THE PRONUNCIATION OF ATTIC GREEK ~ IN THE SIXTH

AND FIFTH CENTURIES B.C.

Summary

There is no consensus of opinion on the phonetic value of ~ in Classical

Attic. Scholars incline to show preference for either dz or zd, gene~a,lly the
latter. This paper offers arguments for the less popular view.

The determination of the phc,net~c alue of ~ in 6th- and 5th-century

Attic still offers scope for debate because of its essenti~ diffic~ty x).
The habit of the more cautious investigator is to present the rival
values, dz and zd, and either to leave the question open or else to
admit a phonetic dualism *). Those who must have a definite answer,
on the other hand, are apt to show preference for one of the values,
generally zd. a) This interpretation has the sanction of 'aatiquity',
in effect that of the late Greek grammarians Dionysius Thrax (2nd
century B.C.) and Dionysius Halicarnassensis (lst century B.C.)4),
and was supported by Erasmus In the 16th century 5) and favoured
by the authority of Brugrnann towards the end of the 19th ~'). More
recently it has been upheld by E. H. Sturtevant 7), M. Grammont s),
l) F. Blass, Uber die Aussprache des Gviechischen ~ (Berlin, 1888).
t) B. F. C. Atklnson, The Greek Language ~ (London, 1931); A. C. J uret,
Phondtique grecque (Strasbourg, 1938).
s) M. Lejeune, Traitg de phondtique grecque (Paris, 1947).
4) Dionysius Thrax, Avs grammatica (Tkxv~q y~a~av~~). Ed. G. Uhlig
(Leipzig, 1883); Dionysius Halicarnassensis, De compositione verborum
(Ilcpl o ~ n c t o g 6vott~x~o~) in H. Usener et L. Radermacher, Dionysii Halicarnassei opuscula (Leipzig, 1899).
5) Desiderius E~asmus, De recta latini graecique sermonis pronuntiatione,
1525. Erasmus's 'etacist' pronunciation ot Gx-eek was opposed to J. Reuchlin's
(1455~ 1522) ei~:acist' variety, which treated ~ as 2:.
6) K. Brugrrann, Grundriss der vevgleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen I ~ (Strassburg, 1897) and Kurze vergleichende Grammatik
der indo-germanischen Sprachen (Strassburg, 1904); also K. Brugmann und
A. Thumb, Griechisikz Grammatik 4 (Munich, 1913).
~) The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin (Philadelphia, I940).
8} Pkongtique du grec anciet, (Lyon-Paris, 1948).

64

and others 9). In direct contrast to this interpretat,~,on of ~ as a consonszltal group, we have G. Curtius's view ~o) that the character
represents the affzicate dz, and this view is stiU r e ~ a t e d b y m ~ t
writ~ers of school grammars in Central and Western Europe n) either
unchanged or with slight modifications like that suggested by L. Roussel, who would have us believe that the end of the affricate represented
by ~ is 'tr~s faiblement teint~e d'un chuintement un peu pareil/k la fin
du g italien devant e, i', which gives d3 z~). All investigators are agreed
however that from the 4th century B.C. onwards ~ had its modem
w~lue z as).
Our subject is strictly limited in compass: we are concerned to
establish no more than the pronunciation of the character ~ in Attic
Greek up to the time when it definitely became a voiced ~-~o~o~ha...,
(z). This means that our material w~a be t~ken primarily from the
records of a Greek dialect in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. Yet
investigation of only this material, however scrupulous, would obviously not be enough. We shall also have to consider the evidence
of pre-Classical Attic and of the ancient Greek dialects, and to this
we must add the evidence of the Italic dialects and of Old Church
Slavonic, as well as the values of ~ and z in present-day Greek and
Romance respectively. All our material therefore, except the scientifically studied testimony of modern speech, which alone has phonetic
relevance and cogency, belongs not only t 9 a written language but to
a language used at a remote period of time, and its interpretation
therefore is inevitably a matter of more or less plausible conjecture.

