>> Ancient Greek <kHtHo:n>
> Was Greek /kH/ actually aspirated in such positions?
There is a long discussion of this in W Sidney Allen's 'Vox Graeca'. He
discusses other languages with sequences of aspirates which are actually
aspirated, and then says with underlining: "There is thus no phonetic
improbability whatever about the first consonant of the groups /PT/ and /KT/
being aspirated as well as the second." He also points to the evidence of
inscriptions which regularly show the aspiration, even in combinations with
the word 'ek' + aspirate. His conclusion is very strongly that the
aspiration was actually pronounced in both consonants , at least in Greece
in the classical period.
Peter