Pronunciation of rough breathing after delta

Greek Learning Greek
21

I take such cases as simply indicating the gradual disappearance of the /h/ phoneme. Rather than postulating a new allophone or a marginal phoneme, it may have been the case that psilosis started operating rather early, even in classical times. The process could have been gradual. Perhaps at first /h/ was lost only in these cases, where you have elision. Later it may have spread to all mid-sentence words, and finally completely.

Remember that breathing was added later on, by Hellenistic grammarians and scribes, possibly after it was already lost in popular speech. We also know that they were pretty zealous about it, even in psilotic dialects such as Ionic (you can find both ἱκνέομαι and ἀπικνέομαι in the same texts, for instance). δ’ ὁ could very well have been pronounced /do/ and later on the scribes indiscriminately added rough breathing to all occurrences of the article.

Otherwise, why would /h/ not block elision, like the other proper consonants?

22

/h/ doesn’t block elision in the case of voiceless occlusives, and the breathings or /h/ are apparently preserved in the aspirated articulation of the occlusives. But you’re generally thinking along the same lines as I was in a previous comment.

23

Does aspiration ever block elision, whether in Greek or in Latin? Apparently not, if verse is anything to go by, or only in exceptional circumstances.

24

Yes, of course, aspiration never blocks elision in Greek. In pointing out that aspiration doesn’t block elision in the case of voiceless occlusives, I was responding to ido6667’s suggestion that if aspiration were retained in pronouncing δ(ε)+ /h/ο, the aspiration would block elision “like any other consonant”. It seems to me that this suggestion is probably not correct, given that, at least orthographically, /h/ does not block elision in situations where a word ending in an unvoiced unaspirated occlusive + vowel is followed by a word beginning with /h/ + vowel – and yet aspiration doesn’t go away: it’s retained as a feature of the unvoiced consonant, as e.g. τε /h/ο > θ’ο.

And of course /h/ doesn’t “make position”, so in that respect too /h/ doesn’t behave like any other consonant in Greek (or Latin).

Sorry, I don’t have breathing marks on my tablet.

25

I found a bit of discussion from Iliad scholia of internal word aspiration after vowels ι, υ, and the liquid λ, normally unmarked in our texts. Take it for what it’s worth, but it seems to indicate that aspiration occurred in places where it was not necessarily written down.

(15.705b) Ap. H. (?) σχόλιον· ἐπιθετικὸν γὰρ ὂν δασύνεσθαι ὤφειλεν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο, εἰ σύνθετον ἦν, ἐγένετο ἄν. νῦν δέ, ὡς ἐν τοῖς ἄνω (sc. in scholio a) εἶπεν, παραγωγὴν ἔλαβε τῆς αλος κατὰ παρολκὴν κειμένης. Διονύσιος δὲ ὁ Ἁλικαρνασσεὺς ἐν τετάρτῳ Ἀττικῶν ὀνομάτων οὕτως ἔφη· „ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΣ μὲν τῆς μέσης δασυνομένης τὸ προσηγορικόν· οὕτως γὰρ καὶ ἐν Τηρεῖ Σοφοκλέους ἀναγινώσκομεν· ‘Ἥλιε φιλίπποις Θρῃξὶ πρέσβιστον σέλας’. Φίλιππος δὲ ψιλῶς ὁ Μακεδών. καὶ ὠκύαλος μὲν δασέως ἡ ναῦς, ψιλῶς δὲ ὁ ἀνήρ· ‘ὦρτο μὲν Ἀκρόνεώς τε καὶ Ὠκύαλος’ (θ 111).“ ἐναντίως δὲ ὁ Ἡρωδιανός. A

Herodian:

  1. ὠκυάλου: ἐψίλωσαν τὸ α, παραγωγὴν δεξάμενοι καὶ οὐ σύνθεσιν· καὶ οὕτως ἡ παράδοσις ἐπείσθη. καὶ τάχα ἐπεὶ μηδὲν ἄλλο ἢ τὸ ὠκὺ ἐκ τῆς λέξεως σημαίνεται. ἡ δὲ ἁλός γενικὴ ἐν τῇ συνθέσει ἐπὶ μὲν κυρίων ψιλὸν ἀποφέρεται τὸ πνεῦμα, Εὐρύαλος, Ἀμφίαλος, Ἀστύαλος· ἐπὶ δὲ ἐπιθετικῶν τὸ ἴδιον τηρεῖ πνεῦμα «πολλαὶ ἐν ἀμφιἅλῳ Ἰθάκῃ» (Od. α 395) «ἀγχίἁλόν τ’ Ἀντρῶνα« (Il. Β 697), ὕφαλος, ὥστε καὶ κατὰ τοῦτο ἐλέγχεται τὸ ὠκύαλος ψιλούμενον. A.

