Ancient Greek phonology

Early East Greek

Most of the East Greek dialects palatalized or assibilated /t/ to [s] before /i/. West Greek, including Doric, did not undergo this sound change in certain cases, ^[6] and through the influence of Doric neither did the Thessalian and Boeotian dialects of Aeolic.

• Attic τίθησι, Doric τίθητι ('he places')

Attic εἰσί, Doric ἐντί ('they are')

Attic εἴκοσι, Doric ϝῑκατι ('twenty')

Arcadocypriot was one of the first Greek dialects in Greece. Mycenaean Greek, the form of Greek spoken before the Greek Dark Ages, seems to be an early form of Arcadocypriot. Clay tablets with Mycenaean Greek in Linear B have been found over a wide area, from Thebes in Central Greece, to Mycenae and Pylos on the Peloponnese, to Knossos on Crete. However, during the Ancient Greek period, Arcadocypriot was only spoken in Arcadia, in the interior of the Peloponnese, and on Cyprus. The dialects of these two areas remained remarkably similar despite the great geographical distance.

Aeolic is closely related to Arcadocypriot. It was originally spoken in eastern Greece north of the Peloponnese: in Thessaly, in Locris, Phocis, and southern Aetolia, and in Boeotia, a region close to Athens. Aeolic was carried to Aeolis, on the coast of Asia Minor, and the nearby island of Lesbos. By the time of Ancient Greek, the only Aeolic dialects that remained in Greece were Thessalian and Boeotian. The Aeolic dialects of Greece adopted some characteristics of Doric, since they were located near Doric-speaking areas, while the Aeolian and Lesbian dialects did not.

Boeotian underwent vowel shifts similar to those that occurred later in Koine Greek, converting /ai̯/ to [ɛː], /eː/ to [iː], ^[7] and /oi̯/ to [yː]. ^{[8] [9]} These are reflected in spelling (see Boeotian Greek phonology). Aeolic also retained /w/. ^[10]

Homeric or Epic Greek, the literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, Iliad and the Odyssey, is based on early Ionic and Aeolic, with Arcadocypriot forms. In its original form, it likely had the semivowel /w/, as indicated by the meter in some cases. This sound is sometimes written as ⟨Ϝ⟩ in inscriptions, but not in the Attic-influenced text of Homer. ^{[11] [12]}

West Greek

The Doric dialect, the most important member of West Greek, originated from western Greece. Through the Dorian invasion, Doric displaced the native Arcadocypriot and Aeolic dialects in some areas of central Greece, on the Peloponnese, and on Crete, and strongly influenced the Thessalian and Boeotian dialects of Aeolic.

Doric dialects are classified by which vowel they have as the result of compensatory lengthening and contraction: those that have η ω are called Severer or Old, and those that have ει ου, as Attic does, are called Milder or New. ^[5] Laconian and Cretan, spoken in Laconia, the region of Sparta, and on Crete, are two Old Doric dialects.

Attic and Ionic

Attic and Ionic share a vowel shift not present in any other East or West Greek dialects. They both raised Proto-Greek long /aː/ to [æː] (see below). Later on, Attic lowered [æː] found immediately after /eir/ back to [aː], differentiating itself from Ionic. This long vowel then merged with /ɛː/ and was noted <Η> in the Ionic alphabet (which became used by the Athenians in the classical era) ^{[7] [13]} All other East and West Greek dialects retain original /aː/.

Ionic was spoken around the Aegean Sea, including in Ionia, a region of Anatolia south of Aeolis, for which it was named. Ionic contracts vowels less often than Attic (see below).

Attic is usually the dialect taught in modern introductory Ancient Greek courses, and the one that has much of the most important literature written in it. It was spoken in Athens and Attica, the surrounding region. Old Attic, which was used by the historian Thucydides and the tragedians, replaced the native Attic /ttrr/ with the /ssrs/ of other dialects. Later writers, such as Plato, use the native Attic forms.

Later Greek

Koine, the form of Greek spoken during the Hellenistic period, was primarily based on Attic Greek, with some influences from other dialects. It underwent many sound changes, including development of aspirated and voiced stops into fricatives and the shifting of many vowels and diphthongs to [i] (iotacism). In the Byzantine period it developed into Medieval Greek, which later became standard Modern Greek or Demotic.

Tsakonian, a modern form of Greek mutually unintelligible with Standard Modern Greek, derived from the Laconian variety of Doric, and is therefore the only surviving descendant of a non-Attic dialect.

Stops

Ancient Greek had nine stops. The grammarians classified them in three groups, distinguished by voice-onset time: voiceless aspirated, ^[14] voiceless unaspirated (tenuis), ^[15] and voiced. ^[16] The aspirated stops are written /pʰtʰkʰ/. The tenuis stops are written /p˭t˭k˭/, with ⟨˭⟩ representing lack of aspiration and voicing, or /ptk/. The voiced stops are written /bdɡ/. For the Ancient Greek terms for these three groups, see below; see also the section on spirantization.

English distinguishes two types of stops: voiceless and voiced. Voiceless stops have three main pronunciations (allophones): moderately aspirated at the beginning of a word before a vowel, unaspirated after /s/, and unaspirated, unreleased, glottalized, or debuccalized at the end of a word. English voiced stops are often only partially voiced.^{[ citation needed ]} Thus, some pronunciations of the English stops are similar to the pronunciations of Ancient Greek stops.

Fricatives

Attic Greek had only two fricative phonemes: the voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ and the glottal fricative /h/.

/h/ is often called the aspirate (see below). Attic generally kept it, but some non-Attic dialects during the Classical period lost it (see below). It mostly occurred at the beginning of words, because it was usually lost between vowels, except in two rare words. Also, when a stem beginning with /h/ was the second part of a compound word, the /h/ sometimes remained, probably depending on whether the speaker recognized that the word was a compound. This can be seen in Old Attic inscriptions, where /h/ was written using the letterform of eta (see below), which was the source of H in the Latin alphabet: ^[17]

• Old Attic inscriptional forms

ΕΥΗΟΡΚΟΝ/eú.hor.kon/, standard εὔορκον/eú.or.kon/ ('faithful to an oath')

ΠΑΡΗΕΔΡΟΙ/pár.he.droi/, standard πάρεδροι/pá.re.droi/ ('sitting beside, assessor')

ΠΡΟΣΗΕΚΕΤΟ/pros.hɛː.ké.tɔː/, standard προσηκέτω/pro.sɛː.ké.tɔː/ ('let him be present')

• εὐαἵ/eu.haí/ ('yay!')
• ταὧς/ta.hɔ́ɔs/ ('peacock')