9) A. CarnGy, Manuel de linguistique grecque (Paris, 1924); U. Mengin,

Ecriture et prononciation du grec ancien (Paris, 1948).
Io) G. Curti_,s und E. Windisch, Grundzi~ge der griechischen Etymologie
I - - I I (Leipzig, 18791.
11) W. H. D. Rouse, A First Gree,~ Course (London, 1906) and The Sounds
o/ Ancient Greek (London, 1935); L. Roussel, La, prononciation de r attique
classique (Paris, 1921); E. D:rerup, Die Schulaussprache des Gviechischen
(Paderborn, 1930).
I2) Op. cir. in fn 11.
~s) Cf. G. N. Hatzidakis, EinIeitung in die neugviechiscke Grammatik (Leipzig, 1892) and Zrwo~o~ {o-top~ ~ k.:~,~,~tx~g y),~nmtg (Athens, 1915).

65
II
The character ~ now occupies sixth place in the sequence of the
Greek alphabet, but as a numeral sign (~') it had the value 7, having
been preceded by the obsolete digamma, (~), which immediately
followed ~ +~6v and stood for 6. It was one of the twenty-three ~8~tx,
or q~otvt/~t~, Tt~&tzi~x~ai), originally sixteen, which the Greeks, according to Classical tradition ~5), had taken from the Phoenicians in
the 9th century B.C. and possibly even earlier xr). The earliest Attic
inscriptions, which are slightly earlier than the 8th century, have
I for ~, and this 'primitive' form of the character occurs also in the
Ionic alphabet, which was introduced in Athens under the archon
,vo ~.~. This character corresponds exactly in shape to
z~uc~iue, in "^~
one variety of Phoenician zain 17) (cf. Heb. T), which also appears
as / and I. The form oI ~ , x with short horizontal strokes is found in
the earliest Semitic inscription, viz. that on the tomb of King Ahir~m
of Byblos (c. 1500--1000 B.C.), in 8th- and 7th-century Attic (750--600
B.C.), Rhodian (650 B.C.), and Cretan (650 6 0 0 B.C.)~a), and in
Etruscan xg), Oscan 20), and Messapian ~1). The other Greek form of ~,
viz. the uncial Z, occurs in 9th-century North Phoenician (Zenjirli Inscription) and 8th-century Old Aramaic, which displaced this
dialect az). The dating of the characters which we have adduced here
suggests that the forms / and I preceded Z, and this inference is
a4) Herodotus, Historiae V, 58--59. Edd. H. R. Dietsch et H. Kallenberg
(Leipzig, 1887).
15) Plinius Secundus, Naturalis historia V, xiii, 67. Edd. L. Janus et C.
Mayhoff (Leipzig, 1906--09) ; Tacitus, ,4nnales, xi, 14. t~ez. H. F u r n e a u x
(Oxford, 1894).
~) D. Diringer, The Alphabet 2 (London, 1949).
,7) This name occurs in Doric as ~&v (Herodotus I, 139), which corresponds
to Ionic and Attic ~ y ~ .
,s) K. Meisterhans und E. Schwyzer, Grammatik der attischen Inschri/ten 3
(Berlin, 1900); W. Larfeld, Handbuch der griecMschen Epigraphik I (Leipzig,
1917) ; H. Pernot, D'Hom~re d nos ~ours (Paris, 192 I).
,9) D. Diringer, op. tit. in fn 16.
~0) C. D. Buck, A Grammar o[ Oscan and Umbrian (Boston, 1904).
zi) A. Kirchoff, Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets s (Berlin,
1877).
~2) Z. S. Harris, A Grammar o/ the Phoenician Language (New Haven,

