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Re: Ancient Greek Phonology

From:Oskar Gudlaugsson <hr_oskar@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 19, 2000, 13:46
>From: Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> >Subject: Re: Ancient Greek Phonology >Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 06:57:40 +0100
Thanks for the help guys :)
>The Romans did not know the ancient pronunciation. The only pronunciation >the knew was the Koine. Some very early borrowings were made in speech >through contact with Greeks in southern Italy where the Dorian settlements >still pronounced upsilon as [u] or [u:]; thus we find 'Pyrrhos' rendered as >_Burrus_.
Why with a 'b'? Didn't Romans and Greeks both pronounce 'b' as a voiced bilabial?
>(b) Upsilon >In Ionian and some other dialects, e.g. Boiotian & Attic, /u/ & /u:/ >shifted to /y/ and /y:/. This left a gap, so to speak, at [u], which was >early filled by OY which shifted from [o:] to [u:]. This became the >standard Attic pronunciation which later formed the basis of the >international Koine pronunciation. But some dialects, noticeably Doric, >hang onto older forms.
So, to summarize my interpretation of your answer (and that of the other members): - The asymmetry in the AG presented in my book is due to the phonological system being in a transition stage - the transition was exclusive to one or a limited number of dialects (Attic and Boiotian mentioned) - "standard" AG has been modelled on that or those dialect(s) - the transitional asymmetry, and the phonological gaps it entailed, were soon to be "corrected" (by /oy/ becoming /u/ and more) in later Greek Correct? _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.