Peter Barber
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199680504
- eISBN:
- 9780191760525
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199680504.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This book is an investigation of how semivowels were realised in Indo-European and in early Greek. More specifically, it examines the extent to which Indo-European *i and *y were independent ...
More
This book is an investigation of how semivowels were realised in Indo-European and in early Greek. More specifically, it examines the extent to which Indo-European *i and *y were independent phonemes, in what respects their alternation was predictable, and how this situation changed as Indo-European developed into Greek. Evidence from Greek, Germanic and Vedic are crucial for understanding the Indo-European situation; this book undertakes a re-examination of the evidence provided by Gothic and Vedic, and offers the first comprehensive survey of the Greek evidence. The impact of this evidence on the theories of Sievers, Edgerton, Lindeman, Schindler and Seebold is assessed. This inquiry has significant morphological as well as phonological components; a proper understanding of the early behaviour of semivowels depends on disentangling considerable morphological innovation in the comparative adjectives in *-yos-/-iyos-, the nominals in *-ye/o-, *-iye/o-, *-y-e/o-, *-i-(y)e/o-, and *-tye/o-, the feminine suffix *-ya, and verbal formations in *-ye/o- (and to a limited extent *-i-(y)e/o). The evidence provided by optatives in *-yeH 1- and morphological categories showing the effects of assibilation is also assessed. The comprehensive nature of this study, its sensitivity to questions of relative chronology, and careful assessment of what is inherited and what is innovative, enable substantive conclusions to be drawn regarding the behaviour of semivowels at various stages in the history of Greek and in Indo-European itself. In turn these conclusions bear on such questions as the interaction of semivowel syllabicity with syllable and foot structure, sandhi phenomena, and the moraic properties of obstruents (including laryngeals).Less
This book is an investigation of how semivowels were realised in Indo-European and in early Greek. More specifically, it examines the extent to which Indo-European *i and *y were independent phonemes, in what respects their alternation was predictable, and how this situation changed as Indo-European developed into Greek. Evidence from Greek, Germanic and Vedic are crucial for understanding the Indo-European situation; this book undertakes a re-examination of the evidence provided by Gothic and Vedic, and offers the first comprehensive survey of the Greek evidence. The impact of this evidence on the theories of Sievers, Edgerton, Lindeman, Schindler and Seebold is assessed. This inquiry has significant morphological as well as phonological components; a proper understanding of the early behaviour of semivowels depends on disentangling considerable morphological innovation in the comparative adjectives in *-yos-/-iyos-, the nominals in *-ye/o-, *-iye/o-, *-y-e/o-, *-i-(y)e/o-, and *-tye/o-, the feminine suffix *-ya, and verbal formations in *-ye/o- (and to a limited extent *-i-(y)e/o). The evidence provided by optatives in *-yeH 1- and morphological categories showing the effects of assibilation is also assessed. The comprehensive nature of this study, its sensitivity to questions of relative chronology, and careful assessment of what is inherited and what is innovative, enable substantive conclusions to be drawn regarding the behaviour of semivowels at various stages in the history of Greek and in Indo-European itself. In turn these conclusions bear on such questions as the interaction of semivowel syllabicity with syllable and foot structure, sandhi phenomena, and the moraic properties of obstruents (including laryngeals).
