Ancient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory)

4.8 The E~olution ofQoppa Some very archaic (early -7th cent.) forms of qoppa, namely Cf, q> ,etc. (see EG 4.265-266, 328-329, etc.) bear a strang resemblance to

than Ip/. I base this conclusion on the evidence presented by Teodorsson (1974:131-137) and Threatte (1980:449-469), that there is more confusion between K kand X kft than between tr p and $ ph. Teodorsson, for instance, records 15 X for K and 12 K for x. Contrarily, there are 13 cases of tr for $, but only conteltt-sensitive $ for tr. Threatte presents extensive discussion but 00 statistical summary. Both indicate more cases of unaspirated stop for aspirated than the other way around, suggesting an increase in aspiration among the unaspirates. One is reminded of the large number of languages in which, of the unaspirated series, IkJ is the most aspirated, followed by ItJ or Ipl in either order (see Lehiste 1970:22; Devine 1974b:130-131). The evidence from gemination (Teodorsson 1974: 148-153,231235) reveals that IkJ and Ikhl are the most frequently doubled, three times more frequently than ItJ, and nearly twice as often as Ip/. This suggests that there was a positive correlation between aspiration and tenseness, as in Hindi (Miller 1986), and forces the conclusion that, as in Hindi, IkJ was the most aspirated and perceptually prominent stop.

52

ANCIENT SCRlPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEOOE

in Jensen 1969:462; Heubeck 1979:92-93). Wachter (1989) rejects any connection between and

was a pharyngealized uvular stop [cU (marked value), which could be used for a marked value (aspirate) in Greek. So why was it used for Iphl and not for Ik h/? If it is true that Euboean, etc. (Le., 'red') i Ikhj derives from 1>, as is sometimes assumed, then it would regionally have a derived shape with the superficially expected value. However, the truly interesting possibility that the alphabet was borrowed when Greek still had the labiovelars has not been discussed anywhere, to my knowledge. Powell (p.41) and others miss the point of the early use of (qoppa) before 0 and u as reflecting lip-rounding, as a retention from the period when Greek still had labiovelars - quite late, on the evidence of Mycenaean and the very different dialectaI reflexes (Lejeune 1972:43-53; Wyatt 1975b; Miller 1981, discussed in Stephens & Woodard 1986). One could appeal to the fact that Latin Ipl was borrowed into Old lrish as Ikwl (Lewis & Pedersen 1961:62) in order to account for the use of 1> Iq/or Iq(w)1 for Iph/, but another possibility suggests itself. It is hardly accidental that tantaIizingly c10se versions of the sign (qoppa) are found in Linear B: ~ qo, aqo qa, and represented Ikwi and Ikwh/. The normal phonological development of astring [kw(h)o/a] to [p(h)oIa) would explain the consistent association of

«

«

«

«

«

11 This is not to suggest, as Rex Wallace (p.c.) formulates my claim, that the similarities to the Mycenaean signs provided "secondary support" for the use of qoppa to represent the labialized velars (although the interaction between the syllabary and alphabetic traditions (§4.13) does not rule out such a scenario), but rather that it hardly seems fortuitous that the same W. Semitic sign was used in both traditions for the labialized velars. 12 Rex Wallace inquires "why would the Greeks go the trouble to reborrow qoppa even though it doesn't adeqnately represent any new phonological information? IkI is already adequate1y represented by kappa." Phonologically, this is unequivocal, but the evidence is that the Greeks were quite fond of the use of qoppa in the context of lip-rounding, again illustrating the force of tradition. Tbe model abecedaria, to which the Greeks kept referring

1HE GREEK ALPHABEf

53

alphabet, accounting both for its form (similar to qoppa) and its (motivated) position, adjacent to Y (also associated with lip-rounding), itself displaced by the reborrowing of F, and before ""IX, displaced by the later reborrowing of :.;Ik from Phoenician. Now it makes sense why k was reborrowed. Greek initially received ® for Ith/; it then developed (phonologically)

«

4.9 Supplementals and the Sibilant Leiters One problematical supplemental remains, $ [ps]. Making the reasonable assumption that the problem of $ is bound up with the problem of the sibilant letters, we can treat affricate and affricate-like strings together. The sibilant letters, for which Greek had no use, were distributed for use in clusters: 1) -=F- [t5 ] <15> (~-) gave its name to s(gma, but sigma has the shape and position of lann-ISin <21>. In the original position of samek is a letter with the same shape and the usual (Bastern) value of [ks] named x(e) i. But Praetorius (1902:679) al ready noted that there are also areas where :a: retains the affricate value of Phoenician samek, viz. IdZf (or the like), rarely, in Lyttos (Crete), Corinth (Heubeck 1979:91; Wachter 1989:56), and Thera (LSAG 317, pI. 61 Ib, i; Powell 1991: 130-131):