~936).
5

66
supported by the meaning of the Semitic name of ~. Zayin (I) in
Hebrew and zain (Estrangela \) in SyTiac both mean 'weapon',
presumably some sort of missile. This meaning has been traced
back to Egyptian z~n/zcon ~). The hieroglyph representing 'arrow' ( ~ )
is naturally horizontal, like that of 'bolt' (m), whereas the corresponding Semitic character is, as naturally, uptight, and it is this, as
Classical antiquity and modem scholarship agree, that served as
model to Greek ~. The Greek name of the character however is
very curious. In the Septuagint, Hebrew zayin becomes ~ (Psalm
CXIX, 49), which is also the Ethiopian name ( z ~ 'weapon'), and it
would appear that this name, as ~Tq (z~; cf. Classical Arabic zd), was
adapted to the name of the following character ~v~(~), a Greek rendering of ]~t (c[. Hebrew n)u). Such an explanation seems to be
well founded, for names of adjacent zettez~, ~ ~,, ,~,.,j,~,-~,, ,u.,,,,~,~,
tend sometimes to approximate to one another phonetically (cf.
Russian vosem' 'octo', which is an adaptation to sere" 'septem'; also
Russian oktjabr' 'October', whose form was determined by those
sentiabr' 'September' and nojabr' 'November'). In Greek, of course.
the name ~1"~, like that of the other letters of the alphabet, has no
Greek meaning, but it can be readily interpreted in terms of Semitic.
Here we have, on the one hand, a parallel to the truncated and obscure
names of the Latin characters, only one of which (cf. English zed),
a later bon'ewing from Greek, is easy to associate with its original,
and, on the other hand, to Cyrillic, which can mostly interpret its
letter-names as Slavonic words (e.g. s--dz~lo 'very' and 3~zemlja
'earth', both of which are associated with Greek ~).
III
The characters of the Greek alphabet, represent both single sounds
and sound-groups (cf. n, ~ with ~, ~), and the sound-groups are either
'aspirated' plosives (e.g. ~, ,~,~.) or combinations of a plosive with a
sibilant fricative (e.g. ,J~, ~.). The former constitute the complete
triad ph, th, kh and might have been indicated graphically by the
symbol of a plosive followed by that of the glottal fricative h, viz.
~8) G. R. Driver, Semitic Writing #om Pictograph to Alphabet (London,
1948).
2~) G. R. Driver, op. cit. in fn 23.

67
~', ,', x' (cf. I'.~., K.~. in Thera and Melos :inscriptions), or, less satisfactorily, by starting with the 'rough breathing' (e.g. ~, '~, 'x; cf. 'p),
but the consistent triple correlation of /orris, lenis, and aspirata
(the last strictly a 'prosodic' modification of the corresponding/orris)
demanded separate characters for each class, and the availability of
these in later times was put to good account in the representation of
sounds unknown to the older language (e.g. ~, ~, X). The prosodic nature
of aspiration in Greek has a parallel in the more elaborate, 'pentadic'
system of Sanskrit plosives, which includes the aspirated lenes,
bh, dh, d.h, jh, gh. But Sanskrit has no close parallels to offer to Greek
and ~ (cf. Latin x), which analyse into it's and ks respectively 25).
Here we find sibilation conceived as a prosody, but the series of such
sounds with a sibilant 'release' is incomplete, not extending to ts,
which figvres in Byzantine and Modem Greek as v~. In point of fact
these consonantal groups--- and they could have been adequately
written ~ and a
are not true affricates, lacking as they do the
homorganic association of plosive and fricative found in ts.
It would appear then that the pholonogical principle of 'one sound
one letter' was not rigorously applied in the G~eek alphabet or
rather that its application was vitiated bv inaccuracies in the phonetic
anMysis of contemporary speech. \V~, may contrast the majority
of the characters ~ all the vowel symbois and most of the consonant
symbols, which uphold the principle, with a small minority, which
illustrate an attempt to treat not only a;piration but sibilation
prosodically. To this minority of characters b, longs ~, but this character, as normally interpreted (viz. zd or dz), falls outside the foregoing
categories, for zd is merely a loose consonaWal group which requires
no separate symbol to represent: it, and dz :i:.~a pure affricate which
does (cf. Old Church Slavonic and Modem Macedonian s).
IV
The orthographic approach to our problem is, as we have seen, intimately associated with the phonetic. This may be either static or
historical. Examination of the sound-systems of the most diverse
~5) The c o m p o u n d c h a r a c t e r t r a n s l i t e r a t e d ks is the nearest a p p r o a c h to ~.
Cf. Sanskrit aks.ah 'axle' with Greek ~ o ~ , L i t i n axis. The Greek ~ and +
were originally written a and na (Attic xa and q~" respectively).

