PhDniX's blog

A! That damned *a!

Traditionally, in Indo-European reconstructions we reconstruct *e and *o as the only two vowels, and thus, no such thing as a vowel *a. We generally explain *a's away with laryngeal colouring (Notable *h2, but some people also come up with a *h4).

Some people argue that the vowel system that is formed by an absence of an /a/ is highly unnatural since the vowel system would look something like this:

Iueo

This system is considered unrealistic because it is very sub-ideal. A vowel system tried to have the maximum amount of contrast, so the most maximal distances from each other. Obviously *e and *o, which could also be [e] and [o] rather than how I presented them as Open-Mid vowels, are not the furthest possible removed from i and u.

In a system as presented above, on an exam question 'fill in the missing vowel to make a natural vowel system' not a single person would hesitate to fill in the [a] at Open Front/Open Central.



So, to make this vowel system look more natural I came up with the theory that maybe the vowels are rounded back and front vowels in the 'Open' position creating a vowel system something like this:

Iuaa

The system would then look something like this. I proposed that maybe the reaches of these vowels were quite extreme in certain contexts.
These reaches of the vowels I've done with the shades on this diagram.
It's similar to how the Arabic /a/ tends to sound more like [æ] especially when not surrounded by any laryngeals. While it takes on the sound of [a] when it is surrounded by laryngeals or an /r/ (Which in Semitic languages is similar to a laryngeal). This Would actually perfectly fit our theory of *h2 being a pharyngeal colouring our '*e' (or [a/æ]) into an *a-like sound.

The reach of *o is quite a logical conclusion since the Indo-European *o tends to become a in a lot of languages (Germanic, Hittite, Balto-Slavic...).  This vowel 'box' would also be a very nice explanation why *e and *o merged into /a/ in Sanskrit, which is with the above theory (the i-u-e-o one) very hard to explain.

But these theories only make sense if you assume that there in fact is no phoneme /a/. And although this phoneme is so incredibly rare it's hard to believe it exists, denying its existence is very unscientific, but is still done by the majority of the current Indo-Europeanists.

But there's reasons to assume that the PIE *a is not originally from Indo-European, for example, it doesn't partake in any ablaut paradigms like you do see with *e/*o. And besides that, there's just an extreme scarcity of the phoneme all together.

But like I said, it's quite unlikely to assume there is no *a, or never was. Which brings us to assuming that maybe originally the *a was there, and due to certain developments it just managed to get lost in many many contexts.

Now we get to a rather controversial part of my story. Some linguists assume that PIE was originally related the Uralic languages, creating a Indo-Uralic so to speak*. These people assume that the PIE branch of Indo-Uralic moved towards the Caucasus, and coming in contact with Caucasian languages, which tend to have big consonant clusters, and very small vowel systems (2 vowels /a/ and /ə/ if I've been informed correctly) PIE underwent a huge syncope of vowels, except under the accent. We still see strong correlations between the place of the accent, and the appearance of a vowel in Indo-European.

Now let's assume that maybe, just maybe *a was a vowel that could only appear OUTSIDE of the accent, that would explain the rather abrupt loss of the vowel in Indo-European. /a/ appearing as a non-accented vowel isn't without precedent either (or more accurately postcedent). In Russian the phoneme /o/ only contrasts with /a/ on the accent syllable, otherwise the two merge.

So *a sort of performed a function similar to a schwa (ə) in many languages. This is not unthinkable, if we think back of what is a 'natural' vowel system. If a language has a schwa, but no a, this schwa will automatically try to extend it's quality towards this a.

Now what exactly the conditions were to retain this *a in some positions, I don't know, but it's in no way unthinkable that a far-reaching syncope would not be able to affect ALL cases of the *a. This would explain both the scarcity and the existence of the vowel.

Just for completeness let me give you a little diagram of what this pre-syncopatic vowel sytem:

Iueoa

* Let me especially refer you to Kortlandt's work which is to be found here. Pay special attention to this very interesting, but not really related article on the Indo-Uralic verb

Hysterophobia!

