Proto-Greek language: Encyclopedia II - Proto-Greek language - Phonology

Proto-Greek language - Phonology

Greek is a Centum language, which would place a Graeco-Aryan protolanguage before Satemization, making it identical to late PIE. Proto-Greek does appear to have been affected by the general trend of Palatalization characteristic of the Satem group, evidenced for example by the (post-Mycenaean) change of labiovelars into dentals before e (e.g. k^we > te "and"), but the Satemizing influence appears to have reached Greek only after it had lost the palatovelars (i.e. after it had already become a Centum language).

The primary sound changes separating Proto-Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language included

• Aspiration of /s/ -> /h/ intervocalically
• De-voicing of voiced aspirates.
• Dissimilation of aspirates (Grassmann's law), possibly post-Mycenaean.
• word-initial y- (not Hy-) is strengthened to dy- (later ζ-)

The loss of prevocalic *s is was not completed entirely, famously evidenced by sus "sow", dasus "dense"; sun "with" is another example, contaminated with PIE *kom (Latin cum, Proto-Greek *kon) to Homeric / Old Attic ksun.

Sound changes between Proto-Greek and Mycenaean include:

• Loss of final stop consonants; final /m/ -> /n/.
• Syllabic /m/ and /n/ -> /am/, /an/ before resonants; otherwise /a/.
• Vocalization of laryngeals between vowels and initially before consonants to /e/, /a/, /o/ from h₁, h₂, h₃ respectively.
• The sequence CRHC (C = consonant, R = resonant, H = laryngeal) becomes CRēC, CRāC, CRōC from H = h₁, h₂, h₃ respectively.
• The sequence CRHV (C = consonant, R = resonant, H = laryngeal, V = vowel) becomes CaRV.
• loss of s in consonant clusters, with supplementary lengthening, esmi -> ēmi
• creation of secondary s from clusters, ntia -> nsa. Assibilation ti -> si only in southern dialects.

These sound changes are already complete in Mycenaean. For changes affecting most or all later dialects see Ancient Greek.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Phonology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki