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GRASSMANN'S "LAW" IN THE EARLY SEMITIC LOAN-WORD XL"'W\I, XL8W\I

by SAUL LEVIN

The word for 'tunic' doubtless came into Greece with the garment itself through trade with Asia. The term is common to the ancient Semitic , but it is hard to specify which one contributed it to the Greek vocabulary. Phonetically closest to XL"t'W\I is the Hebrew zi~'nf' apart from the feminine suffix [-Et] which finds no counterpart in the Greek masculine noun. I Ancient Hebrew or Phoenician writing recorded only the consonantal skeleton -T-N-T. Until the early Middle Ages only an oral tradition preserved the sounds, including the accent upon the -0-, and the different articula­ tion of certain - e.g., that it is [t] rather than [t]. However, there is indirect evidence, from the ancient spelling of many Hebrew words, that the initial of l'Iln~ was aspirate, like the Greek [kh], and the second de-aspirated, like "t' [t]. The evidence does not show how widespread such a pattern of articulation may have been outside of strictly Hebrew territory; but at any rate it was characteristic of whichever Semites communicated the word that became XL"t'W\I in Homeric and . Ionic prose -later than Homer of course - has XL8W\I (Herodotus 5.87.3, etc.), which bespeaks either an adaptation to the native Greek pattern of non-aspirate followed by aspirate [k-] or else a more far-reaching phonetic shift to [k-p], due to the lack or loss of aspiration in the system of this sub-dialect.2

1 Fern. agreement in Gen. 37:33, Cant. 5:3; masc. agreement in Neb. 7:72 (ano­ malous), Od. 19.232, 234, and innumerable other passages. 2 The Linear script, by its nature, cannot distinguish aspirate from non-aspirate . So ki-to, ki-to-na, ki-to-ne, ki-to-pi (KN J693.1, L785.2b, X771.2, Le787.B) throw no light on the present inquiry. Grassmann's "Law" 67

The non-recurrence ' of aspiration in two successive was the most famous discovery of . Grassmann in his research among the old Indo-European languages.3 The Semitists have not found anything like it, although general phonetic theory might reckon upon its turning up sporadically in any part of the world. For it arises out of the physiology of speech: the muscular exertion to emit a puff of breath is not easily repeated at such a slight interva1.4 In Greek, as well as , the dissimilation of one out of any two potentially aspirate consonants into a non-aspirate is normally anticipatory, a~ in 'tLSTH.l.L 'I put' [tith_] or the Herodotean XLSW\I - if the spelling stands for [kith-]. Posterior dissimilation occurs, however, in the rare aorist passive imperative O"WSt)'tL (rather than *O"W'tt)SL) 'be rescued' (Plato, Crito 44b); for in the absence of the -St)- stem the imperative suffix is -SL; e.g., CP~\lt)SL 'appear' ~Il. 18.198).5 The exceptional sequence [th-t] is explained thus by Eduard Schwyzer: "the sign of the aorist was more important to the speakers than the preservation of the S of the imp[erative] ending." 6 Given equal motivation for an aspirate in the former and the latter , the Greeks favored the latter and in anticipation of it forwent the prior aspiration. Why then in the loan-word XL'tW\I did they settle upon the opposite sequence [kh-t] and not promptly lapse into [k-th]? 7 On general linguistic principles it is likely that [kh-t] continues the pronuncia­ tion of the Semitic source. We can now confirm this specifically, by showing that Hebrew, at least, was characterized by posterior de-aspiration.