Tocharian B has a very interesting thing about its accent system, which makes it look like it is absolutely filled with Indo-European-like ablaut (change of vowel in the root). Sadly for us, this often isn't the case, nevertheless, it's a nice system to talk about now.

The Tocharian accent is as we call 'Hysterophobic', afraid to be in the back. In a noun, the accent can technically be anywhere, but when it's in the last syllable of a word, it will be moved a syllable forward.

As an example we'll take the noun 'palsko' 'thought'.
The root of this word is /pəlskó-/.
In the nominative, this word takes a zero-suffix so /pəlskó-/+/Ø/. Because this would mean the accented vowel would be in the back, the accent jumps to the initial syllable and gives a surface form of /pə́lsko/. This is written <palsko> (accented schwa is written <a> unaccented it's written <ä>). The oblique case of palsko is the same as the nominative. The Genitive though, has suffx /ntse/ so /pəlskó-/+/-ntse/, which means the accent isn't in the final syllable, and thus, stays in place. /pəlskóntse/ written <pälskontse>. As you can see we now have something that looks like a a/ä ablaut, while actually it's a accented/non-accented schwa alternation.

This not only plays a vital role in Nouns, also verbs will have this switch between a/ä at times, so it's important to know that it happens. There is also a alternation between <ā> and <a>. Which is to be interpreted as /á/ and /a/. So in writing, one can't distinguish an accented schwa from an unaccented a. And of course, chances are, they were homophones.

I've always found this incredibly fascinating about Tocharian, I hope you do too.

Please note: I have next to no knowledge of Tocharian A, so whenever I talk about Tocharian I mean Tocharian B. Maybe I should start calling it Kuchean.

/bʲan̪ˠ/ & /mraː/ ?

You might not easily believe it, but the above words are phonemic transcriptions of the Irish word bean in it's nominative and genitive/plural form, namely bean and mna. And before you go 'Hey that's that suppletion stuff you've been telling us about!' I'll destroy that thought right away, in fact these words come from the same root!
namely *b(e)n- (This being a sort of arbitrary Proto-Irish reconstruction) Where when the vowel is lost b and n touched, and the n affected the b to also become a nasal. giving mn-a. Later on though, the Irish weren't exactly happy with this mn cluster and figured it may be a better idea to dissimilate it, and they started pronouncing the n as an r. This dissimilation by the way, is regular.

There once was a town called Limerick,
Which originally was written Luimneach
The Irish came round,
And changed the sound,
And that's why we now sing a Limerick

I'm a terrible poet, I know (For the people who don't know what the hell I'm talking about: Educate Thyself!)

But this incredible paradigm for woman is not the point of this blog entry. It's just an interesting step up to a little bit on Indo-European morphology, and a small theory I had on it.

In Indo-European nouns, there's a certain class known as the r/n-stems. The r/n-stems* have an *r in the nominative singular, and an *n in all the other forms. One of the better known paradigms of this group is that of water

Nom. sg. *uód-r
Gen. sg. *ud-n-ós

Most languages have generalised either the *r (Like west Germanic *watar), or the *n (Like Gothic wato <*watōn ). There's, as far as I know, one attested language that actually has this r/n-stem though, and that is of course, Hittite!

Nom. sg. u̯ātar
Gen. sg. u̯itenaš

Now I was wondering about this odd r/n-switch when I was suddenly reminded of that crazy Irish Paradigm bean-mna(mra)

Although that is actually the exact opposite of what happens in r/n-stems, I can't help but feel that this is somehow relevant. It seems like, also in some early Indo-European stage, some kind of dissimilation or assimilation took place. Although it's hard to believe that an /r/ becomes an /n/ after a stop. That would imply that *r had some kind of nasal quality.

I'm open to any suggestions that you are willing to throw at me!

*There's also l/n-stems, although very rare. They are the reason why Latin has Sol  and English has Sun. With that I have also depleted my full knowledge of existing l/n-stems.

