R and r

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

"Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be> wrote:

>From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
>> Ed suggested a contrast in Classical Greek (rho / rho with spiritus asper or
>> dasemon)?

>> I cannot think of any words where there would such a contrast.  In the
>> absence of such words, the presence or absence of the spiritus asper is
>> purely mechanical, and therefore not phonemic, so there cannot be a phonemic
>> contrast.   Some modern publications no longer even print the spiritus
>> asper, since it is so predictable.

>[Ed]

>I would be extremely surprised by there not being a contrast: why would they
>have invented this unobvious orthography in the first place? Note that
>rho-sp.a. or the combination rho-rho-sp.a. occurs in the positions where you
>could expect a 'fortis' R, very similar to the occurrence of rr in Spanish
>(word-initially and in case of gemination), and the one in Portuguese. The
>spiritus asper is strongly suggestive of some form of aspiration.

There was a contrast, but it wasn't contrastive.

Greek initial r- comes mainly from *sr- > *hr- (original *r- had
become er-).  The r- was surely aspirated (i.e. voiceless) in
Classical Attic Greek, but since this applied to *all* initial
r's, there is no reason to postulate a separate phoneme /rh/.
The spiritus asper here is a case of subphonemic orthography (as
in many of these cases introduced after the fact, in this case by
Byzantine scribes).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl