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Laryngeal theory

The laryngeal theory is a theory in historical linguistics positing that the Proto-Indo-European language included a number of laryngeal consonants that are not reconstructable by direct application of the comparative method to the Indo-European family. The "missing" sounds remain consonants of an indeterminate place of articulation towards the back of the mouth, though further information is difficult to derive. Proponents aim to use the theory to:
 * Produce greater regularity in the reconstruction of PIE phonology than from the reconstruction that is produced by the comparative method.
 * Extend the general occurrence of the Indo-European ablaut to syllables with reconstructed vowel phonemes other than *e or *o.

In its earlier form (see below), the theory proposed two sounds in PIE. Combined with a reconstructed *e or *o, the sounds produce vowel phonemes that would not otherwise be predicted by the rules of ablaut. The theory received considerable support after the deciphering of Hittite, which revealed it to be an Indo-European language.

Many Hittite words were shown to be derived from PIE, with a phoneme represented as ḫ corresponding to one of the hypothetical PIE sounds. Subsequent scholarly work has established a set of rules by which an ever-increasing number of reflexes in daughter languages may be derived from PIE roots. The number of explanations thus achieved and the simplicity of the postulated system have both led to widespread acceptance of the theory.

In its most widely accepted version, the theory posits three laryngeal phonemes in PIE: h₁, h₂, and h₃ (see below). Daughter languages other than Hittite did not preserve the laryngeals themselves, but inherited sounds derived from the merger of these laryngeals with PIE short vowels and the subsequent loss of those laryngeals.

The phonemes are now recognized as consonants, related to articulation in the general area of the larynx, where a consonantal gesture may affect vowel quality. They are regularly known as laryngeal, but the actual place of articulation for each consonant remains a matter of debate. (see below).

The laryngeals got their name because they were believed by Hermann Möller and Albert Cuny to have had a pharyngeal, epiglottal, or glottal place of articulation, involving a constriction near the larynx. While this is still possible, many linguists now think of laryngeals, or some of them, as having been velar or uvular.

The evidence for their existence is mostly indirect, as will be shown below, but the theory serves as an elegant explanation for several properties of the PIE vowel system that made no sense until the theory, such as the independent schwas (as in  'father'). Also, the hypothesis that PIE schwa *ə was a consonant, not a vowel, provides an explanation for some apparent exceptions to Brugmann's law in Indo-Aryan languages.

History

The beginnings of the theory were proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879, in an article chiefly demonstrating that *a and *o were separate phonemes in PIE.

In the course of his analysis, Saussure proposed that what had then been reconstructed as long vowels *ā and *ō, alternating with *ǝ, was an ordinary type of PIE ablaut. That is, it was an alternation between e grade and zero grade like in "regular" ablaut (further explanations below), but followed by a previously unidentified element. This element accounted for both the changed vowel colour and the lengthening (short *e becoming long *ā or *ō).

So, rather than reconstructing *ā, *ō and *ǝ as others had done before, Saussure proposed *eA alternating with *A and *eO with *O, where A and O represented the unidentified elements. Saussure called them simply coefficients sonantiques, which was the term for what are now in English more usually called resonants; that is, the six elements present in PIE which can be either consonants (non-syllabic) or vowels (syllabic) depending on the sounds they are adjacent to: *y w r l m n.

These views were accepted by a few scholars, in particular Hermann Möller, who added important elements to the theory. Saussure's observations, however, did not achieve any general currency, as they were still too abstract and had little direct evidence to back them up.

This changed when Hittite was discovered and deciphered in the early 20th century. Hittite phonology included two sounds written with symbols from the Akkadian syllabary conventionally transcribed as ḫ, as in te-iḫ-ḫi 'I put, am putting'. This consonant did not appear to be related to any of the consonants then reconstructed for PIE, and various unsatisfactory proposals were made to explain this consonant in terms of the PIE consonant system as it had then been reconstructed.

It remained for Jerzy Kuryłowicz to propose that these sounds lined up with Saussure's conjectures. He suggested that the unknown consonant of Hittite was, in fact, a direct reflex of the coefficients sonantiques that Saussure had proposed.

Their appearance explained some other matters as well: For example, why verb roots containing only a consonant and a vowel always have long vowels. For example, in *dō- "give", the new consonants allowed linguists to decompose this further into *deh₃-. This not only accounted for the patterns of alternation more economically than before (by requiring fewer types of ablaut) but also brought the structure of these roots into line with the basic PIE pattern which required roots to begin and end with a consonant.

The lateness of the discovery of these sounds by Indo-Europeanists is largely because Hittite and the other Anatolian languages are the only Indo-European languages for which at least some are attested directly and consistently as consonantal sounds. Otherwise, their presence is to be inferred mostly through the effects they have on neighboring sounds, and on patterns of alternation that they participate in. When a laryngeal is attested directly, it is usually as a special type of vowel and not as a consonant, best exemplified in Greek where syllabic laryngeals (when they appeared next to only consonants) developed as such: *h₁ > e, *h₂ > a, and *h₃ > o.

Varieties of laryngeals
There are many variations of the laryngeal theory. Some scholars, such as Oswald Szemerényi, reconstruct just one laryngeal. Some follow Jaan Puhvel's reconstruction of eight or more.

Basic laryngeal set
Most scholars work with a basic three:

 * , the neutral laryngeal
 * , the a-colouring laryngeal
 * , the o-colouring laryngeal

Additional laryngeals
Some scholars suggest the existence of a fourth consonant,, which differs from in not being reflected as Anatolian ḫ but being reflected, to the exclusion of all other laryngeals, as Albanian h when word-initial before an originally stressed vowel.

E.g. PIE ' 'testicle' yields Albanian herdhe 'testicle' but Hittite arki- 'testicle' whereas PIE ' '"bear' yields Albanian ari 'bear' but Hittite hart(ag)ga- (=/hartka-/) 'cultic official, bear-person'.

When there is an uncertainty whether the laryngeal is or, the symbol  may be used.

Another such theory, but much less generally accepted, is Winfred P. Lehmann's view, based on inconsistent reflexes in Hittite, that was two separate sounds. (He assumed that one was a glottal stop and the other a glottal fricative.)
 * doublet

Direct evidence for laryngeals
Some direct evidence for laryngeal consonants comes from Anatolian: PIE *a is a fairly rare sound, and in an uncommonly large number of good etymologies, it is word-initial. Thus PIE (traditional) *anti 'in front of and facing' >
 * Greek antí 'against'
 * Latin ante 'in front of, before'
 * Sanskrit ánti 'near; in the presence of'.

But in Hittite there is the noun ḫants 'front, face', with various derivatives (ḫantezzi 'first', and so on), pointing to a PIE root-noun 'face' (of which  would be the locative singular).

However, it does not follow that all reconstructed forms with initial *a should automatically be rewritten.

Similarly, the traditional PIE reconstruction for 'sheep' is  (a y-stem, not an i-stem) whence Sanskrit, Latin , Greek. But Luwian has, indicating instead the reconstruction.

Lyco-Carian chain shift
In the Anatolian languages Lycian and Carian, there was a chain shift such that *h₂ > k > c. In other words, PIE *h₂ is reflected as /k/ in these languages, and PIE *k as /c/. Alwin Kloekhorst takes this as evidence that PIE *h₂ originally had a value of /q/, but Martin Joachim Kümmel is skeptical of Kloekhorst's hypothesis and prefers to model the laryngeals as fricatives.

Pronunciation
Considerable debate still surrounds the pronunciation of the laryngeals and various arguments have been given to pinpoint their exact place of articulation. Firstly the effect these sounds have had on adjacent phonemes is well documented. The evidence from Hittite and Uralic is sufficient to conclude that these sounds were guttural, pronounced rather back in the vocal tract. The same evidence is also consistent with the assumption that they were fricative sounds (as opposed to approximants or stops), an assumption that is strongly supported by the behaviour of laryngeals in consonant clusters.

*h₁
J.E. Rasmussen (1983) suggested a consonantal realization for *h₁ as the voiceless glottal fricative with a syllabic allophone  (mid central unrounded vowel). This is supported by the closeness of to  (with which it combines in Greek), its failure (unlike *h₂ and *h₃) to create an auxiliary vowel in Greek and Tocharian when it occurs between a semivowel and a consonant, and the typological likelihood of an  given the presence of aspirated consonants in PIE.

W.P. Lehmann (1993) theorized, based on inconsistent reflexes in Hittite, that there were two *h₁ sounds: a glottal stop and an h sound  as in English hat, similar to  reconstructing *h₂ and *h₃ as varying between geminate uvular stops and fricatives in PIE, which is typologically likely given the assumed correspondence of the three PIE laryngeals to the Proto-Uralic laryngeal (possibly velar *x), Finnic *h < Pre-Finnic *š [ʃ~ɕ] and k (including word-initially) alike in Jorma Koivulehto’s theories about PIE loans into Proto-Uralic. suggested that *h₁ is always a glottal stop.

A. Kloekhorst (2004) argued that the Hieroglyphic Luwian sign no. 19 (𔐓, conventionally transcribed á) stood for /ʔa/ (distinct from /a/, sign no. 450: 𔗷 a) and represents the reflex of ; this would support the hypothesis that was, at least in some cases,. Later, Kloekhorst (2006) claimed that also Hittite preserves PIE *h₁ as a glottal stop, visible in words like Hittite e-eš-zi 'he is' < PIE *h₁és-ti, where an extra initial vowel sign (plene spelling) is used. This hypothesis has been met with serious criticism; e.g., from Rieken (2010), Melchert (2010), and Weeden (2011).

supported Kloekhorst's thesis by suggesting that plene spelling in Cuneiform Luwian can be explained in a similar way. Additionally, Simon's (2013) article revises the Hieroglyphic Luwian evidence and concludes that although some details of Kloekhorst's arguments could not be maintained, his theory can be confirmed.

An occasionally advanced idea that the laryngeals were dorsal fricatives corresponding directly to the three traditionally reconstructed series of dorsal stops (palatal, velar, and labiovelar; i.e., that the laryngeals *h₁ *h₂ and *h₃ are more accurately written *h́, *h, and *hʷ respectively) suggests a further possibility, a palatal fricative.