Translation B5

Now we're so nicely on a roll with Tocharian B, I thought I'd 'publish' one of my translations of a Tocharian text. The text in question is B5, which you can find on TITUS, sadly without any images, so you're going to have to trust the transcription, (who would want to read that script anyway? :P).

Here's the link to the text on TITUS:
TITUS B5
Take note that the above are transliterations, I've used a far more readable transcription ;)

We'll start at Strophe 66, because 65 isn't too well preserved, besides that, a new chapter seems to start there.

List of abbreviations

impf = imperfect
prt = preterite
sbj = subjunctive
imp = imperative
voc = vocative, often identical to nominative.
nom = nominative
obl = oblique, functions as accusative, and base for the case suffixes
gen = genitive (also functions as a dative)
com = commitative, suffixed -mpa put after the Oblique expresses 'together with'
perl = perlative 'by, through, with' formed with -sa suffix to the Oblique case (-sa becomes -tsa after l, n, ñ and m).
loc = locative 'at, in, by' -ne suffixed to the oblique form.
all = allative 'to, towards' -śc suffixed to the oblique form. Also seen in the form -ś, -ścä (rare) and -śco.
abl = ablative 'from, out of' -meṃ suffix. Suffixed to the oblique form.
3 = third person
sg = singular
pl = plural
nta-pl = -nta suffix plural. Typical Alternant gender plural suffix.
med = Medium. Many verbs are lexically bound to the Medium though, even when not expressive the mediopassive voice.
adj = adjective. Adjectives can also function as adverbs without any change of form.
tstse-adj = tstse is a typical abstractifying suffix to derrive adjectives from nouns. Has a wide variety of meanings.
ññe-adj = similar to -tstse suffix, a typical abstractifying suffix, here for derriving from a verb, but nouns are also possible.
ger = gerundive, often made with the suffix -lle.
encl = enclitic, especially important in the word 'to be' nes- with it's special enclitic forms ste 3sg, skente 3pl.
encl.prn = enclitic pronoun. There's 4 enclitic pronouns. -ñ 1sg -c 2sg. -ne 3sg. -me pl. These are either Oblique or Genitive, and can also get case suffixes.

Strophe 66

nnok pudñäkte mäskīträ Śrāvāstī spe sāṅkāmpa.
again Buddha.sg.nom be.impf.3sg Śrāvāstī following(religious).sg.com
'Again the Buddha was near Śrāvāstī with his following.'

---

kokaletstse īyoy sū Prasenacī walo. ot ṣem kaukāte koklentse waiptār pwenta käskānte
wagon.tstse-adj travel.impf.3sg this.sg.nom Prasenajit.sg.nom king.sg.nom. Then axle.sg.nom break.prt.3sg wagon.sg.nom apart/scattered spoke.nom.nta-pl scatter.prt.med.3pl
'This King Prasenajit travelled by wagon. Thenn the axle of the weagon broke, the spokes scattered all around'

---

walo rano ceu preke śaultsa tāka skolkatstse ||66||
king.sg.nom also/therefore this.sg.obl time.sg.obl life.perl be.prt.3sg doubt.tstse-adj
'Thefore at that time, the king was doubtful of his life.'

Strophe 67

Jetavaṃne pudñäkteś masa. yarke ynāmñesa kekalentse katalñe preksa poyśiṃ ot walo:
Jetavana.loc buddha.sg.all go.prt.3sg. honor.sg.obl reverence.sg.perl* wheel.sg.gen break.ññe-adj. ask.prt.3sg all-knowing one.sg.obl then king.sg.nom
'He went to the Buddha at Jetavana (forest). With honour and reverence the king then asked the all-knowing one about the breaking wheel.'

*When several words with oblique case are placed behind eachother, and the last one gets a case suffix, all are considered to be in this case.