Whatever the details of the name changes among the sibilant letters (some speculations in Nilsson 1918; LSAG 25ff; cf. Powell 1991:47-48), this letter was most assuredly regarded as an 'extra' and used, like $llde (below), for affricates or the affricate-like [ks] (cf. Praetorius 1902:679; Faber 1992: 1300.23). Wachter (1989:49ff) is clearly right that the prototype contained :a:, M. and ::r. and that san users who kept E: used the original dental affricate value, while sigma users (like the Samos type) reassigned to :a: the value [ks] and got rid of san. 2) 'V I~I <18> bears a conspicuously close resemblance to q,. Beyond the problem that this supposedly yields san (M) (though Naveh thinks M is just right into the historical period, bad a slot for « with a given name and value. from which the contemporary q, differed too drastically, motivating the reborrowing of 9 to maintain the traditional conception of this letter.

r I

54

ANCIENT SCRIP1'S AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEOOE

a rotation of sigma (~), which makes better sense), there are two problems to motivate: (i) the value Ikhl in Western ('red') scripts, and (ii) the order at the end of the supplementals. The incredible confusion (pp> within but across alphabetic traditions 13) about the form - X~' \V. A - and value ([ps], [kh]) with regard to kh(e)i - W, \V, - might be explained by the assumption oftwo very similar letters, initially distinct, one an affricate, the other a velar displaced by the reborrowing of kappa. Suppose the former was an older borrowing but an unneeded letter. Then, as the quasi-affricates (clusters of stop + s) received letters,14 it was used for that purpose. What about the order? Why did it not just go in the pI ace of san? There was general agreement among the Greeks that san had the shape M (whatever its source - a recent reborrowing causing displacement of older 'V?). Whatever the details, it could not occupy the position of the current conception of san, and fit formally and functionally with the other supplementals at the end of the alphabet. 15 For a radically different proposal, see Wachter (1989:49-61).

4.10 The Antiquity ofSegmental Writing The judicious survey of the history of literacy in India by Patel (1993) concludes that writing may have existed in India since the Indus civilization and that it was practiced in the Vedic period and during the time of Pä!)ini. (See §l.l, fordevanagarias a segmentally coded script.) The absence of extant writing from before the -5th century is explained by the fact that "early Brahmanicalliterature was written on frail and perishable leaves, birchbark. 13 I owe this formulation to Rex Wallace. 14 Why a language should have cluster-symbols

for [les] and [ps] has occasioned considerable speculation. For instance, Sampson (1985: 103) attributes their existence to the fact that those are the ouly clusters that could occur at syllable and word end. More to the point, they are the only onset clusters that could occur in coda position. The unitary letter reflects awareness of the old convention of providing complex signs only for onset clusters. 15 One other possibility (from Praetorius 1902:677ff, 1908:287-288) is mentioned by Jensen (1969:463 w. lil) and Faber (1992: 125, 131n.27), who discuss early Sonth Arabian letters that closely resemble phi and psi (variant form and function of khi). Faber speculates that the old Phoenician alphabet from which both descended (Sass 1988: 166-167, dates the South Arabian planned creation of the alphabet to the -1l/IOth century) must have bad those letters (cf. Praetorius 1908:288). The letter that ends up as psi, as noted above, does have a correlate that could easily be confused with and/or split off from the old form of IkJ, which agrees with the S. Arab. value as a pharyngeaI fricative. The variant of phi with the v8lue Iwl or lvi is again not too difficult to motivate if also derived from qoppa, which had always been associated with lip-rounding. Already Nilsson (1918:183) emphasized that Praetorius' hypothesis of Greek letter borrowing from S. Arab. was "sicher unrichtig", emphasizing internal paralleIs.

