THE THEORY OF IE LARYNGEAL SOUNDS AND PHONEMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF OLD ARMENIAN VOICELESS FRICATIVE (H) (ANACHRONISTIC AND DIACHRONIC ASPECTS)

Abstract

The variety of Old Armenian voiceless h (h) in comparative Armenology (comp. *H (7)/ *p (52)/ *s (16)/ *ø (12)/ *k^ṷ (4)) gives rise to a certain set of problems when identifying the prototype(s) of h (h). One of these problems is the relevance of the laryngeal sounds in common Indo-European language, since Armenian, together with Hittite and Old Greek, was considered one of the key languages that had preserved the reflexes of the IE laryngeal sounds (V. Georgiev). We are more prone to accept the theories that discard the existence of certain unique “laryngeal” sounds in the common Indo-European language. These theories hypothesize that the IE *h was an “ordinary voiceless back-lingual” sound (O. Semerenyi, E. Makaev and others). The Armenian words starting with h (h), which the supporters of the “Laryngeal theory” identify with the IE first shewa (*ə) or a laryngeal sound marked with *H, was, in fact, an ordinary voiceless fricative *h. One of the prototypes proper of the Armenian h (h) was *s, since if not in the Indo-European, then at least in the first IE dialects, the sounds *s and *h were in sequential relationship. This idea is well-supported by typological evidence. The transition of the IE *p> to Arm. h (h), despite its overwhelming number as compared to the others, took place much later when Armenian was already an independent language. The phonetic transitions IE *ø > Arm. հ (հ), IE *k^ṷ > Arm. հ (հ) are of secondary significance for us since in case the IE *ø > Arm. հ (հ) match, the Armenian h (h) is most apparently a later addition while the transition IE *k^ṷ > Arm. հ (հ) is a non-standard phonetic phenomenon that can be well observed in the history of the Armenian language as an independent language.