# Reconstructing IE h2 everywhere to get rid of /a/. Too much?



## Erkattäññe

First of all, I'm not against reconstructing laryngeals in PIE. Anatolian preserves them at least in the instances we know (h2 almost everywhere and h3 initialy) and there are direct evidence but yet sporadic in Armenian and more scarcely in Albanian.
The Mainstream theory allow laryngeals to behave like resonants in PIE roots, even more freely, matching the /s/ in its range of position thus creating very odd consonant clusters not seen among the occlusives regardless the original phonetic value of the laryngeals (velar, uvular, pharyngeal, glottalic, etc)
The Mainstream theory with its variants tries too hard of get rid of /a/, the apex on this matter is the work "Against a proto-indo-european a phoneme" from Lubotsky (1989) and he reconstructs forms like *seh2ls - sh2los for salt, *neh2s - nh2sos for nose, and many more like *peh2'g, *sueh2d, *beh2'g etc.
Theoretically those give the explected result in the daughter languages but I'm not confidant with this approach. 
They end up with a consonant system with h2 being among the most common consonants and a vowel system without phonemic open vowels.
I think this is a big failure, and some points are to be made

- The mainstream theory desires a hyper regular system of e/o ablaut detesting a vowel like /a/ which doesn't behave like that but at the same time there is growing consensus that the e/o ablaut is the result of phonetic and prosodic triggers than morphological because the ablaut seems to be a redundant morphological mark in the forms. So maybe at the begining we had roots with a mid vowel which then broke into ablaut and roots with an open vowel which didn't , not typological problems here.
- In anatolian I see h2 behave like an occlusive in roots, with the same constrains. It appears between vowels or after a resonant in codas, never forming clusters like **tham or **tahm etc and always at the beginning or end of roots, not in the middle. Thus for Indoiranian surd aspirates I regard them as originals and not the contraction of two phonemes.

So avoiding all the reconstucted h2 just to justify /a/ I think that roots with /a/ could make like 20% of the whole set, adding those in /ai/ and /au/ diphthongs which may of course come from loss of a medial consontant (h2 or any other H) and contraction. thus /a/ being not a marginal phoneme.


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## sumelic

Erkattäññe said:


> They end up with a consonant system with h2 being among the most common consonants and a vowel system without phonemic open vowels.


Is there good evidence that *e *o must have corresponded to [e] [o] at this early stage of PIE? If not, one or the other might have been open.
And in the modern day, there are varieties of Arabic where the open vowel [ɑ] only occurs as a conditioned allophone of what is [ɛ] in other places.


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## Erkattäññe

The arabic development of /a/ is interesting, although I don't now the context of fronting/backing, even if pre-PIE wad /a/ for /e-o/, something I see reasonable,  we need a PIE with the three vowels to explain palatalization of k/kW in indoiranian as well as Brugmann law in open syllabes. *kWeCV > caCV; kWaCV > kaCV; kWoCV > ka:CV and direct or underlying triple reflex of *a/e/o in almost all the PIE branches. 
Moreover if pre-PIE /e-o/ was /a/ I wonder what was PIE "marginal" /a/ in pre-PIE. Was it other vowel than an /a/ or an /a/ which "failed" to get fronted in PIE as sometimes is sugested?

I recomend the work of Allan Bomhard on Nostratic available in academia.edu where some equivalences for the PIE vowels and laryngeals with other language families may be enlightening, in any case a three vowel system is avoided.

Update, I failed to understand the true goal of your post, you've dealed well with the typology problem positing both /e/ and /o/ to be open, but regarding to the consonants, we still have an overpopulation of h2 in the reconstructed forms.


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## ahvalj

This has been debated to death since de Saussure, i. e. in the last 100+ years. All possible instances of _a_ have been identified, analyzed and reanalyzed, so I wonder if without an influx of new data anything valuable can be said that was so far unknown. Yes, after all the eliminations there remains some small stock, like *_gʲʰans_- "goose" and nobody actually knows what to do with it. These words may have entered the language as borrowings or neologisms at the point when _a_ had emerged from the laryngeal coloring, or may have been borrowed to separate branches even later, or may have existed in the late Common Indo-European as an isolated element of the vocabulary (as words with _oe_ in Classical Latin) — nobody knows and, what is more important, there are currently absolutely no tools to deal with it.

As to the Nostratic theory, I don't know if it turns out to be right in any aspect, but its proponents have an elegant explanation of several PIE phenomena, which is fun to learn. In the classical form, developed by Illich-Svitych, the Common Nostratic vocalism is based on the Uralic one, i. e. consists of the vowels _a, ä, e, i, o, u_ and _ü_. When PIE experienced a period of strong vowel reduction, most of these phonemic distinctions were lost or reanalized, having left traces e. g. in the formation of three sets of velars: velars that originally stood before _a_ developed into PIE simple ones (Nostr. suffix **-_ḳa_ [Finnish -_kka_] > PIE *-_ko-; Nostr. **ḲarV_ > PIE *_ker-(s)-_ "black, dark"), those that stood before front vowels_ ä, e, i_ and _ü_ developed into palatovelars (Nostr. **_kälu_ [Finnish _käly_] > PIE _gʲlōu_ "brother's wife"; Nostr. **_ḲüjnV_ > PIE *_kʲu̯ō/kʲun_- "dog"), while those that stood before back vowels _o_ and _u_ became labiovelars (Nostr. **_Ḳo _[Finnish _ku-ka_]> PIE _kʷo_ "who"). In particular, Nostraticists postulate that some PIE _a_'s may represent remnants of unreduced Nostratic instances of this vowel, e. g. Nostratic **_ḳapʿV_ > PIE *_kap-ut_- "head".