1HE GREEK ALPHABET

55

and later on hand-made paper" (Patei 1993:202). Similarly, Old Canaanite written on papyrus did not survive (Segert 1993:87). Mycenaean documents were probably transferred to perishable materials (Olivier 1986). Continuity of the Cypro-Minoan script in the Cyprian syllabary (§3.0-3.1) presupposes interim documents on perishable materials (cf. Heubeck 1979:73; Olivier 1986). As noted above and inchap.5, similar arguments have been made for Greek and Germanie. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that this has no hearing on the literacy of Homer (against Bellamy 1989, see Miller 1990) or of the public in general. William Harns (1989, e.g., 101ft) finds that literacy in Ancient Greece was restricted largely to a privileged minority and coexisted with an oral culture (cf. Andersen 1989; Thomas 1989, 1992). The absence of documents, then, is not a major obstacle to the general idea that alphabetic writing in Greece can antedate the earliest epigraphic monuments. Another parallel with India can be adduced. Just as the oral mode of transmitting Vedic literature prompted development of grammatical analysis (Scharfe 19n, Patel 1993), so the orality of tbe very popular Homeric texts may have underlain the shift from a 'folk' grammatical tradition (Morpurgo Davies 1987) to a (more) professional guild of grammarians, whose main function seems to have been textual exegesis, as stated fairly explicitly in the introduction to Dionysius Thrax's TEXVll ypaliliaTtKll "Art of Grammar" (see Kemp 1987: 172-173), and directly manifested in the copious Homeric scholia (e.g., Erbse 1969-) and other ancient commentators. 4.11 Adoptation anti Developmeni'Phase ofthe Greek Alphabet Another argument for greater antiquity is that the Brähmi script of the -3rd cent. Ashokan inscriptions represents the Sanskrit phonological system so weIl that it must have had a long history of development (Basharn 1967:394; Patel 1993:203). The Greek alphabet, on the other hand, appears to be less weIl adapted to the phonological system of Greek, but the opposite has also been argued; cf. Coulmas (1989: 162): The Semitic alphabet applied to a non-Semitic language could not be used to represent the sounds of that language without significant adaptations. The lack of signs for vowels was crucial here since, in contrast to the Semitic languages, vowels in Greek occupy a position on a par with consonants. By finding a solution for the problem of vowel indication the Greeks overcame this obstacle, thus making the alphabet more suitable for both their language and other non-Semitic languages.

It has been argued (e.g., Harris 1986:120) that the North Semitic alphabet may have ignored vocalic differences in reducing the earlier

.56

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICALKNOWlEDGE

syllabary, thereby adapting better to the word structure of the Semitic languages. So, by (re)developing symbols for the vowels, the Greek alphabet was undergoing adaptation to the Greek morpho-phonological system. Sampson (1985:101) emphasizes that Greek had many lexical contrasts with vowels, wbich were "important for communication" (cf. Diringer 1968:263, 435). Moreover, words frequently begin with vowels in Greek but not in Semitic, and sequences of vowels are virtually unknown in Semitic but frequent in Greek (e.g., Atala "Aeaea", Circe's island). Daniels (1992:97) sees consonant clustering in Greek as a factor. Other changes (development of separate aspirate symbols, addition of other vowel letters, etc.) were all attempts to better adapt the alphabet to the Greek phonological system. Although the adaptation was never complete(d), the process of change and adaptation at the dawn of documentation seems to be continuing a prebistoric process, from which it is reasonable to conclude that, like the Indic scripts, the Greek had a long bistory of development Coulmas (1989: 164) affirms: In principle the Greek alphabet was suitable for representing all the phonemes of the Greek language [...]. Systematic vowel indication is attested in the earliest Greek documents; no developmental state with defective vowel writing is known.

This suggests aperiod of evolution and development of orthographie norms and conventions (cf. Gelb 1963: l8Off). There were also choices made. In the Indic linear scripts, syllable structure was partially coded by different representations of onset vs. coda resonants (Mahulkar 1981:49); cf. the Greek syllabic scripts (chaps. 2,3 above). But the Greek linear script was more strictly segmental in that little reference to bigher levels of organization was made. While the Greek tradition was weil aware of organizational units beyond the segment, the decision was made to represent little more than linear segmental units. Therefore, it is pointless to argue that the Greek alphabet was poorJy adapted to the phonological system. All of this presupposes at least implicit knowledge of segments and their organization into bigher linguistic units. That is, of course, another area of major controversy, which will be treated in Chapter 6. 4.12 Suminary and Conclusion

Powell (1991) unfortunately ignores completely the evidence for an early borrowing of the Greek alphabet: (i) the letter-forms and their ProtoCanaanite prototypes; (ii) internal evolutionary evidence, such as Y to F; (iii) evidence for reborrowings by comparison of 'duplicate' letters with their earlier forms and contemporary Phoenician counterparts. Moreover, (iv), he

