{"id":135,"date":"2017-01-12T15:27:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T07:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/?p=135"},"modified":"2018-09-12T17:02:46","modified_gmt":"2018-09-12T09:02:46","slug":"unit-5-of-the-origin-of-the-greek-alphabet-a-new-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/2017\/01\/12\/unit-5-of-the-origin-of-the-greek-alphabet-a-new-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Section 5 of The Origin of the Greek Alphabet: A New Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

5\u00a0 Pre-phonemic vs phonemic interpretations of a Phoenician syllable<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Phoenician sign represents in effect several CV syllables, including the weakened CV<\/sup>. It should be noted here that a Phoenician CV syllable can be spoken with varying degrees of accentuation of V in different polysyllabic words. Phonetically V\u00a0could take on any value from a fully expressed V to a completely suppressed V, with varying degrees of accentuation of V in between.\u00a0However,\u00a0a phonemic interpretation of the various sound values of V (including a very weak V) in a Phoenician CV syllable demands that one should decide whether the said syllable is a CV syllable or simply a C phoneme. A pre-phonemic interpretation, as distinct from a phonemic one, would probably regard a Phoenician CV syllable as a single integral sound unit, leaving the native speakers to take care of the various values of V in daily conversation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0To illustrate the above point, we now use the English word medicine <\/em>as an example. This word can be pronounced as \/medisin\/ or as \/medsin\/. In the pronunciation of \/medisin\/, the second syllable can be realized as [d\u026a] or [d\u0259]. When [\u026a] or [\u0259] gets shorter and lighter, it may become inaudible, and the pronunciation of the word will be transcribed as \/medsin\/. A pre-phonemic approach would treat [d\u026a], [d\u0259] and [d] as different realizations of the same sound, whereas a phonemic approach will regard [d\u026a] and [d\u0259] as different realizations of the syllable \/di\/, but will regard [d] as the realization of the consonant \/d\/. Accordingly, the syllable \/di\/ and the consonant \/d\/ will be regarded as two different sounds.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0A phonemic writing system has to decide on a spelling that reflects either the pronunciation \/medisin\/ or \/medsin\/. Since the spelling of a word has to take into consideration its inner morphological structure as well as its surface phonological structure, the spelling medicine<\/em> has prevailed as it takes care of both structures. medi-<\/em> is the root for a number of related words such as medic<\/em>, medical<\/em>, medicinal<\/em>, and medication<\/em>. If the word medicine<\/em> were spelled as *medcine<\/em> so as to reflect the pronunciation \/medsin\/, the root medi-<\/em> would not be as clearly identifiable. In a segmental writing system, sometimes one has to decide whether the spelling of a word should give a bias to its underlying morphological structure or to its surface phonological one. However, in a syllabic writing system like Phoenician, one does not have to deal with this problem. The sign representing the syllable \/di\/ can be left intact even when the actual pronunciation has weakened to [d\u026a], [d\u0259], or [d].<\/p>\n

26 December 2016<\/p>\n

Views: 754<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5\u00a0 Pre-phonemic vs phonemic interpretations of a Phoenician syllable A Phoenician sign represents in effect several CV syllables, including the weakened CV. It should be noted here that a Phoenician CV syllable can be spoken with varying degrees of accentuation of V in different polysyllabic words. Phonetically V\u00a0could take on any value from a fully … Continue reading “Section 5 of The Origin of the Greek Alphabet: A New Perspective”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,24],"tags":[97,25,26,27],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-articles","category-the-origin-of-the-greek-alphabet","tag-origin-of-greek-alphabet","tag-phoenician-syllable","tag-phonemic-analysis-of-a-semitic-syllable","tag-pre-phonemic-analysis-of-a-semitic-syllable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":343,"href":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingsystemsabc.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}