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## Erkattäññe

I know this has been debated for the last 150 years, but I don't think there has been no progress, the last decades were fruitful in the understanding of anatolian and tocharian as well as the growing importance given to the typology aspect. 
Regarding to the oe latin example, I'm a spanish speaker and we have some marginal diphthongs as /ei/ /oi/ /eu/ (although in basic vocabulary) and /ou/ is exclusive of loanwords such as english _bowl or coach_ . But the vowel /a/ is completely another thing on typological grounds because is a basic cardinal vowel mandatory even in a 3 vowel system. 
If Sumelic is right in taking PIE or pre-PIE /e/ and /o/ as open vowels then the whole picture changes and that "marginal" a could then have been another kind of vowel, perhaps a schwa just to level the suggested system. btw is there any language that made a /ə/>/a/ change?
I've read many works trying to get rid of that phoneme, they talk about *baby-talk words, loans, laryngeal vocalizations in zero grade, laryngeal coluring, plain velar/ uvular colouring, etc* and I think they are missing something. Why every root with e/o? if we know any natural language is absolutely regular synchronically.

From the nostratic point of view PIE /a/ seems to be a pre-PIE that "failed" to get fronted, but even with its high frequency near to plain velars or h2 (artificial or not) there are many contexts that overlaps with those of an /e/ vowel, thus no motivation for a split.
Another thing that I didn't mention in the first post is that I don't believe in laryngeal vocalization, in my point of view, that outcome has to come from a full vowel plus a laryngeal, in the cases a "real" laryngeal was there.


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## ahvalj

Actually, nobody knows how these _E_'s sounded in PIE: it was perfectly possible that the coloring with _hₐ,_ that created a true _a,_ moved the _E_ phoneme towards the proper _e_. Yet, most daughter lineages exhibit a clear _e_ sound with no variations (Indo-Iranic has traces of the former front articulation in the assibilation of the former velars, and within Anatolian we find _e_ in Hittite vs. _a_ in Luwian etc.). Whatever the interpretation, the short _e_ in the daughter lineages is overwhelmingly more frequent than the short _a_, which, while typologically improbable, is the fact.

If we recall that PIE was most probably spoken in the Pontic-Caspian region, it becomes no wonder we find the North-West Caucasian languages in close vicinity that exhibit a rich consonant inventory with two or three vowel phonemes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Caucasian_languages).


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> is there any language that made a /ə/>/a/ change?


In Slovene and Serbo-Croatian, the late Common Slavic _ь_ (<*_i_) and_ ъ_ (<*_u_) merged into a schwa sound, which in Slovene has partly preserved and partly become _a_, while in standard Serbo-Croatian in has uniformly resulted in _a_, indistinguishable from the etymological _a_ (<*_ā_), e. g. Old Church Slavonic (10th century) _dьnь_ (<*_dinm̥ _Acc. Sg.) "day", _sъnъ_ (<*_supnos_) "sleep" and _stanъ_ (<*_stānos_<*_stehₐnos_) "camp" have produced SC _dan_, _san_ and _stan_. In most of West Slavic the common outcome of _ь_ and _ъ_ is _e_, again identical with the etymological one.


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> Another thing that I didn't mention in the first post is that I don't believe in laryngeal vocalization, in my point of view, that outcome has to come from a full vowel plus a laryngeal, in the cases a "real" laryngeal was there.


Then how to explain e. g. the Aorist Sg. 3 *_stāt_ (<*_stehₐt_) "he stood", *_dʰēt_ (<*_dʰehₑt_) "he did" and *_dōt_ (<*_dehₒt_) "he gave" vs. the _to_-adjective *_stəₐtos_ (<*_sthₐtos_) [_sthita_ vs. _στατός_] "stood", _dʰəₑtos_ (<*_dʰhₑtos_) [_hita_ vs. _θετός_] "done" and *_dəₒtos_ (<*_dhₒtos_) [_dita_ vs. _δοτός_] "given" and why the schwa outcome is _i_ in Indo-Iranic, _a/e/o_ in Greek and _a_ elsewhere? It is obvious that the "vocalized laryngeals" were distinct from ordinary vowels both in quantity and quality.


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## ahvalj

Sorry, too much of me, but since all these four posts imply separate discussions, I think it is impractical to merge them. 

Back to _a_. Let's take the IE language with the best preserved vocalism — the Ancient Greek. If we eliminate the instances of _α_ in loanwords (_θάλασσα_) and in the outcomes of the syllabic sonorants (_δέκα, θρασύς_), the only cases remaining will be the _α_ somehow related to the second laryngeal (by coloring, like in _ἀντί_ vs. Hittite _ḫanti_ and _κρέας_ [*<*_kreu̯hₐes_-] vs. Slovene _kri_ [<*_kry_<*_krūs_<*_kruhₐs_], or "vocalization", like in _πατήρ_ vs. _Sanskrit_ _pitā_ [<*_phₐtēr_] and _πότνια_ vs. Sanskrit _patnī_ [<*_potnihₐ_]) or occasional obviously non-laryngealic _a_ (_ἄττα _vs. Hittite_ attas_). All these instances are rather rare, and, in particular, the only old cases when this _a_ is attested in the morphology are (1) Nom. Sg. of some _a_-stems, (2) Nom-Acc. Pl. neutrōrum, (3) Perfect Sg. 1, all -_α_, and (4) Mediopassive -_μαι_ (though in the latter case only the vowel is etymological) — the cases (1), (2) and (4) originate from the "vocalized" *_hₐ_ (as they have _i_ in Indo-Iranic) while (3) comes from *-_hₐe_. No case when an old _a_ is attested in any grammatical role, very few instances in the vocabulary — how could it be a normal full-fledged phoneme?

Update. I had forgotten Perfect Sg. 2 -_α_ in _οἴσθα_ (<*_u̯oı̯dthₐe_), though for Greek this is already rather a part of vocabulary, not grammar. Yet, one more _α_ from coloring.


