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Before attempting to work on the evidence, we need to first define the objective sought. In principle, the scope defined by Allen (ALLE87, p. xv) will be adopted also here, namely:
"fifth-century Attic"
Faced with such a definition, there are a number of questions that one may raise:
The determination of a general phonological model for "Ancient Greek" is an impossibility, simply because the period in question is too long and the extend of deployment of ancient Greeks too vast for a uniform phonology to exist or, as Renan puts it (RENA49, p. 36), "Poser, en effet, la question de cette manière: Quelle a été la prononciation des Grecs anciens? et chercher à donner sur chaque son en particulier une réponse absolue, c'est supposer qu'il a existé pour tous les siècles et tous les pays une prononciation identique, ce qui est assurément bien éloigné de la vérité|To pose, actually, the question in the following manner: Which was the pronunciation of the ancient Greeks? and to attempt to give on every particular sound an absolute response, is to suppose that there exists for all centuries and all countries an identical pronunciation, which is certainly very far from the truth".
The need to narrow down the scope locally is dictated by the already-mentioned dispersal of Greek, long before classical times (V BC), across a relatively (e.g., compared to the language of Latium) large area (comprising the southern Balkans, a myriad of islands, the entire coast of Asia Minor including the shores of Propontis and the Euxine, Cyprus, Cyrenaica, southern Italy and Sicily, even southern France and Catalonia) into a considerable number of (allegedly) mutually intelligible, yet distinct ancient-Greek dialects. These dialects must have differed not only in morphology, but also in phonology, the differences in pronunciation being suggested by orthographic variations, e.g., the (occasional) use of Σ in Laconian for Attic Θ, of Η (=[ɛ]?) in Boeotian for Attic ΑΙ and of ΣΣ in Ionian for Attic ΤΤ. After the conquests of Alexander, his vast empire, as well as the successor Hellenistic kingdoms, adopted the Attic dialect (which had been used at the administrative level in the Kingdom of Macedonia since the time of Alexander's father or even grandfather) as the official language. Despite this expansion of Greek to the foot of the Himalaya, the sand dunes of Sahara and the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Caspian Sea, this Common Attic, or Koine (Κοινή|common (language)), was remarkably uniformcf. Browning's previously mentioned quote (BROW83, p. 23): "as far as our evidence goes, the Koine was remarkably uniform throughout its area of use". and was considered a single language/dialect. Thus, if a single dialect would deserve the title of "ancient Greek language", that would be the Koine. This is also the language identified by the Romans as "Greek" and became the (eastern) counterpart of Latin in the Empire. The remaining dialects survived a few more centuries (as can be inferred, e.g., by the work of Hesychius), but eventually they all petered out by the end of ancient times,A notable exception is modern Tsakonian, the origins of which can, pretty safely, be traced to the ancient Laconian dialect of Doric. Assertions that other modern dialects are direct descendants of (non-Attic/Koine) ancient-Greek dialects, such as modern Pontic from Black-Sea Ionic and modern Griko from Magna-Graecia Doric, are merely extravagant claims that make catchy headlines (asserting, e.g., that the prestigious "ancient Greek" survives in the mouths of some living individuals) and justify research funding (it is better to declare than you have been studying the evolution of "ancient Greek" rather than yet another dialect). It is more likely that these dialects are direct offshoots of the medieval language (almost certainly in the case of Griko) with diverging features that, sometimes, happen to coincide with corresponding features of an ancient dialect. To claim that the features have been "preserved" from ancient times is as credible as Geldart's theory that Tsakonian has "preserved" the periphrastic tenses of Hebrew. If only the scholars were as careful as Menardos in their "preservation" claims. leaving a single official medieval language, which also replaced Latin as the administrative language of the (remaining, i.e., eastern) Roman Empire, while regional peculiarities undoubtedly existed amongst the common people. For these reasons, one has to pinpoint the location of Greek to be phonologically "reconstructed", i.e. either its nature (e.g., Greek spoken in the imperial palace or taught at the academies) for post-Alexandrian times or a particular dialect (e.g., Attic, Lesbian, Laconian, etc) before Alexander.
It should also be already clear that, due to the history of Greek, the selection of location depends on the selection of time period of interest. Another factor that necessitates a temporal limitation of our scope is that a phonological system is not (a priory) expected to remain stable for a period as long as the extend of "Antiquity". Thus, any conclusions drawn for a particular period of "Antiquity" may not be compatible with a phonological model of another (sufficiently distant) part. The selected period cannot cover more than a couple of centuries, otherwise we run the risk of mixing up features from different phonological models, which, based on our experience with more recent developments, may not survive a time span of 5-6 generations (or even less).