*h₂
From what is known of such phonetic conditioning in contemporary languages, notably Semitic languages, *h₂ (the a-colouring laryngeal) could have been a pharyngeal fricative such as and. Pharyngeal consonants (like heth in the Semitic abjads) often cause a-colouring in the Semitic languages.

Uvular fricatives may also colour vowels, thus is also a noteworthy candidate. Weiss (2016) suggests that this was the case in Proto-Indo-European proper, and that a shift from uvular into pharyngeal may have been a common innovation of the non-Anatolian languages (before the consonant's eventual loss). Rasmussen (1983) suggested a consonantal realization for *h₂ as a voiceless velar fricative, with a syllabic allophone , i.e. a near-open central vowel.

proposes, based on evidence from Anatolian languages, that *h₂ was originally a geminate uvular stop [qː] (he also holds the view that the traditionally voiceless stops of PIE were in fact geminate, as in Hittite), although he judges it plausible that already in PIE it had a fricative allophone.

*h₃
Likewise it is generally assumed that *h₃ was rounded (labialized) due to its o-colouring effects. It is often taken to have been voiced based on the perfect form *pi-bh₃- from the root *peh₃ "drink". Rasmussen chose a consonantal realization for *h₃ as a voiced labialized velar fricative, with a syllabic allophone , i.e. a close-mid central rounded vowel. Kümmel instead suggests.

reconstructs [qʷː] as the basic value, which in his view would be the labialized counterpart to *h₂ (see above).

Support for theory from daughter languages
The hypothetical existence of laryngeals in PIE finds support in the body of daughter language cognates which can be most efficiently explained through simple rules of development.

Direct reflexes of laryngeals
Unambiguous examples are confined to Anatolian languages. Words with Hittite ḫ (hh), Luwian h and Lycian x are explained as reflexes of PIE roots with h₂.

Some Hittitologists have also proposed that h₃ was preserved in Hittite as ḫ, although only word initially and after a resonant. Kortlandt holds that h₃ was preserved before all vowels except *o. Similarly, Kloekhorst believes they were lost before resonants as well.

In Germanic
Reconstructed instances of *kw in Proto-Germanic have been explained as reflexes of PIE *h₃w (and possibly *h₂w), a process known as Cowgill's law. The proposal has been challenged but is defended by Don Ringe.

In Albanian
In the Albanian language, a minority view proposes that some instances of word-initial h continue a laryngeal consonant.

In Western Iranian
Martin Kümmel has proposed that some initial and  in contemporary Western Iranian languages, commonly thought to be prothetic, are instead direct survivals of *h₂, lost in epigraphic Old Persian but retained in marginal dialects ancestral among others to Modern Persian.

Proposed indirect reflexes
In all other daughter languages, a comparison of the cognates can support only hypothetical intermediary sounds derived from PIE combinations of vowels and laryngeals. Some indirect reflexes are required to support the examples above where the existence of laryngeals is uncontested. The proposals in this table account only for attested forms in daughter languages. Extensive scholarship has produced a large body of cognates which may be identified as reflexes of a small set of hypothetical intermediary sounds, including those in the table above. Individual sets of cognates are explicable by other hypotheses but the sheer bulk of data and the elegance of the laryngeal explanation have led to widespread acceptance in principle.

Vowel coloration and lengthening
In the proposed Anatolian-language reflexes above, only some of the vowel sounds reflect PIE *e. In the daughter languages in general, many vowel sounds are not obvious reflexes. The theory explains this as the result of H coloration and H loss.

 * 1 H coloration. PIE *e is coloured (i.e. its sound value is changed) before or after h₂ and h₃, but not when next to h₁.

 * 2 H loss. Any of the three laryngeals (symbolized here as H) is lost before a short vowel. Laryngeals are also lost before another consonant (symbolized here as C), with consequent lengthening of the preceding vowel.

The results of H coloration and H loss are recognized in daughter-language reflexes such as those in the table below:

Greek triple reflex vs schwa
Between three phonological contexts, Greek reflexes display a regular vowel pattern that is absent from the supposed cognates in other daughter languages.

Before the development of laryngeal theory, scholars compared Greek, Latin and Sanskrit (then considered earliest daughter languages) and concluded the existence in these contexts of a schwa (ə) vowel in PIE, the schwa indogermanicum. The contexts are: 1. between consonants (short vowel); 2. word initial before a consonant (short vowel); 3. combined with a liquid or nasal consonant [r, l, m, n] (long vowel).

 * 1 Between consonants
 * Latin displays a and Sanskrit i, whereas Greek displays e, a, or o.

 * 2 Word initial before a consonant
 * Greek alone displays e, a, or o.

 * 3 Combined with a liquid or nasal
 * Latin displays a liquid/nasal consonant followed by ā; Sanskrit displays either īr/ūr or the vowel ā alone; Greek displays a liquid/nasal consonant followed by ē, ā (in dialects such as Doric), or ō.

Laryngeal theory provides a more elegant general description than reconstructed schwa by assuming that the Greek vowels are derived through vowel colouring and H loss from PIE h₁, h₂, and h₃, constituting a triple reflex.

 * 1 Between consonants
 * An explanation is provided for the existence of three vowel reflexes in Greek corresponding to single reflexes in Latin and in Sanskrit.

 * 2 Word initial
 * The assumption of *HC- in PIE yields an explanation for a dichotomy exhibited below between cognates in the Anatolian, Greek, and Armenian languages reflexes with initial a and cognates in the remaining daughters which lack that syllable, The theory assumes initial *h₂e in the PIE root, which has been lost in most of the daughter languages.

 * *h₂ster- 'star': Hittite hasterza, Greek astḗr, Armenian astí, Latin stella, Sanskrit tár-

 * *h₂wes 'live, spend time': Hittite huis- 'live', Greek á(w)esa 'I spent a night', Sanskrit vásati 'spend the night', English was

 * *h₂ner- 'man': Greek anḗr, Armenian ayr (from *anir), Oscan niir, Sanskrit nár

 * 3 Combined with a liquid or nasal
 * These presumed sonorant reflexes are completely distinct from those deemed to have developed from single phonemes.
 * {| class="wikitable"

! !! *r̥ !! *l̥ !! *m̥ !! *n̥ The phonology of the sonorant examples in the previous table can only be explained by the presence of adjacent phonemes in PIE. Assuming the phonemes to be a following h₁, h₂, or h₃ allows the same rules of vowel coloration and H-loss to apply to both PIE *e and PIE sonorants.
 * Greek || ra, ar || la, al || a || a
 * Latin || or || ul || em || en
 * Sanskrit || r̥ || r̥ || a || a
 * }
 * Sanskrit || r̥ || r̥ || a || a
 * }
 * }
 * }

Support from Greek ablaut
The hypothetical values for sounds with laryngeals after H coloration and H loss (such as seen above in the triple reflex) draw much of their support for the regularization they allow in ablaut patterns, specifically the uncontested patterns found in Greek.

Ablaut in the root
In the following table, each row shows undisputed Greek cognates sharing the three ablaut grades of a root. The four sonorants and the two semivowels are represented as individual letters, other consonants as C and the vowel or its absence as (V).

The reconstructed PIE e grade and zero grade of the above roots may be arranged as follows:

An extension of the table to PIE roots ending in presumed laryngeals allows many Greek cognates to follow a regular ablaut pattern.

Ablaut in the suffix
The first row of the following table shows how uncontested cognates relate to reconstructed PIE stems with e-grade or zero-grade roots, followed by e grade or zero grade of the suffix –w-. The remaining rows show how the ablaut pattern of other cognates is preserved if the stems are presumed to include the suffixes h₁, h₂, and h₃.

Intervocalic H loss
In the preceding sections, forms in the daughter languages were explained as reflexes of laryngeals in PIE stems. Since these stems are judged to have contained only one vowel, the explanations involved H loss either when a vowel preceded or when a vowel followed. However, the possibility of H loss between two vowels is present when a stem combines with an inflexional suffix.

It has been proposed that PIE H loss resulted in hiatus, which in turn was contracted to a vowel sound distinct from other long vowels by being disyllabic or of extra length.

Early Indo-Iranian disyllables
A number of long vowels in Avestan were pronounced as two syllables, and some examples also exist in early Sanskrit, particularly in the Rigveda. These can be explained as reflexes of contraction following a hiatus caused by the loss of intervocalic H in PIE.

Proto-Germanic trimoraic o
The reconstructed phonology of Proto-Germanic (PG), the ancestor of the Germanic languages, includes a long *ō phoneme, which is in turn the reflex of PIE ā. As outlined above, laryngeal theory has identified instances of PIE ā as reflexes of earlier *h₂e, *eh₂ or *aH before a consonant.

However, a distinct long PG *ō phoneme has been recognized with a different set of reflexes in daughter languages. The vowel length has been calculated by observing the effect of the shortening of final vowels in Gothic.

Reflexes of trimoraic or overlong *ô are found in the final syllable of nouns or verbs, and are thus associated with inflectional endings. Thus four PG sounds are proposed, shown here with Gothic and Old English reflexes:

A different contrast is observed in endings with final *z:

Laryngeal theory preserves regularities in declensions and conjugations by explaining the trimoraic sound as a reflex of H loss between vowels followed by contraction. Thus
 * by H loss *oHo > *oo > *ô;
 * by H coloration and H loss *eh₂e > *ae > *â > *ô.

(Trimoraic *ô is also reconstructed as word final in contexts that are not explained by laryngeal theory.)

Balto-Slavic long vowel accent
The reconstructed phonology of the Balto-Slavic languages posits two distinct long vowels in almost exact correspondence to bimoraic and trimoraic vowels in Proto-Germanic. The Balto-Slavic vowels are distinguished not by length but by intonation; long vowels with circumflex accent correspond to Proto-Germanic trimoraic vowels. A significant proportion of long vowels with an acute accent (also described as with acute register) correspond to Proto-Germanic bimoric vowels. These correspondences have led to the suggestion that the split between them occurred in the last common ancestor of the two daughters.

It has been suggested that acute intonation was associated with glottalization, a suggestion supported by glottalized reflexes in Latvian. This could lend support to a theory that laryngeal consonants developed into glottal stops before their disappearance in Balto-Slavic and Proto-Germanic.

