R and r

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

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

>From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>

>> 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).

>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.

Of course they were not aware of *sr-, but they were aware of the
classical pronunciation [rh-], with aspirated (voiceless) r.

>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.

There is no reason to assume a uvular pronunciation and no reason
not to take the Byzantine spelling at face value: the spiritus
denotes an aspirated (voiceless) [rh].  See the discussion in
Allen "Vox Graeca" pp. 41-45.

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