TIIE GRFEK ALPHABET

57

fails to motivate the order of the supplementals and the constant association of cl> with Iph/, and (v) his theory of an adapter (as opposed to a bilingual, Hterate environment) fails to motivate the matching of unmarked and marked values across the languages. The stages in the development of the Greek alphabet reconstructed here are the following: (1) assignment of old 'pharyngeal' letters to vowels; (2) evolution of Y to F; (3) reborrowing of Yat the end of the alphabet (first of the supplementals) as a vowel sign sanctioned by the corresponding syllabary traditions; (4) 1> evolved to IrJIl via the normal phonological development of lkw(h)o/a] to [p(h)o/a]; (5) for the non-aspirate Ip/, 1T was naturally used, leaving the letter cl> exclusively for the labial aspirate Iph/, all of which alone explains the consistent association of cl> with labials; (6) the reborrowing of contemporary (qoppa) from Phoenician entailed a displacement of the sign phi with the marked value to the end of the alphabet; (7) evolution of W to X and 'V provided a possible separate sign for the marked value Ikh/, which was exploited by the reborrowing of 'modem' kappa for the unmarked value IkI, as provided for in the model abecedaria; (8) regional differentiation of signs for affricates and affricate-like clusters; (9) rejection by conservative 'southem' areas of supplementals not sanctioned by the syllabary tradition (thus l' was allowed to remain, but not the supplemental consonant letters); (10) the East Ionic evolution of eta and (within the historical period) creation . ofomega. Powell may be right that the spread of the alphabet in Euboea had to do with recording Epic, but Thomas (1992:56-65) rightly assails this view as "romantic", emphasizing that most of the earHest Greek alph~betic writings are not poetic at alt. More likely, it was the high level of cultural activity at that place and time that prompted a renaissance of interest in the Greek alphabet, as a consequence of which (at least short) examples of epic verse were recorded, along with a wide array of other things. In any event, Powell is surely wrong that the Greek alphabet is the product of a single adapter at that time and place, though a single adapter may have ultimately been responsible for the initial creation of the alphabet. The two views, of course, make entirely different predictions. Powell predicts that no very early inscriptions, say, using 1> for Ikw(h)1 should ever turn up and that, if earlier inscriptions and abecedaria do turn up (and the date of Homer would - circularly - have to be moved back), regardless of where they are found, they should have the full set of supplementals he reconstructs. My prediction is the opposite, of course. To the extent that it is plausible for inscriptions a century or two earlier than the current corpus to

«

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58

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

I

ever turn up, neither of these hypotheses is properly testable (empirically verifiable or falsifiable). Hopefully time will teil. 4.13 Interaction Between the Syllabary anti Alphabet Tradition. Another issue involves the assumption of some continuity between the syllabary and alphabet traditions. Such continuity is typically denied (e.g., Stroud 1989: 110). Faber writes (letter of 18 Jan. 1993): I'll grant you your demonstration that Mycenaean spelling conventions probably reflect sub-syllabie awareness. if you will grant me that there could not have been complete eultural continuity between users of Linear B and of early True-Greek orthography. If there had been such continuity. one would expect to see some reflexes of it in early True-Greek orthographie convention [...].

Of course there was no complete continuity, or there wouid have been no change. Yet there was continuity, and it has been documented by Hermann (1923), Morpurgo Davies (1987), and others. Additionally, everyone grants that there had to be continuity of the syllabary tradition from Cypro-Minoan to the Cyprian syllabary of the historical era, despite the absence of Greek documents in any related script during the 'Dark Age' (cf. Heubeck 1979: 65ff, 85ff; see §3.0-3.1 above). There was continuity of the conventions of syllable division based on the Sonority Hierarchy (and feature geometry) from Mycenaean on in both the syllabary and a1phabetic traditions. This was carried down to the detail that s plus stop received special treatment. The alphabetic tradition continued the recognition of the special problem of onset clusters in coda position. Meister (1894: 185) noted the agreement of the syllabary and the alphabet in having a unitary sign for [ks], and Nilsson (1918: 184) further noticed that the form of X = [ks] is paralleled by the form of the Cyprian sign for [ksa]. This was generally taken to imply influence of the alphabet on the syllabary (cf. Masson, ad ICS §28.7a), but it is actually the other way around, since the only clusters that traditionally (Mycenaean+) received special letters were onsets, and that is inherently a syllabic notion. Another syllabic coding in the Greek alphabet was the nonlinear (and nonsegmental) representation of aspiration (see Steriade 1982). Daniels (1992: 197) makes the astute point that one of the reasons (if not the main one) for the shift to the alphabet had to do with the extremely awkward representation of Greek consonant clusters. For example, str6phigx "pivot" in some tradition might have been (*)so-to-ro-pi-ni-xe (cf. §§3.4, 3.6). To that one can add the problem of identifying where the vowels were.

