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Northwest Semitic Structural Influences on Archaic Greek: a Reassessment

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Northwest Semitic Structural Influences on Archaic Greek: a Reassessment Cyril Aslanov, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem NORTHWEST SEMITIC STRUCTURAL INFLUENCES ON ARCHAIC GREEK: A REASSESSMENT In order to deal with the impact of non-Indo-European linguistic systems on the crystallization of the Greek linguistic system, it is necessary to distinguish between the pre-Hellenic Aegean substrate represented by linear A and the Northwest Semitic adstrate that is perhaps no less important than the substratic impact of the Aegean, especially as far as post-Mycenaean Greek is concerned. Since so little is known about the Aegean language once spoken in the region, it is preferable to focus on the Northwest Semitic structural infl uence on the development of Greek during the apogee of the Oriental infl uence on Archaic Greek civilization. Focusing on the Semitic infl uence on the development of Greek does not preclude the consideration that in some cases the convergence process between Archaic Greek and Phoenician within what we may call the Eastern Mediterranean Sprachbund relies on the same substrate constituted by the Prehellenic non-Indo-European and non-Semitic language(s) superseded by the expansion of Northwest Semitic westwards and Greek eastwards. To this Aegean language or language family belong the language represented by Linear A and probably also the Philistine language 1 and possibly even Etruscan 2 . Th is paper examines some features of Archaic Greek that constitute an innova- tion with respect to Mycenaean Greek, attributing them to the impact provoked by intense contact with Northwest Semitic languages during the period of the Dark Ages, an epoch when the infl uence exerted by the Phoenician world was also felt outside the language system. My preference was to focus on structural features rather than lexical borrow- ing. Apart from the fact that the latter dimension has already been thoroughly 1 Giovanni Garbini, I filistei : gli antagonisti di Israele. Milan: Rusconi, 1997. P. 239, 241. 2 Giulio M. Facchetti, Appunti di morfologia etrusca con un’appendice sulla questione delle affinità genetiche dell’etrusco. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2002. P. 147–150. Judaica Petropolitana № 1’ 2013 17 investigated 3 , it is not specifi c to Archaic Greek, as demonstrated by the presence of Semitic-borrowed lexical items in Mycenaean. Conversely, all the structural features that we examine here appear to be post-Mycenaean innovations. Th ese innovations can hardly be imagined as deriving from an internal development during the transition from Mycenaean to Archaic Greek, especially if we consider that some of them are restricted to Ionic or to the continuum represented by Ionic and Lesbian. As such, they appear to be conditioned by their location in a specifi c geographical area that constitutes the easternmost fringe of the Greek-speaking world, a region that was exposed more than any other to contact with Phoenician. Recent trends in the study of contact linguistics have stressed the importance of contact-induced diachronic changes 4 . Th e reassessment of the importance of contact-induced change among dia- chronic changes in general could contribute to fi nding an external explanation for some features that have not received satisfactory internal explanation. 1. Phonological infl uences: from the impact of a common substrate to the constitution of an Eastern Mediterranean Sprachbund 1.1. Vowels So far, the attempt to reconstruct the vocalism of the pre-Hellenic substratic language has focused on qualitative alternations in Greek terms of non-Indo- European origin 5 . We would like to transcend the narrow frame of isolated words, to analyze the vocalic system as a whole and to uncover what can be considered an innovation with respect to the Indo-European legacy. Th e main point pertains to an unusual correlation between vowel quantity and vowel quality, the Indo- European-inherited median vowels being reinterpreted as long open vowels (η and ω), whereas their short counterparts ε and ο seem to have been realized as mid-closed 6 . In most dialects of ancient Greek, the Indo-European-inherited [ē] and [ō] were more open than their short counterparts [e] and [o]. Th is blatant dissym- metry between the Indo-European-inherited [ɛ:] and [ɔ:] on the one hand and 3 Heinrich Lewy, Die semitischen Fremdwörter im Griechischen. Berlin, 1895 (repr. Hil- desheim-New York, 1970); Émilia Masson, Recherches sur les plus anciens emprunts sémitiques en grec. Paris: Klincksieck, 1967; Cyril Aslanov, Emprunt enthousiaste et emprunt réticent: essai de typologie de différentes attitudes devant l’emprunt lexical à travers l’exemple du grec et du japonais / Meta. Translators’ Journal. 1995. Vol. 40. No. 4. P. 540–547. 4 Frans van Coetsem, A General and Unified Theory of the Transmission Process in Language Contact. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 2000. 