How a Swiss linguist predicted hidden sounds in an ancient, long-lost language
In short: In 1879, Ferdinand de Saussure proposed that Proto-Indo-European contained mysterious, invisible consonants. He could not prove they existed, but his theory elegantly solved long-standing puzzles in how ancient words changed over time. Decades later, the discovery of Hittite texts finally revealed these elusive sounds, confirming his brilliant linguistic intuition.
The laryngeal theory posits that the ancestor of most European and Indo-Iranian languages, Proto-Indo-European (PIE), contained a series of consonants that vanished in almost every daughter language. Saussure originally called these 'sonantic coefficients.' He argued that these elements were responsible for the irregular lengthening of vowels and changes in vowel color, such as why short 'e' sometimes became long 'ā' or 'ō'. By positing these hidden elements, linguists could reconstruct PIE roots more economically, bringing them into alignment with the language's fundamental structural patterns.
For decades, the theory remained purely abstract until the early 20th century, when the decipherment of Hittite provided the missing evidence. Scholars discovered that Hittite words often contained a consonant transcribed as ḫ in positions where Saussure’s theory predicted a laryngeal sound. Jerzy Kuryłowicz later demonstrated that these Hittite sounds were direct reflexes of the coefficients Saussure had conjectured. This discovery transformed the theory from a speculative model into a cornerstone of historical linguistics, providing a robust framework for understanding how PIE evolved.
While the theory is widely accepted, the exact nature of these laryngeals remains a subject of intense debate. Most linguists agree there were three primary phonemes, *h₁, *h₂, and *h₃, though some scholars argue for a fourth, *h₄, or even more. Researchers continue to argue over their precise articulation, with candidates ranging from glottal stops and fricatives to uvular or pharyngeal sounds. Evidence from Anatolian languages like Hittite, Luwian, and Lycian continues to be the primary source for testing these hypotheses, as these languages are the only ones that consistently preserved the laryngeals as consonantal sounds.
The study of these sounds matters because it reveals the hidden mechanics of language evolution. By applying simple rules of development, linguists can explain complex cognates across diverse languages that otherwise seem unrelated. Whether they were guttural fricatives or glottal stops, these reconstructed elements allow us to peer deeper into the structure of the ancient past, proving that even the most invisible features of a language can leave a lasting, traceable footprint.
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