[gothic-l] accents

[jdm314 at AOL.COM]

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In a message dated 8/31/00 3:12:16 AM, you wrote:

<<--- In gothic-l at egroups.com, jdm314 at a... wrote:
> A quick note: I don't think Wulfila invented [the diaeresis over 
> word and syllable initial i's] as, believe it or not, I have seen
> it used in manuscripts written in Greek. I don't recall what the 
> date was on those ...

The Greek rough and smooth breathing signs are classical Greek
letters and were originally the left and right halves of the eta 
letter. (Eta was originally pronounced {h}, but it changed to long
{e} 
because Athenian spelling was influenced there by Ionic dialect 
spelling; Ionic dropped the initial {h} sound, and its name "he:ta" 
changed to "e:ta".) I read that the other accents (which mostly mark 
pitch-accent) were invented in a date AD by someone who wanted his 
pupils to pronounce Greek correctly, >>

Aristophanes of Byzantium, I believe.


<< like in a textbook that I saw 
teaching Italian to English speakers that added extra diacritics to 
distinguish open from closed {e} and {o}.

Greek puts umlaut / diaeresis over {i} and {u} after another vowel 
when the two vowels are separate syllables and not a diphthong, e.g. 
{oi"s} = "sheep". "diaeresis" is Greek for "taking apart". Perhaps 
Wulfila wanted to remind readers literate in Latin that those {i}'s 
were {i}'s and not to be pronounced {dzh} like in the usual way that 
Latin and its descendants were pronounced by that time in the West.>>


A) I don't think the obstruent pronunciation of the yod was current in 
Wulfila's time, though I could be wrong. It might explain why he spells /j/'s 
in loanwords differently from those in Gothic... Note however that he does 
use the diaeresis on those words too.

B) You have missed my point about Greek Manuscripts however. Wulfila uses the 
diaeresis, as you know, both in the traditional way (but only on the letter 
i) and on all word initial i's. But this odd convention is not unique to 
Wulfila, as I have seen it used in Oxyrhynchus papyri. This certainly is an 
oddity, as Greek and Gothic do not normally mark word divisions at all, 
outside of this one thing.

Please allow me to violate the high-ascii moratorium to sign my name 
appropriately ;)

ÏUSTEINUS

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