68
languages discovers the presence of affricates, which are invariably
regarded as single consonants. The 'typical' affricate ts is found in
Indo-European, Uralian, Caucasian, and Japanese;
common to
English and Russian; dz is found in Italian, Macedonian, and Georgian;
d3 figures in English, Italian, Ukrainian, and Turkic; and less common
types of affricates are not far to seek (e.g. German ib/, Swiss German
kx). We shall find however that they are not always indicated by
separate characters (cf. English ch with Czech ~, English i with Ukrainian dS,, Slovak dz with Macedonian s). In no language, to our know ='1
S'
ledge, are the metamese
of the denti-alveolar affricates, viz.
st, zd, r , 3d, represented by a single charac*~er. The reason for this
seems obvious enough: these consonantal groupings and others like
them, in which the second member is a plosive, do not strike the ear
as consonantal units any more than do juxtapositions of sibilant and
sonant (e.g. sn, st, sl) or of sibilant and another type of fricative
consonant(e.g, s[, 3v). A priori then Greek ~, as a single character,
could have stood for either a single, phonetically 'atomic' consonant
or an affricate.
V
Before studying the evidence of Attic Greek and the other ancient
Greek dialects, let us examine the evidence of Semitic, from which,
as we know, the Greek alphabet derives. Comparative Semitic linguistics 2,3) has established an hypothetical protoglossa (Common
Semitic) to summarise the points of resemblance between the recorded
Semitic languages. This protoglossa, like Classical Arabic, appears
to have distinguished ~ and z, which coalesced in z in Canaanitic.
Accordingly we are authorised to assume on theoretical grounds that
Phoenician zain (I and Z) was pronounced z at the time when the
Phoenician alphabet was taken over by the Greeks. It has been
suggested however that it may have a 'double sound, like Greek ~' 27),
because the Phoenician demonstrative adjective ~ is almost alway:~
written with prothetic ~(e.g. ".~n a ~ 'this monument'). This suggestiov.
ultimately rests on the traditional interpretation of ~ and possibly
~*) C. Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischer,
Sprachen I (Berlin, 1908); G. Bergstrfisser, Ein[Ohrung in die semitische
Sprachu4ssenschafl (Munich, 1928).
t~) Z. S. Harris, op. cit. in fn 22.

69
also on the knowledge that z is ts/tf in Hittite ~). The conception of ~
r
as a 'double sound' appears to receive some support from its use
along with a, ~r, and ~ in Greek transcriptions of Phoenician sade (~)
phonetically emphatic s (of. Arabic d.dd), in the Punic period,
which begins in the 5th century B.C. and ends in 146 B.C. (e.g. Zcopo~/
Tupo~ for "l~ in Appian, Punica I). By the middle of this period however
Attic ~ had become z, and we find this Hellenistic pronunciation
reproduced in the Greek loans of the Talmud (e.g. lt~:~t z~md < ~:o~$6g
'broth', ~ zfn~ < ~ v ~ 'girdle'; ~ z~g < ~uy6v 'yoke'; r ~ t 6rez
< 6pu~0t 'twing') ~*).
It wiU be clear by now that the conjectured value of Phoenician
zain as the simple sibilant z does not help us to interpret Attic: ~ as
l , ~ 1 1 1 - ~ l , , ~,.~...~..~,4' "
t.^
n
a t r,,~,,,~
~ u , , u m . ,4,. =
.~,d t. 1.. century D.
~" but the fact that ~ and z
coalesced in z in Phoenician suggests the possibility that zain m a y
have been a composite sound at least dialectaUy. The choice of the
character by the Greeks to represent a 'double sound' in their own
language must have been guided by its possession of at least a zelement, which was lacking in Greek except as a positional variant of
the s-phoneme. But whether the z-element came first or second in
the 'double sound' is not easy to establish Z. Hm~s's 30) obserwat:ion
that the Cypriote Phoenician demonst~*:~tive adjective T is always
preceded by I~ inclines u, to ~ssume that it came first, which would
make ~ the symbol of the affricate dz.
VI
The Indo-European t,rotoglossa, defined in the 19th century
chiefly by the Neograrmnarian School, is, like its Semitic counterpart, a complicated set cf concordances based on the comparison of
forms recording its later evolution at different historical periods.
The inevitable disparity i1~ time diminishes to some extent the validity
~8) E. H. S t u r t e v a n t and E m m a A. H a h n , A Comparative Grammar o/ the
Hittite Language (New H a v e n , 1951). On p. 25 we r e a d : ' . . . i n H i t t i t e words,
z has the v a l u e of t or d ptus ~'. W e are also r e m i n d e d t h a t : ' T h e r e q s no
c e r t a i n proof w h a t t h e phonetic c h a r a c t e r of the sibilant was, b u t t h e f r e q u e n t
double writing i n d i c a t e s t ~ a t it was a voiceless s o u n d . '
~0) S. Krauss, Grieehische und lateinische Lehnw6rter im Talmud, Mid~asch
und Targum I - - I I (Berlin, 1 8 9 8 ~ 9 9 ) .