/s/ was a voiceless coronal sibilant. It was transcribed using the symbol for /s/ in Coptic and an Indo-Aryan language, as in Dianisiyasa for Διονυσίου ('of Dionysius') on an Indian coin. This indicates that the Greek sound was a hissing sound rather than a hushing sound: like English s in see rather than sh in she. It was pronounced as a voiced [z] before voiced consonants. ^[18]

According to W.S. Allen, zeta ⟨ζ⟩ in Attic Greek likely represented the consonant cluster /sd/, phonetically [zd]. For metrical purposes it was treated as a double consonant, thus forming a heavy syllable. In Archaic Greek, when the letter was adopted from Phoenician zayin, the sound was probably an affricate [ dz ]. In Koine Greek, ⟨ζ⟩ represented /z/. It is more likely that this developed from [dz] rather than from Attic /sd/. ^[19]

• Ζεύς ('Zeus') — Archaic /d͡zeús/, Attic /sdeús/[zdeǔs], late Koine /zefs/

/pk/ in the clusters /psks/ were somewhat aspirated, as [pʰs] and [kʰs], but in this case the aspiration of the first element was not phonologically contrastive: no words distinguish /ps*pʰs*bs/, for example (see below for explanation). ^{[20] [ clarification needed ]}

Nasals

Ancient Greek has two nasals: the bilabial nasal /m/, written μ and the alveolar nasal /n/, written ν . Depending on the phonetic environment, the phoneme /n/ was pronounced as [mnŋ]; see below. On occasion, the /n/ phoneme participates in true gemination without any assimilation in place of articulation, as for example in the word ἐννέα. Artificial gemination for metrical purposes is also found occasionally, as in the form ἔννεπε, occurring in the first verse of Homer's Odyssey.

Liquids

Ancient Greek has the liquids /l/ and /r/, written λ and ρ respectively.

The letter lambda λ probably represented a lateral ("clear") [ l ] as in Modern Greek and most European languages, rather than a velarized ("dark") [ ɫ ] as in English in coda position and Balto-Slavic languages.

The letter rho ρ was pronounced as an alveolar trill [r], as in Italian or Modern Greek rather than as in standard varieties of English or French. At the beginning of a word, it was pronounced as a voiceless alveolar trill [r̥]. In some cases, initial ⟨ρ⟩ in poetry was pronounced as a geminate (phonemically /rr/, phonetically [r̥ː]), shown by the fact that the previous syllable is counted as heavy: for instance τίνι ῥυθμῷ must be pronounced as τίνι ρρυθμῷ in Euripides, Electra 772, τὰ ῥήματα as τὰ ρρήματα in Aristophanes’ play The Frogs 1059, and βέλεα ῥέον as βέλεα ρρέον in Iliad 12.159. ^[21]

Semivowels

The semivowels /jw/ were not present in classical Attic Greek at the beginnings of words. However, diphthongs ending in /iu/ were usually pronounced with a double semivowel [jjww] or [jːwː] before a vowel. Allen suggests that these were simply semivocalic allophones of the vowels, although in some cases they developed from earlier semivowels. ^{[22] [23] [24]}

The labio-velar approximant /w/ at the beginning of a syllable survived in some non-Attic dialects, such as Arcadian and Aeolic; a voiceless labio-velar approximant /ʍ/ probably also occurred in Pamphylian and Boeotian. /w/ is sometimes written with the letter digamma ⟨Ϝ⟩, and later with ⟨Β⟩ and ⟨ΟΥ⟩, and /ʍ/ was written with digamma and heta ⟨ϜΗ⟩: ^[22]

• Pamphylian ϜΗΕ/ʍe/, written as ἕ in Homer (the reflexive pronoun)
• Boeotian ϜΗΕΚΑΔΑΜΟΕ/ʍe.ka.daː.moe/ for Attic Ἑκαδήμῳ Akademos

Evidence from the poetic meter of Homer suggests that /wʍ/ also occurred in the Archaic Greek of the Iliad and Odyssey, although they would not have been pronounced by Attic speakers and are not written in the Attic-influenced form of the text. The presence of these consonants would explain some cases of absence of elision, some cases in which the meter demands a heavy syllable but the text has a light syllable (positional quantity), and some cases in which a long vowel before a short vowel is not shortened (absence of epic correption). ^[22]

In the table below the scansion of the examples is shown with the breve ⟨˘⟩ for light syllables, the macron ⟨¯⟩ for heavy ones, and the pipe ⟨|⟩ for the divisions between metrical feet. The sound /w/ is written using digamma, and /ʍ/ with digamma and rough breathing, although the letter never appears in the actual text.

Doubled consonants

Single and double (geminated) consonants were distinguished from each other in Ancient Greek: for instance, /pkʰsr/ contrasted with /pːkʰːsːrː/ (also written /ppkkʰssrr/). In Ancient Greek poetry, a vowel followed by a double consonant counts as a heavy syllable in meter. Doubled consonants usually only occur between vowels, not at the beginning or the end of a word, except in the case of /r/, for which see above.

Gemination was lost in Standard Modern Greek, so that all consonants that used to be geminated are pronounced as singletons. Cypriot Greek, the Modern Greek dialect of Cyprus, however, preserves geminate consonants.

A doubled ⟨ττ⟩/tː/ in Attic corresponds to a ⟨σσ⟩/sː/ in Ionic and other dialects. This sound arose from historic palatalization (see below).

Monophthongs

Diphthongs

Attic had many diphthongs, all falling diphthongs with /iu/ as the second semivocalic element, and either with a short or long first element. Diphthongs with a short first element are sometimes called "proper diphthongs", while diphthongs with a long first element are sometimes called "improper diphthongs." ^[39] Whether they have a long or a short first element, all diphthongs count as two morae when applying the accent rules, like long vowels, except for /aioi/ in certain cases. Overall Attic and Koine show a pattern of monophthongization: they tend to change diphthongs to single vowels. ^[32]

The most common diphthongs were /aiaueuoi/ ^[40] and /ɛːi̯aːi̯ɔːi̯/. The long diphthongs /ɛːu̯aːu̯ɔːu̯/ occurred rarely. ^[41] The diphthongs /eiouyi/ changed to /eːuːyː/ in the early Classical period in most cases, but /eiyi/ remained before vowels.

In the tables below, the diphthongs that were monophthongized in most cases are preceded by an asterisk, and the rarer diphthongs are in parentheses.

