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Re: Hellenish oddities

From:BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Saturday, November 25, 2000, 10:28
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^)> -- mailto:bp.nospam@netg.se mailto:bpjonsson.nospam@post.com (delete .nospam) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "If a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, of what language, pray, is Basque a dialect?" (R.A.B.)