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Notes on the Consonants in the Greek of Asia Minor The Classical Quarterly http://journals.cambridge.org/CAQ Additional services for The Classical Quarterly: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Notes on the Consonants in the Greek of Asia Minor D. Emrys Evans The Classical Quarterly / Volume 12 / Issue 3-4 / October 1918, pp 162 - 170 DOI: 10.1017/S000983880001260X, Published online: 11 February 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S000983880001260X How to cite this article: D. Emrys Evans (1918). Notes on the Consonants in the Greek of Asia Minor. The Classical Quarterly, 12, pp 162-170 doi:10.1017/S000983880001260X Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAQ, IP address: 131.173.48.20 on 15 Apr 2015 NOTES ON THE CONSONANTS IN THE GREEK OF ASIA MINOR. THE ASPIRATES. THE change of the Greek aspirates into the voiceless spirants of the modern language was already beginning to appear in some of the ancient dialects.1 The intermediate stage in this development is naturally that of affricates, ph, th, kh, becoming pf, #, kx respectively, a stage seen in such spellings as /leTrjWaKXora.2 The evidence of the inscriptions shows that the change was not readily effected in Attic,3 and the clearest mark of this conservatism is the interchange of aspirates and tenues. The Koiprj inscriptions of Asia Minor furnish striking evidence of the value attached to the aspirates there during the early centuries of our era. An examination of the inscriptions belonging to the area, which may be taken to correspond roughly with the limits of ancient Phrygia, shows a steady confusion over a great extent of it between the aspirates </>, 8, %> and the tenues IT, T, K. Such spellings as aSe\7roi, (fypeo-fivTepos, TvyaTrjp, fjurjdpi, icapiv, ^vvaiyl, occur constantly, proving that the aspirates during the period of the inscrip- tions, which extends to 4 A.D., and in the region where the examples are found, had a non-continuous, not a spirantal, value. The same confusion, pointing to the same conclusion, prevailed in other parts of Asia Minor. Among Greek borrowings in Armenian, too, we find forms like akat (d%aT?7?), elik" (IXtKi'a?), naPrum (vCrpov).* The cause underlying this confusion cannot be stated, since we lack knowledge of the phonology of the native, pre- Hellenic languages of the interior of Asia Minor. It may be suggested that the non-Greek peoples failed to give sufficient prominence to the second element in the pronunciation of the Greek aspirates, viz., the breath-expulsion, and consequently gave them values approaching those of simple tenues. The aspirate was, in all probability, foreign to the native Phrygian language; the I. Eur. aspirates had been reduced in it to non-aspirated mutes. With Gk. (f>epw is connected Phr. aftfteper, with Gk. eOrjica, fferos, Phr. aBa/cer, (a)Sarea.6 But whatever may have been the precise values of the Greek aspirates on the lips of the non-Greek peoples of Asia Minor, it is clear that they were nearer the tenues p, t, k than the spirants/, {>, %. 1 For its earliest appearance see Schmidt, 3 Meisterhans-Schwyzer, 76. KZ. 32. 341 sq. i See Thumb, Byz. Zjt. ix. 412. 2 See Brugmann, G.G.f 123. 5 Brugmann, Grundriss* i: 2. 650. NOTES ON CONSONANTS IN GREEK OF ASIA MINOR 163 Do the inscriptions yield any signs that the normal Greek development to spirants by way of affricates was asserting itself in Asia Minor ? The almost complete absence of inscriptions after the fourth century renders it impossible to deal adequately with the question. But if we regard the geographical distribution of our examples within the area already referred to, it is seen that the interchange of aspirate and tenuis occurs in the great majority of cases in the eastern and south-eastern parts—the north Lycaonian plain, the district around Iconium, the valley of Phrygia ParGreios, the district of Phrygia ad Pisidiam, and the Killanian Plain.1 These districts, in all of which, except the last named, inscriptions in the native Phrygian have been found, largely consisted of great imperial estates; they were regions comparatively remote, lying outside the main stream of Greek influence. On the other hand, of the cities of S.W. Phrygia, where this influence was specially strong, Hierapolis alone gives a fair number of examples. Of the others, Colossae supplies the form Yoinrov, and Apamea the form 0e0tf<reTai, which may be explained as due to a tendency towards simple reduplication.2 The inscriptions of Laodiceia and Eumeneia give no instances. To this purely negative evidence that side by side with the retention in some districts of their non-continuous values the aspirates, under