The second element of a diphthong /iu/ was often pronounced as a doubled semivowel [jjww] or [jːwː] before vowels, and in other cases it was often lost: ^[24]

• Ἀθηναῖοι/a.tʰɛɛ.nái.oi/ ('Athenians'): [a.tʰɛː.naĵ.joi]
• ποιῶ/poi.ɔ́ɔ/ ('I do'): either [poj.jɔ̂ː] or [po.jɔ̂ː]
• Doric στοιᾱ́ /stoi.aá/: [sto.jǎː]

Attic στοᾱ́/sto.aá/: [sto.ǎː]

• κελεύω/ke.leú.ɔː/ ('I command'): [ke.lew̌.wɔː]
• σημεῖον/sɛɛ.méi.on/ ('sign'): [sɛː.meĵ.jon]

The diphthong /oi/ merged with the long close front rounded vowel /yː/ in Koine. It likely first became [øi]. Change to [øi] would be assimilation: the back vowel [o] becoming front [ø] because of the following front vowel [i]. This may have been the pronunciation in Classical Attic. Later it must have become [øː], parallel to the monophthongization of /eiou/, and then [yː], but when words with ⟨οι⟩ were borrowed into Latin, the Greek digraph was represented with the Latin digraph ⟨oe⟩, representing the diphthong /oe/. ^[40]

Thucydides reports the confusion of two words (2:54), which makes more sense if /oi/ was pronounced [øi]: ^[40]

• λοιμός/loi.mós/ ('plague'): possibly [løi.mós]

λῑμός/lii.mós/ ('famine'): [liː.mós]

In the diphthongs /au̯eu̯ɛːu̯/, the offglide /u/ became a consonant in Koine Greek, and they became Modern Greek /aveviv/. The long diphthongs /aːi̯ɛːi̯ɔːi̯/ lost their offglide and merged with the long vowels /aːɛːɔː/ by the time of Koine Greek.

Consonant spelling

Most double consonants are written using double letters: ⟨ππ σσ ρρ⟩ represent /pːsːrː/ or /ppssrr/. The geminate versions of the aspirated stops /pʰːtʰːkʰː/ are written with the digraphs ⟨πφ τθ κχ⟩, ^[42] and geminate /ɡː/ is written as ⟨κγ⟩, since ⟨γγ⟩ represents [ŋɡ] in the standard orthography of Ancient Greek. ^[43]

• ἔκγονος (ἐκ-γονος) /éɡ.ɡo.nos/ ('offspring'), occasionally εγγονοσ in inscriptions

ἐγγενής/eŋ.ɡe.nɛɛ́s/ ('inborn') (εν-γενής)

/s/ was written with sigma ⟨Σ σ ς⟩. The clusters /psks/ were written as ⟨ΦΣ ΧΣ⟩ in the Old Attic alphabet, but as ⟨Ψ Ξ⟩ in the standard Ionic alphabet.

Voiceless /r/ is usually written with the spiritus asper as ῥ- and transcribed as rh in Latin. The same orthography is sometimes encountered when /r/ is geminated, as in ⟨συρρέω⟩, sometimes written ⟨συῤῥέω⟩, giving rise to the transliteration rrh.

Vowel spelling

The close front rounded vowels /y/ and /yː/ (an evolution of /u/ and /uː/ respectively) are both represented in writing by the letter upsilon (υ) irrespective of length.

In Classical Attic, the spellings ει and ου represented respectively the vowels /eː/ and /uː/ (the latter being an evolution of /oː/), from original diphthongs, compensatory lengthening, or contraction.

The above information about the usage of the vowel letters applies to the classical orthography of Attic, after Athens took over the orthographic conventions of the Ionic alphabet in 403 BC. In the earlier, traditional Attic orthography there was only a smaller repertoire of vowel symbols: α, ε, ι, ο, and υ. The letters η and ω were still missing. All five vowel symbols could at that stage denote either a long or a short vowel. Moreover, the letters ε and ο could respectively denote the long open-mid /ɛː,ɔː/, the long close-mid /eː,oː/ and the short mid phonemes /e,o/. The Ionic alphabet brought the new letters η and ω for the one set of long vowels, and the convention of using the digraph spellings ει and ου for the other, leaving simple ε and ο to be used only for the short vowels. However, the remaining vowel letters α, ι and υ continued to be ambiguous between long and short phonemes.

Spelling of /h/

In the Old Attic alphabet, /h/ was written with the letterform of eta ⟨Η⟩. In the Ionic dialect of Asia Minor, /h/ was lost early on, and the letter ⟨Η⟩ in the Ionic alphabet represented /ɛː/. In 403 BC, when the Ionic alphabet was adopted in Athens, the sound /h/ ceased to be represented in writing.

In some inscriptions /h/ was represented by a symbol formed from the left-hand half of the original letter: ⟨Ͱ⟩ ( ). Later grammarians, during the time of the Hellenistic Koine, developed that symbol further into a diacritic, the rough breathing (δασὺ πνεῦμα; Latin : spiritus asper; δασεῖα for short), which was written on the top of the initial vowel. Correspondingly, they introduced the mirror image diacritic called smooth breathing (ψιλὸν πνεῦμα; Latin : spiritus lenis; ψιλή for short), which indicated the absence of /h/. These marks were not used consistently until the time of the Byzantine Empire.

Syllable weight

Syllables in Ancient Greek were either light or heavy. This distinction is important in Ancient Greek poetry, which was made up of patterns of heavy and light syllables. Syllable weight is based on both consonants and vowels. Ancient Greek accent, by contrast, is only based on vowels.

A syllable ending in a short vowel, or the diphthongs αι and οι in certain noun and verb endings, was light. All other syllables were heavy: that is, syllables ending in a long vowel or diphthong, a short vowel and consonant, or a long vowel or diphthong and consonant.

• λέγω/lé.ɡɔɔ/: light – heavy;
• τοιαῦται/toi.âu.tai/: heavy – heavy – light;
• βουλεύσειε/buː.leú.sei.e/: heavy – heavy – heavy – light;
• ἠελίοιο/ɛɛ.e.lí.oi.o/: heavy – light – light – heavy – light.

Greek grammarians called heavy syllables μακραί ('long', singular μακρά), and placed them in two categories. They called a syllable with a long vowel or diphthong φύσει μακρά ('long by nature'), and a syllable ending in a consonant θέσει μακρά ('long by position'). These terms were translated into Latin as naturā longa and positiōne longa. However, Indian grammarians distinguished vowel length and syllable weight by using the terms heavy and light for syllable quantity and the terms long and short only for vowel length. ^{[45] [46]} This article adopts their terminology, since not all metrically heavy syllables have long vowels; e.g.:

• ἥ (fem rel pron ) /hɛɛ́/ is a heavy syllable having a long vowel, "long by nature";
• οἷ (masc dat sg pron ) /hói/ is a heavy syllable having a diphthong, "long by nature";
• ὅς (masc rel pron) /hós/ is a heavy syllable ending in a consonant, "long by position".

