On Sat, 24 Sep 2005 12:59:47 +0000, tgpedersen
<
tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>I proposed a long time ago that the Greeks, when they adopted the
>Phoenician alphabet and supposedly invented true alphabetic writing
>by letting three Phoenician signs for laryngeals (vel sim.!) stand
>for vowels, in fact did not make such an epoch-making change because
>the three PIE laryngeals were still pronounced then and the first
>Greek alphabet was just as vowel-less as the Semitic ones, only the
>dropping of the laryngeals so to speak made the "discovery" of the
>vowel-signs for the Greeks, since that was how these three signs now
>were read.
>Miguel pointed out that not all vowels in Greek originated in
>laryngeals, but once alpha, eta, vaw were read as vowels, they would
>of course have been used to designate also non-laryngeal-derived
>vowels.
>One piece of positive evidence is that some Greek dialects use eta
>to designate /h/.
That's a negative piece of evidence. Phoenician */h.E:t/
was adopted by the Greeks to stand for their /h/ (from PIE
*s and some other sources, none of them laryngeal). The
psilotic Ionians had dropped /h/, so they pronounced the
letter as [E:ta], which led them in due course to use it, by
the acrophonic principle, to represent the long vowel /E:/.
This was an exclusively Ionian innovation. All other Greek
epichoric alphabets use H for /h/.
This of course immediately invalidates this absurd claim
that the Greeks used the Phoenician "laryngeals" to
represent surviving *h1, *h2 and *h3. If so, they would
have used H for *h2/a, or perhaps E (Phoenician /h/).
Certainly not Phoenician /?/.
In fact, all is explained by the acrophonic principle, and
by the _lack_ of laryngeals (except /h/) in Greek:
Ph. A /?alp/ was heard as [alph] (alpha), so /a/.
Ph. E /he:/ was heard as [e:] (e:), so /e/.
Ph. H /h.E:t/ was heard as [hE:t] (hE:ta), so /h/.
Ph. I /jO:d/ was heard as [iO:t] (iO:ta), so /i/ (Greek had
no phoneme /j/).
Ph. F /waw/ was heard as [wau] (Fau), so /w/. By modifying
the glyph, separate symbols were created for /w/ and /u/
(the Phrygians, which *had* /j/, did the same with the sign
I (original shape S)).
Why Ph. O /¿E:n/, which should have given Greek *E:, was
adopted as the letter /o:/ instead (representing /o/, /o:/
and /O:/) is a bit puzzling. The Greeks obviously needed an
/o/, and /¿E:n/ was the only left-over letter sign. Its
rounded shape may have played a role, or even its Phoenician
meaning "eye" = Grk. ophthalmos, osse, etc., all starting
with /o-/.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...