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## Erkattäññe

So PIE /i/;/u/ > slavic /_ь/;/__ъ/ _to serbocroatian /schwa/ > /a/ while in other slavic languages /e/;/o/ when stressed, sometimes only /e/.

Does this development sounds familiar with that of the "epenthetic" vowels before PIE "syllabic" resonants among different branches? 
This whole thing makes me think that PIE syllabic resonants were in fact a pretonic full vowel plus a resonant that were reduced just like slavic /_ь/;/ъ/ and then they developed differently in the same fashion as slavic did. 

Germanic /u/
Thocarian /schwa/
Greek, Celtic and Indoiranian /a/
Latin /e/;/o/
Baltoslavic /i/; /u/ _


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> So PIE /i/;/u/ > slavic /_ь/;/__ъ/ _to serbocroatian /schwa/ > /a/ while in other slavic languages /e/;/o/ when stressed, sometimes only /e/.
> 
> Does this development sounds familiar with that of the "epenthetic" vowels before PIE "syllabic" resonants among different branches?
> This whole thing makes me think that PIE syllabic resonants were in fact a pretonic full vowel plus a resonant that were reduced just like slavic /_ь/;/ъ/ and then they developed differently in the same fashion as slavic did.
> 
> Germanic /u/
> Thocarian /schwa/
> Greek, Celtic and Indoiranian /a/
> Latin /e/;/o/
> Baltoslavic /i/; /u/ _


This doesn't work: we find _ἀντί/anti_ from *_an_ vs. _δέκα/daśa_ from _n̥_, so the latter in pre-Greeko-Aryan wasn't an ordinary _an_.


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> Then how to explain e. g. the Aorist Sg. 3 *_stāt_ (<*_stehₐt_) "he stood", *_dʰēt_ (<*_dʰehₑt_) "he did" and *_dōt_ (<*_dehₒt_) "he gave" vs. the _to_-adjective *_stəₐtos_ (<*_sthₐtos_) [_sthita_ vs. _στατός_] "stood", _dʰəₑtos_ (<*_dʰhₑtos_) [_hita_ vs. _θετός_] "done" and *_dəₒtos_ (<*_dhₒtos_) [_dita_ vs. _δοτός_] "given" and why the schwa outcome is _i_ in Indo-Iranic, _a/e/o_ in Greek and _a_ elsewhere? It is obvious that the "vocalized laryngeals" were distinct from ordinary vowels both in quantity and quality.



The three famous examples 
I think that schwa indogermanicum (non indoiranian /a/, indoiranian /i/) is just PIE unstressed /a;e/ without adyacent tautosillabic resonant induced to rise in indoiranian by the lowering of /e/ and /o/ while in the other branches it remained open. 

The greek vocalism was remodeled by paradigm leveling and not even sure if it's prudent to reconstruct laryngeals in those roots anymore. See the last work of Allan Bomhard on Nostratic, while he reconstructs laryngeals vehemently the nostratic comparanda for *dhe: and *do: seems to establish that those long vowels came from diphthongs. *dhai, *dau. See the root dhe: in Anatolian or the w glide for do: before vowels in numerous PIE branches.


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## ahvalj

An update to the syllabic sonorants. There are actually many nuances that don't allow to postulate any clear vowel before or after the sonorant. Thus, Iranic has instances of palatalization before *_n̥_ and *_m̥_, e. g. Avestan _ǰasaiti_ "he goes" vs. Sanskrit _gacchati_ (both <*_gʷm̥skʲeti_), so the fill vowel was originally rather fronted, at least in parts of Iranic. Likewise, the _īr/ūr_ from *_r̥hₓ_ is only Indic. Aeolic Greek (and Mycenaean) often has _o_-coloration vs. _a_-coloration elsewhere in Greek. Celtic has _ri_ and _li_ (*_kʲrd_-> Old Irish _cride_ "heart") vs. _ar_ and _al_ (*_mr̥u̯os_> Old Irish _marb_ "dead") depending on the context.


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> This doesn't work: we find _ἀντί/anti_ from *_an_ vs. _δέκα/daśa_ from _n̥_, so the latter in pre-Greeko-Aryan wasn't an ordinary _an_.



not an, but *ən or *ɨn by reduction of unstressed syllabe.

*dekam or *dekem > *dekəm > *dekə̃ > *dekə > *deka


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> The three famous examples
> I think that schwa indogermanicum (non indoiranian /a/, indoiranian /i/) is just PIE unstressed /a;e/ without adyacent tautosillabic resonant induced to rise in indoiranian by the lowering of /e/ and /o/ while in the other branches it remained open.
> 
> The greek vocalism was remodeled by paradigm leveling and not even sure if it's prudent to reconstruct laryngeals in those roots anymore. See the last work of Alan Bomhard on Nostratic, while he reconstructs laryngeals vehemently the nostratic comparanda for *dhe: and *do: seems to establish that those long vowels came from diphthongs. *dhai, *dau. See the root dhe: in Anatolian or the w glide for do: before vowels in numerous PIE branches.


I try to provide well-known examples for not to cause questions concerning words unknown to everybody. These examples will work with other roots as well. 

Why does it rise in Indo-Iranic only from _h_?

The idea of the Greek vocalism being remodeled was OK in the past until it was shown that the prothetic vowels and vocalizations in isolated lemmata actually correspond well to the reconstructed laryngeals. The entire Beekes Greek etymological dictionary is successfully based on this assumption (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJeWVWWWcydS0wVE0&authuser=0).

I don't believe in deep reconstructions: the Nostratic theory is nice to read but purely speculative: the procedures that can still be rather precise for reconstructing the latest PIE don't work reliably when going deeper since in that case we have no intermediate stages attested by asynchronously diverging branches. There is a classical argument against all those attempts: for 5 thousand years between the split of PIE and the modern languages, most of the daughter lineages have changed almost totally, yet the same distance between PIE and Nostratic seems to provide quite recognizable forms: that is suspicious per se and requires crystal clean procedures and extremely convincing comparisons to make it credible.