From the perspective of modern Greek, no ancient dialect is more important than Attic. With the exception of Tsakonian (which appears to be Doric gone astray), all other modern flavours of Greek trace their ancestry to the dialect of Attica through medieval Greek and Koine, which "has been evolved out of the Attic dialect" (JANN97, p. vi). From the perspective of the vast Greek literature, all other dialects combined amount to a flimsy percentage of the total, as compared to the proliferation of Attic works from the classical era on (including post-classical Common-Greek writings). In terms of prestige, Attic was held in so high esteem that the post-christian movement for purifying the common Greek language was termed "Atticism" (and sought to re-establish the norms used by the renowned Attic authors).
Had we chosen another dialect (say, Lesbian), this would serve neither the connection with the living language nor the study of our literary heritage (bar the works of Sappho and Alcaeus, in the particular case of Lesbian). On the other hand, the impact on the practical consequences of any potential conclusions will be significant, only if the chosen dialect is Attic.
This is the most curious of the choices one can make. In order to understand the reasons behind it, we need to review the Catholic perception of what was (ancient) "Greek". After the introduction of Greek studies in the West by the the Greek scholars fleeing the Ottoman conqueror, it did not take the westerners long to realise that there was a discrepancy between Greek text and its Latin transliterations on one side and Greek speech on the other. On the face of this kind of evidence, they assumed that Greek pronunciation had recently changed and the suspected culprit was (the influence of) the Turk (cf. MENA98, p. 29; also PICK18, p. 235 quoting Thomas Smith's designation "semi-Turkici et obscuri Graeci|half-turkish and obscure Greeks" for the Greek scholars who taught in the Orthodox pronunciation)! This view was based on disbelief (similar to stating "why would the French write all these letters, if they only pronounce half of them"), rather than actual data (given that they never had the chance to hear a Greek, either ancient or contemporary, speak and that they had no written evidence, either inscriptions or ancient manuscripts, at their disposal).
Up to the birth of the Greek state, the accessible available evidence did not reach pre-Christian times, as is evident from Pickering's reference to "the evidence now in possession of the learned" (PICK18, p. 266), particularly the Herculanean Manuscripts: three centuries after the establishment of Catholicism, the scholars (who had already given their verdict on the issue of ancient-Greek pronunciation) were just beginning to at last get familiar with the synchronic evidence! Pickering, based on the latest evidence at his time, concluded that "In almost every instance, in short, where the opinions of the learned have been at variance with the usage of the Modern Greeks, whenever any evidence has been discovered relating to the point in controversy, the theories of the former have proved to be unfounded, and the usage of the latter confirmed" (p. 291). As more and more material (manuscripts, papyri and inscriptions) came to light, the Orthodox started pointing out that undeniable evidence (such as spelling mistakes) existed proving that the Orthodox pronunciation reached at least as far back as the beginning of the imperial period. Even the most conservative Catholics, in light of (mostly) inscriptional evidence, cannot push the diverging (with respect to the Orthodox pronunciation) features of the "reconstructed pronunciation" (except, possibly, for the convergence of Υ/ΟΙ and Ι) beyond the establishment of "New Rome" (a.k.a., "Constantinople").For example, see THRE82, p. 149, which presents almost incontrovertible evidence for "modern Greek pronunciation" (i.a. Η=Ι, ΑΙ=Ε, loss of quantity, etc) even in Attica from II AD. Since the end of Ancient Times is generally deemed to be sometime between the sack of Rome by the Goths (410 AD) and the ratification of Greek as the Empire's official language (610 AD) or the Muslim Conquests (beginning in 634 AD), even adopting the Catholic timeline, the Orthodox pronunciation can be legitimately considered to be part of the "ancient-Greek phonology"!cf. VESS10, p. 2: "many changes towards 'modern pronunciation' are indeed much less 'modern' than we think, and could easily have been achieved by Plato's time, i.e. at the very core of the classical age of Ancient Greek".
