Re: Ancient Greek Phonology

Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:

I've also just started Ancient Greek this semester, and these have been
my observations from reading that I have done.

> - The asymmetry in the AG presented in my book is due to the
>   phonological system being in a transition stage
Yes, much like reading Shakespeare in contemporary pronunciation. He was
writing towards the end of the Great Vowel Shift, which produced the
modern English vowel system. I don't remember all the changes, so I
can't put them here. I think there was a lot of monophthizing and
fronting of diphthongs going on. Someone else could explain better than I.

Although, the fact that not much was left to us which actually describes
the way the language sounded leaves some measure of it up to
speculation. There are similar problems with a few consonants in Latin.
I had always assumed that Latin R was rolled or trilled, but then my
professor up and says that the Romans themselves described it as a
"growl". I can only assume that they're describing the pharyngeal trill
R as in French.

> - the transition was exclusive to one or a limited number of
>   dialects (Attic and Boiotian mentioned)
That's probably not true. Given the nature of language and the
relatively early stage of writing at the time (I think that writing has
a bit of a stabilizing influence on sound change), it's probably pretty
safe to assume that all of the languages and dialects were in a constant
state of heavy flux.

> - "standard" AG has been modelled on that or those dialect(s)
"Standard" AG is pretty much the straight Attic of Plato & Aristotle
(and others, of course), as far as I can tell.

> - the transitional asymmetry, and the phonological gaps it entailed,
>   were soon to be "corrected" (by /oy/ becoming /u/ and more) in
>   later Greek
All in all, languages have a tendency towards balance. Phonological gaps
are usually filled over time. Also, I can't imagine that there was a
pure 1-to-1 correspondence between letter and sound like is usually
assumed (I can't even imagine that for Latin). We've already seen what
conflict can arise over the pronunciation of upsilon.

Too bad we haven't invented time-travel yet. ;)

--
Daniel Seriff
microtonal@sericap.com
http://members.tripod.com/microtonal

Si iterum insanum me appelles, oculum alterum tuum edem.