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> not an, but *ən or *ɨn by reduction of unstressed syllabe.
> 
> *dekam or *dekem > *dekəm > *dekə̃ > *dekə > *deka


See #13: we find _a, *æ, ī _and _ū_ in various fragments of Indo-Iranic — are you able to derive all this from a single vowel? 
Why does Nom. Pl. *-_es_ never reduce?


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> An update to the syllabic sonorants. There are actually many nuances that don't allow to postulate any clear vowel before or after the sonorant. Thus, Iranic has instances of palatalization before *_n̥_ and *_m̥_, e. g. Avestan _ǰasaiti_ "he goes" vs. Sanskrit _gacchati_ (both <*_gʷm̥skʲeti_), so the fill vowel was originally rather fronted, at least in parts of Iranic. Likewise, the _īr/ūr_ from *_r̥hₓ_ is only Indic. Aeolic Greek (and Mycenaean) often has _o_-coloration vs. _a_-coloration elsewhere in Greek. Celtic has _ri_ and _li_ (*_kʲrd_-> Old Irish _cride_ "heart") vs. _ar_ and _al_ (*_mr̥u̯os_> Old Irish _marb_ "dead") depending on the context.



Indoiranian labiovelar palatalization is a inner branch developent (lithuanian gyvas, sanskrit ji:va-). If the iranian palatalized form is not analogical it means that the fill vowel is old enough to predate de indoiranian /e/ > /a/ development and thus to close to the PIE stage itself so maybe it was never _m̥ _there, just a pretonic loss of the nasal through nasalization of the previous vowel.


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> Indoiranian labiovelar palatalization is a inner branch developent (lithuanian gyvas, sanskrit ji:va-). If the iranian palatalized form is not analogical it means that the fill vowel is old enough to predate de indoiranian /e/ > /a/ development and thus to close to the PIE stage itself so maybe it was never _m̥ _there, just a pretonic loss of the nasal through nasalization of the previous vowel.


Do you realize that you complicate the reconstruction immensely? Where the laryngealistic interpretation of the standard reconstruction creates clean and fully predictable (yet often unpronounceable) results, which provide standard outcomes in the attested branches, you postulate a set of particularities, so that a student has to email you every time he wants to learn something about the post-PIE development?


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> I try to provide well-known examples for not to cause questions concerning words unknown to everybody. These examples will work with other roots as well.
> 
> Why does it rise in Indo-Iranic only from _h_?



That is circular, no evidence for h in those cases, nor even from anatolian, see the hi conjugation and the mediopasive, only h in the first person singular. neogrammarians just reconstruct h when greek /a/ matches indoiranian /i/ 


ahvalj said:


> The idea of the Greek vocalism being remodeled was OK in the past until it was shown that the prothetic vowels and vocalizations in isolated lemmata actually correspond well to the reconstructed laryngeals. The entire Beekes Greek etymological dictionary is successfully based on this assumption (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJeWVWWWcydS0wVE0&authuser=0).



I think Beekes has too much bias towards greek, it's natural that the vocalism of the prothetic greek vowels match with the reconstructed laryngeals when the reconstructed laryngeals are based on the vocalism of the prothetic vowels. 


ahvalj said:


> I don't believe in deep reconstructions: the Nostratic theory is nice to read but purely speculative: the procedures that can still be rather precise for reconstructing the latest PIE don't work reliably when going deeper since in that case we have no intermediate stages attested by asynchronously diverging branches. There is a classical argument against all those attempts: for 5 thousand years between the split of PIE and the modern languages, most of the daughter lineages have changed almost totally, yet the same distance between PIE and Nostratic seems to provide quite recognizable forms: that is suspicious per se and requires crystal clean procedures and extremely convincing comparisons to make it credible.



I have many reserves towards Nostratic too, but extensive vocabulary with formal and semantic correspondences makes me take it on account for external comparisons of roots with dubious structure. I had a bad concept of Nostratic until I read the monumental Bomhard work.


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> Where the laryngealistic interpretation of the standard reconstruction creates clean and fully predictable (yet often unpronounceable) results


Then why the palatalization in Iranian before the nasal resonant? It's not about hard or easy, it's about what PIE was like. I think my guesses, very far from being systemtatical yet, aim to solve problems instead of creating them. If everything is done why should we bother to get inmersed in comparative linguistics?


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> Then why the palatalization in Iranian before the nasal resonant? It's not about hard or easy, it's about what PIE was like. I think my guesses, very far from being systemtatical yet, aim to solve problems instead of creating them. If everything is done why should we bother to get inmersed in comparative linguistics?


This occasional palatalization, as well as other instances of non-linear development (let's not forget the unexplicable distribution of _i_ and _u_ in Balto-Slavic, e. g. _ginti_/_gъnati_ "to drive" and _į_ vs. _vъ(n)_ "in" and Russian _žerlo_/_gorlo_ from *_gʷr̥hₒdʰlo_- "throat") suggests that there wasn't any clear reduced or full vowel in vicinity of those sounds and that the loss of syllabic sonorants occurred differently in various branches and various contexts. By the way, Latin has _en/em_ and _or/ol_ for the sonorants but _a_ from schwa secundum (_quattuor_), so again we find that the vocalic element that originated in vicinity of the sonorants wasn't necessarily identical to the pre-existing non-laryngeal schwa.


