Re: The Appearance of Fricatives "ð" and "θ" in Anc. Macedonian: the Earliest Date?

On Mar 29, 2008, at 10:30 AM, Vasil Gligorov wrote:
> Most textbook on ancient Macedonian phonology point out that
> "Delta"="d",
> while "Theta" had a value of "t". However certain recent studies,
> outside
> the aforementioned mainstream view,  point out that the sounds
> represented
> by Δ/Θ may already had values of  ð/θ in xmk
I'm not sure what you mean by "xmk".

> even before those changes
> occurred in Classic Greek and not as is mostly encountered in the
> textbooks,
> during later Koine period, with regards to Macedonian soil.
>
> What are your conclusions on this issue, the earliest date of
> appearance of
> dental fricatives among the Macedonians as an ethne?
Well, I don't know anything about Ancient Macedonian, but Wikipedia
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Macedonian_language>) says
that aspirated stops in Greek appear to correspond to voiced stops in
Macedonian -- or at least that they are written <β, δ, γ>. It then
says:

As to Macedonian β, δ, γ = Greek φ, θ, χ, Claude Brixhe[21]
suggests that it may have been a later development: The letters may
already have designated not voiced stops, i.e. [b, d, g], but voiced
fricatives, i.e. [β, δ, γ], due to a voicing of the voiceless
fricatives [φ, θ, x] (= Classical Attic [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ]).


The citation for Brixhe is:

Claude Brixhe, "Un «nouveau» champ de la dialectologie grecque: le
macédonien", in: A. C. Cassio (ed.), Katà diálekton. Atti del III
Colloquio Internazionale di Dialettologia Greca (A.I.O.N., XIX),
Napoli 1996, 35-71.

>
> Thank you.
>
> The Appearance of Fricatives "ð" and "θ" in Anc. Macedonian: the
> Earliest Date?