Despite the disagreement on ὠκύαλος derivation, both seem to agree on a general rule that internal word aspiration is kept for adjectives, but dropped for names.

26

Very lovely to find this discussion a couple years after the fact!

I have often discussed this topic with others, so I appreciated seeing all the points of view presented. I used to be of the mind that the most appropriate choice was just deaspiration for δ’ ὁ [do], and I had never found the ουθεις for ουδεις in Threatte to be particularly convincing since, if Classical Attic lacked a /dʰ/ phonemically, it would make the most sense to render δ’ ὁ unaspirated voiced [do], and certainly not [tʰo].

But my mind has been slowly changed by the best Attic speakers, who, in addition to immaculate pronunciation, advocate aspirating the voiced stops. I used to politely oppose their point of view, but recognizing further evidence in Latin has persuaded me otherwise.

You may know that Latin authors regularly demonstrated internal aspiration in transcriptions: Pyrrhus is one example (though this is actually a voiceless R [r̥] it shows the Roman desire to represent the contemporary Greek sound), and Polyhymnia for Πολύμνια or, indeed, Πολυύμνια is especially demonstrative that, while usual Ancient Greek orthography does not show internal aspiration, it is in fact there even in the 1st century BC Attic the Romans heard and sought to represent in Latin orthography. I used to believe this was mere slavish orthographic imitation, but the regularity of the practice convinces me that this is Greek as the Romans actually heard it (at least in contemporary Athens), and is not a mere etymological spelling.

Something worth considering also, is that there is more than one glottal fricative [h], the voiceless variety, but also the voiced [ɦ]. This is a very likely candidate for the H in words like mihi in Latin: [miɦi], since its voicing permits a smooth transition to mī as a common alternative. The voiced glottal fricative [ɦ] actually occurs quite a lot in spoken English, often in how people say “ahah,” especially when not especially excited in the saying.

The verb συνί̄ημι is a good place to use the voiced glottal fricative: rather than [sy.n̥ʰǐː.ɛː.mi] (note that the [n] has been rendered voiceless to [n̥] by necessity since the voiceless [h] is in the superscript), I recommend [sy.nʱǐː.ɛː.mi]. Since it’s hard to see, the two variant characters in IPA are [n̥ʰ] vs. [nʱ]. I recommend [sy.nʱǐː.ɛː.mi] (with the ɦ) as nasals tend to voice ‘weaker’ sounds when they are able, such as σμῑκρός being [z̠miː.krós].

Since this is a reasonable sandhi, it stands to reason that a voiced glottal fricative could be added to a delta with no issues: [dʱ]. Indeed, [dʱ] is IPA for the consonant sound in Sanskrit and Hindi, not [dʰ], which would be impossible since choosing the voiceless glottal fricative would devoice the [d] to [t].

Given how readily Classical Attic retains aspiration where it is orthographically possible, such as καὶ οἱ > χοι, I think the best recommendation is to keep aspiration (voiceless or voiced glottal fricative) everywhere, even where the orthography cannot show it, thus δ’ ὁ = [dʱ]. In this recent episode of my podcast I attempt just that:

https://youtu.be/Wc6enX_Wo5k

To that end, I also now write συνἵ̄ημι etc.

27

Luke, I’m glad to see you writing the internal breathing on συνἵημι. Literary papyri often do that too. (Of course that doesn’t mean that aspiration was actually effected.) The quantity of the iota varies, however, and I don’t suppose that even in 5th-century Attic speech it was consistently long.

28

Pardon my late reply! Would you be able to point me to some of these literary papyri? I have decided to write the internal etymological smooth breathing as a rule, as you can see here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z3zh5SKhTUyJfBpfmVUivNlZ-jY7CBxmQ9JQM3-jyW0/edit?usp=sharing

I would love to point to the literary papyri you have in mind to justify my unusual (but I think paedagogically useful) spelling choice.

29

I don’t think you’re right to say it was once the norm in writing ancient texts. But you’ll be happy to see εξανἕστηκεν in P.Oxy.3151 (Sophocles) complete with breathing and accent, and with a breve on the alpha for good measure. In such texts lectional aids tend to be used sparingly, for clarity and disambiguation. My own preferred practice, a little more radical than yours, is to use rough breathings but not smooth ones.

30

The more I read, the stronger my impression becomes that the early copyists were far more interested in distinguishing ambiguous forms (like -ἕστηκεν and -ἔστηκεν) with their annotations than in indicating pronunciation.