Poetic meter shows which syllables in a word counted as heavy, and knowing syllable weight allows us to determine how consonant clusters were divided between syllables. Syllables before double consonants, and most syllables before consonant clusters, count as heavy. Here the letters ⟨ζ, ξ and ψ⟩ count as consonant clusters. This indicates that double consonants and most consonant clusters were divided between syllables, with at least the first consonant belonging to the preceding syllable. ^[47]

• ἄλλος/ál.los/ ('different'): heavy – heavy
• ὥστε/hɔɔ́s.te/ ('so that'): heavy – light
• ἄξιος/ák.si.os/ ('worthy'): heavy – light – heavy
• προσβλέψαιμι/pros.blép.sai.mi/ ('may I see!'): heavy – heavy – heavy – light
• χαριζομένη/kʰa.ris.do.mé.nɛɛ/ ('rejoicing' fem sg): light – heavy – light – light – heavy

In Attic poetry, syllables before a cluster of a stop and a liquid or nasal are commonly light rather than heavy. This was called correptio Attica ('Attic shortening'), since here an ordinarily "long" syllable became "short". ^{[48] [49]}

• πατρός ('of a father'): Homeric /pat.rós/ (heavy-heavy), Attic /pa.trós/ (light-heavy)

Onset

In Attic Greek, any single consonant and many consonant clusters can occur as a syllable onset (the beginning of a syllable). Certain consonant clusters occur as onsets, while others do not occur.

Six stop clusters occur. All of them agree in voice-onset time, and begin with a labial or velar and end with a dental. Thus, the clusters /pʰtʰkʰtʰptktbdɡd/ are allowed. Certain stop clusters do not occur as onsets: clusters beginning with a dental and ending with a labial or velar, and clusters of stops that disagree in voice onset time. ^[50]

Coda

In Ancient Greek, any vowel may end a word, but the only consonants that may normally end a word are /nrs/. If a stop ended a word in Proto-Indo-European, this was dropped in Ancient Greek, as in ποίημα (from ποίηματ; compare the genitive singular ποιήματος). Other consonants may end a word, however, when a final vowel is elided before a word beginning in a vowel, as in ἐφ᾿ ἵππῳ (from ἐπὶ ἵππῳ).

Debuccalization

In Proto-Greek, the PIE sibilant *s became /h/ by debuccalization in many cases. ^[57]

• PIE *so, seh₂ > ὁ, ἡ/hohɛː/ ('the') (m f) — compare Sanskrit sá sā́

PIE *septḿ̥ > ἑπτά /hep.tá/ ('seven') — compare Latin septem, Sanskrit sapta

Clusters of *s and a sonorant (liquid or nasal) at the beginning of a word became a voiceless resonant in some forms of Archaic Greek. Voiceless [r̥] remained in Attic at the beginning of words, and became the regular allophone of /r/ in this position; voiceless /ʍ/ merged with /h/; and the rest of the voiceless resonants merged with the voiced resonants. ^[58]

• PIE *srew- > ῥέϝω > Attic ῥέω/r̥é.ɔː/ ('flow') — compare Sanskrit srávanti (3rd pl)

PIE *sroweh₂ > Corfu ΡΗΟϜΑΙΣΙ/r̥owaisi/ (dat pl), Attic ῥοή[r̥o.ɛ̌ː] ('stream')

• PIE *swe > Pamphylian ϜΗΕ/ʍe/, Attic ἕ/hé/ ( refl pron )
• PIE *slagʷ- > Corfu ΛΗΑΒΩΝ/l̥aboːn/, Attic λαβών/la.bɔ̌ːn/ ('taking') ( aor ppl )

PIE *s remained in clusters with stops and at the end of a word: ^[59]

• PIE *h₁esti > ἐστί/es.tí/ ('is') — compare Sanskrit ásti, Latin est

PIE *seǵʰ-s- > ἕξω/hék.sɔː/ ('I will have')

PIE *ǵenH₁os > γένος/ɡénos/ ('kind') — compare Sanskrit jánas, Latin genus

The PIE semivowel *y, IPA /j/, was sometimes debuccalized and sometimes strengthened initially. How this development was conditioned is unclear; the involvement of the laryngeals has been suggested. In certain other positions, it was kept, and frequently underwent other sound changes: ^[60]

• PIE *yos, yeH₂ > ὅς , ἥ [hóshɛ̌ː] ('who') (rel pron) — compare Sanskrit yás, yā́
• PIE *yugóm > early /dzu.ɡón/ > Attic ζυγόν/sdy.ɡón/ ('yoke') — compare Sanskrit yugá, Latin jugum
• *mor-ya > Proto-Greek *móřřā > μοῖρα/mói.ra/ ('part') (compare μόρος)

Between vowels, *s became /h/. Intervocalic /h/ probably occurred in Mycenaean. In most cases it was lost by the time of Ancient Greek. In a few cases, it was transposed to the beginning of the word. ^[61] Later, initial /h/ was lost by psilosis.

• PIE *ǵénh₁es-os > PGr *genehos > Ionic γένεος/ɡé.ne.os/ > Attic γένους ('of a race') /ɡé.nuːs/ (contraction; gen. of γένος )
• Mycenaean pa-we-a₂, possibly /pʰar.we.ha/, later φάρεα/pʰǎː.re.a/ ('pieces of cloth')
• PIE *(H₁)éwsoH₂ > Proto-Greek *éuhō > εὕω/heǔ.ɔː/ ('singe')

By morphological leveling, intervocalic /s/ was kept in certain noun and verb forms: for instance, the /s/ marking the stems for the future and aorist tenses. ^[61]

• λύω, λύσω, ἔλυσα/lyý.ɔːlyý.sɔːé.lyy.sa/ ('I release, I will release, I released')

Grassmann's law

Through Grassmann's law, an aspirated consonant loses its aspiration when followed by another aspirated consonant in the next syllable; this law also affects /h/ resulting from debuccalization of *s; for example:

• PIE *dʰéh₁- > ἔθην/étʰɛːn/ ('I placed') (aor)

*dʰí-dʰeh₁- > τίθημι/tí.tʰɛː.mi/ ('I place') (pres)

*dʰé-dʰeh₁- > τέθηκα/té.tʰɛː.ka/ ('I have placed') (perf)

• *tʰrikʰ-s > θρίξ /tʰríks/ ('hair') (nom sg)

*tʰrikʰ-es > τρίχες/trí.kʰes/ ('hairs') (nom. pl)

• PIE *seǵʰ-s- > ἕξω/hé.ksɔː/ ('I will have') (fut)