After stop consonants
A significant number of instances of voiceless aspirates in the Indo-Iranian languages may be explained as reflexes of PIE stop consonants immediately followed by laryngeals (*CH > *Cʰ).

After resonants
PIE resonants (sonorants) *r̥, *l̥, *m̥, *n̥ are predicted to become consonantal allophones *r, *l, *m, *n when immediately followed by a vowel. Using R to symbolize any resonant (sonorant) and V for any vowel, *R̥V>*RV. Instances in the daughter languages of a vocalic resonant immediately followed by a vowel (RV) can sometimes be explained as reflexes of PIE *R̥HV with a laryngeal between the resonant and the vowel giving rise to a vocalic allophone. This original vocalic quality was preserved following H loss.

Next to semivowels
(see Holtzmann's law)

Laryngeal theory has been used to explain the occurrence of a reconstructed sound change known as Holtzmann's law or sharpening (German Verschärfung) in North Germanic and East Germanic languages. The existing theory explains that PIE semivowels *y and *w were doubled to Proto-Germanic *-yy- and *-ww-, and that these in turn became -ddj- and -ggw- respectively in Gothic and -ggj- and -ggw- in early North Germanic languages. However, the existing theory had difficulty in predicting which instances of PIE semivowels led to sharpening and which instances failed to do so. The new explanation proposes that words exhibiting sharpening are derived from PIE words with laryngeals.

Many of these techniques rely on the laryngeal being preceded by a vowel, and so they are not readily applicable for word-initial laryngeals except in Greek and Armenian. However, occasionally languages have compounds in which a medial vowel is unexpectedly lengthened or otherwise shows the effect of the following laryngeal. This shows that the second word originally began with a laryngeal and that this laryngeal still existed at the time the compound was formed.

Support for theory from external borrowings
Further evidence of the laryngeals has been found in Uralic languages, and some marginal cases also in Kartvelian. While the protolanguages of these families have not been convincingly demonstrated to be genetically related to PIE, some word correspondences have been identified as likely borrowings from very early Indo-European dialects to early Uralic and Kartvelian dialects. In a few such instances, laryngeal consonants reconstructed in PIE stems show correspondences with overt dorsal or laryngeal consonants in the Proto-Uralic and Proto-Kartvelian forms, in effect suggesting that these forms result from very old PIE borrowings where the consonantal nature of the PIE laryngeals was preserved.

Laryngeals reflected in the Kartvelian languages
The evidence for the preservation of laryngeals by borrowings into Proto-Kartvelian is meagre, but intriguing.

It has been suggested that some examples of an initial Proto-Kartvelian sequence *γw- may reflect sequences of the form *hxw- borrowed from PIE—cp. e.g. PK *γweb- 'to weave' alongside PIE *h₁webʰ- 'id.', PK *γwel- 'to turn, to twist' alongside PIE *(h₁)wel- 'to turn, to roll'—although evidence for *hxw- sequences in most of the proposed PIE source terms is controversial and other possible explanations for Proto-Kartvelian *γw- sequences exist.

A separate suggestion proposes that the PIE *a-colouring laryngeal *h₂ is reflected as Proto-Kartvelian *x in two fruit names borrowed from PIE *(s)méh₂lo- 'apple', namely Proto-Kartvelian *msxal- 'pear' and *sxmart'l̥- 'medlar', the latter etymologically the 'rotten (*t'l̥-) pear'.

Laryngeals reflected in the Uralic languages
Evidence for the PIE laryngeals has been suggested in ancient loans into Proto-Uralic. Work particularly associated with research of the scholar Jorma Koivulehto has identified several additions to the list of Finnic loanwords from an Indo-European source or sources whose particular interest is the apparent correlation of PIE laryngeals with three postalveolar phonemes (or their later reflexes) in the Finnic forms. If so, this would suggest great antiquity for the borrowings; since no attested Indo-European language neighbouring Uralic has consonants as reflexes of laryngeals, this would bolster the idea that laryngeals were phonetically distinct consonants.

However, Koivulehto's theories are not universally accepted and have been sharply criticized (e.g. by Finno-Ugricist Eugene Helimski ) because many of the reconstructions involve a great deal of far-fetched hypotheses and the chronology is not in good agreement with the history of Bronze Age and Iron Age migrations in the Eastern Europe established by archaeologists and historians.

Three Uralic phonemes have been posited to reflect PIE laryngeals. In post-vocalic positions both the postalveolar fricatives that ever existed in Uralic are represented: firstly a possibly velar one, theoretically reconstructed much as the PIE laryngeals (conventionally marked *x), in the very oldest borrowings and secondly a grooved one (*š as in shoe becoming modern Finnic h) in some younger ones. The velar plosive k is the third reflex and the only one found word-initially. In intervocalic position, the reflex k is probably younger than either of the two former ones. The fact that Finno-Ugric may have plosive reflexes for PIE laryngeals is to be expected under well documented Finnic phonological behaviour and does not mean much for tracing the phonetic value of PIE laryngeals.

The correspondences do not differentiate between, and. Thus
 * 1) PIE laryngeals correspond to the PU laryngeal *x in wordstems like:
 * 2) *Finnish na-inen 'woman' / naa-ras 'female' < PU *näxi-/*naxi- < PIE *[] = */-/ > Sanskrit gnā́ 'goddess', OIr. mná (gen. of ben), ~ Greek gunē 'woman' (cognate to Engl. queen)
 * 3) *Finnish sou-ta- ~ Samic *sukë- 'to row' < PU *suxi- < PIE *sewh-
 * 4) *Finnish tuo- 'bring' ~ Samic *tuokë- ~ Tundra Nenets tāś 'give' < PU *toxi- < PIE *[] = *// > Greek didōmi, Lat. dō-, Old Lith. dúomi 'give', Hittite dā 'take'
 * Note the consonantal reflex /k/ in Samic.
 * 1) PIE laryngeals correspond to Finnic *h, whose normal origin is a Pre-Finnic fricative *š in wordstems like:
 * 2) *Finnish rohto ([roçto~roxto]) 'medical plant, green herb' < PreFi *rošto < PreG *groH-tu- > Gmc. *grōþu 'green growth' > Swedish grodd 'germ (shoot)'
 * 3) *Old Finnish inhi-(m-inen) 'human being' < PreFi *inši- 'descendant' < PIE *(i)e/o- > Sanskrit jā́- 'born, offspring, descendant', Gmc. *kunja- 'generation, lineage, kin'
 * 4) PIE laryngeals correspond to Pre-Finnic *k in wordstems like:
 * 5) *Finnish kesä 'summer' < PFS *kesä < PIE * > Balto-Slavic *eseni- 'autumn', Gothic asans 'summer'
 * 6) *Finnish kaski 'burnt-over clearing' < Proto-Finnic *kaski < PIE/PreG *[] = *// > Gmc. *askōn 'ashes'
 * 7) *Finnish koke- 'to perceive, sense' < PreFi *koki- < PIE *[] = *// > Greek opsomai 'look, observe' (cognate to Lat. oculus 'eye')
 * 8) *Finnish kulke- 'to go, walk, wander' ~ Hungarian halad- 'to go, walk, proceed' < PFU *kulki- < PIE *kʷelH-e/o- > Greek pelomai '(originally) to be moving', Sanskrit cárati 'goes, walks, wanders (about)', cognate Lat. colere 'to till, cultivate, inhabit'
 * 9) *Finnish teke- 'do, make' ~ Hungarian të-v-, tesz- 'to do, make, put, place' < PFU *teki- < PIE > Greek títhēmi, Sanskrit dádhāti 'put, place', but 'do, make' in the western IE languages, e.g. the Germanic forms do, German tun, etc., and Latin faciō (though OE dón and into Early Modern English do still sometimes means "put", and doen or tun still does in Dutch and colloquial German).

This list is not exhaustive, especially when one also considers several etymologies with laryngeal reflexes in Finno-Ugric languages other than Finnish. For most cases no other plausible etymology exists. While some single etymologies may be challenged, the case for this oldest stratum itself seems conclusive from the Uralic point of view, and corresponds well with all that is known about the dating of the other most ancient borrowings and contacts with Indo-European populations. Yet acceptance for this evidence is far from unanimous among Indo-European linguists, some even regard the hypothesis as controversial (see above). If, on the other hand, the Indo-Uralic hypothesis is supported, the explanation of why the correspondences do not differentiate between, and  is that Pre-PIE or Indo-Hittite innovated this difference as a part of developing ablaut, where the zero grade matched  ( and [h]), the front-unrounded full (“e”) grade matched  (mainstream  >  and  < ) and the back-rounded full (“o”) grade matched  (Kümmel’s uvular > pharyngeal fricative and ).

PIE laryngeals and Proto-Semitic
Several linguists have posited a relationship between PIE and Semitic, almost right after the discovery of Hittite. Among these were Hermann Möller, though a few had argued that such a relationship existed before the 20th century, like Richard Lepsius in 1836. The postulated correspondences between the IE laryngeals and that of Semitic assist in demonstrating their evident existence. Given here are a few lexical comparisons between the two respective proto-languages based on Blažek (2012), who discusses these correspondences in the context of a proposed relation between IE and Afroasiatic, the language family to which the Semitic languages belong:

 * 1) Semitic ʼ-b-y 'to want, desire' ~ PIE *[] 'to fuck'
 * 2) Semitic ʼ-m-m/y ~ PIE *[] 'to take'
 * 3) Semitic ʼin-a 'in', 'on', 'by' ~ PIE *[] > Sanskrit ni, ~ Greek enōpḗ
 * 4) Semitic ʼanāku ~ PIE *h₁eǵ(hom)- 'I'
 * 5) Semitic ʻ-d-w 'to pass (over), move, run' ~ PIE *[] 'to pass through'
 * 6) Semitic ʻ-l-y 'to rise, grow, go up, be high' ~ PIE *[] 'to grow, nourish'
 * 7) Semitic ʻ-k-w: Arabic ʻakā 'to rise, be big' ~ PIE *[] 'to grow, nourish'
 * 8) Semitic ʻl 'next, in addition' ~ PIE *[] 'in'
 * 9) Semitic: Arabic ʻanan 'side', ʻan 'from, for; upon; in' ~ PIE *[] 'on'

Comments
The Greek forms ánemos and árotron are particularly valuable because the verb roots in question are extinct in Greek as verbs. This means that there is no possibility of some sort of analogical interference, as, for example, happened in the case of Latin arātrum "plow", whose shape has been distorted by the verb arāre "to plow" (the exact cognate to the Greek form would have been *aretrum). It used to be standard to explain the root vowels of Greek thetós, statós, dotós "put, stood, given" as analogical. Most scholars nowadays probably take them as original, but in the case of "wind" and "plow", the argument can't even come up.

