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The laryngeal theory aims to produce greater regularity in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European phonology than in the reconstruction produced by the comparative method. Most notably, it seeks to extend the general occurrence of ablaut (apophony) to syllables that contain reconstructed vowel phonemes other than *e or *o. In its earlier form (see below) the theory postulated three sounds in PIE (Proto-Indo-European) which combined with reconstructed *e or *o to produce vowel phonemes which would not otherwise be predicted by the rules of ablaut. It received considerable support from the decipherment of Hittite, which was discovered to be an Indo-European language. Many Hittite words were recognised as reflexes (derived words) of PIE, with a phoneme represented as ''ḫ'' corresponding to one of the hypothetical PIE sounds. Subsequent scholarship has established a set of rules by which an ever-increasing number of reflexes in daughter languages may be derived from PIE roots. The number of explanations achieved and the simplicity of the postulated system has led to widespread acceptance of the theory. In its most widely accepted version, the theory posits three phonemes h₁, h₂ and h₃ (see below) in PIE. In Hittite, h₂ developed into ḫ. Other daughter languages inherited derived sounds resulting from merger with PIE short vowels, and subsequent loss. The phonemes are now recognised as consonants related to articulation in the general area of the larynx where a consonantal gesture may affect vowel quality. They are regularly known as laryngeal but the actual place of articulation for each consonant remains a matter of debate. (see below). The laryngeals are so called because they were once hypothesized (by Müller and Cuny) to have had a pharyngeal, epiglottal, or glottal place of articulation involving a constriction near the larynx. The evidence for their existence is mostly indirect, as will be shown below. But the theory serves as an elegant explanation for a number of properties of the Proto-Indo-European vowel system that, prior to the postulation of laryngeals, were indecipherable, such as "independent" schwas (as in *''pəter-'' 'father'); and the hypothesis that PIE schwa *''ə'' was actually a consonant, not a vowel, provides an elegant explanation for some apparent exceptions to Brugmann's law in Indic. ==History== The beginnings of the theory were proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879, in an article chiefly devoted to something else altogether (demonstrating that *''a'' and *''o'' were separate phonemes in PIE). In the course of his analysis, Saussure proposed that what had then been reconstructed as long vowels *''ā'' and *''ō'', alternating with *''ǝ'', was actually an ordinary type of PIE ablaut. That is, it was an alternation between ''e''-grade and zero grade like in "regular" ablaut (further explanations below), but followed by a previously unidentified element. This "element" accounted for both the changed vowel color and the lengthening (short *''e'' becoming long *''ā'' or *''ō''). So, rather than reconstructing *''ā, ō'' and *''ǝ'' as others had done before, Saussure proposed something like *''eA'' alternating with *''A'' and *''eO'' with *''O'', where ''A'' and ''O'' represented the unidentified elements. Saussure called them simply ''coefficients sonantiques'', which was the term for what are now in English more usually called resonants; that is, the six elements present in PIE which can be either consonants (nonsyllabic) or vowels (syllabic) depending on the sounds they're adjacent to: *''y w r l m n''. These views were accepted by a few scholars, in particular Hermann Möller, who added important elements to the theory. Saussure's observations, however, did not achieve any general currency, as they were still too abstract and had little direct evidence to back them up. This changed when Hittite was discovered and deciphered in the early 20th century. Hittite had a sound or sounds written with symbols from the Akkadian syllabary conventionally transcribed as ', as in ' "I put, am putting". This consonant did not appear to be clearly related to any of the consonants then reconstructed for PIE, and various unsatisfactory proposals were made to explain this consonant in terms of the PIE consonant system as it had then been reconstructed. It remained for Jerzy Kuryłowicz (''Études indoeuropéennes I,'' 1935) to propose that these sounds lined up with Saussure's conjectures. He suggested that the unknown consonant of Hittite was in fact a direct reflex of the ''coefficients sonantiques'' that Saussure had proposed. Their appearance explained some other matters as well; they explained, for example, why verb roots containing only a consonant and a vowel always have long vowels. For example, in *''dō''- "give", the new consonants allowed linguists to decompose this further into *''deh₃''. This not only accounted for the patterns of alternation more economically than before (by requiring fewer types of ablaut), but also brought the structure of these roots into line with the basic PIE pattern which required roots to begin and end with a consonant. The lateness of the discovery of these sounds by Indo-Europeanists is largely because Hittite and the other Anatolian languages are the only Indo-European languages where at least some of them are attested directly and consistently as consonantal sounds. Otherwise, their presence is to be inferred mostly through the effects they have on neighboring sounds, and on patterns of alternation that they participate in. When a laryngeal ''is'' attested directly, it is usually as a special type of vowel and not as a consonant. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Laryngeal theory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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