Talk:Laryngeal theory/Archive 1

Archive 1

Paragraphs removed

I removed the following paragraphs:

The second argument, which appears to ba a stronger one, is the tendency of symmetry and economy in phonemic systems, a principle which is well documented in languages around the world. The fact that the PIE alveolar stops are matched by an alveolar fricative (sibilant) would pattern neatly if also the velar, palato-velar and labio-velar stops were matched by corresponding velar *h₂, palato-velar *h₁ and labio-velar *h₃ fricatives. If the laryngeals could be shown to represent these places of articulation the system would save redundant distinctions in places of articulation (pharyngeal vs. velar), which would increase the economy of the phonemic system and make it a more probable reconstruction.

On the basis of analogy with Semitic languages another rather economic solution may be suggested. This is based on the fact that pharyngeal stops are not, due to human anatomy, possible to articulate. The laryngeals may therefore be understood to be frictives due to their place of articulation and thus taking up the position of stops in the system. From the systemic point of view the three laryngeals would represent further places rather than manners of articulation (*h₂ certainly pharyngeal and *h₁ perhaps laryngeal proper? or uvular??, either or both with an optional secondary feature of labialization *h₃).

The use of voicing in the PIE phonemic system did not extend to non-plosives. If the glottal theory is accepted, voicing was not a phonemic feature of the system at all. Voicing could therefore hardly have been a distinctive feature of laryngeals either.

It can be concluded, that the exact phonetic value of the laryngeals may remain unknown. The Uralic (and Hittite) evidence does in any event seem to contradict the assumption still held by some, that the laryngeals would have had no pronunciation at all, and are simply phonetic coefficients.

These seem to be someone's personal opinion rather than any accepted beliefs in the PIE field. (Please see Wikipedia's "No Original Research" policy.)

Before adding them back, they need to be rewritten to remove obviously incorrect stuff (e.g. h1 is clearly not a palato-velar, and no such arguments have been made in the PIE community), and they *MUST BE REFERENCED* to relevant authorities in the field.

Benwing 3 July 2005 07:28 (UTC)

Actually, such speculations (that the laryngeals might have been dorsal fricatives of some kind) are pretty general in the field. Cowgill has mentioned the possibility; Puhvel I believe has been more definite in his ideas. And it is beyond argument that PIE as usually constructed has rather few fricatives (one) for what is a more-elaborate-than-most obstruent system otherwise. (Disclaimer: I myself don't have any opinion about the phonetic features of laryngeals.) Alsihler 21:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Some ideas

History of laryngeal theory

Ferdinand de Saussure did posit three phonemes, but did not call them laryngeals. Early notations are E, A, O and ə₁, ə₂, ə₃. I think he used the former (to be checked). Someone introduced the term coefficients. Again de Saussure?

At first, these three phonemes seemed to be resonants, like m, n, r, l, or glides like w, y. The laryngeal theory, in strict sense, began when "laryngeal" realizations for those phonemes were proposed. Who? When? The h₁, h₂, h₃ or H₁, H₂, H₃ notations were introduced at that time.

Sprocedato 18:22, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Saussure called them "coéfficients sonantiques", which is also the term used for what nowadays are called the IE semivowels or (as I would prefer) resonants. And he only postulated two of the things, which he rendered A and a symbol not in the Unicode set, "O with a little subscript v" (I guess he was afraid it would be read as just an "O"). The term "laryngeal" was from Hermann Møller (e.g. Die Semitisch-Vorindogermanischen Laryngalen Konsonanten of 1917) & later pushed by Cuny. I believe the schwa notation is largely Kuryłowicz and his followers, though he may not have invented it. Alsihler 21:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This needs some basic background info; it is very hard for the average reader to understand. 69.171.129.46 08:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the text is not as lucid (or as technically correct) as it might be. I've started to straighten out the exposition/explanation/background, adjust the notation (subscripts provided by Wikipedia screw up the line spacing) and so on. Will continue to work on it. Alsihler 22:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Just added huge (too huge?) background, discussion, examples to try to anchor laryngeal theory both in Indo-European history and in the history of Indo-European linguistics. Alsihler 23:52, 1 January 2007 (UTC) (Well, except that it seems to have disappeared. It was a lot of work.) Alsihler 18:48, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Stick to the simplest form of the theory

The laryngeal theory, in its basic form, posits three phonemes, and vaguely interprets them as continuants pronounced back in the oral cavity.