Regarding Greek híeros, the pseudo-participle affix *-ro- is added directly to the verb root, so *- > *isero- > *ihero- > híeros (with regular throwback of the aspiration to the beginning of the word), and Sanskrit iṣirá-. There seems to be no question of the existence of a root *eysH- "vigorously move/cause to move". If the word began with a laryngeal, and most scholars would agree that it did, it would have to be *h₁-, specifically; and that's a problem. A root of the shape *h₁eysh₁- is not possible. Indo-European had no roots of the type *mem-, *tet-, *dhredh-, i.e., with two copies of the same consonant. But Greek attests an earlier (and rather more widely attested) form of the same meaning, híaros. If we reconstruct *h₁eysh₂-, all of our problems are solved in one stroke. The explanation for the híeros/híaros business has long been discussed, without much result; laryngeal theory now provides the opportunity for an explanation which did not exist before, namely the metathesis of the two laryngeals. It is still only a guess, but it is a much simpler and more elegant guess than the guesses available before.

The syllabic *' in *'- "father" might not be isolated. Certain evidence shows that the kinship affix seen in "mother, father" etc. might have been *-h₂ter- instead of *-ter-. The laryngeal syllabified after a consonant (thus Greek patḗr, Latin pater, Sanskrit pitár-; Greek thugátēr, Sanskrit duhitár- "daughter") but lengthened a preceding vowel (thus say Latin māter "mother", frāter "brother") — even when the "vowel" in question was a syllabic resonant, as in Sanskrit yātaras "husbands' wives" < *'- < *'-).

Laryngeals in morphology
Like any other consonant, Laryngeals feature in the endings of verbs and nouns and derivational morphology, the only difference being the greater difficulty of telling what's going on. Indo-Iranian, for example, can retain forms that pretty clearly reflect a laryngeal, but there is no way of knowing which one.

The following is a rundown of laryngeals in Proto-Indo-European morphology.

 * *h₁ is seen in the instrumental ending (probably originally indifferent to number, like English expressions of the type by hand and on foot). In Sanskrit, feminine i- and u-stems have instrumentals in -ī, -ū, respectively. In the Rigveda, there are a few old a-stems (PIE o-stems) with an instrumental in -ā; but even in that oldest text the usual ending is -enā, from the n-stems.
 * Greek has some adverbs in -ē, but more important are the Mycenaean forms like e-re-pa-te "with ivory" (i.e. elephantē? -ě?)

 * The marker of the neuter dual was *-iH, as in Sanskrit bharatī "two carrying ones (neut.)", nāmanī "two names", yuge "two yokes" (< yuga-i? *yuga-ī?). Greek to the rescue: the Homeric form ósse "the (two) eyes" is manifestly from *h₃ekʷ-ih₁ (formerly *okʷ-ī) via fully regular sound laws (intermediately *okʷye).

 * *-eh₁- derives stative verb senses from eventive roots: PIE *sed- "sit (down)": *sed-eh₁- "be in a sitting position" (> Proto-Italic *sed-ē-ye-mos "we are sitting" > Latin sedēmus). It is attested in Celtic, Italic, Germanic (the Class IV weak verbs), and Baltic/Slavic, with some traces in Indo-Iranian (In Avestan the affix seems to form past-habitual stems).

 * It seems likely, though it is less certain, that this same *-h₁ underlies the nominative-accusative dual in o-stems: Sanskrit vṛkā, Greek lúkō "two wolves". (The alternative ending -āu in Sanskrit cuts a small figure in the Rigveda, but eventually becomes the standard form of the o-stem dual.)

 * *-h₁s- derives desiderative stems as in Sanskrit jighāṃsati "desires to slay" < *gʷhi-gʷhṇ-h₁s-e-ti- (root *gʷhen-, Sanskrit han- "slay"). This is the source of Greek future tense formations and (with the addition of a thematic suffix *-ye/o-) the Indo-Iranian one as well: bhariṣyati "will carry" < *bher-h₁s-ye-ti.

 * *-yeh₁-/*-ih₁- is the optative suffix for root verb inflections, e.g. Latin (old) siet "may he be", sīmus "may we be", Sanskrit syāt "may he be", and so on.

 * *h₂ is seen as the marker of the neuter plural: *-h₂ in the consonant stems, *-eh₂ in the vowel stems. Much levelling and remodelling are seen in the daughter languages that preserve any ending at all, thus Latin has generalized *-ā throughout the noun system (later regularly shortened to -a), Greek generalized -ǎ < *-h₂.

 * The categories masculine/feminine plainly did not exist in the most original form of Proto-Indo-European, and there are very few noun types which are formally different in the two genders. The formal differences are mostly to be seen in adjectives (and not all of them) and pronouns. Both types of derived feminine stems feature *h₂: a type that is patently derived from the o-stem nominals; and an ablauting type showing alternations between *-yeh₂- and *-ih₂-. Both are peculiar in having no actual marker for the nominative singular, and at least as far as the *-eh₂- type, two features seem clear: it is based on the o-stems, and the nom.sg. is probably in origin a neuter plural. (An archaic trait of Indo-European morpho-syntax is that plural neuter nouns construe with singular verbs, and quite possibly *yugeh₂ was not so much "yokes" in our sense, but "yokage; a harnessing-up".) Once that much is thought of, however, it is not easy to pin down the details of the "ā-stems" in the Indo-European languages outside of Anatolia, and such an analysis sheds no light at all on the *-yeh₂-/*-ih₂- stems, which (like the *eh₂-stems) form feminine adjective stems and derived nouns (e.g. Sanskrit devī- "goddess" from deva- "god") but unlike the "ā-stems" have no foundation in any neuter category.

 * *-eh₂- seems to have formed factitive verbs, as in *new-eh₂- "to renew, make new again", as seen in Latin novāre, Greek neáō and Hittite ne-wa-aḫ-ḫa-an-t- (participle) all "renew" but all three with the pregnant sense of "plow anew; return fallow land to cultivation".

 * *-h₂- marked the 1st person singular, with a confusing distribution: in the thematic active (the familiar -ō ending of Greek and Latin, and Indo-Iranian -ā(mi)), and also in the perfect tense (not really a tense in PIE): *-h₂e as in Greek oîda "I know" < *. It is the basis of the Hittite ending -ḫḫi, as in da-aḫ-ḫi "I take" < *-ḫa-i (original *-ḫa embellished with the primary tense marker with subsequent smoothing of the diphthong).

 * *-eh₃ may be tentatively identified in a directive case. No such case is found in Indo-European noun paradigms, but such a construct accounts for a curious collection of Hittite forms like ne-pi-ša "(in)to the sky", ták-na-a "to, into the ground", a-ru-na "to the sea". These are sometimes explained as o-stem datives in -a < *-ōy, an ending attested in Greek and Indo-Iranian, among others, but there are serious problems with such a view, and the forms are highly coherent, functionally. And there are also appropriate adverbs in Greek and Latin (elements lost in productive paradigms sometimes survive in stray forms, like the old instrumental case of the definite article in English expressions like the more the merrier): Greek ánō "upwards, kátō "downwards", Latin quō "whither?", eō "to that place"; and perhaps even the Indic preposition/preverb â "to(ward)" which has no satisfactory competing etymology. (These forms must be distinguished from the similar-looking ones formed to the ablative in *-ōd and with a distinctive "fromness" sense: Greek ópō "whence, from where".)

Criticism
Throughout its history, the laryngeal theory in its various forms has been subject to extensive criticism and revision.

The original argument of Saussure was not accepted by anyone in the Neogrammarian school, primarily based at the University of Leipzig, then reigning at the cutting-edge of Indo-European linguistics. Several of them attacked the Mémoire savagely. Hermann Osthoff's criticism was particularly virulent, often descending into personal invective.

For the first half-century of its existence, the laryngeal theory was widely seen as "an eccentric fancy of outsiders". In Germany, it was roundly rejected. Among its early proponents were Hermann Möller, who extended Saussure's system with a third, non-colouring laryngeal, Albert Cuny, Holger Pedersen, and Karel Oštir. The fact that these scholars were engaged in highly speculative long-range linguistic comparison further contributed to its isolation.

Although the founding fathers were able to provide some indirect evidence of a lost consonantal element (for example, the origin of the Indo-Iranian voiceless aspirates in *CH sequences and the ablaut pattern of the heavy bases, *CeRə- ~ *CR̥̄- in the traditional formulation ), the direct evidence so crucial for the Neogrammarian thinking was lacking. Saussure's structural considerations were foreign to the leading contemporary linguists.

After Jerzy Kuryłowicz's convincing demonstration that the Hittite language preserved at least some of Saussure's coefficients sonantiques, the focus of the debate shifted. It was still unclear how many laryngeals are to be posited to account for the new facts and what effect they have had exactly. Kuryłowicz, after a while, settled on four laryngeals, an approach further accepted by Edward Sapir, Edgar Sturtevant, and – through them – much of American linguistics. The three-laryngeal system was defended, among others, by Walter Couvreur and by Émile Benveniste. Many individual proposals were made, which assumed up to ten laryngeals, such as that of André Martinet. While some scholars, like Heinz Kronasser and Giuliano Bonfante, attempted to disregard Anatolian evidence altogether, the "minimal" serious proposal (with roots in Pedersen's early ideas) was put forward by Hans Hendriksen, Louis Hammerich, and later Ladislav Zgusta, who assumed a single /H/ phoneme with no vowel-colouring effects.

