On Wed, 31 Jan 2001 12:33:03 -0000,
tgpedersen@... wrote:
>I had an idea some time ago. It goes like this:
>
>First the standard version:
>
>1. (Pre..Pre)Greeks had laryngeals
>
>2. Laryngeals do their stuff to vowels and disappear.
>
>3. Greeks meet Phoenicians. Phoenicians have alphabet. Greeks
> take alphabet, but since Phoenician, being AA, has laryngeals,
> alphabet has three letters too many. Greeks, being Greek and
> inventive, use these three for something entirely new: vowels!
>
>Enter TP, slashing dementedly with Occam's razor:
>
>1. (Pre..Pre)Greeks had laryngeals
>
>2. Greeks meet Phoenicians. Phoenicians have alphabet. Greeks take
> alphabet. It fits perfectly.
>
>3. Laryngeals do their stuff to vowels and disappear.
>
>4. Now suddenly three of the borrowed letters stand for vowels. The
> Greeks have invented vowels (and they didn't even know it)!
PIE had, as far as we can tell by what they did to the vowels, three
laryngeals: *h1, *h2 and *h3. It is not known exactly how they were
pronounced, but some of the options can be narrowed down. *h1 must
have been /?/ or /h/, a weak sound that disappeared everywhere. *h2
was maintained in Anatolian as velar /x/ (or uvular /X/), and it's
reasonable to suppose this was also its original value
(pharyngeal/epiglottal /H/ is another possibility). *h3 is the
hardest to pin down, and opinions vary between that it didn't exist at
all (as defended here by Piotr), through that it was a labialized
variant of any of the above (/?w/, /hw/, /xw/), or that it was a
voiced sound (velar /G/, uvular /R/ or pharyngeal/epiglottal /3/).
The Phoenician laryngeals were /?/ (<'a:lep>), /h/ (<he:'>), /H/
(<h.e:t>, merged with /x/ in Phoenician), and /3/ (<`ayin>, merged
with /G/ in Phoenician). They gave the Greek letters A, E, H and O.
If your Graeco-Punic-laryngeal theory were right, we would have had
Phoen A (/?/) = Greek /e/ (not /a/!) or Phoen. E (/h/) = Greek /e/
(ok), Phoen H (/H/)= Greek /a/ (not /h/ or /e:/!), Phoen. O (/3/) =
Greek /o/ (ok).
In actual fact, the assignments were largely made based on the
voweling of the *name* of the letter. [']a:lep -> /a/, [h]e: -> /e/
(and [`]ayin was then used for /o/, perhaps helped by the Phoenician
development `áyin > `á:yin > `ó:yin (but likewise 'á:lep > 'ó:lep)).
<H.e:t> was kept as a "laryngeal" (for Greek /h/ < */s/, */j/), until
the aspiration was lost in the "psilotic" Greek dialects, chiefly
Ionian. Then by the same principle, <[h]e:ta> -> /e:/, and this was
taken over by non-psilotic dialects such as Attic (but not in the
West-Greek alphabets that were the basis of Etruscan > Latin writing,
which is why we still have H as a "laryngeal" consonant).
The same principle can be seen in the Iberian script. The vowels are
A < alep, E < he, I < yod, H (=o) < h.et and U < waw. (<h.et> for /o/
is also used in Late Punic voweling).
The non-stops (M, N, L, R, S, S') are also clearly derived from
Phoenician/Punic originals. R' is a back-to-back double RR. The
origin and value of the sign "Y" (/m/ or nasal vowel?) is unclear.
The most interesting thing about the Iberian script (not alphabet!) is
that the stops are written syllabically. So we have signs for BA, BE,
BI, BO, BU; TA/DA, TE/DE, TI/DI, TO/DO, TU/DU and KA/GA, KE/GE, KI/GI,
KO/GO and KU/GU (there was no /p/, and if Iberian phonology was
something like Basque phonology, /t/ and /k/ were absent initially and
finally, and rather rare medially). As to the shape of the signs, it
is my belief that the following correspond to Phoenician models (cf.
<
http://rabbitmoon.home.mindspring.com/asw/iberian.html>):
BE = be:t (Grk. be:ta)
BI = pe:? (Grk. pi)
TA = ta:w (Grk. tau)
TE = t.e:t (Grk. the:ta)
TU = da:let (Grk. delta)
KA = ka:p (Grk. kappa)
KE = gi:mel (Grk. gamma)
KU = qo:p (Grk. qoppa)
The other signs may have been invented later by the Iberians after the
misconception that Phoenician was partly a syllabary ("why else have
separate symbols for BE(d) and BI, DAu, DE(d) and DUle(d), GA(b),
GEmel and GU(b)?") had been established.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...