3 "Ueber die aspiraten und ihr gleichzeitiges vorhandensein im an- und auslaute der wurzeln," KZ, XII (1863), 81-138. 4 Cf. R-M. S. Heffner, ·General (Madison, 1952), pp. 198-199; Albert ]. Carnoy" "The Real Nature of Dissimilation," Transactions of the American Philological Association, XLIX (1918), 104-110. Maurice Grammont's chapter on dissimilatory de-aspiration in La dissimilation consonantique dans les langues indo-europeennes et dans les langues romanes (Dijon, 1895), pp. 103-107, and in Traite de phonetique, 6th ed. (Paris, 1960), pp. 314-316, is below the standard of his other work. He arbitrarily treats initial consonants as either intervocalic or post-consonantal (appuyee), and skirts around the problem of diametrically opposite phenomena; see Michel Lejeune, Traite de phonetique grecque (Collection de philologie classique Ill; Paris, 1947), p. 47. 5 I venture to introduce the term "anticipatory" instead of "regressive," and "posterior" instead of "progressive," because the old terms, rc:;sting upon an unclear metaphor, have always disconcerted and confused me, even though applied consistently by Grammont and other eminent scholars. 6 Griechische Grammatik (Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, zweite Abteilung, erster Teil; Munich, 1939-50), I, 262. -BT}'tL imperatives are least infrequent in the LXX, where we also find E1tLCT'tpa.>T}'tL [-p"-t-] 'turn back' (Is. 44: 22, etc.). 7 My English-speaking readers should not allow a school pronunciation of Greek, which is merely conventional, with [khrp'own] for XLBwv (fricative B) and [xIth!own] for XL'tWV (fricative x) to prejudice their scrutiny of the ancient data. 68 Saul Levin

A full account of this previously unnoticed feature of Hebrew is hardly in place here among studies of the Aegean world;8 but I must give enough information to explain XVtW\I. The Hebrew tendency to omit aspiration, when there has been an aspirate consonant at one syllable's distance, is manifested in the unequally varied spelling of four suffixes: ;:1- (never ·i"!iT) 'her' (object or possessive) Tt (rarely if:r)9 'you' (object) or 'your' (masc. sing.) l;l- l?- (sometimes i"!fl- i1-t1-) 'you' (subject of the perfect tense, masc. sing.) 'r (but usually trr)9 feminine plural subject of the imperative, imperfect, and related tenses Where the medieval vowel-notation shows other Hebrew words ending in a vowel sound, the spelling of the text (which was already fixed in ancient times) always has a following letter to represent a weak consonant more or less clearly homorganic with the vowel.lO To the medieval readers who marked the ( T for [:>] in these four suffixes), the following letter made no difference at all in pronunciation, and the more careful ones systematically marked the silent i1 of many suffixes with a horizontal line above. Thus they pronounced [-K;)], regardless whether the word happened to be spelled with 1- or i1:l- by virtue of the tradition of copying Bible scrolls and codices letter-perfect from authoritative exemplars. But the ancient scribes, many centuries earlier, had employed the letters to catch variations of sound. The phonetic rationale of their scribal practice comes out clearly if you consider not only that i1 (the essential consonant of the 'her' suffix) is h and its sound is aspiration pure and simple, but also that 1 or :l and l'l were usually aspirate in Hebrew like the unvoiced plosives k and t in English and many other languages. When transcriptions of Hebrew into Greek letters began in the early Hellenistic period, 1 or:l was habitually rendered by

8 I treat it at considerable length in my forthcoming book, The Indo-European and Semitic Languages: An ~xploration of structural similarities related to accent, /?iefly in Greek, Sanskrit, and Hebrew (now in press). 9 :> and 1 are both the letter k; land 1 are both the letter n. The longer shape is used at the end of a word. 10 Through the grammatical background of accidental Semitists, the Hebrew letters used in such an environment have been inaccurately interpreted and transcribed as signs of mere prolongation of the preceding vowel sound. 11 On the vexing question why the Greek letter 8 is from ~ and 't from. l'l, see Benedict Einars'on, "Notes on the Development of the ," Classical Philology, LXII (1967), 3, 19. 12 One ms. (L) has XE8ov. Grassmann's "Law" 69 x, and n by 8. The non-aspirate plosives x [k] and 't [t] were mostly reserved for the Hebrew "emphatic" consonants p and ~ respectively.l1 In line with this practice osephus (Ant. 3.7.2) cites a Hebrew word xE8wv 'linen,' not recorded in the Bible. 12 Evidently it was the base for tl~n~ 'tunic', and it or something very close to it in an undetermined Semitic dialect was also the source of the Homeric Greek word Xt"twv. But the Hellenistic transcriptions of Hebrew do not reveal the earlier pheno­ menon of dissimilatory de-aspiration, as evidenced both by Xt"tWV and by the Biblical spellings il-, ,-, n-, and r. Hellenistic Greek, to be sure, gradually changed the aspirate plosives of Attic into , while the same letters x, 8,