However, by the 2000s a widespread agreement was reached in the field – though not unanimous – on reconstructing Möller's three laryngeals. One of the last major critics of this approach was Oswald Szemerényi, who subscribed to a theory similar to Zgusta's.

Today, the laryngeal theory is almost universally accepted in this new standard form. Nevertheless, marginal attempts to undermine its bases are occasionally undertaken.

title: Laryngeal theory


text:
Hōgen rebellion

The Hōgen rebellion (保元の乱) was a short civil war fought in order to resolve a dispute about Japanese Imperial succession. The dispute was also about the degree of control exercised by the Fujiwara clan who had become hereditary Imperial regents during the Heian period.

Hōgen no ran produced a series of unanticipated consequences. It created a foundation from which the dominance of the samurai clans would come to be established. It is considered the beginning in a chain of events which would produce the first of three samurai-led governments in the history of Japan.

Context
A simmering power struggle in the Imperial court was focused on three figures in 1155. After the former Emperor Toba and the former Emperor Sutoku abdicated, each intended to continue to wield various kinds of power behind the throne during the reign of Emperor Konoe in cloistered rule. However, when young Konoe died, the dynamics of the contending factions changed.

 * August 23, 1155 (Kyūju 2, 24th day of the 7th month) : In the 14th year of Konoe-tennō's reign (近衛天皇14年), the emperor died; and despite an ensuing dispute over who should follow him as sovereign, contemporary scholars then construed that the succession (senso) was received by a younger brother, the 4th son of former-Emperor Toba. Shortly after that, Emperor Go-Shirakawa is said to have acceded to the throne (sokui).

When Go-Shirakawa ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne, a new phase of this multi-faceted power struggle began to unfold. A bitter dispute between two of Toba's sons was paralleled by divisions within the several kuge families and others. Toba had forced one of his sons to abdicate in favor of the son of another consort; and after 1142, former Emperor Sutoku harbored the expectation that his son would follow Emperor Konoe on the throne. Sutoku's hopes were frustrated by the elevation of another brother who would become known as Go-Shirakawa.

 * July 20, 1156 (Hōgen 1, 2nd day of the 7th month): The former-Emperor Toba died at the age of 54.

After the death of the Toba, forces loyal to reigning Emperor Go-Shirakawa and the forces supporting retired former Emperor Sutoku disputed the accession of Go-Shirakawa and his continued possession of the throne. The opposing groups were also contending over continuation of cloistered government.

Battle
Go-Shirakawa and Sutoku were rival sons of Toba. Fujiwara no Tadamichi, first son of regent Fujiwara no Tadazane, sided with Go-Shirakawa while his younger brother Fujiwara no Yorinaga sided with Sutoku. Each rival side in turn beckoned the Minamoto and Taira clans of samurai. Minamoto no Tameyoshi, head of the Minamoto clan, and Taira no Tadamasa, head of the Taira contingent, sided with Sutoku and Yorinaga. Minamoto no Yoshitomo, first son of Minamoto no Tameyoshi, and Taira no Kiyomori, head of the Taira clan and nephew of Taira no Tadamasa, sided with Go-Shirakawa and Tadamichi.

 * July 28, 1156 (Hōgen 1, 10th day of the 7th month): Both forces faced each other in Kyōto. On the Sutoku side, Minamoto no Tametomo (son of Minamoto no Tameyoshi and younger brother of Yoshitomo) suggested a night attack on an enemy palace, but Fujiwara no Yorinaga rejected this strategy. Meanwhile, their enemy Minamoto no Yoshitomo suggested the same, and followed through on it.
 * July 29, 1156 (Hōgen 1, 11th day of the 7th month): At night, Kiyomori and Yoshitomo led 600 cavalry and attacked Sutoku in the Siege of Shirakawa-den. Kiyomori attacked the West gate where Tametomo defended it. Tametomo repulsed Kiyomori's force with his outstanding archery units.

Then Yoshitomo attacked Tametomo but he was also repulsed. Sutoku's samurai fought hard, and a fierce battle continued. Yoshitomo suggested that they set the enemy palace on fire. This was done and, fighting both the flames and Go-Shirakawa's forces, Sutoku's samurai fled, leaving Go-Shirakawa's allies victorious on the battlefield.

Outcome
The forces of the reigning Emperor Go-Shirakawa went on to defeat the forces of the former Emperor Sutoku. This made way for Go-Shirakawa to abdicate while still continuing to exercise unfettered Imperial powers. Go-Shirakawa became the new cloistered emperor in 1158, and he would continue to exercise power throughout the reigns of five emperors: Emperor Nijō, Emperor Rokujō, Emperor Takakura, Emperor Antoku, and Emperor Go-Toba. His influence only ceased with his death in 1192. Sutoku was banished to Sanuki Province of Shikoku; Fujiwara no Yorinaga was killed in battle, and Minamoto no Tameyoshi and Taira no Tadamasa were executed. Tametomo survived the battle and was forced to flee.

Minamoto no Yoshitomo became head of his clan after the death of his father and together with Taira no Kiyomori, succeeded in establishing the two samurai clans as major new political powers in Kyoto.

Legacy
The outcome of the Hōgen Rebellion and the rivalry established between the Minamoto and Taira clans led to the Heiji Rebellion in 1159.

The Kamakura period epic Tale of the Disturbance in Hōgen is about the exploits of the samurai who participated in the Hōgen Rebellion. Together with the Tale of the Disturbance in Heiji and the Tale of Heike, these war stories (gunki monogatari) describe the rise and fall of the Minamoto and Taira samurai clans.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Hōgen rebellion


text:
Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, social philosopher, and political commentator. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he became a well-known voice in the American conservative movement as a prominent black conservative. He was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in 2002.

Sowell was born in segregated Gastonia, North Carolina, to a poor family, and grew up in Harlem, New York City. Due to poverty and difficulties at home, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked various odd jobs, eventually serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. Afterward, he took night classes at Howard University and then attended Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958. He earned a master's degree in economics from Columbia University the next year and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. In his academic career, he held professorships at Cornell University, Brandeis University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also worked at think tanks including the Urban Institute. Since 1977, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy.

Sowell was an important figure to the conservative movement during the Reagan era, influencing fellow economist Walter E. Williams and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He was offered a position as Federal Trade Commissioner in the Ford administration, and was considered for posts including U.S. Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration, but declined both times.

Sowell is the author of more than 45 books (including revised and new editions) on a variety of subjects including politics, economics, education and race, and he has been a syndicated columnist in more than 150 newspapers. His views are described as conservative, especially on social issues; libertarian, especially on economics; or libertarian-conservative. He has said he may be best labeled as a libertarian, though he disagrees with the "libertarian movement" on some issues, such as national defense.

Early life
Sowell was born in 1930 into a poor family in segregated Gastonia, North Carolina. His father died shortly before he was born, leaving behind Sowell's mother, a housemaid who already had four children. A great-aunt and her two grown daughters adopted Sowell and raised him. His mother died a few years later of complications while giving birth to another child. In his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, Sowell wrote that his childhood encounters with white people were so limited that he did not know blond was a hair color. He recalls that his first memories were living in a small wooden house in Charlotte, North Carolina, which he stated was typical of most black neighborhoods. It was located on an unpaved street and had no electricity or running water. When Sowell was nine years old, he and his extended family moved from North Carolina to Harlem, New York City, for greater opportunities, joining in the large-scale trend of African-American migration from the American south to the north. Family quarrels forced him and his aunt to room in other people's apartments.

Sowell qualified for Stuyvesant High School, a prestigious academic high school in New York City; he was the first in his family to study beyond the sixth grade. However, he was forced to drop out at age 17 because of financial difficulties and family quarreling. He worked a number of odd jobs, including long hours at a machine shop, and as a delivery man for Western Union. He also tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948. Sowell was drafted into the armed services in 1951 during the Korean War and was assigned to the U.S. Marine Corps. Although Sowell opposed the war and experienced racism, he was able to find fulfillment as a photographer, which eventually became his favorite hobby. He was honorably discharged in 1952.

Higher education and early career
After leaving military service, Sowell completed high school, took a civil service job in Washington, DC, and attended night classes at Howard University, a historically black college. His high scores on the College Board exams and recommendations by two professors helped him gain admission to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. He earned a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University the following year. Sowell had initially chosen Columbia University to study under George Stigler, who would later receive the Nobel Prize in Economics, but when he learned that Stigler had moved to the University of Chicago, he followed him there and studied for his doctorate under Stigler upon arriving in the fall of 1959.

Sowell has said that he was a Marxist "during the decade of my 20s". One of his earliest professional publications was a sympathetic examination of Marxist thought vs. Marxist–Leninist practice. What began to change his mind toward supporting free market economics, he said, was studying the possible impact of minimum wages on unemployment of sugar industry workers in Puerto Rico, as a U.S. Department of Labor intern. Workers at the department were surprised by his questioning, he said, and he concluded that "they certainly weren't going to engage in any scrutiny of the law".

Sowell received his Doctor of Philosophy in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. His dissertation was titled "Say's Law and the General Glut Controversy".

Academic career
From 1965 to 1969, Sowell was an assistant professor of economics at Cornell University. Writing 30 years later about the 1969 seizure of Willard Straight Hall by black students at Cornell, Sowell characterized the students as "hoodlums" with "serious academic problems [who were] admitted under lower academic standards", and noted "it so happens that the pervasive racism that black students supposedly encountered at every turn on campus and in town was not apparent to me during the four years that I taught at Cornell and lived in Ithaca."

Sowell has taught economics at Howard University, Rutgers, Cornell, Brandeis University, Amherst College, and the University of California, Los Angeles. At Howard, Sowell wrote, he was offered the position as head of the economics department, but he declined. Since 1980, he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds a fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman, his mentor. The Hoover appointment, because it did not involve teaching, gave him more time for his numerous writings. In addition, Sowell appeared several times on William F. Buckley Jr.'s show Firing Line, during which he discussed the economics of race and privatization. Sowell has written that he gradually lost faith in the academic system, citing low academic standards and counterproductive university bureaucracy, and he resolved to leave teaching after his time at the University of California, Los Angeles. In A Personal Odyssey, he recounts, "I had come to Amherst, basically, to find reasons to continue teaching. What I found instead were more reasons to abandon an academic career."