*seǵʰ- > ἔχω /é.kʰɔː/ ('I have') (pres)

Palatalization

In some cases, the sound ⟨ττ⟩/tː/ in Attic corresponds to the sound ⟨σσ⟩/sː/ in other dialects. These sounds developed from palatalization of κ, χ, ^[62] and sometimes τ, θ, ^[63] and γ before the pre-Greek semivowel /j/. This sound was likely pronounced as an affricate [ ts ] or [ tʃ ] earlier in the history of Greek, but inscriptions do not show the spelling ⟨τσ⟩, which suggests that an affricate pronunciation did not occur in the Classical period. ^[64]

• *ēk-yōn > *ētsōn > ἥσσων, Attic ἥττων ('weaker') — compare ἦκα ('softly')
• PIE *teh₂g-yō > *tag-yō > *tatsō > τάσσω, Attic τάττω ('I arrange') — compare ταγή ('battle line') and Latin tangō
• PIE *glōgʰ-yeh₂ > *glokh-ya > *glōtsa > γλῶσσα, Attic γλῶττα ('tongue') — compare γλωχίν ('point')

Loss of labiovelars

Mycenaean Greek had three labialized velar stops /kʷʰkʷɡʷ/, aspirated, tenuis, and voiced. These derived from PIE labiovelars and from sequences of a velar and /w/, and were similar to the three regular velars of Ancient Greek /kʰkɡ/, except with added lip-rounding. They were written all using the same symbols in Linear B, and are transcribed as q. ^[65]

In Ancient Greek, all labialized velars merged with other stops: labials /pʰpb/, dentals /tʰtd/, and velars /kʰkɡ/. Which one they became depended on dialect and phonological environment. Because of this, certain words that originally had labialized velars have different stops depending on dialect, and certain words from the same root have different stops even in the same Ancient Greek dialect. ^[66]

• PIE, PGr *kʷis, kʷid > Attic τίς, τί, Thessalian Doric κίς, κί ('who?, what?') — compare Latin quis, quid

PIE, PGr *kʷo-yos > Attic ποῖος, Ionic κοῖος ('what kind?')

• PIE *gʷʰen-yō > PGr *kʷʰenyō > Attic θείνω ('I strike')

*gʷʰón-os > PGr *kʷʰónos > Attic φόνος ('slaughtering')

• PIE kʷey(H₁)- ('notice') > Mycenaean qe-te-o ('paid'), Ancient Greek τίνω ('pay')

τιμή ('honor')

ποινή ('penalty') > Latin poena)

Near /uuː/ or /w/, the labialized velars had already lost their labialization in the Mycenaean period. ^[65]

• PG *gʷow-kʷolos > Mycenaean qo-u-ko-ro, Ancient Greek βουκόλος ('cowherd')

Mycenaean a-pi-qo-ro, Ancient Greek ἀμφίπολος ('attendant')

Psilosis

Through psilosis ('stripping'), from the term for lack of /h/ (see below), the /h/ was lost even at the beginnings of words. This sound change did not occur in Attic until the Koine period, but occurred in East Ionic and Lesbian Aeolic, and therefore can be seen in certain Homeric forms. ^[67] These dialects are called psilotic. ^[57]

• Homeric ἠέλιος/ɛɛ.é.li.os/, Attic ἥλιος/hɛɛ́.li.os/ ('sun')
• Homeric ἠώς/ɛɛ.ɔɔ́s/, Attic ἑώς/he(.)ɔɔ́s/ ('dawn')
• Homeric οὖρος[óo.ros], Attic ὅρος/hó.ros/ ('border')

Even later, during the Koine Greek period, /h/ disappeared totally from Greek and never reappeared, resulting in Modern Greek not possessing this phoneme at all, approximating it instead in foreign borrowings using /x/ or /ç/ (or /∅/).

Spirantization

The Classical Greek aspirated and voiced stops changed to voiceless and voiced fricatives during the period of Koine Greek (spirantization, a form of lenition).

Spirantization of /tʰ/ occurred earlier in Laconian Greek. Some examples are transcribed by Aristophanes and Thucydides, such as ναὶ τὼ σιώ for ναὶ τὼ θεώ ('Yes, by the two gods!') and παρσένε σιά for παρθένε θεά ("virgin goddess!') ( Lysistrata 142 and 1263), σύματος for θύματος ('sacrificial victim') ( Histories book 5, chapter 77). ^[68] These spellings indicate that /tʰ/ was pronounced as a dental fricative [ θ ] or a sibilant [s], the same change that occurred later in Koine. Greek spelling, however, does not have a letter for a labial or velar fricative, so it is impossible to tell whether /pʰkʰ/ also changed to /fx/. ^[69]

Compensatory lengthening

In Attic, Ionic, and Doric, vowels were usually lengthened when a following consonant was lost. The syllable before the consonant was originally heavy, but loss of the consonant would cause it to be light. Therefore, the vowel before the consonant was lengthened, so that the syllable would continue to be heavy. This sound change is called compensatory lengthening, because the vowel length compensates for the loss of the consonant. The result of lengthening depended on dialect and time period. The table below shows all possible results:

Wherever the digraphs ⟨ει ου⟩ correspond to original diphthongs they are called "genuine diphthongs", in all other cases, they are called "spurious diphthongs". ^[38]

Contraction

In Attic, some cases of long vowels arose through contraction of adjacent short vowels where a consonant had been lost between them. ⟨ει⟩/eː/ came from contraction of ⟨εε⟩, and ⟨ου⟩/oː/ from contraction of ⟨εο⟩, ⟨οε⟩, or ⟨οο⟩. ⟨ω⟩/ɔː/ arose from ⟨αο⟩ and ⟨οα⟩, ⟨η⟩/ɛː/ from ⟨εα⟩, and ⟨ᾱ⟩/aː/ from ⟨αε⟩ and ⟨αα⟩. Contractions involving diphthongs ending in /i̯/ resulted in the long diphthongs /ɛːi̯aːi̯ɔːi̯/.

Uncontracted forms are found in other dialects, such as in Ionic.

Monophthongization

The diphthongs /eiou/ became the long monophthongs /eː/ and /oː/ before the Classical period.

Vowel raising and fronting

In Archaic Greek, upsilon ⟨Υ⟩ represented the back vowel /uuː/. In Attic and Ionic, this vowel was fronted around the 7th or 6th century BC. It likely first became central [ʉʉː], and then the front [yyː]. ^[30] For example, the onomatopoietic verb μῡκάομαι ("to moo") was archaically pronounced /muːkáomai̯/, but had become /myːkáomai̯/ in 5th century Attic.