13 Examples of pre-Hellenistic fricativation in some Greek dialects are cited by Schwyzer (above, note 6), I, 205. . 14 Early instances of the phenomenon in Aramaic come out in Accadian cuneiform transcriptions of Aramaic names; but I am unable to appraise this evidence. The of Avestan, an Iranian dialect written in a modified Aramaic alphabet, differs from Sanskrit notably in possessing fricatives and lacking aspirate plosives; A. V. Williams Jackson, An Avestan Grammar in Comparison with Sanskrit, I (Stuttgart, 1892), 28-34. The Hebrew pronunciation of Jews whose vernacular was Aramaic, and who adopted the Aramaic style of "square lettering," manifests fricatives instead of plosives in precisely the same phonetic environments as in Aramaic. The distinctiveness of Hebrew was perceived to lie rather in the vowels. And fricativation in Greek probably gained ground fastest among Jews and others who had previously been accustomed to Aramaic. All these languages, however, had unvoiced non-aspirate plosive that were not fricativated : Aramaic and Hebrew p ~ (" emphatics ") Avestan , p aJ

Greek x "t' 'It IS James Barr, "St Jerome and the Sounds of Hebrew," Journal of Semitic Studies, XII (1967), 9-11. The Latin transcribers too could go on writing , th, ph even when x, e,

" 'may he strike you' (jussive, Deut. 28:22, etc.) .1 1- : - fI::>:;:," 'he will strike you' (imperfect, Jer. 40:15, etc.) l' .I'" - n::;':'N 'I will strike you' (imperfect, I Sam. 2:22) l' ... - but ,'Tjfi:q 'and he will strike you' ("converted perfect," I Kings 20:36) In the first three, the ~ of the suffix is non-aspirate because it follows a ~. So the chain is aspirate consonant (~) de-aspirated consonant (~) aspiration (it). But in ,9f>iJ1 the itinitiates the opposite chain:. aspiration (it) de-aspirated consonant (~) aspirate consonant (1) zero (i.e., de-aspirated it ) .16 The full details of factors favoring it~· need not be mentioned here; but one negative factor stands out: only 1-, never it~·, is attached to plural or dual nouns - e.g., 1"i~ 'your hands' (Deut. 16:15, etc.) cf. it:,-," 'your hand' (Ex. 13:16) 'I' :.IT ." otherwise 9,~ " (Ex. 4:4, etc.) The total lack of any such spelling as -it:''','' for 'your hands' gives a clue 'I' ... T

to the alternation between ;; r and the infrequent T r in the feminine plural. The consonant n is not in itself aspirate; so the suffix was ordinarily [-nVh]. But in the thematic class of verbs it became part of a longer ending T,":- or Ul"'-; e.g., 'J '0"

T'''i?.~m 'and they had [their father] drink' (preterite, Gen. 19:33, etc.)

16 Cf. the fern. sing. 'you(r)' suffix: : jf~?~7~ 'your messenger' (Nahum 2: 14; aspirate ~ followed by non· aspirate ~ and then the aspiration it ) otherwise : 1~.~ · 'your son' (Gen. 30: 14, etc., the 1 of the suffix being aspirate) not -: ii~l:J "1" ; Grassmann's "Law" 71

'they will be' (imperfect, Ex. 25:27 and elsewhere in Genesis and Exodus) fll"~ilt-l 'they will be' (Num. 36:3 and throughout many other books) i \'.. 1· Apparently the consonant y was aspirate after this accented vowel and shared its aspiration with the ensuing consonant n or k, so that aspiration at the end of the word was sometimes inhibited after -ynV and completely inhibited after -ykV, not less than after -hV in the 'her' suffixY With regard to aspiration, the t of the subject suffix 'you' (masc. sing.) behaves much like the k of the object or possessive suffix: jfn~o 'you have covered' (Ps. 140:8; also Lam. 3:43,44) . , - fI~~~ 'you have given' (Gen. 3: 12; the usual spelling in most books) but T-lTll " " " (Judges 15:18; lacking in the Pentateuch and , ~ - J otherwise infrequent) The normally aspirate t of the suffix is liable to dissimilatory de-aspiration when the verb-root has an aspirate k or t in the previous syllable; in that case the suffix ends aspirate: [ -khV t Vh] or [-thVt Vh], This suffix of the Hebrew perfect tense is particularly relevant because it resembles -Bex. [-tha] in the Greek perfect (F)OLcrBex. 'you (sing.) know' (It. 1.85, etc.) and the Sanskrit cognate - 't:(' [th A 1, which is used in the second person singular of all perfect active verbs. 18 Posterior dissimilation, as in iln::>O 'you have covered,' can change the usual Hebrew [-thV] to [-tVh] -which never happens to the comparable suffix in Greek and Sanskrit. But I suspect that Grassman's "law" has operated with anticipatory dissimilation in the plural 'you' suffix -'tE 1, [ -teh ],19

17 The 'his' suffix, in its usual form with singular nouns, was vocalized [6] by the medieval punctators and normally written' - i.e., the consonantal offglide [_W]_ by the ancient scribes. On occasion the suffix is written il [--'>], especially in two words: fI?ilN 'his tent' (Gen. 12:8; also in 9:21, 13:3, 35:21) 1\ t. r otherwise ;'ilN (Gen. 26:25; also in 31:25, 33:19, and throughout other 1\ I: 1 " " books) i1':l 'all of it (masc.)' (Jer. 2: 21, the usual spelling in the prophetic books) \ \ but ;,~ " " " " (Jer. 6: 13; also throughout the Pentateuch and the poetical books, but infrequent in the prophets) Apparently the vowel of the suffix was usually pre-aspirated [_how], but when the previous syllable began aspirate, then the aspiration of the suffix was shifted to the very end [-hVCoh] or [khVtoh). 18 So too the Avestan ...,(,- [-pA]; Jackson (above, note 13); pp. 130, 170, 172). 19 To be sure, the Sanskrit cognate -;:r [-tA] is not used in the perfect, but only 72 Saul Levin

The aspiration of an unvoiced plosive consonant in Hebrew is unmo­ tivated; for it can disappear through phonetic causes, leaving the [t] sound of l'I and the [k] sound of :> still distinct from the "emphatic" ~ and p. Dissimilatory de-aspiration in Hebrew operates posteriorly; it results from an aspirate sound before the previous vowel.20 Anticipatory dissimilation would be very odd psychologically except in a like Greek or Sanskrit, where the aspiration of plosives is motivated; then it becomes quite possible to sacrifice the earlier aspiration for the sake of the one in the next syllable. So we have convincing grounds to re-assert our thesis that the sequence of aspirate and non-aspirate in the Homeric Xt'tWV adheres to a pattern of posterior dissimilation present in the Semitic source. I am not sure, however, that the opposite sequence in the Herodotean XLBwv is just a shift to the habitual pattern of Greek [C-Ch] rather than [Ch-CJ. Recent trends in general linguistics oblige us to re-examine the phonology of the "psilotic" dialects.21 The evidence from spelling puts it beyond question that the initial [h-] of Homeric, Attic, and most other

in the imperative and other "secondary" paradigms. A relation between -"t'E and the 'you' (pI.) suffixes of Hebrew - c6- (masch.), l~- (fern.) - is likely, not only because of the similar consonant and vowel in the suffixes themselves (disgregarding the Hebrew gender signs -m and on), but also because the vocalism of the root undergoes a similar gradation from singular to plural: (F)otcr6a ~~\:r~ [y:>o -] 'you (masc. sing.) know' (Deut. 28: 36, etc.)