In an interview, Sowell said he had been offered a position as Federal Trade Commissioner by the Ford administration in 1976, but that after pursuing the opportunity, he withdrew from consideration to avoid the political games surrounding the position. He said in another interview that he was offered the post of United States Secretary of Education but declined. In 1980, after Reagan's election, Sowell and Henry Lucas organized the Black Alternatives Conference to bring together black and white conservatives; one attendee was a young Clarence Thomas, then a congressional aide. Sowell was appointed as a member of the Economic Policy Advisory Committee of the Reagan administration, but resigned after the first meeting, disliking travel from the West Coast and lengthy discussions in Washington; of his decision to resign, Sowell cited "the opinion (and the example) of Milton Friedman, that some individuals can contribute more by staying out of government".

In 1987, Sowell testified in favor of federal appeals court judge Robert Bork during the hearings for Bork's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. In his testimony, Sowell said that Bork was "the most highly qualified nominee of this generation" and that what he viewed as judicial activism, a concept that Bork opposed as a self-described originalist and textualist, "has not been beneficial to minorities."

In a review of Sowell's 1987 book, A Conflict of Visions, Larry D. Nachman in Commentary magazine described Sowell as a leading representative of the Chicago school of economics.

Writings and thought
Themes of Sowell's writing range from social policy on race, ethnic groups, education, and decision-making, to classical and Marxian economics, to the problems of children perceived as having disabilities.

Sowell had a nationally syndicated column distributed by Creators Syndicate that was published in Forbes magazine, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The New York Post, and other major newspapers, as well as online on websites such as RealClearPolitics, Townhall, WorldNetDaily, and the Jewish World Review. Sowell commented on current issues, which include liberal media bias; judicial activism and originalism; abortion; minimum wage; universal health care; the tension between government policies, programs, and protections and familial autonomy; affirmative action; government bureaucracy; gun control; militancy in U.S. foreign policy; the war on drugs; multiculturalism; mob rule and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. According to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Sowell was the most cited black economist between 1991 and 1995, and second most cited between 1971 and 1990.

He was a frequent guest on The Rush Limbaugh Show, in conversations with Walter E. Williams, who was a substitute host for Limbaugh.

On December 27, 2016, Sowell announced the end of his syndicated column, writing that, at age 86, "the question is not why I am quitting, but why I kept at it so long", and cited a desire to focus on his photography hobby.

The TV show Free to Choose, distributed by the Free to Choose Network, features Sowell along with Milton Friedman and a number of other panelists as they discuss the relationship between freedom and individual economic choices. A documentary detailing his career entitled "Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World" was released by the Free to Choose Network in 2021.

Economic and political ideology
Until the spring of 1972, Sowell was a registered Democrat, after which he then left the Democratic Party and resolved not to associate with any political party again, stating "I was so disgusted with both candidates that I didn't vote at all." Though he is often described as a black conservative, Sowell said, "I prefer not to have labels, but I suspect that 'libertarian' would suit me better than many others, although I disagree with the libertarian movement on a number of things." He has been described as one of the most prominent advocates of contemporary classical liberalism along with Friedrich Hayek and Larry Arnhart. Sowell primarily writes on economic subjects, generally advocating a free market approach to capitalism. Sowell opposes the Federal Reserve, arguing that it has been unsuccessful in preventing economic depressions and limiting inflation. Sowell described his study of Karl Marx in his autobiography; as a former Marxist who early in his career became disillusioned with it, he emphatically opposes Marxism, providing a critique in his book Marxism: Philosophy and Economics (1985).

Sowell has also written a trilogy of books on ideologies and political positions, including A Conflict of Visions, in which he speaks on the origins of political strife; The Vision of the Anointed, in which he compares the conservative/libertarian and liberal/progressive worldviews; and The Quest for Cosmic Justice, in which, as in many of his other writings, he outlines his thesis of the need felt by intellectuals, politicians, and leaders to fix and perfect the world in utopian and ultimately, he posits, disastrous fashions. Separate from the trilogy, but also in discussion of the subject, he wrote Intellectuals and Society, building on his earlier work, in which he discusses what he argues to be the blind hubris and follies of intellectuals in a variety of areas.

His book Knowledge and Decisions, a winner of the 1980 Law and Economics Center Prize, was heralded as a "landmark work," selected for this prize "because of its cogent contribution to our understanding of the differences between the market process and the process of government." In announcing the award, the centre acclaimed Sowell, whose "contribution to our understanding of the process of regulation alone would make the book important, but in reemphasizing the diversity and efficiency that the market makes possible, [his] work goes deeper and becomes even more significant." Friedrich Hayek wrote: "In a wholly original manner [Sowell] succeeds in translating abstract and theoretical argument into highly concrete and realistic discussion of the central problems of contemporary economic policy."

Sowell opposes the imposition of minimum wages by governments, arguing in his book Basic Economics that "Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they either lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force." He goes further to argue that minimum wages disproportionately affect "members of racial or ethnic minority groups" that have been discriminated against. He asserts that "Before federal minimum wage laws were instituted in the 1930s, the black unemployment rate was slightly lower than the white unemployment rate in 1930. But then followed the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933 and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 – all of which imposed government-mandated minimum wages, either on a particular sector or more broadly... By 1954, black unemployment rates were double those of whites and have continued to be at that level or higher. Those particularly hard hit by the resulting unemployment have been black teenage males."

Sowell also favors decriminalization of all drugs. He opposes gun control laws, arguing, "On net balance, they do not save lives, but cost lives."

Race and ethnicity
Sowell has supported conservative political positions on race, and is known for caustic, sarcastic criticism of liberal black civil rights figures. Sowell has argued that systemic racism is an untested, questionable hypothesis, writing, "I don't think even the people who use it have any clear idea what they're saying", and compared it to propaganda tactics used by Joseph Goebbels because if it is "repeated long enough and loud enough", people "cave in" to it.

In several of his works—including The Economics and Politics of Race (1983), Ethnic America (1981), Affirmative Action Around the World (2004), and other books—Sowell challenges the notion that black progress is due to progressive government programs or policies. He claims that many problems identified with blacks in modern society are not unique, neither in terms of American ethnic groups, nor in terms of a rural proletariat struggling with disruption as it became urbanized, as discussed in his Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005). He is critical of affirmative action and race-based quotas. "When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination." He takes issue with the notion of government as a helper or savior of minorities, arguing that the historical record shows quite the opposite. In Affirmative Action Around the World, Sowell holds that affirmative action affects more groups than is commonly understood, though its impacts occur through different mechanisms, and has long since ceased to favor blacks."One of the few policies that can be said to harm virtually every group in a different way. ... Obviously, whites and Asians lose out when you have preferential admission for black students or Hispanic students—but blacks and Hispanics lose out because what typically happens is the students who have all the credentials to succeed in college are admitted to colleges where the standards are so much higher that they fail."

In Intellectuals and Race (2013), Sowell argues that intelligence quotient (IQ) gaps are hardly startling or unusual between, or within, ethnic groups. He notes that the roughly 15-point gap in contemporary black–white IQ scores is similar to that between the national average and the scores of certain ethnic white groups in years past, in periods when the nation was absorbing new immigrants.

Late-talking and the Einstein syndrome
Sowell's book The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late was published in 2021 as a follow-up to his Late-Talking Children. In it, Sowell discusses what he calls the "Einstein syndrome", which refers to the phenomenon of late-talking children. Sowell says these children are frequently misdiagnosed with autism or pervasive developmental disorder. He includes the research of Stephen Camarata and Steven Pinker, among others. Sowell says this trait affected many historical figures who developed prominent careers, such as physicists Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, and Richard Feynman; mathematician Julia Robinson; and musicians Arthur Rubinstein and Clara Schumann. According to Sowell, some children develop unevenly (asynchronous development) for a period in childhood due to rapid and extraordinary development in the analytical functions of the brain. This may temporarily "rob resources" from neighboring functions such as language development.

Politics
In a 2009 column titled "The Bush Legacy", Sowell assessed President George W. Bush as "a mixed bag" but "an honorable man."

Sowell said the media was "filtering and spinning" its coverage regarding abortions and has spoken out against sex-selective abortion. In 2018, he named George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Calvin Coolidge as presidents he liked.

Donald Trump
Sowell was strongly critical of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and grudgingly endorsed Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, criticizing him as well, and stating that "we can only make our choices among those actually available". During the Republican primary of the 2016 presidential election, Sowell criticized Trump, questioning whether Trump had "any principles at all, other than promoting Donald Trump?" Two weeks before the 2016 presidential election, Sowell recommended voters to vote for Trump over Hillary Clinton, because he would be "easier to impeach". In 2018, when asked on his thoughts of Trump's presidency, Sowell replied, "I think he's better than the previous president."

During interviews in 2019, Sowell defended President Trump against charges of racism.

Joe Biden presidential nomination
In 2020, Sowell wrote that if the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, it could signal a point of no return for the United States, a tipping point akin to the fall of the Roman Empire. In an interview in July 2020, he stated that "the Roman Empire overcame many problems in its long history but eventually it reached a point where it could no longer continue, and much of that was from within, not just the barbarians attacking from outside." Sowell wrote that if Biden became president, the Democratic Party would have an enormous amount of control over the nation, and if this happened, they could twin with the "radical left" and ideas such as defunding the police could come to fruition.

Education
Sowell has written about education throughout his career. He has argued for the need for reform of the school system in the United States. In his latest book, Charter Schools and Their Enemies (2020), Sowell compares the educational outcomes of school children educated at charter schools with those at conventional public schools. In his research, Sowell first explains the need and his methodology for choosing comparable students—both ethnically and socioeconomically—before listing his findings. He presents the case that charter schools on the whole do significantly better in terms of educational outcomes than conventional schools.

Sowell argues that many U.S. schools are failing children; contends that "indoctrination" has taken the place of proper education; and argues that teachers' unions have promoted harmful education policies. Sowell contends that many schools have become monopolies for educational bureaucracies.

In his book Education: Assumptions Versus History (1986), Sowell analyzes the state of education in U.S. schools and universities. In particular, he examines the experiences of blacks and other ethnic groups in the American education system and identifies the factors and patterns behind both success and failure.