During the Classical period, /oː/ – classically spelled ⟨ΟΥ⟩ – was raised to [uː], and thus took up the empty space of the earlier /uː/ phoneme. The fact that ⟨υ⟩ was never confused with ⟨ου⟩ indicates that ⟨υ⟩ was fronted before ⟨ου⟩ was raised.

In late Classical Greek, /eː/ was raised and merged with original /iː/. ^[70]

Attic–Ionic vowel shift

In Attic and Ionic, the Proto-Greek long /aː/ shifted to /ɛː/. This shift did not happen in the other dialects. Thus, some cases of Attic and Ionic η correspond to Doric and Aeolic ᾱ, and other cases correspond to Doric and Aeolic η. ^[71]

• Doric and Aeolic μᾱ́τηρ, Attic and Ionic μήτηρ[mǎː.tɛːrmɛ̌ːtɛːr] ('mother') — compare Latin māter

The vowel first shifted to /æː/, at which point it was distinct from Proto-Greek long /eː/, and then later /æː/ and /eː/ merged as /ɛː/. This is indicated by inscriptions in the Cyclades, which write Proto-Greek /eː/ as ⟨Ε⟩, but the shifted /æː/ as ⟨Η⟩ and new /aː/ from compensatory lengthening as ⟨Α⟩. ^[13]

In Attic, both /æː/ and Proto-Greek /eː/ were written as ⟨Η⟩, but they merged to /ɛː/ at the end of the 5th century BC. At this point, nouns in the masculine first declension were confused with third-declension nouns with stems in /es/. The first-declension nouns had /ɛː/ resulting from original /aː/, while the third-declension nouns had /ɛː/ resulting from contraction of /ea/. ^[13]

• Αἰσχίνης Aeschines (1st decl)

Αἰσχίνου (gen sg)

incorrect 3rd decl gen sgΑἰσχίνους

Αἰσχίνην (acc sg)

• Ἱπποκράτης Hippocrates (3rd decl)

Ἱπποκράτους (gen sg)

Ἱπποκράτη (acc sg)

incorrect 1st decl acc sgἹπποκράτην

In addition, words that had original η in both Attic and Doric were given false Doric forms with ᾱ in the choral passages of Athenian plays, indicating that Athenians could not distinguish the Attic-Ionic shifted ᾱ from original Proto-Greek η. ^[13]

• Attic and Doric πηδός ('blade of an oar')

incorrect Doric form πᾱδός

In Attic, /aː/ rather than /εː/ is found immediately after /eir/, except in certain cases where the sound ϝ/w/ formerly came between the /eir/ and the /aː/ (see above). ^[13]

• Doric ᾱ̔μέρᾱ, Attic ἡμέρᾱ, Ionic ἡμέρη/haː.mé.raːhɛː.mé.raːhɛː.mé.rɛː/ ('day')
• Attic οἵᾱ, Ionic οἵη[hoǰ.jaːhoǰ.jɛː] ('such as') (fem nom sg)
• Attic νέᾱ, Ionic νέη/né.aːné.ɛː/ ('new') (fem nom sg) < νέϝος
• But Attic κόρη, Ionic κούρη, Doric κόρᾱ and κώρᾱ ('young girl') < κόρϝᾱ (as also in Arcadocypriot)

The fact that /aː/ is found instead of /εː/ may indicate that earlier, the vowel shifted to /ɛː/ in all cases, but then shifted back to /aː/ after /eir/ (reversion), or that the vowel never shifted at all in these cases. Sihler says that Attic /aː/ is from reversion. ^[13]

This shift did not affect cases of long /aː/ that developed from the contraction of certain sequences of vowels that contain α. Thus, the vowels /aː/ and /aːi̯/ are common in verbs with a-contracted present and imperfect forms, such as ὁράω "see". The examples below are shown with the hypothetical original forms from which they were contracted.

• infinitive: ὁρᾶν/ho.râːn/ "to see" < *ὁράεεν/ho.rá.e.en/
• third person singular present indicative active: ὁρᾷ/ho.râːi̯/ "he sees" < *ὁράει*/ho.rá.ei/
• third person singular imperfect indicative active: ὥρᾱ/hɔ̌ː.raː/ "he saw" < *ὥραε*/hǒː.ra.e/

Also unaffected was long /aː/ that arose by compensatory lengthening of short /a/. Thus, Attic and Ionic had a contrast between the feminine genitive singular ταύτης/taú.tɛːs/ and feminine accusative plural ταύτᾱς/taú.taːs/, forms of the adjective and pronoun οὗτος "this, that". The first derived from an original *tautās with shifting of ā to ē, the other from *tautans with compensatory lengthening of ans to ās.

Assimilation

When one consonant comes next to another in verb or noun conjugation or word derivation, various sandhi rules apply. When these rules affect the forms of nouns and adjectives or of compound words, they are reflected in spelling. Between words, the same rules also applied, but they are not reflected in standard spelling, only in inscriptions.

Rules:

• Most basic rule: When two sounds appear next to each other, the first assimilates in voicing and aspiration to the second.
  • This applies fully to stops. Fricatives assimilate only in voicing, sonorants do not assimilate.
• Before an /s/ (future, aorist stem), velars become [k], labials become [p], and dentals disappear.
• Before a /tʰ/ (aorist passive stem), velars become [kʰ], labials become [pʰ], and dentals become [s].
• Before an /m/ (perfect middle first-singular, first-plural, participle), velars become [ɡ], nasal+velar becomes [ɡ], labials become [m], dentals become [s], other sonorants remain the same.

The alveolar nasal /n/ assimilates in place of articulation, changing to a labial or velar nasal before labials or velars:

• μ[m] before the labials /b/, /p/, /pʰ/, /m/ (and the cluster /ps/):

ἐν- + βαίνω > ἐμβαίνω; ἐν- + πάθεια > ἐμπάθεια; ἐν- + φαίνω > ἐμφαίνω; ἐν- + μένω > ἐμμένω; ἐν- + ψυχή + -ος > ἔμψυχος;

• γ[ŋ] before the velars /ɡ/, /k/, /kʰ/ (and the cluster /ks/):

ἐν- + γίγνομαι > ἐγγίγνομαι; ἐν- + καλέω > ἐγκαλέω; ἐν- + χέω > ἐγχέω; συν- + ξηραίνω > συγξηραίνω

When /n/ precedes /l/ or /r/, the first consonant assimilates to the second, gemination takes place, and the combination is pronounced [lː], as in ⟨συλλαμβάνω⟩ from underlying *συνλαμβάνω, or [r̥ː], as in ⟨συρρέω⟩ from underlying *συνρέω.