This is not necessarily the most accepted form of the theory. It is important because it has become the reference frame to describe all other theories, even the non-laryngealistic ones. (They say: The so-called h₂ is actually...)

There are many opinions about how many laryngeals PIE had and how they were pronounced. It can be said that every author has its own theory. A review of current theories would be a very difficult task, because there are no "prevailing" theories. Someone has probably already done a similar work: a reference to it would be enough here.

Sprocedato 18:22, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Sound changes involving laryngeals

• laryngeals "colour" adjacent vowels
  • this interacts with ablaut
• laryngeals become vowels (between consonants)
  • prothetic vowels in Greek and Armenian are remnants of laryngeals in many but not all cases
• laryngeals lengthen preceding vowels
  • "resonant-plus-laryngeal" sound changes should be mentioned here (Lat. plēnus < *plh₁no- and many other examples)
  • this led to morphological reorganization: the -ā declension of many IE languages can be cited as an example, but is probably unnecessary, because a morphological adjustment is expected anyway with most sound changes. I think it would be better the other way around: where -ā declension is treated, a derivation from -h₂ consonant stems is proposed, with a link to this article. (We certainly don't want to treat here the origin of the feminine gender...)
• laryngeals are retained as fricatives in Anatolian languages in some positions, and probably also in some Armenian words (the first element of Arm. hoviw < Proto-Arm. *howi-pā 'shepherd' could be from PIE *h₃ewi- 'sheep' (adapted from Pokorny's "Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch", that predates laryngeal theory). I know there are other examples but don't remember where I've read them)
• h₂ produces aspiration of a preceding plosive (Sanskrit tiṣṭhati and other examples)
• h₃ voices a preceding voiceless plosive (disputed because the only clear example is Sanskrit pibati and cognate words in other IE languages)
• laryngeals disappear without a trace in all other cases

Sprocedato 18:22, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

All reasonable enough, though Lat. plēnus is a full grade (cf. Vedic prātá- "full" (next to the participle pūrṇá- "filled"); *pḷH-no- whatever the laryngeal would have given Latin¢plānus, and Cf. (g)nātus "born" unquestionably < *ǵṇh₁-to-. And it looks to me as though *h₁ also aspirates Indic stops, as in asthi- "bone" (cf. Greek ostéon < ?*h₃esth₁-yo-).

Anyhow, I agree that the bit at the end on the prehistory of the ā-stems is out of place (and not very accurate as well; it would have to be substantially rewritten, also to include the "devī" feminines, and to what end?) When I finish touching up the beginning of the article (which is rather ragged as is) I will remove it unless I hear wild objections, and it can always be put back. Alsihler 20:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Evidence from Uralic

Evidence from Uralic is very interesting, but should not be treated in the article, because it is a research field. It can obviously be mentioned, possibly with references; and discussed in this Talk-Page. I hope I'm not making arbitrary rules...

Sprocedato 18:22, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Evidence from Uralic shouldn't be mentioned because it's hypothetical? --Vuo 19:04, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

One of the references listed seems to obviously relate to the Uralic material. The article in chief seems to indicate that this is fairly new research. Smerdis of Tlön 19:13, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

The research is actually fairly old (30 years or so), but heavily disputed. There's an entire school with Uralic that doesn't believe there were any significant loans from Proto-Indo-European into Proto-Uralic. CRCulver 23:55, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it can be handled in an informative but noncommittal fashion, At least I've tried to achieve that effect. (As well as turning the passage into English).Alsihler 20:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