1HE GREEK ALPHABEf

59

For instance, se-pe-re, as in se-pe-re-ma Isperma! "seed", could also be read [sepre], [spre], [sep-e], [spre], etc. These motivations also presuppose interaction between the syllabary and alphabetic traditions. This will be elaborated in Chapter7. The representation of the same five syllabary vowels was continued. This is important in response to Gelb's point (1963: 182) that it is improbable that one person developed the exceptionless use of vowelletters using as a model the linear Semitic scripts with their highly irregular vowel notation. Since syllabaries invariably represent vowels (by definition!), which is natural, that being head of the syllable (chap.l), this feature of the alphabet was another point of contact between the two traditions. Moreover, at least one of the vowel symbols exhibits identity across the systems - conspicuously the only one of the supplementals to be permitted in the 'south' where the syllabaty tradition of no separate signs for the aspirates prevailed (except for e which was sanctioned by the Phoenician script). Evidence has been presented that at least one symbol (with amazingly close forms of similar function in Linear B) evolved over time by means of changes in the phonological system of Greek. In the earliest inscriptions, the same assumptions about words. clitics, and word-divisions were maintained in the alphabetic tradition that prevailed in the syllabary tradition (cf. §6.4). Finally, Heubeck (1979: 67-68,86) makes the interesting point that a very archaic Cyprian inscription (ICS 174: Paphos, second half of the -8th cent.) is atypically retrograde (to-ro-to-so-si[- i.e., [Lü]si-stortö "of Lusi-stortos" [Neumann's restoration, accepted by Viredaz 1983: 191]), and claims that this can most easily be explained by interaction with the Semitic script. Moreover, the Cyprian syllabary and the alphabet both begin to thrive around the -8th century, suggesting a renewal of interest in both forms of writing. Any of these points in isolation is subject to challenge, but the composite picture that emerges is one of considerably more interaction between the syllabary and alphabet traditions than is typically granted (except by Nilsson 1918). The composite evolutionary theory points to a compromise between the vowelless Semitic script and the superfluous vowels of the syllabaries to create a script with the advantage of indicating where and what the vowels were (chap.7). Influence from the syllabary tradition came both in the form of particular symbols and orthographic conventions. Given the continuity from the Linear B to the Cyprian syllabary, there is nothing inherently bizarre about the idea that the alphabetic tradition developed concurrently and that scribes familiar with both scripts transferred syllable-based conventions to the alphabet, or, in the case of consonant clusters, deliberately distanced themselves from the awkward vowel repetition. Sometimes, as noted, the influence

r

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ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

went the other way. This Greek-internal evidence accords better with the findings of Semitic epigraphers who recently opt for a -10th (or -9th) century date for the origin of the Greek alphabet

5. THE RUNIC ALPHABET 5.0 Introduction The Germanie peoples used a 'runie' alphabet from around the first century 10 the Middle Ages. The word rune has occasioned much speculation. Gothic riina can tmnslate Lat. mysterium "mystery; secret". Old English run means "mystery; counsel; discussion; word" (Fell 1991). There is one mention of runic letters (run-stafas Accpl) in Beowulj 1695, in a description of inscribed golden hiltplates on the captured sword that Beowulf gives 10 Hrothgar (cf. Elliott 1989: 17). Runic letters (runstajum DATpl) are themselves equated with magie (dr ycrmft) in JElfric, Homilies 2.358 (cf. Elliott 1989:81). The 'secret' was important enough 10 be borrowed by the Celts, e.g., O.lr. run "seeret" (cf. Elliott 1989: 1ft). Just why runes were surrounded by so mueh mystery and seerecy is itself a mystery. An10nsen (198Oa; 1988; 1989: 140ft) takes a very strong position against magical theories of the runes. It is true that the development of the runes need not be further obfuseated by the fantastic, but nothing preeludes associations with ritual and magie (Düwel 1983: 111ff w. lit.). as in Ancient Greece (Thomas 1992:78-88). In any event. as Antonsen insists, that is just one USE of the script that has no bearing on its creation. original funetion(s). or the original meaning of the word. which may have had to do rather with scratching (Morris 1985). but see Fell (1991); early runic rfln was "message; text" (Antonsen 1990:314). Since runes were the stock-in-trade of the writers in runes,l the very knowledge of the letters in a largely illiterate society could have prompted the interpretation as "mystery; seeret". more-or-Iess as in ancient Babylonia the 'supreme seeret'. the key 10 the uni verse. that the god Ea taught his son was the concept of the number 1 The word erilaz is sometimes translated "nme-master", which EImer Antonsen (lener of 24 Feb. 1993) desaibes as "a stab in the dark. All we know about it is that it is used in parallel with terms like gudija 'priest' and pewaz 'servant' ." Antonsen (e.g., 1981:56-57) translates erilo:t. simply "eril" and suggests to me the phrase writers in runes for the present context. It has also been suggested that the term originated as a tribal name, Heruli, of people skilIed in nmecraft (cf. Elliott 1989: 11-12 w. lit.), but there is no evidence for that (Antonsen 1990: 314). 1 wisb to take this opportunity to thank Professor Antonsen for several sets of extensive comments on this chapter. Marie Nelson and W. C. Watt also read an earlier version, and Jay Jasanoff sent me detailed comments on the Gennanic Vowel System (Appendix).