The sound of zeta ⟨ζ⟩ develops from original *sd in some cases, and in other cases from *y dy gy. In the second case, it was likely first pronounced [ dʒ ] or [ dz ], and this cluster underwent metathesis early in the Ancient Greek period. Metathesis is likely in this case; clusters of a voiced stop and /s/, like /bsɡs/, do not occur in Ancient Greek, since they change to /psks/ by assimilation (see below), while clusters with the opposite order, like /sbsɡ/, pronounced [zbzɡ], do occur. ^[19]

• Ἀθήναζε ('to Athens') < Ἀθήνᾱσ-δε
• ἵζω ('set') < Proto-Indo-European *si-sdō (Latin sīdō: reduplicated present), from zero-grade of the root of ἕδος < *sedos "seat"
• πεζός ('on foot') < PGr *ped-yos, from the root of πούς, ποδός "foot"
• ἅζομαι ('revere') < PGr *hag-yomai, from the root of ἅγ-ιος ('holy')

Internal evidence

External evidence

The Renaissance

Until the 15th century (during the time of the Byzantine Greek Empire) ancient Greek texts were pronounced exactly like contemporary Greek when they were read aloud. From about 1486, various scholars (notably Antonio of Lebrixa, Girolamo Aleandro, and Aldus Manutius) judged that this pronunciation appeared to be inconsistent with the descriptions handed down by ancient grammarians, and suggested alternative pronunciations.

Johann Reuchlin, the leading Greek scholar in the West around 1500, had taken his Greek learning from Byzantine émigré scholars, and continued to use the modern pronunciation. This pronunciation system was called into question by Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) who in 1528 published De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione dialogus, a philological treatise clothed in the form of a philosophical dialogue, in which he developed the idea of a historical reconstruction of ancient Latin and Greek pronunciation. The two models of pronunciation became soon known, after their principal proponents, as the "Reuchlinian" and the "Erasmian" system, or, after the characteristic vowel pronunciations, as the "iotacist" (or "itacist" ) and the "etacist" system, respectively.

Erasmus' reconstruction was based on a wide range of arguments, derived from the philological knowledge available at his time. In the main, he strove for a more regular correspondence of letters to sounds, assuming that different letters must have stood for different sounds, and same letters for same sounds. That led him, for instance, to posit that the various letters which in the iotacist system all denoted [i] must have had different values, and that ει, αι, οι, ευ, αυ, ου were all diphthongs with a closing offglide. He also insisted on taking the accounts of ancient grammarians literally, for instance where they described vowels as being distinctively long and short, or the acute and circumflex accents as being clearly distinguished by pitch contours. In addition, he drew on evidence from word correspondences between Greek and Latin as well as some other European languages. Some of his arguments in this direction are, in hindsight, mistaken, because he naturally lacked much of the knowledge developed through later linguistic work. Thus, he could not distinguish between Latin-Greek word relations based on loans (e.g. Φοῖβος — Phoebus) on the one hand, and those based on common descent from Indo-European (e.g. φώρ — fūr) on the other. He also fell victim to a few spurious relations due to mere accidental similarity (e.g. Greek θύειν 'to sacrifice' — French tuer, 'to kill'). In other areas, his arguments are of quite the same kind as those used by modern linguistics, e.g. where he argues on the basis of cross-dialectal correspondences within Greek that η must have been a rather open e-sound, close to [a].

Erasmus also took great pains to assign to the members in his reconstructed system plausible phonetic values. This was no easy task, as contemporary grammatical theory lacked the rich and precise terminology to describe such values. In order to overcome that problem, Erasmus drew upon his knowledge of the sound repertoires of contemporary living languages, for instance likening his reconstructed η to Scots a ([æ]), his reconstructed ου to Dutch ou ([oʊ]), and his reconstructed οι to French oi (at that time pronounced [oɪ]).

Erasmus assigned to the Greek consonant letters β, γ, δ the sounds of voiced plosives /b/, /ɡ/, /d/, while for the consonant letters φ, θ, and χ he advocated the use of fricatives /f/, /θ/, /x/ as in Modern Greek (arguing, however, that this type of /f/ must have been different from that denoted by Latin ⟨f⟩).

The reception of Erasmus' idea among his contemporaries was mixed. Most prominent among those scholars who resisted his move was Philipp Melanchthon, a student of Reuchlin's. Debate in humanist circles continued up into the 17th century, but the situation remained undecided for several centuries. (See Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching.)

The 19th century

A renewed interest in the issues of reconstructed pronunciation arose during the 19th century. On the one hand, the new science of historical linguistics, based on the method of comparative reconstruction, took a vivid interest in Greek. It soon established beyond any doubt that Greek was descended in parallel with many other languages from the common source of the Indo-European proto-language. This had important consequences for how its phonological system must be reconstructed. At the same time, continued work in philology and archeology was bringing to light an ever-growing corpus of non-standard, non-literary and non-classical Greek writings, e.g. inscriptions and later also papyri. These added considerably to what could be known about the development of the language. On the other hand, there was a revival of academic life in Greece after the establishment of the Greek state in 1830, and scholars in Greece were at first reluctant to accept the seemingly foreign idea that Greek should have been pronounced so differently from what they knew.

Comparative linguistics led to a picture of ancient Greek that more or less corroborated Erasmus' view, though with some modifications. It soon became clear, for instance, that the pattern of long and short vowels observed in Greek was mirrored in similar oppositions in other languages and thus had to be a common inheritance (see Ablaut); that Greek ⟨υ⟩ had to have been [u] at some stage because it regularly corresponded to [u] in all other Indo-European languages (cf. Gr. μῦς : Lat. mūs); that many instances of ⟨η⟩ had earlier been [aː] (cf. Gr. μήτηρ : Lat. māter); that Greek ⟨ου⟩ sometimes stood in words that had been lengthened from ⟨ο⟩ and therefore must have been pronounced [oː] at some stage (the same holds analogically for ⟨ε⟩ and ⟨ει⟩, which must have been [eː]), and so on. For the consonants, historical linguistics established the originally plosive nature of both the aspirates ⟨φ,θ,χ⟩[pʰ,tʰ,kʰ] and the mediae ⟨β, δ, γ⟩[b,d,ɡ], which were recognised to be a direct continuation of similar sounds in Indo-European (reconstructed *bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ and *b, *d, *g). It was also recognised that the word-initial spiritus asper was most often a reflex of earlier *s (cf. Gr. ἑπτά : Lat. septem), which was believed to have been weakened to [h] in pronunciation. Work was also done reconstructing the linguistic background to the rules of ancient Greek versification, especially in Homer, which shed important light on the phonology regarding syllable structure and accent. Scholars also described and explained the regularities in the development of consonants and vowels under processes of assimilation, reduplication, compensatory lengthening etc.