(on the rewrite) The text mentioned only one out of three established phonemic reflexes. Also the text as it was with lengthy dispute over just two example words conveyed the impression that the whole evidence relies on these two words. I made the example words more like lists, because methodologically the evidence comes from parallel cases reinforcing each other rather than single word stems. I exchanged the example etymology kalja 'beer', because refuting the false critisism against it would have taken up too much space explaining the stem-structure of Finnic. Moreover it is not an etymology by Koivulehto, as the text might be understood, but by Petri Kallio (IP 82.181.182.83) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.181.182.83 (talk) 00:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Vuo 09:45, 20 September 2005 (UTC), added the following comment to Pronunciation section of the article, “It is not impossible: the synchronic pattern k → h does exist in Baltic-Finnic, as shown above with the agglutination *tek+ta → tehdä "to do", cf. *tek+t → teet "you do". Attempts have been made by Helimski [1] to relate this back to Proto-Uralic” with the edit summary “has someone consciously ignored consonant gradation? --> talk if.” I have moved the comment here because its level of detail disrupts the readability of the paragraph. Apparently Vuo rejects the statement in the article that “A glottal stop would however be unlikely to be reflected as a fricative in Uralic borrowings, as appears to be the case, for example in the word lehti < *lešte <= PIE *b^hlh₁-to.” If so, he should discuss it here and/or modify or delete the statement he disagrees with. --teb728 22:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

The argument would basically be that *h₁ would be recognized as a velar or palatovelar stop, and its change into a fricative would be a secondary development. The problem is its age; the process is seen in Baltic-Finnic, but attempts have been made to reconstruct it into Proto-Uralic. Easiest this would be if *h₁ was a palatovelar stop, but another kind of "guttural" release could be recognized as a palatovelar stop. This would explain the word-initial reflex (null, as far as I know). --Vuo 10:30, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't think h1 was any kind of stop (short of maybe a glottal one), reflexes in all languages are extremely weak, even in Hittite. If would have been a sort of 'ghost phoneme' in PIE already, and really only left traces by infection of its surroundings in daughter languages. In my view, h1 was a glottal stop (if even that), h2 was a plain /h/, and h3, if it even existed (the o-colouring may also be an ablaut phenomenon) was something like /hw/ or /wh/. OR, of course, we'll have to stick with the published opinions (some of which are very similar to what I just said though). As for word-initial reflex of h1, Greek makes a difference between *h1y- (>h-) and plain *y- (>z-, yugom > zugon). dab (ᛏ) 10:31, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I took out the statement that laryngeals and *s pattern the same in PIE. Put it back in if you can justify it; I myself can't think of a single way in which they pattern alike. Alsihler 18:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The Arabic word for 'air' is hawāʔ , not ħawāʔ. I'll correct the form, but I'm not familiar enough with Indo-European to know what that implies for the sounds of the laryngeals.

Labialization

Regarding this sentence:

Likewise it is generally assumed that *h₃ was rounded (labialized) due to its o-coloring effects.

Isn't it important that neither *w nor the labialized velar series produces any o-coloring? (If they did, the queen's wedding would be the quoon's wadding!) Seems to me this should be considered as evidence that o-color was caused by something other than labialization, and I'll be surprised if there's no published opinion to that effect.

--D. Manrique, 12.107.67.3 14:55, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

There are a number of examples where *w and *u colored an *e into an *o. A simple example would be the number 9.. (ref, the list of Proto-Indo-European_numerals article) h¹newn gave rise to novem and nona in Latin. The *kw, *gw, and *gwh aren't really labialized velars, the original reflex is better described as 'labiovelar', a simultaneous articulation, not a blend *k+*w, etc. Don't forget that *wk *wg and *wgh would equally be descriptive (or *pk/*kp *bg/*gb etc.). --Sturmde 20:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