Reception
Classical liberals, libertarians, and other conservatives of different disciplines have received Sowell's work positively. Among these, he has been noted for originality, depth and breadth, clarity of expression, and thoroughness of research. Sowell's publications have been received positively by economists Steven Plaut, Steve H. Hanke James M. Buchanan; and John B. Taylor; philosophers Carl Cohen and Tibor Machan; science historian Michael Shermer; essayist Gerald Early; political scientists Abigail Thernstrom and Charles Murray; psychologists Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt;  and Josef Joffe, publisher and editor of Die Zeit. Steve Forbes, in a 2015 column, stated that "it's a scandal that economist Thomas Sowell has not been awarded the Nobel Prize. No one alive has turned out so many insightful, richly researched books."

Nathan J. Robinson stated that Sowell "is not given much attention by mainstream scholars in the academy, and few of his books are reviewed by major liberal-leaning publications." Economist James B. Stewart wrote a critical review of Black Rednecks and White Liberals, calling it "the latest salvo in Thomas Sowell's continuing crusade to represent allegedly dysfunctional value orientations and behavioral characteristics of African Americans as the principal reasons for persistent economic and social disparities." He also criticized it for downplaying the impact of slavery. Particularly in black communities in the 1980s Sowell became, in historian Michael Ondaatje's words, "persona non grata, someone known to talk about, rather than with, African Americans". Economist Bernadette Chachere, law professor Richard Thompson Ford, and sociologists William Julius Wilson and Richard Coughlin have criticized some of his work.

Criticisms include neglecting discrimination against women in the workforce in Rhetoric or Reality?, the methodology of Race and Culture: A World View, and portrayal of opposing theories in Intellectuals and Race. Economist Jennifer Doleac criticized Discrimination and Disparities, arguing that statistical discrimination is real and pervasive (Sowell argues that existing racial disparities are mostly due to accurate sorting based on underlying characteristics, such as education) and that government intervention can achieve societal goals and make markets work more efficiently. Columnist Steven Pearlstein criticized Wealth, Poverty and Politics.

Personal life
Sowell was married to Alma Jean Parr from 1964 to 1975, and married Mary Ash in 1981. He has two children.

Legacy and honors

 * 1982: the Mencken Award for Best Book, from the Free Press Association, for his Ethnic America: A History.
 * 1990: the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute.
 * 1998: the Sydney Hook Award, from the National Association of Scholars.
 * 1998: elected membership to the American Philosophical Society.
 * 2002: the National Humanities Medal, presented by President George W. Bush, for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science.
 * 2003: the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement.
 * 2004: the Lysander Spooner Award, presented by Laissez Faire Books, for his Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One.
 * 2008: the International Book Award, from getAbstract, for his book Economic Facts and Fallacies.

Career chronology

 * Labor economist, U.S. Department of Labor, June 1961 – August 1962
 * Instructor in economics, Douglass College, Rutgers University, September 1962 – June 1963
 * Lecturer in economics, Howard University, September 1963 – June 1964
 * Economic analyst, American Telephone & Telegraph Co., June 1964 – August 1965
 * Assistant professor of economics, Cornell University, September 1965 – August 1969
 * Associate professor of economics, Brandeis University, September 1969 – June 1970
 * Associate professor of economics, University of California, Los Angeles, September 1970 – June 1972
 * Project director, Urban Institute, August 1972 – July 1974
 * Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, July 1976 – March 1977
 * Visiting professor of economics, Amherst College, September–December 1977
 * Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, April–August 1977
 * Professor of economics, UCLA, July 1974 – June 1980
 * Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, September 1980–present

Books

 * 1971. Economics: Analysis and Issues. Scott Foresman & Co.
 * 1972. Black Education: Myths and Tragedies. David McKay Co. . ISBN 0-679-30015-5.
 * 1972. Say's Law: An Historical Analysis. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-04166-7.
 * 1974. Classical Economics Reconsidered. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-00358-0.
 * 1975. Race and Economics. David McKay Co. ISBN 978-0-679-30262-9.
 * 1980. Knowledge and Decisions. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-03736-0.
 * 1981. Ethnic America: A History . Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-02074-7.
 * Chapter 1, "The American Mosaic ."
 * 1981. Markets and Minorities. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-04399-2.
 * 1981. Pink and Brown People: and Other Controversial Essays . Hoover Press . ISBN 0-8179-7532-2.
 * 1983. The Economics and Politics of Race. William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-01891-2.
 * 1984. Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-03113-7.
 * 1985. Marxism: Philosophy and Economics. Quill. ISBN 0-688-06426-4.
 * 1986. Education: Assumptions Versus History. Hoover Press. ISBN 0-8179-8112-8.
 * 1987. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles . William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-06912-6.
 * 1987. Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays. William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-07114-7.
 * 1990. Preferential Policies: An International Perspective. ISBN 0-688-08599-7
 * 1993. Inside American Education. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-5408-2.
 * 1993. Is Reality Optional?: and Other Essays. Hoover. ISBN 978-0-8179-9262-0.
 * 1995. Race and Culture: A World View. ISBN 0-465-06796-4.
 * 1995. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation As a Basis for Social Policy. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-08995-X.
 * 1996. Migrations and Cultures: A World View. ISBN 0-465-04589-8..
 * 1998. Conquests and Cultures: An International History. ISBN 0-465-01400-3.
 * 1998. Late-Talking Children. ISBN 0-465-03835-2.
 * 1999. The Quest for Cosmic Justice . ISBN 0-684-86463-0.
 * 2000. A Personal Odyssey. ISBN 0-684-86465-7.
 * 2000. Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy (1st ed.) . Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-08145-2.
 * 2002. Controversial Essays. Hoover. ISBN 0-8179-2992-4.
 * 2002. The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late. ISBN 0-465-08141-X.
 * 2003. Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One. ISBN 0-465-08143-6.
 * 2004. Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press . ISBN 978-0-300-10775-3.
 * 2004. Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy (revised and expanded ed.). New York: Basic Books.
 * 2005. Black Rednecks and White Liberals. San Francisco: Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1-59403-086-4.
 * 2006. Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays . Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8179-4752-1. ..
 * 2006. On Classical Economics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12606-8.
 * 2007. A Man of Letters. San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1-59403-196-0.
 * 2007. Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (3rd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00260-3..
 * 2008. Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One (2nd ed.). Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00345-7 ..
 * 2008. Economic Facts and Fallacies . Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00349-5. ..
 * 2009. The Housing Boom and Bust. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01880-2.
 * Chapter 5, "The Past and the Future ."
 * 2010. Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. ISBN 978-0-465-02252-6.
 * 2010. Dismantling America: and Other Controversial Essays. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-02251-9 ..
 * 2010. Intellectuals and Society . Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01948-9 . Lay summary.
 * 2011. The Thomas Sowell Reader. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-02250-2.
 * 2011. Economic Facts and Fallacies, 2nd edition. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465022038
 * 2013. Intellectuals and Race. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-05872-3.
 * 2014. Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (5th ed.). New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-06073-3.
 * 2015. Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective. Basic Books.
 * 2016. Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective (2nd ed.). Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-09676-3.
 * 2018. Discrimination and Disparities. Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-541-64560-8.
 * 2019. Discrimination and Disparities (revised, enlarged ed.) Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-541-64563-9.
 * 2020. Charter Schools and Their Enemies. Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-541-67513-1.
 * 2023. Social Justice Fallacies. Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-541-60392-9.

Selected essays

 * 1975. "Affirmative Action Reconsidered. Was It Necessary in Academia?" (Evaluation Studies 27). Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. ISBN 0-8447-3199-4..
 * 1979. "Status versus Behavior." Washington University Law Review 1979(1):179–188.
 * 1982. "Weber and Bakke, and the Presuppositions of 'Affirmative Action'." pp. 37–63 in Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and Equal Opportunity: An Economic and Social Perspective, edited by W. E. Block and M. A. Walker. Fraser Institute. ISBN 978-0-88975-039-5.
 * 2002. "The Education of Minority Children ." pp. 79–92 in Education in the Twenty-First Century, edited by E. P. Lazear. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Available via eText.
 * 2002. "Discrimination, Economics, and Culture." pp. 167–180 in Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, edited by A. Thernstrom and S. Thernstrom. Hoover Institution Press.
 * 2012. "'Trickle Down' Theory and 'Tax Cuts for the Rich'" (Hoover Institution Press Publication 635) Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8179-1615-2. Google Books: EY3prsH-5bwC.
 * 2012. "'Trickle Down' Theory and 'Tax Cuts for the Rich'" (Hoover Institution Press Publication 635) Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8179-1615-2. Google Books: EY3prsH-5bwC.

title: Thomas Sowell


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Quark (Star Trek)

Quark is a fictional character in the American television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He was played by Armin Shimerman and is a member of the extraterrestrial race known as the Ferengi, who are stereotypically capitalist and motivated only by profit.

Depiction
Quark was introduced on television in 1993, in the two-part Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiere "Emissary".

Talking about his depiction of Quark, Shimerman said the character developed significantly during the start of the sixth season of Deep Space Nine, during a story arc in which the Dominion took control of the Deep Space Nine station:

"He soon learns that although things may appear to be good under Dominion rule and life is pretty good, they still don't have liberty, and you've got to fight for it. Quark was one of those deluded people who thought, 'This is fine — we all get to do what we want to do,' and didn't realize that liberty was more important than creature comforts. ... Like any Everyman character in literature, Quark has to go through some turmoil before he realizes the truth."Max Grodénchik, who was cast as Rom, also auditioned for the role of Quark; he acknowledged Shimerman had much more history with the show. Grodénchik said, "I got to know Armin a bit during the audition process. He had so much more history with the show."

Karen Westerfield did the makeup for Quark during all of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Shimerman said, “I always say that Karen helped create Quark as much as I did”. He also said of Westerfield, “It was her idea to put the maroon shading around my eyes. The makeup accented the eyes, so you could see the eyes better. The other Ferengi characters didn’t have that, and it made a huge difference.”

