[B-Greek] consonantal iota

Kevin Riley klriley at alphalink.com.au
Tue Jul 4 19:29:31 EDT 2006


 
 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: Carl W. Conrad
Date: 07/05/06 01:15:18
 
Perhaps the question to answer first is whether there is a
consonantal iota in ancient Greek -- or at least a consonantal Iota
that ever had any representation in the standard Greek alphabet.
Historians of the Greek language postulate that present-tense verb
endings in -ZW, -TTW, -SSW, -LLW, etc. derive from combination of a
root consonant with a consonantal Iota + O/E (Smyth §§507ff.). In
Smyth the putative iota-consonant is written as a lower-case Iota
with a semi-circular mark below it. I don't think there is a Unicode
character for that, and the character/symbol that shows up in the
printed form of Smyth does not show up accurately on the Peseus web-
page ( http://tinyurl.com/mt9dw ). 

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K:  Any font for phonetics should include it  - although it is only an
alternative for /j/ to indicate it relationship with /i/.  I am not sure
that it is at all necessary, and I have read a number of I-E studies that
use /j/ and /w/ rather than /i/ and /u/ with subscript marking.  The only
useful aspect of the vowels is that it indicates that in I-E the distinction
was positional (as in Latin) and separate characters were not necessary -
assuming I-E had been written.

Kevin Riley

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I have seen the consonantal Iota
represented by a Roman "y" (lower-case) -- but even that was in the
course of discussion of the underlying phonetic basis of present-
tense verb-endings. In words like IHSOUS and IEROUSALHM (also spelled
hIEROSOLUMA) one should be aware that these proper names are written
with a smooth-breathing over the initial Iota, which is pronounced
independently of the vowel immediately following it.
 




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