The rounding of *e to *o in the neighborhood of *w and *u didn't happen in PIE, though, while the rounding of *e to *o in the neighborhood of *h3 did. And I don't think there's enough evidence to say with any precision whether *kw etc. were labialized velars or genuinely coarticulated labial-velar stops (like the kp/gb sounds of West Africa), or what. —Angr 08:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

in my view, "*h₃" is probably a symbol summarizing a number of constellations, maybe including *hw, but probably also petrified ablaut and what not. The only 'laryngeal' phoneme I heartily endorse is *h₂, likely just /h/; h₁ and h₃ are essentially just symbols that allow you to derive the Greek and Sanskrit forms. Like Angr, I think *k^w may very well have been just /kw/, and the 'co-articulation' was a post-PIE process unique to the centum group. dab (𒁳) 08:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Whoa, I didn't say that! I just said there's not enough evidence to know what it is. I only wrote *kw because I was too lazy to format it as *k^w. —Angr 09:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I know, you said "we can't know", and I agreed, saying "may well have been". You didn't say that, you said "may as well have been, we don't know", and this is of course true. dab (𒁳) 09:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, um, typologically speaking, labialized dorsal articulations are enormously common in the world's languages; coarticulated stops are quite rare. Also typologically, a contrast system of the sort *p *t *ḱ *k *kʷ is rare-to-non-existent. Something like *p *t *k *q *qʷ would be quite normal, and would also evade the extreme improbability that a true palatal series of stops could become plain velars in four or five branches (it would be a miracle for just one to do so). Among the reasons for postulating a rounded series is that there is obviously a rounding feature but whatever it is it never alternates with *u (unlike, say, the behavior of *ḱw which alternates with *ḱu, as in Sanskrit śvā "dog" gen. śunas). And some other little arguments, like the loss of the labial feature in Greek when a high back rounded vocoid immediately precedes the reflex of the labiovelar. It's easy to see how a feature of lip rounding might be "swamped" by a contiguous rounded vocoid; one might suppose that a coarticulated stop would be a little more robust. Alsihler 20:35, 22 December 2006 (UTC

Oh, I don't think *p *t *ḱ *k *kʷ is really all that rare or implausible, if *ḱ is interpreted as the palatal stop [c]. [p t c k] is a pretty common pattern (Hungarian, Indonesian), and adding a [kʷ] to that series doesn't strike me as being far-fetched at all. While I agree that *c > k in all the centum languages is somewhat improbable and that your alternative suggestion [p t k q qʷ] is more plausible for centum, at the same time *k > s (even before consonants and back vowels!) in all the satem languages seems equally improbable, if not more so. —Angr 20:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the plausibiliy of the "classic" PIE stop system, typologically it would be unique among the world's languages. That's grounds enough for calling it implausible. It's not the number of points but the details. (Speaking personally, arrays like p t k kʷ q qʷ look thoroughly implausible to the naked eye, but they're attested, so one's gut aesthetics, if you will, don't count for much.) In any case, getting from palatal to velar stops (taking "classic" PIE as a starting point) is indeed a very large problem. I know of not a single example in linguistic history of such a change. (Note: a palatalized stop of any point of articulation can lose its palatalization; that's totally different.) As for the reverse, a forward shift of the type *k *kʷ > *ḱ *k is thoroughly credible. What is NOT credible is the idea that such a *ḱ developed as a sibilant in ALL satem languages independently. The inference has to be that the sibilation of the "palatal series" was a Proto-Satem innovation.

There are a number of things that make the plain velar ("classic PIE") series look fishy, glottogonically. I mean, we have to have them, to keep our bookkeeping straight, but they have odd distributions that suggest something secondary. Most of them are found adjacent to *r, *u and *w, and (non-ablauting) *a. But they're found elsewhere, if meagrely, so they can't be made to go away via distributional arguments. We all admit that our reconstructions are to one or another degree abstractions. My feeling is that the most concrete "realistic" reconstruction of PIE would have *p *t *k *kʷ, subsequently disrupted by the appearance (somehow) of what we call plain velars, which in the case of Proto-Satem participated in or triggered a fronting of original *k, but in the the case of the more conservative IE groups (the ones around the edges) original *k and new *k fell together. This is an idealization: to repeat, it's not possible to reconstruct layers of proto-languages with these properties. It's more like the language goes behind the mountain and when it comes out again it's different, and one has at best a few good surmises about what went on, back there. Alsihler 21:18, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Any recent handbook of IE linguistics will mention recently discovered languages from West Africa to South-East Asia that possess the same stop system as IE. That it is unique is no longer true. CRCulver 21:30, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