---

mai ñi tākaṃ laitalñe wrocc= asāmmeṃ laṃtuññe, epe wat no śaulantse ñyātse ñi ste nesalle. ||67||
perhaps I.gen be.sbj.3sg fall.ññe-adj big.sg.obl* throne.sg.abl king.ññe-adj**, or or but*** life.sg.gen danger.sg.nom I.gen is.encl.3sg live.ger
'Perhaps will there be falling from the throne by me? Or will there be danger to my life?'

*Oblique of orotstse is orocce. Initial o > w for metrical reasons, you'll see this often. Final e elided for initial a for metrical reasons, also this is not uncommon. Elided vowels are marked with an = sign.
** Here the non-nominative root of 'king' is used. The paradigm of walo is suppletive: Nom.Sg walo, obl.sg. lānt, gen.sg lānte nom.pl lāñc, obl.pl lāntäṃ gen.pl lantants(o)
***Adams says the phrase 'epe wat no' can be equated to the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit athavāpi अथवापि 'or , rather.' Probably based on the original of this text.

Strophe 68

wña-neś poyśi karuntsa: mā tañ ñyatstse śolantse mā r= asānmeṃ laitalñe.
speak.prt.3sg-encl.prn.3sg. all-knowing one.sg.nom compassion.perl: not you.sg.gen danger.sg.obl  life.sg.gen, not too throne.sg.abl fall.ger
'The all-knowing one spoke towards him: There is no danger of your life, nor is there falling from the throne'

---

ceṃ sklok ptārka pälskomeṃ! kosä tne ñakta pelaikni śaiṣṣents= ānaiwacci.
this.obl doubt.obl release.2sg.imp. thought.sg.abl how here god/lord.sg.voc law.pl.nom people/world.sg.gen unwanted.tstse-adj.nom.pl
'This doubt, release it from your mind! How is it, lord, that there are laws unwanted by [all] the people?'

---

tary= akṣā-ne pudñäkte: teki, ktstaitsñe srukalñe ||68||
three.f announce.prt.3sg-encl.prn.3sg buddha.sg.nom: sickness, old-age death
'The Buddha announced to him three [things]: sickness, old-age and death'

Strophe 69

toṃ mā tākoṃ śaiṣṣene mā ṅke tsaṅkoy pudñäkte. toṃ ñyatstsenta wikässiś poyśinta tna tseṅkeṃtär.
this.pl.nom not be.opt.3pl world.sg.loc not  for arise.opt.3sg* Buddha.sg.nom this.pl.obl danger.pl.obl drive out..inf.all here arise.prs.3pl
'If these would not be in the world, a Buddha would not arise. All-knowing ones arise here to drive out these dangers.'

---

* The Optative and Imperfect have the same suffix -'äy- (' stands for palatalisation)and take the same endings. The optative uses the subjunctive stem, and the imperfect uses the present stem. When Subjunctive and Present stem are the same, the optative and imperfect naturally are too.
after an a- the suffix becomes -oy-. Optative is used to express wish or obligation. Also irreal condition, and the apodosis of such a condition. This irreal condition is what is used in this sentence. Optative can also be the past tense of the subjunctive.

---

tumeṃ weña śka-maiyya lānte palsko mrauskatsiś, kokaleṣṣe menāksa ślok ce weña kätkr= ārtho*:
this.abl speak.prt.3sg ten-powered one.nom king.sg.gen thought.sg.obl feel an aversion towards the world.inf.all, wagon.ṣṣe-adjective example.perl strophe this.nom.sg speak.prt.3sg deep.sg.obl meaning.sg.obl
'Then The ten-powered one spoke to the king in order to avert [his] mind from the world, with the example of the wagon he spoke this strophe of deep meaning:'

*A sporadically written final /ǝ/. More ofthen than not this is written <o> While inside a word it's generally written <ä>, unless it's accented then it's written <a>.

---

More to come, just keep mashing that refresh button every now and then to see if I've changed anything. For now, feel free to ask questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

yämmy

I come up with the worst puns for my article titles. But okay, let's talk about the the Tocharian verbal root yäm-.

As I was learning my Sanskrit vocabulary I came across a very odd word: dā- दा 'to give'. A perfectly normal Indo-european verbal root related to the Greek root δω- 'to give'. But when we have a look at the present of this verb, is where it gets odd. The present in Greek is δίδωμι, typical reduplicated present athematic verb. No such luck with Sanskrit though, Sanskrit actually uses a completely different root in the present, namely yam- यम् giving a first person present yacchāmi यच्छामि.

This is what we call 'suppletion' when there's multiple roots in one paradigm. Especially in common words it's to be expected to see a lot of suppletion. Also, due to Sanskrit's extremely big vocabulary, it tends to sprout a lot of suppletion. Usualy though, this suppletion is through loans from the Dravidic language, as I also expected to be the case with yam-. But then suddenly, in a moment of clarity, I realised that yam- has a cognate in Tocharian, namely yäm- `achieve, obtain; reach'. I realise this actually means the exact opposite. But it's still the concept of physical transference, and it's hard to believe these words are not related.

The Indo-European root would then be *iem-. Now, the Tocharian languages (A and B) are known for their extensive suppletion. So I was secretly hoping that Tocharian would display the same suppletion as Sanskrit, so we could conclude some kind of ancient Indo-European suppletion, but no such luck. In fact, the Tocharian B verb doesn't have any suppletion at all!

Adams' Tocharian B dictionary:
Paradigm: G Ps. X /yänmāsk^'ä/_e-/ [A yänmāskau, -, yänmāṣṣäṃ//; APart. yänmāṣṣeñca `achiever'; MPPart. yänmāskemane; Ger. yänmāṣṣälye*]; ¹Ko. I /yonm-/ [A -, -, yonmäṃ//]; ²Ko. VI /yänmā-/ [A -, -, yanmaṃ//-, yänmācer, -; MP //-, -, yänmāntär; AOpt. -, -, yanmoy//; Inf. yänmātsi]; Pt. IIIa /yonm-/ [A yonmwa, yonmasta, yonmasa//]; PP /yeyänmu-/;

   K Ko. IX /yänmäsk^'ä/_e-/ [Inf. yanmäs(t)si]

Just a 'normal' verb. Although actually, it's quite a disturbing paradigm. n-infixed ske/o-suffixed present. With accented -a- suffix in between the root and the ske/o-suffix. in the present. Lovely. But in Tocharian it's definitely not unheard of.

What is crazy though, is the reduplication in the Past Participle. That's a reduplication with Tocharian B e, this might not look crazy, but believe me it is. TochB. e  comes from PIE *o. We've seen *e in reduplication, *i in reduplication, but *o?! And just to mess with us, it also adds 'a' (<h2, h2e) reduplication in some other paradigms.

Makes you wonder what the hell those Tocharians were on.

Now, I figured for completeness I'd add the paradigm of 'to give' in Tocharian B, just for completeness, though I can assure you you're not going to find the preferred *deh3 in there either.

Paradigm: Ps. IXa /āisk^'ä/_e-/ [A aiskau, -, aiṣṣäṃ//aiskem, aiścer, aiskeṃ; AImpf. -, -, aiṣṣi// -, -, aiṣṣiyeṃ; APart. aiṣṣeñca (see also aiṣṣeñcaññe below); MPPart. aiskemane; Ger. aiṣṣälle]; Ko. I /āi-/ [A āyu, ait, aiṃ// -, -, aiṃ; AOpt. -, -, āyi//; MPOpt. -, -, ayītär//; Inf. aitsi; Ger. aille]; Ipv. /pete-/ [sg. pete; pl. petso ˜ petes]; Pt. I(sg.)/III(pl.) /wäsā-/ [A wsāwa, wsāsta, wasa//wasam, -, wsar ˜ wsare]; PP /āyu-/

ai- joy, what a great root that looks nothing like what we'd like to see. It is sometimes connected to the Greek αἴνυμαι 'to take, seize'.

But luckily this paradigms has some nice suppletion. A Preterite with the root wäs- ! Go make up your own etymology for that, Adams' best guesses are as good as anyone's.