5 Edzard J. Furnée, Die wichtigsten konsonantischen Erscheinungen des Vorgriechischen. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 1972. P. 335–385. 6 Michel Lejeune, Phonétique historique du grec ancien et du mycénien. Paris: Klincksieck, 1972. P. 236–237. 18 Cyril Aslanov, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem their short counterparts on the other hand is confi rmed by the fact that the result of the compensatory lengthening of short [e] and [o] was the introduction of the two closed long median vowels [ē] and [ō] 7 . Th e contrast between the inherited [ē] and [ō] and the “spurious diphthongs” ει and ου can be symbolized as follows: [ɛ:] = <η> vs. [e:] = <ει> < -εν(ς) or –εε- [ɔ:] = <ω> vs. [o:] = <ου> < -ον(ς ) or –εο-/ -οο- Now, the tendency to open the long vowel inherited from Proto-Indo-European contradicts a drift attested in many Indo-European languages. According to this general tendency median long vowels tend to be realized more closed than their short correlates. Th is departure from an Indo-European tendency could result from the interference of a Pre-Hellenic substrate where the correlation between openness and length was entirely diff erent from that of Indo-European. Th e fact that the Th essalian and Boeotian counterparts of [ɛ:] <η> and [ɔ:] <ω> were [e:] <ει> and [o:] <ου> shows that the correlation between openness and length shared by most Greek dialects was not kept in those Aeolic dialects 8 . However, in most ancient Greek dialects that correlation was felt quite clearly, as shown by the merging of the Indo- European-inherited [ē], that is, [ɛ:], and [ae:] < [a:] and even more obviously by the opening of [ɛ:] <η> in ᾱ in Elean 9 . If the result of the shift of ᾱ to η was phonemically identical with the etymological η and diff erent from the compensatory lengthening of ε, there is no doubt about the open nature of the refl exes of Indo-European [e:] in most ancient Greek dialects and consequently in common Greek. Th e correlation between openness and length as far as the median vowels [e] and [o] are concerned is probably the refl ection of a structural interference exerted by a language where the phonemes [ē] and [ō] tended to be pronounced [ɛ:] and [ɔ:] respectively. Th is special open nature of the long median vowels may be due to the action of the Aegean substrate where the openness of [ɛ:] might have been the result of the palatalization of [a:] in a way that anticipated the Ionic shift of ᾱ to η. As far as the Ionic shift is concerned, a strictly internal explanation has been proposed 10. According to this assumption, the palatalization of ᾱ to η was alleg- edly the consequence of the appearance of a new ᾱ as a result of the compensatory lengthening of α < -αν(ς) and of the contraction α + ε. However, this hypothesis is not very satisfactory since the appearance of a new ᾱ is by no means limited to the Ionic dialects. Th erefore, it is diffi cult to make a connection between the two 7 Philomen Probert, “Phonology” // A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language / Egbert J. Bakker (ed.). Malden, MA; Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. P. 96–97. 8 Friedrich Bechtel, Die griechischen Dialekte, 2nd edition. Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuch- handlung, 1963. Vol. I. P. 136; 218–220; Carl D. Buck, The Greek Dialects. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1955. P. 25, 27. 9 Bechtel, Die griechischen Dialekte. Vol. III. P. 829; Buck, The Greek Dialects. P. 25. 10 Stephen Colvin, A Historical Greek Reader: Mycenaean to the Koiné. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. P. 10. Judaica Petropolitana № 1’ 2013 19 phenomena, that is, the almost Pan-Hellenic creation of a secondary ᾱ on the one hand and the strictly Ionic-Attic shift from α to η on the other hand. Interestingly enough the closing of [a:] is attested in Canaanite though along the range of the back vowels rather than the front vowels. In this Northwest Semitic language, almost every long [a:] was rounded in [o:]. If both shift s — the non- conditioned Ionic closing of ᾱ to η and the conditioned Canaanite shift from [a:] to [o:] — are to be ascribed to the same substratic infl uence, it could be that the non-Indo-European and non-Semitic language that interfered with both Ionic and Canaanite had a vowel system where the feature of vocalic length was compatible only with the median vowels but not with [a]. Th is language seems to have exerted a deep substratic infl uence on Ionic Greek where all the occurrences of inherited ᾱ were closed to η and a weaker substratic infl uence on Canaanite where the shift from [a:] to [o:] was restricted to certain conditions. In spite of these diff erences, it is tempting to assume that a common substrate was responsible for three shift s: 1) the reinterpretation of the Indo-European-inherited [e:] and [o:] as open long vowels as a result of the adoption of common Greek by people speaking a language where the feature of length was compatible only with open median vowels (probably as a result of a previous shift from [a:] to [ae:] and [ɛ:] and of a velar [a:] to [ɔ:]).
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