While comparative linguistics could in this way firmly establish that a certain source state, roughly along the Erasmian model, had once obtained, and that significant changes had to have occurred later, during the development towards Modern Greek, the comparative method had less to say about the question when these changes took place. Erasmus had been eager to find a pronunciation system that corresponded most closely to the written letters, and it was now natural to assume that the reconstructed sound system was that which obtained at the time when Greek orthography was in its formative period. For a time, it was taken for granted that this would also have been the pronunciation valid for all the period of classical literature. However, it was perfectly possible that the pronunciation of the living language had begun to move on from that reconstructed system towards that of Modern Greek, possibly already quite early during antiquity.

In this context, the freshly emerging evidence from the non-standard inscriptions became of decisive importance. Critics of the Erasmian reconstruction drew attention to the systematic patterns of spelling mistakes made by scribes. These mistakes showed that scribes had trouble distinguishing between the orthographically correct spellings for certain words, for instance involving ⟨ι⟩, ⟨η⟩, and ⟨ει⟩. This provided evidence that these vowels had already begun to merge in the living speech of the period. While some scholars in Greece were quick to emphasise these findings in order to cast doubt on the Erasmian system as a whole, some western European scholars tended to downplay them, explaining early instances of such orthographical aberrations as either isolated exceptions or influences from non-Attic, non-standard dialects. The resulting debate, as it was conducted during the 19th century, finds its expression in, for instance, the works of Jannaris (1897) and Papadimitrakopoulos (1889) on the anti-Erasmian side, and of Friedrich Blass (1870) on the pro-Erasmian side.

It was not until the early 20th century and the work of G. Chatzidakis, a linguist often credited with having first introduced the methods of modern historical linguistics into the Greek academic establishment, that the validity of the comparative method and its reconstructions for Greek began to be widely accepted among Greek scholars too. The international consensus view that had been reached by the early and mid-20th century is represented in the works of Sturtevant (1940) and Allen (1987).

More recent developments

Since the 1970s and 1980s, several scholars have attempted a systematic re-evaluation of the inscriptional and papyrological evidence (Smith 1972, Teodorsson 1974, 1977, 1978; Gignac 1976; Threatte 1980, summary in Horrocks 1999). According to their results, many of the relevant phonological changes can be dated fairly early, reaching well into the classical period, and the period of the Koiné can be characterised as one of very rapid phonological change. Many of the changes in vowel quality are now dated to some time between the 5th and the 1st centuries BC, while those in the consonants are assumed to have been completed by the 4th century AD. However, there is still considerable debate over precise dating, and it is still not clear to what degree, and for how long, different pronunciation systems would have persisted side by side within the Greek speech community. The resulting majority view today is that a phonological system roughly along Erasmian lines can still be assumed to have been valid for the period of classical Attic literature, but biblical and other post-classical Koine Greek is likely to have been spoken with a pronunciation that already approached that of Modern Greek in many crucial respects.

Recent literature

• Allen, William Sidney (1973). Accent and Rhythm: Prosodic features of Latin and Greek (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN   0-521-20098-9.
• Allen, William Sidney (1987) [1968]. Vox Graeca: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Greek (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   0-521-33555-8.
• Allen, William Sidney (1978) [1965]. Vox Latina—a Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN   0-521-37936-9.
• C. C. Caragounis (1995): "The error of Erasmus and un-Greek pronunciations of Greek". Filologia Neotestamentaria 8 (16).
• C. C. Caragounis (2004): Development of Greek and the New Testament, Mohr Siebeck ( ISBN   3-16-148290-5).
• A.-F. Christidis ed. (2007), A History of Ancient Greek, Cambridge University Press ( ISBN   0-521-83307-8): A. Malikouti-Drachmann, "The phonology of Classical Greek", 524–544; E. B. Petrounias, "The pronunciation of Ancient Greek: Evidence and hypotheses", 556–570; idem, "The pronunciation of Classical Greek", 556–570.
• Bakker, Egbert J., ed. (2010). A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN   978-1-4051-5326-3.
• Beekes, Robert (2010) [2009]. Etymological Dictionary of Greek. With the assistance of Lucien van Beek. In two volumes. Leiden, Boston. ISBN   9789004174184.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Devine, Andrew M.; Stephens, Laurence D. (1994). The Prosody of Greek Speech. Oxford University Press. ISBN   0-19-508546-9.
• G. Horrocks (1997): Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers. London: Addison Wesley ( ISBN   0-582-30709-0).
• F.T. Gignac (1976): A Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and Byzantine Periods. Volume 1: Phonology. Milan: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino-La Goliardica.
• Goldstein, David (2014). "Phonotactics". Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. Vol. 3. Brill. pp. 96, 97. Retrieved 19 January 2015– via academia.edu.
• C. Karvounis (2008): Aussprache und Phonologie im Altgriechischen ("Pronunciation and Phonology in Ancient Greek"). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft ( ISBN   978-3-534-20834-0).
• M. Lejeune (1972): Phonétique historique du mycénien et du grec ancien ("Historical phonetics of Mycenean and Ancient Greek"), Paris: Librairie Klincksieck (reprint 2005, ISBN   2-252-03496-3).
• H. Rix (1992): Historische Grammatik des Griechischen. Laut- und Formenlehre ("Historical Grammar of Greek. Phonology and Morphology"), Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (2nd edition, ISBN   3-534-03840-1).
• Robins, Robert Henry (1993). The Byzantine Grammarians: Their Place in History. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN   9783110135749 . Retrieved 23 January 2015– via Google Books.
• Sihler, Andrew Littleton (1995). New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN   0-19-508345-8.
• R. B. Smith (1972): Empirical evidences and theoretical interpretations of Greek phonology: Prolegomena to a theory of sound patterns in the Hellenistic Koine, Ph.D. diss. Indiana University.
• S.-T. Teodorsson (1974): The phonemic system of the Attic dialect 400-340 BC. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis (ASIN B0006CL51U).
• S.-T. Teodorsson (1977): The phonology of Ptolemaic Koine (Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia), Göteborg ( ISBN   91-7346-035-4).
• S.-T. Teodorsson (1978): The phonology of Attic in the Hellenistic period (Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia), Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis ( ISBN   91-7346-059-1).
• L. Threatte (1980): The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions, vol. 1: Phonology, Berlin: de Gruyter ( ISBN   3-11-007344-7).

Older literature

• G. Babiniotis: Ιστορική Γραμματεία της Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, 1. Φωνολογία ("Historical Grammar of the Ancient Greek Language: 1. Phonology")
• F. Blass (1870): Über die Aussprache des Griechischen, Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.
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