Re: écagne ,and ConLand names in translation(was: RE: R V: Old English)

At 16:29 03.4.2000 -0500, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

>That's something that's always struck me as counterintuitive:  why would
>a protoform like *[dyeus] become [zdeus], rather than [dzeus]?  The latter
>is a straightforward example of palatalization (cf. Japanese t --> ts / _u),
>while the former, unless you invoke haphazard metathesis from an originally
>palatalized [dzeus], requires you to explain the appearance of that [z] from
>somewhere else in the system, which AFAIK would be very problematic.
Apparently W. Sydney Allen thought that pre-Hellenistic Z was /zd/, because
*some* Z in other dialects correspond to SD in Aeolic.  This seems however
to be an Anglo-Saxon tradition: I learnt that Greek Z was /dz/, and the use
of Z for /dZ/ in late Latin suggested by Greek spellings like Zoulia, and
variants like Daza/Daia in Latin itself suggest a tradition which assigned
a voiced affricate pronunciation to Z.  So does IMO also the use of Z for
/ts/ in all early Romance languages.  I have sometimes wondered if Greek Z
wasn't a pure palatal stop, with TT/SS as its voiceless counterpart.  The
origin of these sounds and the fact that TT is pretty isolated as a
geminate in Greek -- at least far more frequent than any other.




/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <mailto:bpj@...>bpj@netg.se
<mailto:melroch@...>melroch@my-deja.com
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