And besides that, there's a very interesting Imperative. pete. Tocharian had a prefix p- or pä- for imperatives (not pe-!) which would be prefixed to the verbal root. How exactly the prefix came to be pe- is uncertain, maybe it was affected by the following root te-. te- is interesting though, it looks like our long lost *deh3. It doesn't go too well though, we're not to sure what to do with PIE *ō's in Tocharian (or *oH or *eh3 that merge with *ō), it tends to become u, but sometimes it becomes e. taking a reconstruction of the root like *dh3e- would give us a much more safe reconstruction as te-. but there's not a clear reason to assume this.

Although not a guide to the Tocharian verbal system, I hope you've gotten an idea how incredibly crazy, and thus, incredibly interesting it really is.

What's that? Want to check out Adams' Tocharian B dictionary yourself? Go to IEED and click the link. It might take a while, the server backing the database is terrible, but after a while it starts working.

Take note though, Adams is notoriously sloppy, and his proposed etymologies are more often than note disposable. He often has rather irregular sound laws. Besides that he doesn't quote textual sources too well every time, he does quote them quite consistently though, which I guess is a plus. The translations he provides can also be rather sloppy.

Some resources:
Indo-European Etymological Dictionary - Nice site with a lot of dictionaries, including the digitalisation of the only Tocharian dictionary out there. But a server you'll instantly come to hate.

TITUS Project - A fantastic resource of an enormous amount of digitalised and transliterated Tocharian texts, both Tocharian A and B. Be sure to check this one out!

Little more on Greek /j/

The Proto-Greek /j/ remains a fascinating phoneme. In the Iliad there's a small thing about this letter which is especially mysterious.When the Proto-Greek */j/ became /h/ it somehow it lost its consonantality (Neoglisms are there to use them!). How can we tell? Usually from metrical texts. For example: θέος ὡς 'like a god' is considered to be of the syllable shape short-short-long θέ-ο-ς ὡς.

Here the /h/ (or spiritus asper) completely loses it's consonantal value, we often assume that the phoneme would become an aspiration of the previous consonant. So something like /tʰéosʰōs/ would appear. This is also attested in words that have special notation for aspirated counterparts. Like τε + ὁ would give θ' ὁ (with elision of the epsilon).

In Homeric Greek though, this non-consonantal value is not always there! Many, often older, comparisons will show phrases like θέος ὡς to be interpreed as short-long-long θέ-ος-ὡς. This would mean, that the /h/ at the time of the composition had a consonantal value /tʰéoshōs/. People like to go as far as saying that this is proof that such a comparative formula comes from pre-Mycenaean Greek times when the /j/ had not yet changed into /h/. That's probably a bit too enthusiastic, but it is clear proof that at some point in time the /h/ was consonantal, and not just aspiration of the preceding vowel.

There's millions of interesting things like this in the Iliad and Odyssey, which seems to indicate a long standing oral tradition making use of formulae to quickly make sentences writing a dactylic hexameter. And luckily for us, these forms seem to have stagnated making 'wrong' forms in modern analysis of the post-dark-age Greek dialects, revealing all sorts of archaisms as stated above.

Other people might say that Homer was just a bad poet, but don't be fooled by them!

More on Proto-Greek /j/ being [ç]

I'll interrupt my little series on Tocharian B (which I will continue) to talk a bit more about my theory that maybe /j/ in Proto-Greek was voiceless rather than voiced. I came to this conclusion completely without the intention to do so when I started to write an article to prove that /tt/ was in not a long consonant.

On review, /tt/ definitely is a long consonant, reading the Iliad at university made me realise without this assumption a lot of the poetic meter wouldn't work.

Nevertheless, I hypothesised that the /j/ in combination with <κ> <γ> and <χ> must mean it's voiceless to create a voiceless geminate like <ττ>. There's also a clear indication that <ττ> probably was closer to a [c:] rather than a [t:] due to the later development into <σσ>.

