michael everson said:
>No, of course not. PBF is accidental. If it were systematic, then
>Latin would be featural.
very true, but i can't resist pointing out that the tick which
distinguishes G from C is in fact "featural" in origin, tho this doesn't
mean that the roman alphabet should be considered featural.
the point is, roughly, that the romans borrowed the alphabet from the
etruscans, who had only voiceless stops P T C (C = [k]). but latin also had
voiced stops [b d g], so they had to borrow letters from elsewhere. they
got B D from greek, with a little modification of the latter; but for some
reason they didn't borrow greek gamma for [g]. Until around 230 BCE, the
romans kept on writing [k] and [g] both as C. then a man named spurius
carvilius ruga invented the letter G by adding a graphic "feature".
nevertheless, as a deliberate archaism, the romans continued to abbreviate
the personal names "gaius" and "gnaeus" as "C." and "CN." respectively.
hence "gaius julius caesar" was written C. IVLIVS CAESAR.
i've always thought that we should celebrate the birthday of spurius
carvilius ruga, or put his picture on a postage stamp, or something - the
man who invented "G"! i'm mortified to admit that his name was misprinted
in WWS as "rufa". cheers; bill
--
William Bright
Professor Emeritus of Linguistics & Anthropology, UCLA
Professor Adjoint of Linguistics, University of Colorado, Boulder
Editor, Written Language and Literacy
Editor, Native American Placenames of the United States
1625 Mariposa Avenue, Boulder, CO 80302
Tel. 303-444-4274
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Email
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William Bright's website:
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