Grenert Linguistics Thesis 1 The Shape of Eta: Evolutionary Phonology and the Development ofAttic Greek [£:] Briana Grenert1 Advised by Jane Chandlee Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a degree of Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics Bryn Mawr College 6 December 201 7 I] would like to thank my thesis advisor Jane Chanellee for her wisdom, patience, and support. ] would also like to thank Anita Brown for patiently and continually helping me shape and refine my ideas, as well as helping me find information. There are many other people to thank: Emily Gasser and Jonathan Washington for giving me examples of loss of quantitative distinction and vowel raising. ] would like to thank Peter Klecha for being my second reader. Also, thanks is in order to Rj Barnes, Dan Crosby, and Laura Surtees for helping me with devious Greek inscriptions. Finally, ] would like to thank Audrey Lin for her useful feedback Grenert Linguistics Thesis 2 Contents o. Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 3 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 4 2. Reconstructing the Phonology of Attic Greek ......................................................................... 5 2.1 What is Attic Greek and how is it Represented? ................................................................ 5 2.2 Challenges and tools in reconstructing Attic Greek pronunciation and syllable structure. 11 2.3 Threatte's account of the evolution of the grapheme 11 (eta) ............................................. 15 2.3.1 From Classical Greek to Modern Greek: ................................................................... 16 2.3.2 The Archaic Period and the Classical Period (700 BCE to 323 BCE). ....................... 16 2.3.3 The Hellenistic Period (323 BCE to 27 BCE) ........................................................... 19 2.3.4 The Early Roman Period (27 BCE to 284 CE) .......................................................... 21 2.3.5 The Late Roman Period (284 CE to 476 CE) to Now ................................................ 22 3. Introducing Evolutionary Phonology ..................................................................................... 24 3.1 What is Evolutionary Phonology? ................................................................................... 24 3.2 How does sound change in Evolutionary Phonology? ..................................................... 27 3.3 Why is Evolutionary Phonology interesting to us? How will we apply it? ....................... 29 4. The Application of EP to Eta ................................................................................................ 31 4.1 Change, Chance, Choice and [s:] to [i] ............................................................................ 31 4.2 [s:] to [i] in Typology ...................................................................................................... 35 4.2.1 Losing a contrast for vowel length ............................................................................ 36 4.2.2 Vowel raising ........................................................................................................... 41 4.3.3 How common is the Modern Greek's vowel system? ............................................... 46 4.3 Evaluation: Problems and Further Questions on the Analysis .......................................... 48 5. Conclusions .......................................................................................................................... 50 6. References ............................................................................................................................ 57 Grenert Linguistics Thesis 3 O. Abstract Blevins's Evolutionary Phonology model has not previous been employed in analyzing sound changes in dead languages (Blevins, 2004). Here, I present evidence from Attic Greek, and follow the evolution of the pronunciation of grapheme eta <11< as a sound change for EP to explain. Eta during the fifth century BeE was pronounced as [s:J, but today is pronounced as [i]. I create a rubric by which to apply EP to my account of eta, tracking which EP mechanisms could be at play and different points in eta's development, and analyzing ifEP would predict the results. I have discovered that EP does describe the change from [s:] to [i] very effectively, accounting for both the loss of phonemic vowel length and the raising of [s] to [i]. However, EP, due to its nonteleological nature, is unable to provide an explanation for why this change occurred. In short, while it has great descriptive power, it lacks the explanatory power of a useful theory of sound change. Grenert Linguistics Thesis 4 