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> That is circular, no evidence for h in those cases, nor even from anatolian, see the hi conjugation and the mediopasive, only h in the first person singular. neogrammarians just reconstruct h when greek /a/ matches indoiranian /i/


Why no evidence? Isn't _asthāt/sthitaḥ,_ _adhāt/hitaḥ _the case? Hittite preserves laryngeals in certain environments, see e. g. _Kloekhorst A · 2008 · Etymological dictionary of the Hittite inherited lexicon:_ 75–82 (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJUk95SHh4VEZIcU0&authuser=0). Balto-Slavic develops acute long vowels from the vowel+laryngeal sequences (including all three these roots) as opposed to circumflex vowels from most apophonic or contractional lengths, cp. Lithuanian _vedúosi_ < _*u̯edō si_ < _*u̯edʰohₓ si_ literally "me llevo" vs. _sesuõ_ < *_s(u̯)sesōr_ "sister". There are some problems there, but overall the BSl acute appears exactly where laryngeals are necessary for etymological purposes (plus the outcomes of Winter's law that produce acute vowels as well). Sanskrit _ā_ as zero-grade in the _n_- and _m_- _set_-roots can't be explained other than _n̥/m̥_+consonant (laryngeal)+stop: if the "laryngeal" were a vowel of any kind, we would have seen the normal _set_ development _ani/ami _(_jātaḥ _"born" from _*gʲn̥hₑtos _with no vowel vs._ janitā _"parent" [_genitor, γενέτωρ_] < _*gʲenhₑtōr_ with a vowel).



Erkattäññe said:


> I think Beekes has too much bias towards greek, it's natural that the vocalism of the prothetic greek vowels match with the reconstructed laryngeals when the reconstructed laryngeals are based on the vocalism of the prothetic vowels.


I am not aware of cases of variation among those prothetic vowels, so _e_ seems to be always_ e_, _a_ — _a_, and _o_ — _o_. There is no phonetic environment that would govern the choice between them, either. This doesn't look as random development at all, so one can't simply say "ah, I don't know and don't care".


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> This occasional palatalization, as well as other instances of non-linear development (let's not forget the unexplicable distribution of _i_ and _u_ in Balto-Slavic, e. g. _ginti_/_gъnati_ "to drive" and _į_ vs. _vъ(n)_ "in" and Russian _žerlo_/_gorlo_ from *_gʷr̥hₒdʰlo_- "throat") suggests that there wasn't any clear reduced or full vowel in vicinity of those sounds and that the loss of syllabic sonorants occurred differently in various branches and various contexts. By the way, Latin has _en/em_ and _or/ol_ for the sonorants but _a_ from schwa secundum (_quattuor_), so again we find that the vocalic element that originated in vicinity of the sonorants wasn't necessarily identical to the pre-existing non-laryngeal schwa.



I'd like to know some examples of languages developing vowel+sonorant from syllabic resonants so we can see parallel developmets. Another typological affair I dispute is the one of laryngeal vocalizations, If then again is any atested example of that development in any language, like velar, uvular, pharyngeal or glotal fricatives developing into full vowels then I might stick more closely to the mainstream theory. 
Regarding to latin quattuor, I've read some proto-latin rule that /o/ develops into /a/ via dissimilation when /_w+back vowel Eh: lowo: > lawo:. quattuor is not exactly the case but there are already 2 labial elements, this theory would almost fit if we know of any reflex of 4 in /o/ grade, or maybe We > Wo as in sweso:r or swepnos and then the disimilation, just guessing here.


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> Why no evidence? Isn't _asthāt/sthitaḥ,_ _adhāt/hitaḥ _the case? Hittite preserves laryngeals in certain environments, see e. g. _Kloekhorst A · 2008 · Etymological dictionary of the Hittite inherited lexicon:_ 75–82 (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJUk95SHh4VEZIcU0&authuser=0). Balto-Slavic develops acute long vowels from the vowel+laryngeal sequences (including all three these roots) as opposed to circumflex vowels from most apophonic or contractional lengths, cp. Lithuanian _vedúosi_ < _*u̯edō si_ < _*u̯edʰohₓ si_ literally "me llevo" vs. _sesuõ_ < *_s(u̯)sesōr_ "sister". There are some problems there, but overall the BSl acute appears exactly where laryngeals are necessary for etymological purposes (plus the outcomes of Winter's law that produce acute vowels as well). Sanskrit _ā_ as zero-grade in the _n_- and _m_- _set_-roots can't be explained other than _n̥/m̥_+consonant (laryngeal)+stop: if the "laryngeal" were a vowel of any kind, we would have seen the normal _set_ development _ani/ami _(_jātaḥ _"born" from _*gʲn̥hₑtos _with no vowel vs._ janitā _"parent" [_genitor, γενέτωρ_] < _*gʲenhₑtōr_ with a vowel).



The form ja:ta certainly point to a final laryngeal in the root but anyway the trisillabic forms genéto:r and janita: as well as thugáte:r and duhita: in my view are trisillabic in the parent language, I see no reason to vocalize a non syllabic consonant instead of dropping it in complicated clusters. So no vowel in the PP gənh-tós, but vowel in the other word because instead of the agent suffix -ter/tor we could be dealing with the -étor/ətér suffix used for family members, I've read a paper on that suffix which my be attested isolated in hittite which surfaces as -atar and means english -hood.
See *Václav Blažek "indoeuropean kinship terms in -*əter*"*


ahvalj said:


> I am not aware of cases of variation among those prothetic vowels, so _e_ seems to be always_ e_, _a_ — _a_, and _o_ — _o_. There is no phonetic environment that would govern the choice between them, either. This doesn't look as random development at all, so one can't simply say "ah, I don't know and don't care".



In that book Beekes says, we won't reconstruct roots with prothetic vowels anymore because that contradicts the laryngeal theory and in other section he says that in the 90% of the cases the prothetic vowel is /a/ and it seems to alternante with /e/ and /o/ randomly. it's at the beginning of the book, before the word entries.


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## fdb

Erkattäññe said:


> I'd like to know some examples of languages developing vowel+sonorant from syllabic resonants so we can see parallel developmets.



Old Persian /ṛ/ regularly becomes /ir/ in Middle and New Persian.


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## Erkattäññe

fdb said:


> Old Persian /ṛ/ regularly becomes /ir/ in Middle and New Persian.



