Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/múh₂s

Why do we reconstruct this with *h₂? --Tropylium (talk) 13:11, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Because of what the Germans call Systemzwang. Having established laryngeals, some try to insert them everywhere. Cheers 31.209.196.121 20:55, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I could be missing something since my last class in the subject was three and a half decades ago, but- I don't think it's a matter of whether there's a laryngeal, but of which laryngeal. Compensatory lengthening of the vowel due to the loss of a consonant between it and the "s" would explain the long vowels in the descendants. The problem is that this particular environment doesn't seem to result in different outcomes for *h₂ as opposed to *h₁ OR *h₃, so how can we tell that it's *h₂? Chuck Entz (talk) 00:25, 11 November 2023 (UTC)