Estudios sobre la aspiración de /S/ en los dialectos griegos del I milenio

Abstract

The scope of this investigation is the study of intervocalic /s/ weakening (both inherited from Proto-Indo-European and recently created) in four Ancient Greek dialects: Laconian, Argive, Elean and Cypriot. Special attention has been brought as well to final /s/ weakening in Cypriot. We have established the chronological boundaries of these phonetic phenomena in each dialect, the way various lexical categories are affected and the fundamental factors governing /s/ retention across the vocabulary. Our work also stresses the implications of the phenomenon for dialectal classification. The salient results of our thesis are the following. Firstly, we have concluded that /s/ loss is a recent process in the four dialects and that in Cypriot final /s/ deletion took place prior to intervocalic /s/ loss. Secondly, we have found four factors that help explain why we find /s/ retention in some inscriptions: a) the chronology of documents; b) the influence of other dialects (including Attic-Ionic koiné or poetic language in epigrams); c) the reluctance of some archaic vocabulary to accept the innovation (particularly theonyms and toponyms) and d) analogy, which causes /s/ reintroduction in some paradigms. Thirdly, concerning the geographical extension of /s/ loss, internal differences inside dialects have been disregarded, excepting Cypriot, where data coming from glossae and inscriptions seem to be contradictory. Finally, intervocalic /s/ loss in Cypriot and in the three Doric dialects is not genetically related and we have firmly established Laconia as the focal area of the innovation in the Peloponnese, where it took place in the second half of the 6th century B.C. and eventually extended into the west Argolid about 500-450 B.C. and the Elean region in the first half of the 4th century B.C