[y:;)o-] 'you (masc. pI.) know' (Ezek. 17:12, etc.) (Il. 2.485, etc.) 'you (fern. pI.) know' (Gen. 31:6) There is much indi~ect evidence that the vowel [E] of the medieval Hebrew puncta tors reflects a post-aspirated vowel [Eh] in ancient times; cf. 'l"~.Wtl] above. 20 In English, where the a~piration of unvoiced plosives is also unmotivated, I have observed that it is less at an interval of one vowel from a previous aspiration; e.g., eat [ith] beat [bith] dip [dIph] stop [staph] heat [hit(h)] peat [phit(h)] tip [thIp(h)] top [thap(h)] English-speaking readers may test the difference in their own articulation by holding a finger close to the mouth and feeling the exhaled air, or else by holding a match there and watching the flame flutter. 21 Haiim B. Rosen has done it intelligently in Eine Laut- und Formenlehre der Herodotischen Sprachform (Heidelberg, 1962), pp. 37-43, 54-55; but I can agree with him only in part. I strongly dissent from his view that the "" marked in codices - and occasionally in late papyri - represents an authentic tradition of a pronounced rh] in Herodotean Ionic. Rather it shows that after the actual spoken dialect was supplanted in its own territory by the Attic "OWl), the surviving texts of Ionic literature were liable to be read in a pronunciation contaminated by Attic rules of "rough breathing." Grassmann's "Law" 73

Greek dialects is missing in the Ionic and Aeolic of Asia Minor,12 Supposing that the Greek of this region once had the [h-] sound, what motive can we suggest for dropping it while retaining the aspiration component in X [P], e [th], cp [ph] and even in the consonant clusters a-X, a-e, a-cp, where an aspirate is hard to articulate? I am not aware of any language described in modern times that opposes aspirate to non-aspirate plosives but does not oppose aspiration to the lack of it in a vocalic environment 22a - e.g.,

[ph a] ~ [pa] but not [ha] ~ [a] We may indeed lessen the problem by positing not Eh] but a post-velar fricative [x] in early Greek. Whoever adapted the alphabet to Greek revalued as a vowel the fifth letter i1 (which was a pure aspiration Eh] in Hebrew, Aramaic, and doubtless other Semitic languages); but in the same process of adaptation the (pharyngeal or post-velar) n was chosen for the Greek consonant H. Furthermore the Greek sound, to judge from its Indo­ European counterparts, developed out of [s-] or [i-]- e.g., E:Tt,,&, 'seven,' 0<; (Sanskrit ya9); so at one stage, at least, it probably was [X_].23 Such a fricative sound must have been an unstable element in the Greek phoneme system, which lacked a fricative order [p, fJ for [x] to fit into. Accordingly it went on to become Eh] in most dialects, where it was at home with the aspirate plosives [P, th, ph]. But why was this sort of integration not carried out in the "psilotic" dialects? Perhaps because in them X, e, cp were not aspirate plosives but already fricatives [le, t, p] with the same point of articulation as plosives - not yet post-velar [x], interdental [p], and labio­ dental [fJ respectively. That would supply a phonological motive for dropping the [x] from Indo-European ~'s- or '''i- altogether, so as to maintain an opposition between x- words and erstwhile [x-] words ([h-] in other dialects), but at the price of giving up the opposition between the old [x-] and zero. Then the unstable fricatives [le, t, p]- which by the general