No, I think you're barking up the wrong three. (Har.) I'm sure that the typological crux you have in mind, which has been largely defused by recent discoveries in half a dozen languages, is the setup of PIE stops in three orders: e.g. t d dh. It may have been Pedersen who first maintained that it had to be t th d dh because the three-order system was phonologically impossible; in any case Kuryłowicz took up the cry (and, I think, Jakobson). And when the comparative evidence for a PIE th order faded and disappeared, the resulting "impossible" t d dh array was one (but only one) of the arguments latched onto by the Glottalic boys for the supposed necessity of reconceiving the stop contrast system, and they, I have the impression, were the ones that tried to make the biggest deal out of the phonological impossibility of the t d dh triad. But no longer, since there are now several languages (just as you say) known with that system.

The problem with the three dorsal stops is not much mentioned in recent literature (and in older literature is seen as a problem only by those who have a problem with the centum/satəm distinction, as (surprisingly) many did). I have to admit to a raised eyebrow at the allusion to "any recent handbook of IE linguistics", a genre of scholarship that is high on the endangered species list. In any case, Szemerényi worries about the validity of the traditional (Brugmannian) reconstruction of dorsal stops, for some of the same reasons I've mentioned but for others of his own as well. Robert Schmitt-Brandt (Einführ. in die Indogermanistik 1998, pp 88 ff) moots an analysis to "reify" the dorsal system that is remarkably similar to the one in my Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (1996). And no matter what, if you can find me even one language or dialect in which an earlier palatal series of stops can be shown to merge with or become plain velar in articulation, I'd be very grateful for the information. Alsihler 21:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

morphology

I took out the discussion of gender marking and laryngeals because it struck me as introducing a subject without then saying much of substance about it, and replaced it with a more general account of some of the main suffixes and endings in which laryngeals evidently played a part, to drive home the point that these things aren't just there to make the root system pretty.

And the rundown of laryngeal reflexes (which looks unhelpful to my eye) has been rendered obsolete by the discussion at the beginning of the article. Alsihler 23:47, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Uralic loans of h1

Could someone provide a source on this loan etymology and on any others that supposedly support the point? This one inspires no confidence, especially without any evidence presented of PIE *bh > "Uralic" zero (what language is lehti, specifically?) Aside from this, the use to which the etymology is being put seems to rest on the assumption that glottal stop cannot yield [h] (otherwise one would have various options including tacking *ʔ to the start of the change sequence that the writer apparently assumes the loan went through, *h > *š > h). But the glottal stop has become [h] widely in modern Nahuatl dialects (see the wikipedia article on Nahuatl, and Canger, IJAL 54 (1988) p. 39 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1265112.pdf) for an academic source). Please at least source this Uralic loan argument. Reforester (talk) 20:59, 21 July 2008 (UTC) Comment moved here from article space by —Angr 21:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

References: F. O. Lindeman(n?)

Just noticed that the "Introduction to the Laryngeal theory" is listed twice (in English and in German). Shouldn't one of the references be deleted? Or would it be better to write "translated as..." - what's the policy in that case? And if somebody knows how Fred(e)rik Otto Lindeman(n) is really spelt they might correct that as well. Thanks --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 20:07, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Can the summary explain the name of the theory

I don't think it's clear why this theory is named Laryngeal, and I think it would be nice to put that in the initial summary of the page. Although I'm familiar with the word Larynx, I think many English speakers are not. It's not till you get to the pronunciation section that you get a hint that these were probably glottal consonants produced in the larynx. It seems that the implication is that since most Indo-European languages don't have these types of sounds any more (I guess with the exception of some Germanic languages) that after they modified the vowels they had a tendency to disappear in all the daughter languages. That makes sense to many Indo-European speakers because they know these sounds don't exist in their language anymore if they ever did. But I feel that this detail is not made obvious to lay-readers like myself and has to be deduced. I would attempt it, but I don't even know if I'm correct about this at all so I'd rather leave it to someone more knowledgeable. 209.149.209.5 (talk) 17:23, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Better now? —Angr 17:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