30) Op. c.it. in fn 22.

71

7(T) as parallels to

< (cf.

Boeotian &LO live with Attic c&w, &.+I

Cretan 4xLva girdle
I judge with Attic
i7q&a& to count with

of c as zd, which appears f:o emerge

cx3ncIusively from a consideration of the foregoing examples, is, in
testimony of two Greek grammarians
- Dionysius Thrax, who
flourished c. I
ensis, who came
cients of such investigators
testimony in detail %). We
may summa&e this here by saying that both gramrrarians, describe
the symbols [, (J and < as representing in Classical times, i.e. at least
three hundered years before Dionysius Thrax, not simp le, but double,
or composite, sounds occupying the space of two s:mbol:ised consonants in the syllable to which they belong. Both interpret t: as zd,
i.e. as a compound whose second constituent is the plos:Cve,in contrast
to 4 and +# whose second onstituent is t
ilant , viz. XD arld m. 36)

The phonetic interpretation

VII

(c)

Sansktit iivdb living, Avestzm

ci(t$),

fiIA T&h Am

v&u

***u&a

y&v)

Gnthir &us Old C~UIY&Shvcmic

u-r---+

~--v-j

---

------I

-VT-

v--_-4

Armenian Ksam, Welsh by@. Further proof

a sedectisn of them shall be given here, viz. (a) Qq leaven,

, Lath ifk, Old Church Slavonic jzlclca Lithuati
cuy6vyoke,Hixtite yzckan, Sanskrit y
Old Church SLwonic ago (6 *&p),

onetics,

tradition itself appears, at le;lst once,

&. Our author this time i

in Modern Persian:
lass, Persian

73
- labial, dental, and velar, Archinus says of the dental sounds that
they axe made with the blade of the tongue near the teeth (~i;z
X~U& Y& yhcjqr; xcqh &q &%v+raq)and uses 6 as an illustration,
adding significantly : and for this reason c is produced in that place
(xab Bt&mike rb < xa& ~akqv yew&r$a~ dp &av).
This suggests
that a d-element was present in c, and if < were merely zd, which is
an ordinary compound requiring no special notation, there would have
been no need to use it as :kn illustration, for the d-element is identical
with 8.
The subsequent development of <, whether it is taken to be xd or
dz, begins m the 4th century
.C. and aft,er, w en we come across
misspellings
suc!r a5 iivaf3
IL& t?rs++jqxasv, ~p..&mmLV, zp<pcw&& Z&,
<
, and Zp;Qva. Here
we observe a
confusion and i
rchange of the character
d and c, both of which,
apparently, require, to be interpreted as z, his has been the normal
pronwnciation of < in literary Greek since the inauguration of the XOW~:
it is ,the pronunciation of this character in ehenistic, Byzantine, an
e statement that Greek drZ(zd) becomes z from the
odem Gree
4th century
onwards must naturally be limited by reference
to dialectal dev
ments and present pr
over the Greek-speaking
lstian era like Terentius
area. Roman grammarians
th century) state that
aurus (Znd century) and
c was still pronounced & (ts) in contemporary Greek as spoken by the
unlettered. J. Psichari 8) quotes forms such as nomindzo, nomilzzo,
and tioanBnzoas being in use on the island of Chios in the 19th century;
t a) mentions sraf6cu (with dz) as occuring in Carpathos, and
for ~K$~o~oL;and
@) FecOFdS ~&%9~, (i.e. dgavokos)
s in the the now expatriate Cappadocian dialect of
age. These, of course are all probably later develo
merits, but they are ge
possibility of the existe
Greek.

audouin (Bdetin
*) See F. Blass (Op.cit.), who quotes
dams h&biqwe IV, pa 366).
88) O@.cit. in In 2.
8@) Modma Greek IN Asi Misaov (Cambridge, 19 16).