Altogether this would mean /j/ is in fact voiceless and would have been closer to the sound [ç] rather than [j]. Now there is actually some other proof that this /j/ was voiceless, at least in several other environments. I came to notice this as we were discussing the initial consonantal PIE *i- reflexes in Greek in my class of Historical Grammar of Greek.

Oddly enough, PIE *i- seems to have two reflexes, namely /h/ or 'spiritus asper' and <ζ>. /h/ is not an unlikely development you'd expect from a word initial /ç/, it's similar to Proto Germanic where *x became h in initial position.
The reflex <ζ> is more likely if you assume the phonetic value of /j/. It's just like how in French the initial i from Latin came to be pronounced as [dʒ] and later just [ʒ].

So why were there two reflexes for PIE *i-?

There's two theories which oddly enough, contradict themselves.

Some say /h/ comes from *Hi- with a laryngeal before i rather than a plain i. And that the <ζ> is from a plain *i-.
Others say that /h/ comes from *i- and <ζ> comes from *Hi-!

Isn't that wonderful? At my university the first theory is supported due to a single example in Sanskrit that seems to indicate this. Greek knows a word ὑσμίνης /husmínês/ 'combat' which in some terribly convoluted way seems to be related to the Sanskrit root yudh- युध् 'to battle'.

This doesn't tell us anything yet, but there is a certain compound verb in Sanskrit that seems to indicate that there's an initial laryngeal. this word is amitrāyudh- अमित्रायुध् 'to fight against those who are not friends'. This word consist of the elements: a- 'not' mitra- 'friend' yudh- 'to battle'. As you can see, for a mysterious reason the a in mitra- gets stretched. This is not a normal reaction for the noun in this position and, can only be explained by assuming there was a laryngeal in between mitra- and yudh- *mitraHyudh-. a laryngeal behind a vowel gives a long ā in Sanskrit, and this would prove that there was a laryngeal in front the indo-european stem *Hiudʰ.

There's one big problem with this though, we don't have any counter examples to prove that there wasn't an *H- in front of the *i that gives the Greek reflex <ζ>. In other words, we have proof that the /h/ reflex comes from *Hi- but no proof that <ζ> comes from *i-. With this hole it's not yet safe to assume anything.

The other theory is not so much based on proof, but rather on phonological reasoning. And Indo-European *H could be vocalised, in other words, it could be the nucleus of a syllable. It's extremely difficult to make a voiceless consonant the nucleus of a syllable, and therefore we often assume that the laryngeals were voiced consonants, which ones exactly, we don't know.

Now if you think about it this way, it becomes increasingly hard to believe that a sequence of two voiced consonants became a voiceless /h/. Therefore, one might want to assume this sequence became <ζ> and simple *i- became /h/ instead. But the first theory has more indirect proof than this one, as far a I know.

The latter theory does fit in better with my /j/ is a [ç] hypothesis. If /j/ were voiceless [ç], it would be quite likely for it to become a voiceless [h] in initial position. Also the other way around though, it's not completely unlikely to assume that if for some reason we're dealing with a voiceless laryngeal, a voiceless /j/ wouldn't be bothered to become an /h/ in initial position.

Which explanation is the right one, or if either of the two are wrong is hard to tell, one thing is for sure, we're not yet close to finding a definite answer to our questions about the odd reflexes in Greek of the PIE *i-.

NOTE: Halfway through my article, I just found an enormous gap in my reasoning which I'm going to pick out myself, before someone else does. I'm not sure if we're certain that the initial /h/ was actually voiceless! for all we know it was a voiced glottal fricative [ɦ]. The only thing that would be possible to assume as proof for a voiceless /h/ is what we see when a unvoiced unaspirated stop comes before  an /h/ initial word. Namely it becomes a unvoiced aspirated stop  C + h >  Cʰ, while if /h/ were voiced you'd expect a C[+voice]ʰ. Of course there's a gap in this reasoning, because there's no such thing as a voiced aspirated stop in Greek, nevertheless you'd sooner expect the combination to form a voiced stop, rather than a voiceless aspirated stop.