A single sound that disappeared from Proto-Indo-European left traces across dozens of languages — and its reconstruction is one of linguistics’ great detective stories. Part 5 of this series focuses on laryngeal theory, one of the most technically sophisticated and consequential developments in Indo-European linguistics.
Dr. Elst explains how Ferdinand de Saussure, working purely from internal evidence, predicted the existence of laryngeal consonants in Proto-Indo-European — consonants that had vanished from all attested languages but left phonetic “fingerprints” in vowel quality and syllable structure. The confirmation came decades later with the decipherment of Hittite. Sanskrit’s nara (man) becoming Greek’s aner is walked through as a textbook case of how laryngeals explain otherwise anomalous sound correspondences.
The discussion also touches on parallels with Northwest Caucasian languages, the original near-vowel-free character of PIE, and how this highly technical field constrains — or should constrain — popular homeland theories that cherry-pick convenient data while ignoring the phonological record.

About the speakers:
Dr. Koenraad Elst is a Belgian Indologist with Master’s degrees in Indology, Sinology, and Philosophy, followed by original fieldwork at BHU and a doctorate on Hindu nationalism. He is known as an oriental philologist and historian, as well as an independent researcher. One of the few Westerners actively defending Hinduism, he is known for his blunt and objective views, with a dissertation (prepared without any funding) on the ideological development of Hindu revivalism in India. He earned his Master’s degrees in Chinese Studies, Indo-Iranian Studies, and Philosophy at KU Leuven. He completed one year of postgraduate research in Indian philosophy at Banaras Hindu University and was accepted for a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies. He completed a doctorate in 1998 in Asian Studies.

Dr. Ramakrishnan Sitaraman is a microbiologist by training, with research interests in microbial pathogenesis, gene regulation, and science education. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (U.S.A.) and conducted post-doctoral research at the National Institutes of Health (U.S.A.) and Vanderbilt University (U.S.A.). Currently, he is a faculty member in the Department of Biotechnology at the TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi, India.