de co~rtu~xm-

74

VIII
The value of [ in Italic and Romance is not Unifom, a it embodies
va,iations, often contiderable, of both time and place.. The oldest
. re,co,-ds
are pre-Ch&ian
and come from oxan and Lkbrian m),
both of which drew their alphabets from a Grtxk ductus q)fChalcidian
type
(i.e. with
1 for 2) through the alien Etruscani
In bc*th languages
the sPbol I(Z) appears to have been pronounced
ho we
have, for
instance, Oscan zicokmzand $24~conespondirlgto Latin diem and act
respectively, and Umbrian artemenzarzc corresponding to Latin
infermenstyitinz.This value of < may be due to a local, or dialecta,l,
Greek interpretation of the symbol ol)a In the &can Tabula Bantina
of the 2nd century B.C., which is written in the Latin alphabet,
5 (for I) however is used with its Oscan value 43).This appears to have
;c+;fiGreek va!ue of cP viz _zje_x~qt in
been ideniicai t&h the Hel.lenJGcl,
certain unusual spellings of Imperial times, where x represents &,
for instance oze (&-&?), aeta (diaeta), zebza (dii%zcs), and Z&s&
(Diorrysius).
Before z *wasadopted into Latin from the Greek however,
the sound it stood for was represented by ss in 0 d Latin (e.g.fi2dw2
($&,

bad&ire

sound as
In the
phonetic
thus 2 is

xPO(8i&xv,atlicissare <&TTWL&IY),
which

implies

a long

well as unvoicing.
modern Romance languages the character z has different
values, which however are constant for each Ianpage
:
2 in French, ts/dz in Italian (e.g. one barley; mezzo ha
middle), and $ (e.g. danza dance) in Castilian Spanish. Its French
value recurs in English and Dutch; its Italian value its in German
and Icelandic. In the Slavonic Latin alphabets, in. Hungarian, and
in Rumanian z is z. The Italian pronunciation of the character as
liz may reflect its phonetic value in Appennine Greek, which because
of its comparative isolation did not undergo the deaffrication oi ?I
in Balkan Greek. A parallel to this is lxesented by the colonial
Cretan, some of whose early inscripti ns have c for the consonantal
groups ~(0) + j (e.g. G&s such < oqoc;, cf. Attic Baoc; @??~og
~&~xw). Paul K re t SChmer 43) suggests that c here is the affricate
ts, as in ~!;ca;l and Urnbrian,

75
IX

The Shmnic contri ution to our problem

involves

the phonetic

and the apparently parallel developmen% of a

consonantal group in Old Chur
Slavonic (Old Bulgarian). Cyrillic
S, which occurs to-day only in
acedonian where it has the value
red, but not phonetic counterpart.
of dz, has a Greek and a Latin
Its modem
aced&an
value appears to have been shared by l&hcentury Old Bulgarian, whose two alphabets, Glagofitic and Cyrillic,
carefully distinguish
t.he affricate represented
by this character
from z, represented in Giagolitic y a Mike! character and in Cyrillic
by either a hooked z or an uncialised minuscule 3 &). Obviously 5
must have ha
its modern pronunciation
(z) in the 9th century,
-when Const
e (St Cyril)
a disciple adopted the Greek uncials
to represent
acedonian variety of Slavonic spoken
e sounds of th
on the periphery of his native
essalonica 4:s).In view of this, another
character was needed. to represent the a,ffricate, once symbolised
by <, and the inventors of the earliest Slavonic alphabets had to go
outside the contemporary
Greek ductus for an appropriate symbol,
it may well be such a
unless Cyrillic s is a stylised reversal of
ernative character for
reversal is su ported by the existence
rough the corresponddzin Cyrillic. This character has a short s
value

of a character

ing character for z, wlhich is obviously

2. Here we have made a very helpful

from the Greek uncial

discover-v:
the same basic
_
character, derived from Greek *<, seems to epresent both dz and z,
and the difference between their phonetic va es is adequately shown
by what is essentially an incorporated diacritic mark. The relation of
dz to ,z is made visually clear, and the former is regarded as a phonetic
unit requiring a separate symbol, as Classical Greek required 5 for
what must also have been a phonetic unit and not merely a juxtaas suggested by the spelling ~6.
of a consonantal
group in Classical
Qprianismore apparent than real. The inter-

velopment

44) J. Vajs, RukovtY hldi~kske' pnkogm~ie

(Psague,
1932) ; Je. F. Karskij,
(Leningrad,
1928).
Slav janska ja kidlovska ja pale .kgrafijsz.
4s) See my articles The Old EIulgarian Language-Type
(Archivum Lisguis(Tlze Slavcmic
tiwm I, 2, Glasgow, 1949) and !;+ources of Old Church Slavonic
and East EzcrcqfwanRmiew XXWII,
7 1, London,
1950).

