Re: GSF revisited

R A Brown wrote:
> I want to keep "Flexionless Greek" (FG) free from any Byzantine and/or
> modern influence. I have in mind a conhistory in which survivors of the
> Graeco-Bactrian kingdom move eastwards towards China and that a
> Greek-based pidgin is formed and comes to be used in a mixed-race
> community; because of the perceived prestige status of Greek, the
> vocabulary is almost entirely Greek, but the language becomes
> flexionless à la chinoise. The pidgin then becomes the L1 of the
> children of this mixed community and thus becomes a creole. These
> "flexionless Greeks'" have adopted Buddhism - maybe Benct Philip might
> fill out the conhistory for me    :)
...
> (a) retaining the ancient pronunciation.
> (b) treating rather like B, Δ, Γ, that is the are aspirated voiceless
> plosives when initial or after nasals, but voiceless fricatives elsewhere
> (Φ of course being a _bilabial_ fricative).
> (c) a modification of (b) in which the aspirate has given way to a
> fricative, thus giving rise an affricate sound  /pf tT kX/ when initial
> or after a nasal, and a simple voiceless fricative elsewhere - in (c) the
> fricative pronunciation of  Φ will be [f].
> (d) using the Byzantine & modern pronunciation.
If you’re taking suggestions, I think Chinese is believed to have had
aspirated voiceless stops for a very long time. Perhaps this is an
argument for (a)?

--
Tristan.