/Anatolian /-nt-/ and Greek /-nth-/

Peter &/or Graham petegray at btinternet.com
Sat Mar 6 12:58:42 UTC 1999


DLW asks:
>why should Anatolian
>place-names with /-nt-/ (or for that matter /-nd-/) be borowed into Greek
>with /-nth-/?

(a) a phonetic explanation:
Hittite (as you probably know) shows only the voiceless stops.   If there is
no phonemic distinction between aspirate and unaspirated, or between voiced
and voiceless in Hittite (although there may be between geminate and
non-geminate), then we know nothing about the actual articulation.   So
perhaps the Greek borrowings, if they were borrowings, are genuine
reflections of the actual phonetic value.

(b) a non-phonetic explanation
We should also note that borrowings into other languages from English
sometimes have results that are odd to our eyes, and may be done for
morphophonemic reasons, e.g. the Hebrew use of /q/ for English /k/, which
prevents fricativisation in certain contexts.   So perhaps we should leave
open the idea that the borrowing as Hittite written -nt- as an aspirate or a
voiced consonant might have had some non-phonetic explanation.

Peter



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