Re: GSF revisited

Philip Newton wrote:
> On 5/7/07, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
>
>> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>>> What about /yi/? I know it was rather marginal.
>>
>> So marginal, I had forgotten it. Before a vowel it will be [yj], so
>>  "son" is _yjo_ Does it ever occur before consonants?
>
>
> The only stems I'm aware of that have survived into MG are uio- and
> arpuia "harpy": before a vowel, in both cases. (Not that that rules
> out further stems which fell out of use between AG and MG, but
> still.)
Yes, I've checked and in the Attic dialect, and thus also in Koine, it
occurred only before a vowel. Preconsonantal [ui] was monophthongized to
[u:] in ProtoGreek (which became [y:] in Attic and Koine). But a
preconsonantal υι is found in Lesbian; but this results from a
contraction of υϊ and has no relevance to FG.

So any instances of υι in FG will always occur before a consonant and be
pronounced [yj], as it probably was in both Attic and Koine.

BTW I'm dropping the "Bactrian Greeks move eastward" scenario for the
moment - it producing other distractions and is probably not plausible.
I'll just concentrate and keeping the thing as close to early Koine
Greek as I can, but dropping, hopefully, all grammatical flexions. I'll
return the question of a conhistory/ althistory when the thing has taken
better shape.

--
Ray
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http://www.carolandray.plus.com
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