R and r

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 8:04 PM

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

[ moderator snip ]

>> 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

[Ed]

This really seems to touch upon the core of the matter, Miguel. Thank you for
the clarification.

But I find it difficult to believe that Byzantine scribes would have been aware
of the initial r- < *hr- < *sr- (which is pre-classic I believe, i.e. close to
a 1000 years earlier) if there hadn't been left some trace in pronunciation.
The different spelling at the beginning and in the middle of a word is not
surprising: Spanish and Portuguese, in which the sounds represented by r and rr
in intervocalic positions are clearly distinguished phonemes, use the same
system: word-initial written r is always pronounced as if it were written rr,
while intervocalically it is written rr; intervocalic r is another phoneme. So,
my conjecture would be that word-initial rho-sp.a. and intervacalic
rho-rho-sp.a. were pronounced the same way (uvular like in Portuguese?) and
intervocalic rho some other way (flap?).

I said 'uvular' (or similar) because that comes close to what a non-linguist
(like the Byzantine scribes) would possibly hear as 'breath' (spiritus, pneuma)
in the pronunciation of an r. That's a not-too-uneducated guess, I hope.

Regards,
Ed.