Re: Hellenish oddities

On Sat, 25 Nov 2000, BP Jonsson wrote:

> >Hmm, this still seems quite counterintuitive to me (I know, many things in
> >linguistics are). When I try it at least, I have to put a short pause
> >between [p_h] and [t_h]. Is it possible without a pause or vowel in between,
> >or would the pause just be an accepted part of the pronunciation?
>
> The double aspirates are probably just an Ancient Greek spelling
> convention.  It is anatomically very hard/impossible to pronounce two
> aspirates without a vowel between them (since aspiration is essentially
> voicelessness in the beginning of the following vowel), and besides
> Sanskrit writes plain voiced stop + voiced aspirate in cognate words.
The other option that nobody is mentioning is the possibility that there
was an epenthetic vowel inserted between them. This is not an uncommon way
to do things in American Indian languages -- I've heard it in Chickasaw,
Pima, and been told about it in Salishan languages. It is not restricted
to aspiration, but is used anytime a cluster is difficult to pronounce.

Marcus