The avestan equivalent of that vowel is written /ərə/ (with adyacent vowels) and in sanskrit is /r̩/. 
On the other hand modern slovenian has words like Srbija but a schwa is pronounced before the r so the persian and sanskrit spellings could be an orthographic convention. 
The same problems arise when transcripting phonemically english words like "bottle" or "button" and some analyse those with final syllabic resonants while other with a schwa and a resonants.
Anyway my claims for the phonetic nature of the "syllabic resonants" in PIE do not alter in any case the traditional morphological model.

What bugs me the most is the paucity of PIE /a/, and the veracity of laryngeal vocalizations, something that almost no one dares to discuss, taking it for granted when I don't know of any development like that in any language. 
Let's see the reconstructed PIE word for daughter with its /h2/ and its possible phonetic values without the aid of any vocalic element:

dʰugxˈteːr / dʰugχˈteːr / dʰugħˈteːr / dʰugʕˈteːr

A disyllabic word with beautiful consonant clusters.
now we have theese:

Sanskrit: duhitáː
Greek: tʰugáteːr

Both trisyllabic with full vowel, even the greek one accented in the reconstructed PIE no syllabe so for me whenever the word had or not a layngeal there were a vowel too.


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## sumelic

The laryngeals need not have "vocalized" in the sense of an immediate development of /χ/ > ə or something like that (which would indeed be an odd change, combining voicing, lowering and syllabification all in one step). I think the main theory I have heard is that the laryngeals in the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages were fricatives or at least patterned like the fricative *s, but in the extant daughter languages different epenthetic vowels were inserted in difficult clusters with laryngeals, followed by the loss of the laryngeals. For comparison, French shows an apparent "vocalization" of Latin /s/ in word-initial clusters /st/ /sp/ sk/ to /et/ /ep/ /ek/, but since we know the historical development of French we know that the /s/ didn't simply turn into a vowel here. However, the end effect is the same as if it did.


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## Erkattäññe

In french that development was /st-/ > /est-/ (in spanish this mostly stops at this stage) > /eht-/ (some spanish varieties reach this stage) > /et-/ and in sardinian the development was a prothetic /i/. 
A study about italian says that the inicial /s/ after pause and before a consonant (I mean not preceded by a previous word syllabe) counts as syllabic even when is no prothetic vowel in that language.
Take into account that your example works at the begining of words and to apply this rule to let's say _dʰugχˈteːr _ we need to have 2 words:
_
dʰug __χteːr > __dʰug _ə_χteːr  > dʰug ateːr for greek__ and dʰug iteːr_ for indoiranian

2 problems: 
-Always 2 words regardigng to laryngeal vocalizations?
-Why did the prothetic vowel didn't get lengthenend if the prothetic vowel and the laryngeal coexisted for a while?

Thus the mainstream theory requires immediate vocalization without the known stages for vowel prothesis and consonant deletion in romance, vowels which in romance wouldn't have been lengthened because at this stage vowel length was not a phonemic feature.

take for example latin frigidus and its outcomes:

vulgar latin fricdo
spanish frío
italian freddo
catalan fred
french froid

Yes, italian and spanish have frigido, but that is a cultism as english frigid, based on the atested latin form but the classical languages autors didn't have written PIE literature to restore prestige forms like that.
An internal vowel in was lost in the normal evolution of those romance languages without a trace, The resulting consonant cluster was simplified too at different degrees, this took a few centuries as the vulgar latin form shows. 
Now why shoudn't we reconstruct a vowel or a vowel + laryngeal for PIE in the instances a posited laryngeal shows vocalized as a syllabe nucleus?


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## sumelic

> -Always 2 words regardigng to laryngeal vocalizations?
> -Why did the prothetic vowel didn't get lengthened if the prothetic vowel and the laryngeal coexisted for a while?


What do you mean by the first part? My idea was that both _dʰugəχteːr _and _dʰugiteːr _descend from an earlier _dʰugχteːr. _For the second question, there are several possibilities. The lengthening could have occurred earlier than the epenthesis, and no longer been an active process. Or, my hypothesized epenthetic vowel could simply have occurred after the laryngeals rather than before them. (I don't know if this last one actually works.)
_dʰugχteːr > __dʰugχ__ə__teːr for Greek
__dʰugχteːr > __dʰug__χ__iteːr for Indo-Iranian__

_


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> The form ja:ta certainly point to a final laryngeal in the root but anyway the trisillabic forms genéto:r and janita: as well as thugáte:r and duhita: in my view are trisillabic in the parent language, I see no reason to vocalize a non syllabic consonant instead of dropping it in complicated clusters. So no vowel in the PP gənh-tós, but vowel in the other word because instead of the agent suffix -ter/tor we could be dealing with the -étor/ətér suffix used for family members, I've read a paper on that suffix which my be attested isolated in hittite which surfaces as -atar and means english -hood.
> See *Václav Blažek "indoeuropean kinship terms in -*əter*"*