Career
Before opening a bar, known as "Quark's Bar, Grill, Gaming House and Holosuite Arcade", Quark served as a cook aboard a Ferengi freighter for eight years, according to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Profit and Loss". According to his own admission, he was rising to the top of the Ferengi Business world as an assistant to the Grand Nagus until he made the mistake of making love to his boss’s sister which resulted in him becoming a cook. He came to the station while it was named Terok Nor during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. Originally, Quark admired the Cardassian race for their version of morality, but later he seemed to take pity on the downtrodden Bajoran people, selling them food and equipment just above cost, which could have gotten him into serious trouble if the Cardassians had found out. When the station changed hands at the end of the occupation, he decided to leave. Commander Sisko, feeling that Quark's Bar (which offered holosuites and gambling) would encourage commercial tourism to boost the station's economy, extorted Quark into staying, using Quark's nephew Nog as a bargaining chip, in the Deep Space Nine pilot episode, "Emissary."

Quark engages in a variety of shady deals, but neither Sisko nor Odo, Quark's nominal nemesis and head of station security, take serious action against him, partially because his value outweighs his numerous illegal activities, which for the most part harm no one. Furthermore, the station's status as, technically, the property of Bajor and thus only nominally a Federation station, sometimes prevented Sisko from prosecuting Quark to the full extent of Federation law; Sisko was not allowed such latitude with criminals who were also Federation citizens, such as his own lover, Kasidy Yates, whom Sisko was once obliged to arrest for dealing in illicit replicators when, on the same occasion, he was obliged to allow Quark relative amnesty for dealing in illicit weapons. In the episode "Business as Usual", Sisko admits that he had "cut [Quark] a lot of slack in the past [and] even looked away once or twice when [he] could have come down hard." However, Sisko's leniency does not stop Odo from regularly interfering with Quark's illegal doings. A shrewd businessman, Quark often quotes the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. In one episode, "Civil Defense", when Quark and Odo are trapped in Odo's office as Deep Space Nine is about to explode, Quark mourns the fact that despite a lifetime of plotting and faithfully following the Rules of Acquisition the only thing he owns is a bar; Odo tries to cheer Quark up by saying that although he has known of Ferengi who are richer than Quark, Quark is the most devious Ferengi Odo has ever met.

When the Bajoran wormhole is discovered, Quark helps broker deals between several Gamma Quadrant races and the Ferengi. The Alpha Quadrant's first knowledge of the Dominion comes through his business dealings in the Gamma Quadrant with the Karemma of the Dominion. Quark becomes Grand Nagus for a brief period when it appears that Zek had died; however, Zek's death turns out to be a ruse and Quark is promptly deposed. Along with Commander Sisko, Quark is also among the first to encounter the genetically engineered soldiers of the Dominion, the Jem'Hadar.

Quark repeatedly clashes with FCA (Ferengi Commerce Authority) liquidator Brunt, who believes that Quark is detrimental to Ferengi society and beliefs. The two meet initially in a scandal involving Quark's mother Ishka, who had earned profit despite this being illegal for a female. Following this, Brunt is responsible for Quark receiving a savage beating at the hands of Nausicaan thugs. The attack is meant to coerce Quark into dissolving the employee union founded by his brother, Rom. Instead, Quark secretly honors many of the union's demands. Later, when Quark is falsely diagnosed with a fatal disease, Brunt anonymously buys the Ferengi bartender's remains six days in advance. When Quark discovers he is not dying and backs out of the contract, Brunt revokes Quark's business license with glee, but Quark's friends supply him with all the equipment necessary to continue operating his bar anyway. (Body Parts) (The license is later reinstated as part of a deal between Quark and Brunt to break up Zek and Ishka, who had begun a relationship.) When Brunt almost becomes Grand Nagus, Quark temporarily becomes a female named Lumba to convince FCA commissioner Nilva that allowing Ferengi females to wear clothing is an opportunity for profit. Brunt does not believe the charade for a minute, but Nilva is deceived and chases "her" amorously. After Quark is accidentally transported 400 years into the past to Roswell, New Mexico 1947 he dreams of altering the space-time continuum by the creation of a vast Ferengi economic Empire across the universe with himself in charge of it ("Little Green Men"). In a concluding episode of the series, "The Dogs of War", Quark is horrified to learn from Brunt that the Grand Nagus has "reformed" Ferengi world with such "innovations" as prices of official bribes; taxes, social welfare and the institution of a "Congress" of 240 business partners.(In comic relief Both Quark and Brunt pray that Ferenginar turn back to unrestrained capitalism). Quark vows to return the Ferengi world back to unchecked exploitation of capitalism when he becomes Grand Nagus but is stunned when it is his brother Rom who becomes "Grand Nagus" instead. In the last episode of the series, Quark literally has the last line of the series when he remarks that the more things seem to change, the more they stay the same. ("What You Leave Behind")

Quark, Rom and Nog do not understand or speak English/Federation Standard, but rather rely on Universal Translators implanted near their ears ("Little Green Men").

Family, friends, and romantic interests
Quark loved his brother Rom, and occasionally even found him useful. Nonetheless, in true Ferengi fashion, he treated Rom with little respect and ordered him about like a servant. Quark was also fond of swindling Rom out of his share of the bar's profits. They were partners in many other business ventures, although Quark routinely made sure to keep Rom in the dark about the true nature of their dealings. Quark's nephew, Nog, also briefly worked in his uncle's bar, before departing for Starfleet Academy. Rom eventually succeeded Zek as Grand Nagus, largely through the machinations of Ishka.

Quark's relationship with his mother Ishka was tumultuous at best. She drove him to distraction with her untraditional ways. Ishka insisted upon wearing clothing and making profit. She was the financial mastermind in the family. However, Quark's father Keldar refused to listen to her advice simply because she was female. Ishka reluctantly revealed to Quark that he was a lot like her, while Rom was more like his father. She became Zek's lover and trusted advisor.

Throughout the series, Quark was often locked in a battle of wits with station security chief Odo, who regularly foiled Quark's criminal schemes. The two eventually developed a grudging respect for each other. When Odo finally left the station to rejoin the Great Link at the end of the series, Quark came to say goodbye, and made a toast to Odo. Quark also had a firm friendship with Jadzia Dax, with whom he often played tongo. Although Quark presented himself as amoral and ruthless, he deeply cared for his friends. In "Move Along Home" when he was apparently forced to sacrifice one of four crew members (Sisko, Dax, Bashir and Kira) in a strange alien game, he refused to make a choice, begging for their lives.

Quark has a cousin, Gaila, who is an arms dealer and has become successful enough to buy his own moon. Gaila appears in two episodes, "Business as Usual" and "The Magnificent Ferengi," portrayed by Josh Pais.

Quark has had his share of romances throughout the series. In the first season, he was involved with Vash, a corrupt archaeologist first introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was married to (and divorced from) a Klingon (Grilka) in an incident that also garnered him considerable respect from the Klingon community for his bravery, when he exposed how her husband's rival had tried to attack his House through business measures rather than a straightforward duel and then provoked said rival into trying to kill Quark in a duel when Quark was unarmed and had freely acknowledged that he would lose. He had a Cardassian love interest (Natima Lang), was shown on several occasions to be attracted to both Major Kira Nerys and Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax, and once tried to seduce a Vulcan member of the Maquis (although this may have been motivated by his own efforts to find out more about the group). He also had a platonic affair with Pel, a female Ferengi posing as a male in order to make profit.

In the non-canon novels set after the series, Quark starts a romantic relation with Ro Laren who has taken Odo's place as head of security.

The Mirror Universe version of Quark appeared only once, in the episode "Crossover". At first he appears much the same as his regular counterpart (although mirror Quark has no idea what 'gold pressed latinum', a staple of Ferengi currency, is), but it is soon revealed that mirror Quark is actively helping Terran slaves escape the cruelty of the Klingon/Cardassian Alliance. This version of Quark is eventually caught and executed when his activities are discovered.

Guest appearances
Armin Shimerman appeared as Quark in the 7th-season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Firstborn", where in conversation it is clear Riker already knew him, and in the Star Trek: Voyager pilot episode "Caretaker". He is referenced in the Star Trek: Picard episode "Stardust City Rag" when a "Quark's Bar" is seen on the planet "Freecloud" in the Alpha Doradus system. Shimerman voiced Quark on the animated series in a guest appearance on Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3 episode "Hear All, Trust Nothing", where it is revealed that the Freecloud establishment is one of 21 franchised locations Quark has established across the Alpha Quadrant.

Expanded Universe media
Quark is featured in Star Trek novels published by Pocket Books. This includes books written by Shimerman.

Reception
In 2016, Screen Rant rated Quark as the 17th best character in Star Trek overall, highlighting the character as a commentary on the human condition. In 2018, The Wrap ranked Quark as the 25th best main cast character of Star Trek overall, calling him a "valuable ally to Sisko when the chips are down".

In her 1998 book The Soul of Popular Culture, Mary Lynn Kittelson noted that Quark allowed Star Trek writers to discuss controversial topics of money, profit and capitalism. M. Keith Booker in his 2018 book Star Trek: A Cultural History described Quark as "Star Trek's most important Ferengi character", "major character of DS9" who is also "the first main Star Trek character not to be a crew member". He noted that Quark's primary purpose in the show is comedic relief.

title: Quark (Star Trek)


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Talk:Deep Space Nine (space station)/Archive 1

Shouldn't articles on characters be on subpages, i.e. Star Trek/Terok Nor for this one? (See for example Atlas Shrugged/Hank Rearden for precedent.)  Mkweise 06:13 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

 * No, subpages are officially deprecated for articles since about a year ago. The Atlas Shrugged pages should be renamed as well, but no one has gotten to it I suppose. --Brion 06:19 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

 * Seems like a foolish and short-sighted move to me. Where would I find the discussion that led to this decision? Mkweise 06:34 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

 * Hell if I know, it was decided before I got involved in the wiki. Search for "subpages" in Wikipedia: namespace and on http://meta.wikipedia.org/ if you're interested. --Brion 06:44 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

This page is short and frankly useless, it should be merged with Deep Space Nine. How can this be acheived? Simondrake 00:15 Feb 19, 2006 (GMT)

 * I'll do it. - Brian Kendig 01:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Whups, already done - I meant that I'll take care of Teraknor. - Brian Kendig 01:57, 5 March 2006 (UTC)