prdation
finnation
$& w&h
the other

of <, emanaW$ fmm

from the origin of
m be traced back

*d + j, as zd seems to receive

Slavonic ckVd0

Slc~

Russian has 4 Serbian has 8, Polish and

11-q dz, Czech has 2 and Slovene has j (e.g. Old
margin, R&an W&Z, Serbian da,
Polish mkda, Sllovak, me&g,
1#
Czech me&e, Slovene me@, all of them going back to an I.-E.
and we are led to assume that fd represents either a transposition
of the constituents of df or a simplification of #dZ(cf. Old B

COnsOnantalgroup;

X
wie have considered a representative sekction of the evide
advanced by comparative study for the phonetk ~~bpiX?ta~bn of
< and may now proceed to an examination of the relevant lexical
material in the light of modern phonetic knojMledge. Study of the
&t&ution of ahis character in the c1aSsiCa.l ttic voc
listed in standard dictionaries 47) shows that it occurs ody i
in both words and syllables, i.e. it follows a pause or a vowel (e.g.
&$VU~CI yoke, c?jAoszeal, ?&&I yoke, c
rian, 6Coqbranch, ~+KJ
I think, &pxdi&~
save), The character
hefore ut and obu;it is commonest
before q and o and, unlike 6 d J1, is never final; medially, i.e. at
of a syllable, it tends to follow t and a more oft&n than
not. For purposes of syllabification is treated as a unit and is a&
tittefi to begin a syllable (e.g. tpp~~-~i-&
this function it
res most profinently at the behe other consonantal gr&ps
d

ut reference to

iagram:

._._

Palatalisatio

rication

a horizontal association, whit

the dental and alveolar are
similar mav be seen in t
d (cf. Lakian
sogis judge
aa) See my review of K. Kepes
The Slavo~eic and East

the direction

ussia

ise

of

(< d + i) tends als~ to change into the pdatal PlmiVe (e.g. Czech
ted (now). ant the normal tendency is to produce slants.
The
hush-sibilant figares in such affricates in twcj guises - either as d3
and Macedonian &). The
(cf. Polish &, Serbian a) or as d3 Serbian
\
former may pass into 1, as it has in Slovene (cf. Serbian m&j with
Slovene meja), the latter into q3 ) as LJ French (cf. French joie with
Old French joi and English joy). The possibility of a change of 3
into 2 is seen in Baltic (cf. Lithuanian zi&i to know with Latvian
z&it), and the same language-group illustrates the intimate association
of g, and dz (cf. Lithuanian &iz to drink with Latvian &&) without
d3 to connect them. Similarly Persian z is directly preceded by a
PaHavi j (d3) (cf. Pahlayi roj *daywith Persian roz). The development
* however as natural as that of 3 into z and may
be
of d5 into &z1s
seen by comparing standard Italian d3, as in gid formerly, already,
giovane youth(ful) with Venetian dx in &a, &ovine. Thus a the
lines of development in our diagram are accounted for, and in the
light of them we can now establish the value of Classicd Greek c as
a phonetic entity,
l

XI
Assuming the manifest ori@d
represented

unity of the phonetic

by r and its subsequent SimpbfiCatiOn,

we

compound

CUlnot

COIKei~??

