zéta encore (was:Re: écagne , etc)

At 11:29 am +0200 5/4/00, BP Jonsson wrote:
>At 16:29 03.4.2000 -0500, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
>>That's something that's always struck me as counterintuitive:  why would
>>a protoform like *[dyeus] become [zdeus], rather than [dzeus]?  The latter
>>is a straightforward example of palatalization (cf. Japanese t --> ts / _u),
>>while the former, unless you invoke haphazard metathesis from an originally
>>palatalized [dzeus], requires you to explain the appearance of that [z] from
>>somewhere else in the system, which AFAIK would be very problematic.
>
>Apparently W. Sydney Allen thought that pre-Hellenistic Z was /zd/, because
>*some* Z in other dialects correspond to SD in Aeolic.  This seems however
>to be an Anglo-Saxon tradition: I learnt that Greek Z was /dz/, and the use
It most certainly is not an AngloSaxon tradition!

40+ years ago when I was taught Greek, I was taught to pronounce zeta as
[dz] - that was the AS tradition.  We were also taught to pronounce
epsilion-iota like German {ei}  - and other abominations.  I regret the way
either you or I, or anyone else, was taught to pronounce Greek has precious
little to do with the way the Greeks themselves pronounced it.

>of Z for /dZ/ in late Latin suggested by Greek spellings like Zoulia, and
>variants like Daza/Daia in Latin itself suggest a tradition which assigned
>a voiced affricate pronunciation to Z.
I hardly think the evidence of _late_ Latin which is post-Hellenic and
*very* post-Classical can be of much use in determining the pronunciation
of the Greece of the 5th cent BC.  It's rather like citing modern English
use of letters to determine how they were pronounced when the Normans
invaded England.

>So does IMO also the use of Z for
>/ts/ in all early Romance languages.
Irrelevant, I'm afraid.

>I have sometimes wondered if Greek Z
>wasn't a pure palatal stop, with TT/SS as its voiceless counterpart.  The
>origin of these sounds and the fact that TT is pretty isolated as a
>geminate in Greek -- at least far more frequent than any other.
All voiceless plosives may be geminated in ancient Greek.  If aspirated,
only the second retains the aspiration in most dialects, i.e. -pp_h-,
-tt_h-, -kk_h-.  But the unaspirated present no problem.  -pp- is not
exactly uncommon, cf. 'hippos' (horse) and -kk- also occurs, though
admittedly not common.  What was eschewed by the Greeks was gemination of
voiced plosives.

That -tt- is more frequent *in certain dialects* than other geminations is,
surely, due to the origin of the combination which I explained in an
earlier email.  That protoGreek certainly had affricates is not AFAIK
disputed.  That [tS] or [ts] became variously -ss-, -tt- or -tt_h- in
different dialects is generally accepted.

It is very difficult to see why people would persist in denoting the same
sound in different ways.  Why not write -ts- if that is what the sound was?
The Greeks were not exactly lacking in intelligence.

It is _not_ BTW an AngloSaxon tradition that I follow.  This is well
argued, in excellent French, by Michel Lejeune in "Phonétique historique du
Mycénien et du Grec ancien".  He argues that -ss-, -tt- mean what they say.
The former represents a progressive assimilation of *ts and the latter
regressive assimilation.

Similar treatment of *dz or *dZ would've given /dd/ and /zz/ as I said; but
as I also said, both combinations were anomalous in ancient Greek
phonology.  But [zd] was not.  I quote.....
"il [ce groupe sonore *dz] est partout passé à _zd_, et s'est confondu avec
_zd_ issu de {sigma} devant {delta}.........Cette prononciation a dû être
_zd_, non _dz_, comme en témoigne, notamment, le traitement de {zeta} après
{nu}...."

Why is nu dropped before zeta?  If the pronunciation were [dz] then [ndz]
would present no difficulty.  But [nzd] is a little tricky!

This is not the only evidence that Lejeune uses  - yes, he does mention the
fact that the Aeolians wrote sigma-delta where other Greek wrote zeta after
zeta had generally become [zz] in the Hellenistic period.  But that is not
his sole evidence. He spends chapters 3 & 4 of his excellent book dealing
with these matters.

I have not met any convincing counter-arguments to dissuade me from
accepting the arguments of this French scholar.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
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