[B-Greek] Fricatives and Aspirates
James Tauber
jtauber at jtauber.com
Wed Aug 9 14:51:29 EDT 2006
One doesn't have to go that far back for F, Q and X to be pronounced as
aspirates. As Randall Buth has often pointed out here, B, D and G
underwent fricatization before F, Q and X did and the latter could well
have still been changing in the 1st century.
I suspect, however, that Mounce is classifying them as aspirates
because, from the point of view of *spelling*, they were still treated
as aspirates, even after the pronunciation had changed. In particular,
their behaviour when followed by rough breathing (which also had
changed), is consistent with their earlier pronunciation.
James Tauber
On Wed, 9 Aug 2006 11:36:08 -0700, "Thomas Thackery"
<tthackery at comcast.net> said:
>
> I was perusing William Mounce's BBG text, and came across something
> curios at §10.19.
> Mounce calls F, Q, and X <φ, θ, χ> "aspirates." What is
> interesting is that he teaches clearly, using Americanized Erasmian
> sounds, that these phonemes are indeed fricatives [φ] [θ] [χ] and
> not aspirates [pʰ] [tʰ] [kʰ]. I have never read of fricatives ever
> as being called aspirates. This must be a typo or perhaps he is
> relating this to a very early or theorized form where these were
> aspirates [pʰ] [tʰ] [kʰ]---I haven't found comment in his text yet.
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