62

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

(Hopper 1969: 12). More directly relevant is the point made by Watt (1989: 92n.3) that from at least the' -6th century 10 the Middle Ages mystical power was associated with the correct recitation of the abecedarium. There are in the neighborhood of 5000 runie inseriptions, some 3000 in Sweden alone, ca. 1100 in Norway, some 700 in Denmark, around 60 in England, and so on. In general, the farther south one goes, the more rare they become (Düwel 1983:3). This creates a problem for Italic theories of the origin of the runic alphabet. This chapter presents additional evidence for the archaic Mediterranean theory of the origin of the runic alphabet, and shows that it was created along phonetic parameters analogous 10 those underlying the ancient scripts of Byblos, Ugarit, and the Phoenician script.

5.1 The Older Runic Fu park There are extant some 250 early Germanic inscriptions in the older runic alphabet (Düwel 1983:123), though only a little over 50 have more than two identifiable words (Antonsen 1980b: 1). An idealized version of the 'older jupark' (named from the first six letters), which had 241etters, is presented in (1), following Antonsen (1989: 142). (1) Older Runic Alphabet (Idealized)

f,,1>

~ ~ <

N -f.

~J'

c:

ae

p

f u

h

P

a

j

n

k

r

t~Mf11' 0 t

b

e

m

I

ng

Xg

f>

w

rz ss [><1 d

~0

There are not many archaic variants of the runic letters, and they are difficult to identify in a non-circular manner (Antonsen 1982; Williams 1992). Most notable is A far /u/, the second letter, and the twelfth, or j-rune, has 'horizontal' variants prior to 400 (Odenstedt 1990). The runic letters can be assigned a number for reference: (2) follows the arrangement in (1). (2) Numbers Assigned 10 Runic Letters (a) f1 U2 P3 84 rs (b) h9 nlO in j12 ie13 (c)

t17

b18

e19

m20

hl

14;

g7

W8

P14

ZlS

S16

!l22

d23

Ü24

TIIE RUNIC ALPHABET

63

Transliteration values (especially of <13» follow Antonsen (1975: 1-10). Discussion of the problematical values follows below. Some of the orderings will be modified in §5.8.

5.2 An ldealized Runic Abecedorium and its Divisions The order of letters in (1) and (2) is that of the Kylver stone (3a). The runic alphabet is written out completely in three abecedaria, listed in (3).2 (3) The Oldest Complete Runic Abecedaria (a) Kylver stone (ORl 30: Gotland, Sweden, 0-400 [Williams 1992: 196 w. lit.J). For the possible ritualistic use, see EIliott (1989:82). (b) Vadstena and Motola bracteates (ORl 90: Östergötland, Sweden, 500-550).3

(c) Grumpan bracteate (ORl 91: Västergötland, Sweden, 500-550). The idealized alphabet in (1) and (2) differs slightly from the extant abecedaria. In (3a), Ipl <14> precedes Iwl <13> The bracteates (3b/c) present a slightly different coda: /0/ <24> and /d/ <23> are reversed. The tripartite division, in three groups of eight (ON lffttir "families; rows of eight"), is presented by means of interpunct dividers (vertical dots) on the bracteates (3b/c). The reason for this arrangement is unclear. Antonsen (1989:142-143) denies any magical significance, but see Elliott (1989: 13-14) and Düwel (1983:9). A feasible rationale would be rhythmic subdivisions in which the alphabet is to be uttered. The 8-8-8 is reminiscent of the 7-9-7 division of the English alphabet jingle: "A B C D E F G 11 H I J K L M N 0 P 11 Q R S T U & V [... ]" (cf. Watt 1989:83-84, noting similar subdivisions in other alphabets).

