Anatolian /nt/

[David L. White]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Yoel L. Arbeitman wrote:

> We cannot ignore the famed example of Sapir's. Hittite <kupahi> /kubaGi/
> (/G/ - voiced pharyngeal, ghain) has a double representation in Biblical
> Hebrew: qoba'' ('' = ayin) and koba''. From this Sapir concluded that
> whereas Hebrew <k> is aspirated phonetically and Hebrew /q/ is
> non-aspirated, but glottalized or pharyngealized (emphatic), the Hittite
> <k> which was phonetically [k] i.e. [-aspiration, -emphaticness], could not
> adequately be represented by either Hebrew grapheme. So the alternating
> writings. As for the cluster /nt/ in Anatolian into Greek, this is a
> special combination. Witness its pronunciation in Modern Greek. One cannot
> extrapolate from how a /nt/ would be transcribed into Greek to how any non
> prenasalized unvoiced obstruent would be realized phonetically and/ or
> graphemically.

    I think it is not unreasonable to suppose that Greek would probably have
borrowed [nt] as /nt/ and [nd] as /nd/.  I note as well that if Greek /depas/
is a borrowing from an Anatolian word with /-p-/, the the fact that we do not
find */dephas/ suggests that the Anatolian voiceless plosives were not
aspirated.

DLW