Having realised this, the Catholics started to push the time period of "interest" further back from the edge of antiquity. Half a century after Pickering, Blass declared that the german pronunciation was valid for the entire heyday of the Greek nation,BLAS70, p. 39: "Unsere [d.h. die deutsche] Aussprache ist in allen andern Punkten des Vokalismus [außer ΕΙ, ΕΥ und den so-genannten "langen Diphthongen"] fest genug begründet als die wenigstens annähernd wahre und echte nicht etwa nur der homerischen Zeit, sondern der gesammten Blütezeit der griechischen Nation|Our [i.e., the Germans'] pronunciation constitutes the, at least approximately, true and genuine in all other matters of vocalism [i.e., articulation of vowels and diphthongs other than ΕΙ, EΥ and the so-called "long diphthongs"], not only of the Homeric times, but rather of the entire heyday of the Greek nation" a definition that includes at least III AD. At the turn of the century, Chatzidakis suggests "νὰ ἐρωτῶμεν «τίς ἦν ἡ προφορὰ τῶν γνησίων Ἀττικῶν κατὰ τὸν Ε´ και Δ´ αἰῶνα» ἤτοι ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν μέχρι τοῦ θανάτου τοῦ Δημοσθένους|to ask «which was the pronunciation of the genuine Attics during the 5th and 4th century» namely from the Median wars [=492BC] until the death of Demosthenes [=322BC]" (CHAT02, p. 338); he justifies the spatial limitation by essentially the importance of Attic on the later development of Greek, but he provides no explanation for the temporal limitation other than his obsession with purity (p. 342: "ἀπὸ τοῦ 300 κἑξ [...] ἡ ἀνάμειξις τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν φυλῶν πρὸς ἀλλήλας καὶ πρὸς ἀλλογλώσσους πλείστην καὶ τῶν φθόγγων καὶ τῶν τύπων κλπ. ἐπήνεγκε σύγχυσιν|from 300 [BC] on [...] the blending of the Greek tribes with each other and with foreign speakers brought about a lot of confusion of the sounds as well as the forms"). Finally, Allen, some 65 years after Chatzidakis, inexplicably ditched the fourth century from the objective (see the beginning of the chapter) and declared the Attic pronunciation of the fifth century sufficient also for the "literature of other periods and dialects" (after all, he asserts, "the differences between fifth- and fourth-century Attic are [?] in any case negligible")!
In order to evaluate the appropriateness of Allen's choice of place and time, one must first establish the purpose which such a choice serves. For, were it a mere matter of curiosity, the extend of interest should be expanded to cover other dialects and, particularly, times. If feasibility (i.e., availability of evidence) is the main concern, then we would have better chances if we focused on later times (from IV BC onwards), when direct evidence are more abundant (especially in the Hellenistic and Roman times) and the sources are contemporary.It is worth pointing out that, at the end of his book, Allen provides a dated list of his sources, which are all (with the exception of one or two unimportant ones) off the target period (V BC), some as late as X AD!!!
Allen pretends that his ambition is to be able to "read aloud" ancient texts, presumably like an ancient. However, such a narrow limitation in space and time would allow one to recite only the early historians, Aristophanes and the tragedians (and possibly a handful of others) "correctly" and would leave out Homer and Hesiod, Plato and Aristotle, not to mention Plutarch and Lucian, even (almost) all the sources cited by Allen. Of course, Allen acknowledges this fact and asserts that "literature of other periods and dialects [...] will be read approximately as it would have been by a fifth-century Athenian". It is needless to say that the resulting anachronism (as the bulk of Greek literature is posterior to V BC) beats the very purpose that Allen claims to serve. Using the "reconstructed" phonological model of so early an era (V BC) and so narrow an area (Attica) as the passe-partout for all ancient literature serves no other purpose than to legitimize, as far as possible, an a priori phonological model (i.e., the so-called "Erasmian" model, which essentially advocates a "speak as you read" principle or, in the words of Blass, the "simple and natural rule, write as you speak"; BLAS90, p. 8), which had for centuries been enforced without taking into account the actual evidence.
My own intention is neither the revival of "the glorious times" (as "The Golden Age of Pericles" is looked upon by many scholars) nor an incantation to the ancient souls.Unlike Sanskrit and Avestan, Greek knows of no sacred "liturgical language", the correct enunciation of which would be indispensable for the effectiveness of sorcerous spells. As a speaker of Greek, I am rather interested in one question only: "How long have Greek speakers been pronouncing our language like me and how was Greek spoken earlier?". Anything that does not qualify as "Greek" should not be of primary concern and is not of (direct) importance. Since one cannot speak of a "Greek language" (as opposed to the assortment of "Greek dialects") for the age before the unification of the Greek world under Alexander, the period of interest would not extend before late IV BC. However, since the common (="Koine") Greek language is essentially evolved Attic, it would be interesting to also include in the objective the Attic pronunciation of the period shortly before it became "Greek", namely the forth and fifth centuries BC. The initially stated objective can, thus, be revised to be the study of the evolution of Attic phonology from V BC down to present time or, in the words of Jannaris (JANN97, p. vi), the scope of research should be extended to comprise
"the whole range from classical antiquity to the present time"
The Catholics claim that they have managed to successfully address not only the initial objective (in the sense that they have accurately "reconstructed" the divine speech of Socrates & Co.), but have also worked their way down to present time (thus, also addressing the aforementioned revised objective) and can pretty safely identify the transition time for each difference. It is the main concern of this website to examine whether this claim holds water in a (strictly) scientific sense. It would, at this juncture, be of importance to identify the scientific tools that can be used to verify such claims and to distinguish them from other, non-scientific proof methods often used in this linguistic feud.
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