5.3 Origin ofthe Runic Alphabet: Medite"anean Theory Of all the speculations about the origin of the runic alphabet, the one that has c1aimed the most proponents is the North Italic hypothesis, richly discussed along with alternative proposals in Moltke (1985:49-73) and Elliott (1989:6-12). Nevertheless, the problems with even that hypothesis have been long known. For instance, Etruscan had no 10/, and did not distinguish voiced and voiceless stops (Devine 1974a/b).4 The main arguments in favor of the 2 Somewhat incomplete abecedaria are also known (OR! 89, 99, 104, 105, 106). For discussion, see Moltke (1985:24f1). Schematized drawings appear in Page (1987: 18). 3 A bracteate is a stamped gold meda1lion, warn as an ornament or amulet around the neck, perhaps as a lucky charm (Elliott 1989:83; photos and discussion in Moltke 1985:108-121). 4 See the extensive references in Düwel (1968/1983:9lf1) and the more recent and detailed discussions in Morris (1988) and Odenstedt (1990, 1991). Rex Wallace objects (p.c.) that the

F

64

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWlEDGE

Mediterranean hypothesis are summarized by Antonsen (1982; 1989: 145146): (i) there is not a single early inseription from middle or southem Oermany; (ii) sporadie agreement in shapes is not suffieient to establish a relations hip of origin; and (iii) the most striking overall correspondences are to the archaie scripts of the Mediterranean. A fourth argument, that "older and older [runie] inscriptions are found" (Morris 1988: 157; cf. 150) has been claimednot to be true (Odenstedt 1989; 1991:363-367), but Antonsen (letter of 24 Feb. 1993) upholds the claim, accepting the validity of the 1st century Meldorf fibula and other recently discovered (2nd century) inscriptions. The most important epigraphic correspondences with the archaic seripts incIude the following (Antonsen 1982; MQrris 1988 §§2.4-2.1O, 3.6-3.12): 1) The direction of writing is not fixed, but there are no violations of linearity; inscriptions read left-to-right, retrograde, vertically, or boustrophedon (Antonsen 1983; Morris, pp.69ff, 99). Odenstedt (1991:383) counters that after the 6th century there are few examples of writing that were not left to right, but that is irrelevant for the early period and the origin of the script. 2) Nasals are frequently not written before certain consonants (Antonsen 1972:127; 1975 §4.2; Morris, pp.68-69):Widuhudaz (ORl 5: Sjmlland, Denmark, 2(0) Widu-hundaz "wood-dog, forest-hound" (possibly "fox"; cf. Moltke 1985: 128; Insley 1991:320); asugisalas (ORI 15: Kragehul spearshaft, Fyn, Denmark, 300) /ansu-giSl-as/ "of Ansugisl". A simpler explanation is suggested by Morrls himself (pp. 126-127), that the absence of nasal letters could indicate nasalized vowels andlor the absence of complete nasal closure, as in Eng. hunt, hump, etc. (see §6.10 below). 3) Double consonants did not have to be written in archaie Greek (cf. Morris, p.155); in runic, they are "virtually never used" (Odenstedt 1991: 384); cf. ginu /ginn-ul "mighty" (ORl 15: Kragehul spearshaft, Fyn, Denmark,3(0). 4) Occasional interpuncts with a variable number of dots appear (Morris, pp.75ff, 100, 137ff, 155); see, for instance, the picture of the Tune stone (ORI 27: 0stfold, Norway, 400) in Antonsen (1989:146), and the discussion in Antonsen (1983:30-39). However, the runie use of interpuncts is too rare and unsystematic to draw any firm conclusions (cf. Odenstedt 1991:384).