the levelling influence of intercourse with other parts of the Hellenistic world, were pursuing the normal Greek development, we may add the single piece of positive evidence which is supplied by the form elXrjTr^w in an,inscription of Hierapolis.3 With regard to the Greek loan-words in Armenian, Thumb (op. cit.) remarks that, in contrast with the earlier practice of representing Greek <f), %> @ by pc, kc, tc and the occasional confusion with p, k, t, an effort was later (after 10 A.D.) made to represent the spirantal value of <p, x by using / for the former, x and £ for the latter. We may therefore presume that in the later Koivtf of Asia Minor the Greek aspirates had two sets of values, the one (non-continuous) due to their pronunciation by the native peoples, the other (tending to become, and eventually becoming spirantal) reflecting general KOLV>] tendencies, and threatening to oust the former. The position is not surprising in the Greek of a land of which the people were at the same time non-Hellenic and in close contact during the late Roman and early Byzantine periods with the general Greek world.4 The fact that no special attempt was made to represent a spirantal pronunciation of 6 in the loan-words in Armenian probably shows that the non-continuous value of 8 was maintained with greater persistence than that of <j> or x- Here again our ignorance of the native phonology forbids an explanation. It is noteworthy that in some of the local Greek dialects of modern Cappadocia 6 frequently has the value of a simple tenuis.5 In the dialect of Fertek it regularly has this value, whether it stands alone or in combination with a continuous sound. In the latter case, which will be 1 3 See Anderson's map of Asia Minor—Mur- J.H.S., 1897, p. 411, No. i48. ray's Handy Classical Maps. 4 See Dawkins, Modern Greek in Asia Minor. 2 Cf. the form extfef^eVois in an inscription p. 195. of Julia Ipsos. 5 Dawkins, of. cit., p. 74 sqq. 164 D. EMRYS EVANS treated separately, it is a tenuis in all the dialects. May we not see in this phenomenon of the modern dialects a partial survival of an ancient phonetic peculiarity ? Persistence of this kind is not unusual in the history of language. One may compare the history of Latin a, to which the Kelts of N. France gave the ce value of their own a—a change which has led to further , modifications, such as the palatalization of a preceding guttural: e.g. French cher from Latin earns.1 Mr. Dawkins (op. cit., p. 79) gives the general explanation of this, as of the other values (%, a) of 6 in these dialects, that the , people, from constantly speaking Turkish, found a difficulty in pronouncing , the Modern Greek spirant }>, which is foreign to Turkish. But the loss of any i of the distinct phonetic sounds of an older native language by the natives <. themselves on account of the influence of a later adopted language does not j seem to be one of the results of bilingual conditions. The absence of the ] spirants 8, 6, and velar 7 in the Greek of Terra d'Otranto, to which Mr. 1 Dawkins refers, must be attributed to the phonology of the native Italians of \ that region rather than to Modern Italian. He points out, too, the objection •• that this treatment of 6 is found in villages which contain no Turks. We s would suggest, in view of the early difference of treatment apparent in the j loan-words in Armenian, that the natives of Asia Minor themselves always j found spirant 8 a more difficult sound to acquire than spirants <£ and %, and j that the variety of sounds in which the ancient aspirate has issued in the -| modern dialects is a reflection of this difficulty. j TENUES AND MEDIAE. j .] No phonetic change was more characteristic of the languages of Asia J Minor than the softening of the tenues to mediae under the influence of i a nasal immediately preceding; vr, JITT, VK thus became vd, jib, vg. Its } existence in the Phrygian area is attested by the forms KovBoTdrrj in a third- I century inscription from Altyn Tash,2 MdpSaXo for the Phrygian town of 3 MdvTaXos,3 and Xajiftpov is an inscription of Pogla.4 The obvious importance \ of this phenomenon, which arose originally among the pre-Hellenic peoples of j Asia Minor, lies in its subsequent spread throughout the Greek-speaking | world, so that it is a general characteristic of the modern tongue, which | makes no distinction between original VT, JJ.IT, VK and vh, /x/3, yy. The nasal 1 element in the combination exerted a twofold influence; it changed the tenues I into mediae by a process of assimilation, while it prevented the change of the | mediae into the voiced spirants f>,v,%, their normal development in the later J Greek.
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