Nikolayev (in _Дыбо ВА, Замятина ГИ, Николаев СЛ · 1993 · Основы славянской акцентологии. Словарь…: _53–59 and in his other works) discusses the behavior of Greek and Indo-Iranic _set_ roots in view of the PIE distribution of high-toned ("dominant) and low-toned ("recessive") morphemes implied by the Balto-Slavic accentological reconstruction of the last decades. He suggests that the presence (preservation) of the vocalized laryngeal agrees with the Balto-Slavic prosody of the roots and suffixes:(I) with suffixes of one type (suffixes of the class I, corresponding to the Balto-Slavic dominant ones), the _set_ roots take the form CVCV, e. g. _ἐχέ-τᾱς, ἄρο-τρον, κρεμά-θρᾱ, φλεγέ-θω;_
(II) with suffixes of another type (suffixes of the class II, corresponding to the Balto-Slavic recessive ones), the _set_ roots distribute between two classes:​(1) some roots (roots of the class I, corresponding to the Balto-Slavic dominant ones) preserve the structure CVCV before suffixes beginning with stops (more precisely, this is a rule only for roots where the second C is a sonorant) and lose the second V before suffixes beginning with a fricative or sonorant, e. g.:​_γενέ-τωρ, γένε-σις_ vs. _ἐ-γείν-αμην_ (*_gen-s-_), _γέν-να_ (*<_gen-mn̥_)
_νεμέ-τωρ, νέμε-σις_ vs._ ἔ-νειμ-α_ (_*nem-s-_)
_ἀρχέ-τᾱς_ vs._ ἦρξα, ἦργ-μαι, ἄργ-μα_
_βρόχε-τος _vs. _βρεχ-μός_
_δάκε-τον_ vs. _δέ-δηγ-μαι_​(2) other roots (roots of the class II, corresponding to the Balto-Slavic recessive ones) acquire the shape CCV̄ (CVCV̄ if the former shape is phonetically impossible), e. g.:​_κρᾱ-τήρ, κρᾶ-σις, κρᾱ-τός, κέ-κρᾱ-κα, κρῆ-σαι, κρᾶ-μα_
_βρῶ-σις, βέ-βρω-κα, βρῶ-μα_
_σχέ-σις, σχε-τός, ἔ-σχη-κα

_​The morphological distinction between the analogs of the Balto-Slavic dominant and recessive roots and suffixes is claimed to be found also in Indic and Latin (choice of one or another morpheme, phonetics). In particular, in Indic this seems to govern the choice between _i_ and_ ī_ in the _set_ roots before the suffixes of the class II: the case II.1 shows_ i_: _janima_, _janitā_ etc., whereas the case II.2 shows _ī:_ _grabhītā_ etc. Before the suffixes of the class I both classes of roots show _i_: _pavītā_ vs. _pavitra-_, _bhavītva-_ vs. _bhavitra_-, _bharīma_ vs. _bharitra_-. This lengthening in Indic in II.2 seems similar to the one found in Greek in the same position with the same kind of roots.

So, all this is aimed to suggest that the fate of the laryngeal in the _set_ roots (loss, vocalization into a short or vocalization into a long vowel) in Greeko-Aryan may have depended on the prosodic features of the roots and suffixes (preserved as a phonetic reality until pretty late in Balto-Slavic but discoverable only indirectly in other branches at their attested stages).



Erkattäññe said:


> In that book Beekes says, we won't reconstruct roots with prothetic vowels anymore because that contradicts the laryngeal theory and in other section he says that in the 90% of the cases the prothetic vowel is /a/ and it seems to alternante with /e/ and /o/ randomly. it's at the beginning of the book, before the word entries.


On p. X (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJeWVWWWcydS0wVE0&authuser=0) we read the following:

"d) It should be noted that the term 'prothetic vowel' is used in this dictionary to indicate the vowel (mostly a-) that may or may not be present in _Pre-Greek substrate words._ In _inherited_ words, a _facultative_ prothetic vowel is not reconstructed any more since it contradicts the laryngeal theory".

The first phrase is further expanded on p. XXIII:

"3. Prothetic vowel
_Pre-Greek_ had a prothetic vowel, e.g. _ἀσκάλαφος_ beside _κάλαφος._ In most cases, the vowel is _ἀ_. The numbers (Fur. 368ff.) are as follows: _α_ ± 90, _ο_ 10, _ε_ 5, _ι_ 3, υ _∅_, _η_ 6, _αι_ 2. Note that, generally speaking, _α_ may interchange with _ο_, _ε_, and _αι_. Indeed, we have cases where prothetic _ο_ interchanges with _α_, and the same holds for _ε_ (e.g. _εἰκλ_- / _αἰκλ_-, _ἐψία_ / _ἀψία_). Although not all other cases can be explained away, it seems that the phenomenon originally only concerned _α_. Examples: _ἀγασυλλίς_ / _γηθυλλίς;_ _ἀκιρίς_ / _κίρρις_; _ἀκορνοί_ / _κόρνοψ;_ _ἀχραδαμύλα_ / _χραμαδοῖλαι;_ _ἀναρίτης_ / _νηρίτης;_ _ἀσκάλαβος_ / _(σ)καλαβώτης;_ _ἀχύνωψ_ / _κύνωψ_".

Beeks calls "Pre-Greek" the substrate _non-IE language_ spoken in Greece before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans.

I have checked the relevant lemmata on _α< _PIE _*hₐ _from the first 100 pages of Beekes:

_ἀγείρω_ < *_hₐger_- — no alternation listed: _α_- throughout
_ἄεθλος_ < *_hₐu̯edʰ_- (?) — no alternation listed
_ἀείδω_ < *_hₐu̯eı̯d_- (?) — no alternation listed
_ἀείρω_ < *_hₐu̯er_- (?) — two lemmata; no alternation listed for either
_ἄελλα_ < *_hₐu̯el_- (?) — no alternation listed
_ἄεσα_ < _hₐu̯es_- — no alternation listed
_ἄημι_ < *_hₐu̯ehₑ_- — no alternation listed
_ἀκούω_ < *_hₐkeu̯s_- — no alternation listed
_ἀλέγω_ < *_hₐleg_- — no alternation listed
_ἀλείτης_ < *_hₐleı̯t-_ — no alternation listed
_ἀλείφω_ < *_hₐleı̯bʰ_- (?) — no alternation listed
_ἀλέξω_ < *_hₐlek-s-_ — no alternation listed
_ἀλέομαι_ < *_hₐleu̯_- (?) — no alternation listed
_ἀλίνειν_ < _*hₐleı̯(hₓ)-_ — no alternation listed
_ἀλώπηξ_ < *_hₐlop_- — no alternation listed
_ἀμαρτάνω_ < *_hₐmert_- — no alternation listed
_ἀμάω_ < *_hₐmehₑ_- (?) — no alternation listed
_ἀμβλίσκω_ < *_hₐm̥lhₒ_- (?) — no alternation listed
_ἀμείβω_ < *_hₐmeı̯gʷ_- — no alternation listed
_ἀμέλγω_ < *_hₐmelgʲ_- — no alternation listed
_ἀμέρδω_ < *_hₐmerd_- — no alternation listed, though forms on _μερδ_- are attested as well
_ἀμεύσασθαι_ < *_hₐmeu̯(hₓ)_- (?) — no alternation listed
_ἀμύμων_ < *_hₐmeu̯_- — no alternation listed
_ἀμφί_ < _*hₐn̥t-bʰi_ — no alternation listed.


