Re: [PEER REVIEW] Mutations and sound changes (longish)

En réponse à bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>:

>
> uvular trill in ancient greek ? that's the first i've
> heard of it.
Strange, since all the reconstructions of Ancient Greek I've seen contain it.
See http://www.softlab.ntua.gr/miscellaneous/faq/greece/linguistics_faq.html
for instance, where Ancient Greek rho is specifically said to be a 'rolled
French r', an uvular trill thus. I've often seen it described that way.

 certainly sydney allen ( vox graeca )
> puts forward /r/ rather than /R\/, and his is the most
> comprehensive research into greek phonetics i'm aware
> of. i've always considered greek as having two
> allophones : [r] and word initial [r_0], geminating to
> [rr_0] . . . am i wrong ?
>
This looks to me more like the Erasmian pronunciation (which dates from the
Middle Ages IIRC) than the original one as it is currently reconstructed. Of
course, we can never be sure on how the Greeks themselves pronounced rho, and
there was probably a lot of dialectical variation. But the description of rho
as a rolled French r (not a Spanish nor Italian nor even Modern Greek one) is
clear enough to be sure that what is meant is the uvular trill. And IIRC this
issue is less hot than the on-going debate on whether Greek zeta was /dz/
or /zd/ (well, with dialectical variation, it was probably a lot of
things ;))) ). I've even heard people speaking Ancient Greek texts with a
reconstruction of Homeric Greek, and this one had definitely an uvular trill
(even a voiceless one IIRC).

Of course, the opinion may have changed since last time I checked. But without
time travel, we cannot be sure of anything anyway...

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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