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Re: GSF revisited

From:T. A. McLeay <conlang@...>
Date:Sunday, May 6, 2007, 23:16
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.