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## ahvalj

One more curious evidence concerning the fate of the laryngeals and the rise of the acute intonation in Balto-Slavic. In the later languages we find the uniform acute intonation in the outcomes of the PIE _vowel+laryngeal+consonant_ and _vowel+semivowel/sonorant+laryngeal+consonant_ as well as in the outcomes of Winter's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter's_law). However, there are data that allow to distinguish between two of these three sources within Balto-Slavic itself. 

According to the modern interpretation of Hirt's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirt's_law — though many of the statements in that article are based on older data), the final accent moved onto the preceding syllable with a long monophthong or diphthong of laryngeal origin, but not on the vowels lengthened following Winter's law, neither on the Bezzenberger's combinations (_erə, elə, emə, enə_) — see _Дыбо ВА · 2000 · Морфологизированные парадигматические акцентные системы. Типология и генезис. Том I:_ 538–541, 59–64 and _passim_ (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJVUhZYi1pbFR3ODA&authuser=0). 

In later Slavic (around the turn of the 1st and 2nd millennia), this is responsible for the following distribution of stress in the Infinitives of the verbs with mobile stress:

-_áti_ (<*-_ātēı̯_):_ zъváti, pьráti, oráti, kováti, lьjáti, dějáti, dajáti_
-_ýti_ (<*-_ūtēı̯_): _býti_
-_íti_ (<*-_ītēı̯_): _píti, víti, žíti, avíti, gubíti_
-_íti_ (<*-_ēı̯tēı̯_): _líti_
-_úti_ (<*-_ēu̯tēı̯_, *-_ōu̯tēı̯_, *-_āu̯tēı̯_): _kúti, ŗúti, snúti, trúti, žúti.
_
Vs. 
-_nǫtí_ (<*-_nontēı̯_): _pomęnǫtí, minǫtí._

This means that verbs with both barytonic and mobile stress can't have a stressed Infinitive marker (-_ti_) if it is preceded by the former long vowel of laryngeal origin, whereas the Infinitives in both stress types remain distinct in the former Bezzenberger's roots:

barytona: *_bórti_ (<*_bʰarətēı̯_), *_pórti_ (<*_porətēı̯_), *_mélti_ (<*_melətēı̯_), *_kólti_ (<*_kolətēı̯_)
mobilia: *_žertí_ (<*_gʷerətēı̯_), *_dertí_ (*<_derətēı̯_), *_stertí_ (<_sterətēı̯_), *_pertí_ (<_(s)perətēı̯_), _pętí_ (<*_penətēı̯_), _tętí_ (*<_temətēı̯_)
(Dybo, op. cit.: 545).

What is not trivial here is that, to the time when Hirt's law operated, the laryngeals had already merged with the preceding vocalic elements through the separating_ ı̯ _and _u̯ _(hence the long diphthongs that attracted the stress) but remained separate (as schwa or a kind of glottal stop or stød) when separated by sonorants _r, l, m_ and _n_.

The older literature suggests that Hirt's law operated on Bezzenberger's combinations as well, hence Latvian _pil̃ns_, Slavic *_pь́lnъ_ vs. Sanskrit _pūrnáḥ_ "full" or Latvian _il̃gs_, Slavic *_dь́lgъ_ but Sanskrit _dīrghás_, Greek _δολιχός_ "long", but Afghan data seem to support the originally barytonic stress here as in Balto-Slavic: _pə́ṇa_, _lā́rγa_ (Dybo, op. cit., 51).


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## Erkattäññe

sumelic said:


> What do you mean by the first part? My idea was that both _dʰugəχteːr _and _dʰugiteːr _descend from an earlier _dʰugχteːr. _For the second question, there are several possibilities. The lengthening could have occurred earlier than the epenthesis, and no longer been an active process. Or, my hypothesized epenthetic vowel could simply have occurred after the laryngeals rather than before them. (I don't know if this last one actually works.)
> _dʰugχteːr > __dʰugχ__ə__teːr for Greek
> __dʰugχteːr > __dʰug__χ__iteːr for Indo-Iranian__
> 
> _



About the 2 words thing I was trying to say that your rule of prothetic vowel stands word initially as in french, thus we need two word for the PIE form if we want to apply that rule.
I don't know of languages which insert vowels medially in inherited words to symplify clusters, on the other hand complex clusters are often created by syncope and the lost vowel never comes back. they simply drop one consonant or assimilate one element to another.
_*dʰugχteːr _cannot be a phonotactically legal 2 syllabe word, not even voice agreement among the consontants unless we are dealing with the glottalic approach but anyway *_du'kχteːr _do not fix it for me either. what could be the m,orphological swgmentation? _*dʰug-χteːr? __*dʰug-χ-teːr? __*dʰug-χt-eːr?
_It is pronunceable but then why adding an uneconomical extra syllabe? I'll do more research on *set* roots which give similar outcomes and I'll see what I can find, they seem to have disyllabic outcomes in tocharian too.


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## ahvalj

Don't also forget Gaulish _duxtir_, Oscan _futír_, Avestan _dugədar-/dugdar-_, Persian _duxtar_. All these languages otherwise tend to vocalize the interconsonantal laryngeals.


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