Re: Hellenish oddities

At 12:44 2000-11-22 -0600, Eric Christopherson wrote:
>On Wed, Nov 22, 2000 at 07:17:25AM -0500, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 21, 2000 at 10:53:14PM -0600, Eric Christopherson wrote:
> > [snip]
> > > I think phi-theta would actually be pronounced [pt_h] since it's so
> hard to
> > > pronounce both with aspiration, but I could be wrong.
> >
> > Actually, you'd *have* to pronounce the /p/ as [p<h>] because of the
> > [t<h>] sound attached to it. It's called the assimilation of aspirates.
>
>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.




/ B.Philip Jonsson B^)>
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