The laryngeals are so called because they are often held to have had a pharyngeal, epiglottal, or glottal place of articulation involving a constriction near the larynx. - is this 100% sure? I remember reading that the term laryngeal was coined by someone in an article dealing with Semitic consonantism (de Saussure just called them "sonant coefficients") thinking that they were real laryngeals (like those in Semitic languaegs), and modern-day usage of the term is simply out of academic inertia.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 02:23, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Isn't that what it says? "Laryngeal" is not actually a recognized place of articulation; the so-called "laryngeals" of Semitic languages are glottals and pharyngeals (and maybe epiglottals in some languages/dialects too, I'm not sure). —Angr 07:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

This is how I perceive it: 1) the term laryngeal was coined as a replacement for Saussure's coefficients sonantiques by a linguist who thought that they were real laryngeals (whatever he head in mind when using that term) by place of articulation 2) the term has become widely-established in the field 3) toady there is a wide range of opinions (including those that nothing can be said for sure as for the phonetic values of PIE laryngeals) regarding their pronunciation. So in conclusion: the term laryngeal is anachronism in a sense regarding the place of articulation, and has been retained only due to academic inertia.

Now, the phrasing of the sentence I quoted would draw me to a conclusion that the PIE laryngeals are widely established as being phonetic "laryngeals", when in fact that term is in PIE terminology is not used in that sense at all, but in a sense of consonants inducing certain well-defined colouring/lengthening properties on neighbouring vowels. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 08:08, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

While it's true that most IE-ists are agnostic and/or apathetic on the issue of the articulation of the laryngeals, still most people who do express an opinion about it believe that the laryngeals were "back in the throat" somewhere, whether glottal, epiglottal, or pharyngeal. I think it's fair to say that even today the laryngeals "are often held to have had a pharyngeal, epiglottal, or glottal place of articulation". —Angr 11:41, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

True true, but the article says The laryngeals are so called because they are often —they're called so because the person who coined the term laryngeal thought that they were real "laryngeals"; the fact that some today assign PIE laryngeals some "laryngealistic" properties is something completely different ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 02:19, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Is this your personal theory that that is how laryngeals were named? Or do you have a reliable published source of the opinion of an expert. Wikipedia includes only info from reliable sources. For example, Beekes said, “… they were called laryngeals, because it was suspected that they had once been laryngeals (and/or pharyngeals).” —teb728 t c 05:21, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Now I've checked it, and my source (reliable, published, expert - don't worry) says that it was coined by de Saussure's friend Danish Herman Möller in a paper (probably Die semitisch-vorindogermanischen laryngalen Konsonanten that article on him mentions) in which he unconvincingly connects Saussure's sonantic coefficients with Semtitic laryngeals. The next sentence is that PIE laryngeals were almost certainly nothing sort of a real laryngeals, and that that term is just an anachronism that has been used due to pure academic inertia.

Digging on b.g.c., more fun here: "Moller called these phonemes (in German) 'Gutturale' in (1906:255) and 'Laryngale' in (1917)"

(next page): "Moller's term 'Laryngale' was undoubtedly insipred by his reconstruction of a protolanguage common to Indo-European and Semitic languages; however, the term eventually lost its descriptive character and became just a referential term without any classificatory thrust; this development was facilitated when Sturtevant (1942) suggested that the two equivalent English terms laryngal and laryngeal be used in such a way that laryngal would have its full descriptive meaning as established by articulatory phonetics, whereas laryngeal would be just a nondescriptive, conventional term for I. E. phonemes under discussion. Most authors on the subject who write in English have followed this suggestion; and although such a pair of nearly identical terms does not exist in French or German, the terms phonemes laryngaux and Laryngale are widely used. Occasionally, an author will write 'Laryngeals' in quotation marks so to warn the reader."

The term laryngeal in PIE terminology is just an anachronistic misnomer, that has absolutely nothing to do with laryngal laryngeals. That fact that some researchers that highly speculate on the phonetic value of PIE laryngeals assign them laryngealistic properties is irrelevant and orthogonal to the usage of that term by others, and how that term came to be used by everyone nowadays. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 06:03, 26 November 2008 (UTC)