1. Introduction The goal of this thesis is to explore the relationship between a dead language (here, Attic Greek, referred to throughout as simply 'Greek') and modern phonological theory (here, Evolutionary Phonology after Blevins, 2004) by tracking the development of the grapheme eta <H, 11< from the Archaic Period through the Late Roman Period (700 BCE-SOOCE). The purpose of this exploration is to see how well the Greek data fits the theory, and how well the theory fits the Greek data. More than just engaging with the Attic to build a history of pronunciation this paper intends to engage Attic with modern linguistic theory. Greek has been a continuously recorded language for the last 2,700 years, and through the present day. As such, Greek provides an invaluable window into the language change - its long history, many dialects, and linguistic evidence from people of all social classes (see Section 2.2) enable linguists and Classicists to peek into the history of the language. This paper concerns itself with Attic Greek, one dialect of Ancient Greek, and the journey of the pronunciation of one letter, 11, from [s:] to [i] (Section 2). Section 2 will also introduce several principles for reconstructing a dead language, with a focus on evaluating the kind of data available in Attic Greek. Then, Section 3 will introduce one such modern theory, Evolutionary Phonology, and create a framework within which to apply the data concerning 11 to this theory. Finally, Section 4 will do this application, mapping Evolutionary Phonology's mechanisms for sound change to 11 and considering how typologically common these changes are. Then Section 4 will evaluate what we can learn about both Evolutionary Phonology and Attic Greek. Grenert Linguistics Thesis 5 While the mapping of Evolutionary Phonology onto the history of eta works well, it will not be particularly illuminating. The paper ends with a reflection on the role and purpose of a theory: if a theory is meant to describe, then Evolutionary Phonology does its job well. If the purpose of a theory is to create a framework that allows us to draw new conclusions, Evolutionary Phonology is insufficient. 2. Reconstructing the Phonology of Attic Greek 2.1 What is Attic Greek and how is it Represented? Attic Greek (henceforth "Greek") is an Indo-European language of the Hellenic branch which was spoken on the peninsula of Attica in mainland Greece and was, at the time, one of many dialects (Colvin, 2013). However, due to the Athenian cultural dominance for the 4th and 5th centuries BCE, it was a simplified Attic which evolved into the koine dialect ("common dialect") which was spread with Alexander's Hellenistic empire (Threatte, 1996). All but one of the dialects of both Medieval and Modern Greek are descended from Attic, and even by the time of the Hellenistic Period (323 BCE and 31 BCE) other dialects did not survive outside of the Greek mainland, while the koine was spoken as a native language and used for trade in Europe, the Near East, Egypt and as far as India (see Figure I below)2 2 Only one dialect of Greek today is not descended from Kaine. It is from one of the Doric speaking islands, see Colvins, 2013. Grenert LinguiStics TheSis 6 THE lM'UIIE Of Al..El<AI'tD£IITlII GIllEAT _.............. - -~ \ D .............. _" I " - 0- UMENIA A " , AN A • eo ' ..... A"A O IA INDIA • " I ..... \ Fit"', 1 Aioxam" In. Groal buiit his ,,,,,.,,, in 321, and s!",ad",th him £;,.". Glutas li>l ad"' nistrah·", =i CO""""",! IinlJ1aJra""a. P",n aft" I"" lim,.," Eml' " s!", ad La", as li>l !"'guago of admi"d"'oo~ an. h"" stili "SOld ' !i. nsi"'!} Map from E""J< !op~ Brilamk ~ [no All fonns of Greek have been wntten 1n the Greek Alphab et for 2700 y e,.- s, producmg a dynam1c and enonnous corpus 0 f texts. In Attic, there were fiv e short ,.,d seven long vowd s, and the alphoo et mconSistently represents this distinction, which is Interesting because 1n Attic both vowel length and consonant length are contrastive (Threatte, 1996). Lo ng conso n,.,ts are represented by a doubling of the Singl e consonant, ,.,d long v owels are either written With a different letter, a letter combination, or no t m ,.-ked at all (s ee Table 1 below). Howev er, the alphabet used m the ClasSical ,.,d Hd leru stic p erlOds se ems to be phonetic, 1f 1mp er fectly (for the most part, one l etter seems to represent on e sound) (Vess ell", 2011) Th e olde>t records of written Greek of,.,y fonn comes from Mycenean Greek, m-itten m Linear B' However, dunng the Archaic Pen od (750 -4 8 0 B eEl, the first m-itten Attic em erge s, ) Linear B ,..., used from the 15 " 10 13" centuries BeE ( M atth.w~ 2014). Line" B ",riF< ecd';", w er 20 0 symbd, with