of historically attested phonetic developments

is v&d, for such a compound would be easily analysable into its
components z and d, or, in other words, into distinct phonemes, which
even the phonetically untraine ear would be inclined to keep apart
as distinct acoustic impressions. These components are specified by the
grammarians of antiquity as constituting c, but they are placed in
the order z + d, in contrast to the components of 6 and JI, whose sibilant
element (s) comes last. This interpretation of c, as we already know,
is confirmed by numerous etymologies, from the opa ue Bcos, whose
pfionetic structure m2 be elucidated by the comparative method,
to the transparent Af+at& with its transformation of the ending
-83~~
and such misspellings as A&Jw~. Various dialectal forms offer
SQPPoe here: in Aeolic and Asian Ionic -a& often ccrrcspclnds to
%tic -r- fe.& x$& for Z&G;,ypov&$w for cppo\r~ic~).There are also
instances of C as the equivalent of zd in transcripts
of foreign
names
hG
f2~~%$
CM
Persian Awamazdi):, of the substitution
af
it as zd,

if our

scheme

79
6 for 1: in intervocalic position, which is normally 4g) interpreted
as representing syncope of z parallel to that of TVbetween consonants
(cf. Ae&-Ionic
@So < F&?& with PGLw pedii < *p&w), and
of the 10s~ of v alike before G and < (cf. CW&MU I draw together
with ~U?&JW.UI gird up). It is clear from this catalogue of evidence
that the items in it are not of equal value: some of them belong to
Classical Attic, others to divergent dialects; some are established by
the application of the comparative method, others from the native
resources of the language. The possibility of different treatments
in
cognate dialects must be necessarily conceded, and this will eliminate.
the dialectal evidence which is not strictly c gt3nt to our argument
here. Spelling errors too, unless they are suf ciently frequent, may
be discounted, and too much emphasis need not be laid on parallels
involving CFand x (6). Although s and z are phonologically correlative,
they are acoustically distinct, with at least voice as the differential,
and can therefore function independent y. In saying this we do not
underestimate
the validity of the evide e for the interpretation
of <
as zd, but muster and phonetic assessment of the available data
would seem to show that c symbolised dz, to which zd may well have
been assimilated in Classical Attic. \Ve are inclined to concur with
unciation, but, unlike
M. Lejeune 50), that < represents a unifor
him, we believe that zd must have become 11~
and not the reverse.
The character < must have been allocated to a phonetic and phonological unit, and this could have been only dz, which is one outcome
of the transformation
of both *dj and *gj (cf. Zel;~ with Sanskrit
&uw~, Cypriote CE earth with Attic ~7) as well as one member of
the heteroglottic ratio-voiced affricate/j (cf. Q$-q with Sanskrit y$$
It was also natural for dz to discard its plosive element in course of
time. This may be illustrated, for instance, by the form acx,uicx(2nd
century B.C.), which reflects Doric ?&J& and &tic CyipSa loss (cf.
esychius). Initially, o for the sound z
however ~aphc for ~q.da in
may also be seen in the Greek name (CE$~~) of the Phrygian goddess
Zemele (cf. Avestan Za;t,z, Lithuanian 2%unynrz Earth Goddess) 51).
-_
48) E. H. Sturtevant, The Pronz.wiaGg?z oj Greek and Latin (Philadelphia,
1940).
cit. in fn 3.
51) P. Kretschmer,
Semele und Pinnvsos
(Aus der A now&z, Berlin, 1890) ;
F. Altheim, Terra6 Mater (Giessen, 193 lj ; L. H. Gray, The F~wdxt~o~u of tk
Iranian Rsiigiora-s (Bombay, 1929).
50) 09.

The explanation of the tnditiond equation c = zd, which goes

Attic
back to Dionysius Thrax, must qa
L sought chiefly in the para,&
If ()sgi&
and Aeolic spellings of identic lexunes (e.g. Z&65:C8&).
c WS.S pronounced dx, as we have tried to prove in this paper, & ia
Aeolic must be a development from it by metathesis later than the
r LJ
Old Bugari~~~~
Jd) u). The reverse _proce~ appears
9th cent-uqy-12
.v*RJ.
\I&&.
to have taken place in Attic, where dz WAS paramount and copsequently attracted to itself the original juxtapositions of 2 and d icf,
Attic V,w I sit clown with Doric E&I < *CW&GJ).

--

---

51) See fn 46.

of Homeric a~ in, say, pbac~1qmiddle and Attic
(3 in @GO<1s
* mepted as representing an earlier ts (< ~~)1 this pPlo*etic
~~~~~~~~e~t of ers a complete parallel to that of c as the affricate & viz.
@ ) LIZ> 2. In other words, because of the regressive assimilation of
~~~~~~a~~ts
in (2reek, dz becomesZ,as LSbecomes S, whereas & can give only d.
sa) ff the intqxetarion