Re: Greek laryngeals

--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:

> 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.


> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...

"In actual fact"! I wish I knew that much. Anyway, two out of four is
not that bad.
A compromise suggestion: The Greeks start out using the Phoenician
alphabet "as is". Down the road they lose their laryngeals. Now
they reinterpret the ex-laryngeal letters based on the first vowel
in its name instead of the now lost laryngeal (but then I would have
to find an early Greek inscription with reversal of a and e). I
believe something similar happened to one of the runes of the futhark
(ja > a ?).

Torsten