12 For several non-literary local dialects in other regions the lack of [h -] is probable but not absolutely clear; Schwyzer (above, note 6), I, 220-221. 123 Cf. Charles F. Hockett in Universals of Language, ed. J. H. Greenberg (Cam· bridge, Mass., 1963), p. 20. 23 The Latin i- regularly and the s- sometimes come out [x -] in Spanish; e.g., JO!fis 'Jupiter's' > jueves 'Thursday' sapone(m) 'soap' > jab6n Intermediate stages were [J] and [s] respectively. In an early Attic inscription (fC2 1.678, an elegiac couplet dated about 600 B.c.) the spelling HEXEI for EXE~ may indicate a pronunciation [xeklL] - Grassmann's "law" not operating because the [x] had not yet become [h]. However, the scansion treats the H- as devoid of consonantal value, just like any other aspiration in Greek verse; and KA®[E]XEI in 1.987 (about a century later) seems to require a phonetic interpretation that there are two aspirate plosives [-thekh- ]. 74 Saul Leyin . principles of phonology are hard to articulate in most environments other than right after a vowel- could shift ' to the more comfortable position of [x, p, f]. I must forestall the objection that had x, a, cp been pronounced as frica­ tives by lonians in the fifth century B.C., their a at least would have sounded like a to an Attic ear. Aristophanes' impression of the Laconian Doric dialect has indeed EA,(J'W'J instead of EA,aW'J, oP(J'& for opal}, (J'~W for aEW (Lys. 82, 995, 1081), etc.; and Thucydides' transcription of a Laconian text - a treaty with Argos - into his own alphabet has 'tw (J'~W (J'v~cx.'to<; ( 5.77.4; = 'tOU aEOU av~cx.'to<; in Attic). But such graphic evidence can only come from a non-Laconian author mimicking Laconian pronunciation.24 The Laconians themselves, in writing, used the letter a in conformity with the rest of Greece - no matter how they pronounced it; and Attic speakers and h authors would pronounce Laconian names with the aspirate Lt ] sound and write it a, not (J' - e.g., eEp~W'J (Thucydides 8.11.2), eL~pW'J (Xenophon, Hell. 3.1.4, etc.).25 It follows that if Ionic also (in Asia Minor) had any fricative sounds like Laconian Doric, they would probably not show up in writing except in Attic comedies or in treaties and the like quoted by Attic historians; but there happen to be no such cases in any extant text. So in this regard the question must remain open. The argument, then, that the a in x~aw'J stands for a fricative rather an aspirate plosive, comes back to phonological probability: aspirate plosives /Ch/ seem out of place and unlikely to endure in a dialect that lacks a phoneme /h/. A small additional point is that the "psilotic" branches of Ionic and Aeolic were located in Asia. The Greeks there were in touch with the speakers of some Anatolian languages, as the whole history of the region demonstrates. The phonology of those extinct languages is too obscure to show whether qr not they shared in that fondness for fricative sounds which we associate with the area further east and south - the area where Aramaic was the common international language. Politically, and no doubt linguistic­ ally, Anatolia was on the fringe of Mesopotamian and Syrian civilization and

24 Presumably Aristophanes, as &S&.O'XCXf..OC; of the actors, had them pronounce Lp] or something close to it rather than an out-and-out Attic ]. But in later generations, when readers of the Attic classics did not have the benefit of such coaching, and Greek phonology in general was much changed, the 0' was naturally read as Cs]. The papyrus of Alcman's Partheneion, which was composed in the seventh century RC. for a chorus of Spartan girls, likewise has 0' instead of e. If this detail of spelling goes back to the poet himself, it would constitute the oldest attestation of a fricative sound and confirm the report that Alcman was a foreigner - or at least he must have learned the alphabet h in a non-Laconian dialect of Greek with El pronounced [t ], not [p]. But the (j may just as well have been introduced into the Laconian Doric text by some later scribe. 25 On a fricative [v] from [w] in Laconian and other dialects, see Lejeune (above. note 4), pp. 46-47. Grassmann's "Law" 75 did not begin to be absorbed into it until the Persian conquest in the sixth century B.c. From that time on an Aramaic pattern of articulation could conceivably have reached even the Greeks on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. Or still earlier their pronunciation may have been affected by their imme­ diate neighbors. The only concrete evidence which (to my knowledge) bears upon the phonetic analysis of XL9wv is the Lydian name transcribed asvil for the goddess 'A91)vctL1).26 The diffusion of her cult in prehistoric times cannot be traced so as to determine which people learned her name from which other. We are entitled to remark only that [p J- if such was the sound of the Ionic 9 - would constitute a closer resemblance to the Lydian consonant s than [thJ would.27 However, the argument is obscurum per obscurius, as the phonetic value of the Lydian letter can be challenged. So in the end we are uncertain whether the consonantal sequence in xL9wv is [k-pJ or [k-thJ, although [kh-tJ in the Homeric and Attic form XL'tWV is quite clear and related to the H'ebrew pattern of posterior dissimilatory de-aspiration.

State University of New York at Binghamton

26 w. H. Buckler, Sardis, voI. VI, part II (Leiden, 1924), no. 40 and pI. xiii. The-l is an oblique case ending. The doubts of E. E. Sturtevant, "Remarks on the Lydian Inscriptions," Language, I (1925), 78, about the identification of the crucial letter =+ do not seem justified. 27 See Alfred Heubeck, Lydiaka (Erlanger Forschungen, ser. A, voI. 9, 1959), p. 36.