A Corpus Study of Attic Greek Alpha, Iota and Upsilon
Cory Robinson
Attic Vowels
Short LongAEIOY
Attic Vowels
Short Long
A
E H
I
O Ω
Y
Minimal Pairs
Allen (1987)“such contrasts are rare”
“no more numerous than true homonyms”
“the context will in any case seldom have left room for ambiguity”
Minimal Pairs
Example from German
/x/
[ç] [x]
Minimal Pairs
Example from German
/x/
[ç] [x]
However…Kuhchen (little cow) [|khu:çən]
Kuchen (cake) [|
khu:xən]
Phonemic or Allophonic?
Phonemic or Allophonic?
Allen (1987)Primarily concerned with phonetics
Teodorsson (1974)“Sequences of identical phonemes”
Woodard (1997)“Vowel length is phonemic in Greek”
Phonemic or Allophonic?
Complementary Distribution
The Corpus
The Corpus
Lysias (c. 445 – 380 B.C.)Attic orator
Everyday speech
Oration 32: Against Diogeiton
700 words
1,600 syllables
The Corpus
The Corpus
1O3 1O2 1O1 1N 1L 1A 1C1 1C2T A \N O S) EI :
M E \ NM H : \L A) H : /\ NT A \T A) W : /\
D R E S
The Corpus
Vowel LengthFirst marked c. 400 – 200 B.C.
Poetry
Accent
The Corpus
SortingBy syllable
All syllables together
For any factors correlating to the length of alpha, iota, upsilon
Results
222
3952 43
5
78
34
6 8
302
144
194
121
A E H O ΩA: A? I I: I? Y Y: Y?
Frequency of Vowels in Corpus
Results
Short Long
A 85% 15%
I 90% 10%
Y 85% 15%
E/H 68% 32%
O/Ω 62% 38%
Conclusion
Distinction is phonemic
No need for new letters
Future Work
Bigger corpus
Historical factors
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