Beekes R.S.P. The development of the Proto-Indo-European laryngeals in Greek

Mouton, 1969. — 369 p. — (Janua Linguarum. Series Practica 42).The laryngeal theory is not of recent date. In fact it is nearly ninety years ago now that it was formulated by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Memoire sur le systeme primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-europeennes , in 1878. That was at a time of discoveries that were of fundamental importance to comparative Indo-European linguistics. It was then that the “Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze” was found and defined. In the same year (1876) Osthoff ’s discovery of the liquida sonans and that of the nasalis sonans by Brugmann were published. The last two discoveries gave an entirely new understanding of the phoneme system of the proto-language, especially of the vowel system. At this stage De Saussure put forward his view, in which an essential place was occupied by the “coefficients sonantiques” which he postulated and which since Moller have been called laryngeals. However, De Saussure’s system was outstripped by that of Brugmann and others, codified in the Grundriss (1886). The influence exerted by this work in the German-speaking area in particular was and still is so great that as recently as 1965 it could be said of someone that he used it “almost as god-given revelation”.
It is understandable that the theory found little acceptance in the first years of its existence, since the idea was based largely on a schematic analysis for which no concrete facts could be adduced as arguments. But it may be considered surprising that today, after so many years of research, the theory is definitely not yet universally accepted — or universally rejected. The reason seems in part to be an emotional question. Anyone brought up with Brugmann’s system is confronted with a group of sounds whose phonetic value can be indicated only very vaguely, which had different functions in the proto-language, which passed through many developments in the individual languages and which are reproduced in the literature by a variety of not very attractive signs.