=

"North ItaJie hypothesis does not necessarily entail 'Etruscan' per se." lbis is certainly true, and he goes on to argue that the absence of 0 in later Etruscan abecedaria is no problem since the Veneti bad the letter (see Lejeune 1974). Moreover, Wallace maintains that, since the runie letters ror Igl and Idl do not seem to be gamma and delta, it is likely that they were taken from some script in which "they were at home." I completely agree. Tbe question is not only the source of the letters hut also the other writing eonventions, and those point to an eadier source of the runic alphabet

TIIE RUNIC ALPHABEf

65

Based on the above evidence, Morris (1988) derives the runic alphabet from a preclassica1, epichoric Greek alphabet, ca. -500, prior to the loss of F Iwl and 9 Iq/, which he claims (pp. 59, 152) served as the models for runic Ifl <1> and IW <22>. This seems a little strange in light of Morris' claim, with which I am in complete agreement (see below), that the inventor(s) of the fupark had to be in a position to analyze the phonologica1 systems of both the source and target languages. As Morris (pp.93, 95) acknowledges, since the classical Roman script was the only Mediterranean script that used F for Ifl (but see §4.7), it hardly seems likely that F would get reassigned to Ifl and not keep its proper value Iw/, to which a different letter got assigned.

5.4 Crltique ofthe Lotin Origin Theory Odenstedt (1990; 1991: 367-368,376-383) objects to the antiquity of the runic alphabet on several grounds: 1) One does not find different runic alphabets as one finds different preclassical Greek ones; there are minor variants but surprising uniformity over the half millennium of its use. However, all that means is that the runic alphabet was consciously designed, like the Indic (Allen 1953:20; Diringer 1968:262; Jensen 1969:362; Watt 1989:71; Coulmas 1989: 185), the Korean Han'gul script, also buHt on phonetic features (Sampson 1985:120-144), the Ugaritic and South Arabian scripts (Diringer 1968:178-179; Sass 1988:166167), etc. (Gelb 1963: 144, 206ft). 2) There are thousands of extant Iron Age objects on which a runic inscription could appear, but there is not a single instance, which is difficult to explain if the runie script dates to ca. -500, as Morris (1988) claims. On eounterpoint, Antonsen (letter of 24 Feb. 1993) affirms that "it is quite reasonable to assume that runie writing was not used for inseribing on meta! until a eonsiderable time after its invention and then probably in imitation of the Roman practiee of putting 'makers' marks' on weapons. See the most recent discussions by Marie Stoklund and Klaus Düwel." 3) All of the letters can be derived from the classica1 Roman script. This is especially true of Ifl <1> from Fand 1ft <22> from Q, or possibly from o. Odenstedt has no problem with the arbitrary reassignment of values. He claims that Germanic did not 'need' Q Ikw/, which is not tTUe (it did not, of COurse, need qoppa Iq/). He does not address the issue of why [0] should be so much more important in Germanic than in Latin as to merit its own letter,. when in fact it was allophonic in both. Clearly, the creator(s) of the fupark lllust have had good reason to invent a letter for [0] (see §5.5 below). The problem has been adequately deseribed by Antonsen (1982:5): 8 letters are identical in the Latin and runie alphabets (B F H I L R T V); 6 are

66

ANCIENf SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEOOE

related in form and function (A CIK D M OS); 3 correspond in form but not function ( ~ Iw/; M lei; X Ig/); and 7 (5 of which are in the middle row and two in the coda) have no formal or functional correspondent (In! , leI <13>,/01 <22>, Ipl <14>. Izi <15>, Idl <23». In stark contrast, all of the runic leiters can be derived from preclassical Greek prototypes; cf. Antonsen (1982), whose critique of Moltke partly anticipates the following critique of Odenstedt (more detailed criticisms in WiIIiams 1992). Some of Odenstedt's derivations make exceIIent sense; for instance, Alu! <2> from V by the principle that runes begin 'at the top'; the smaII size of IkI <6> he attributes to its stafflessness. Some are more questionable. For instance, he derives r Iv <15> from Y, which was not needed. He does not discuss the question of why the more obvious Z was not used for Iv, rather than some letter that appears nowhere in the Roman alphabet. Where sounds correspond one inherently expects that the corresponding letters will keep the same values. He derives p <3> from D, despite numerous problems. Another test of one's tolerance for the absurd is X Iyl (or Ig/) <7> from X [ks] because it was not needed. While finally admitting that the o-rune <24> looks a lot like Greek omega (cf. the Gothic 10/; Braune-Ebbinghaus 1961: 10), though he of course prefers to derive it from Latin 0, Odenstedt (1991:363) criticizes Morris (1988: 153) for deriving fil <11> and Ijl (i.e., Iy/) <12> from different archaie variants of iota, because that presupposes borrowing from two alphabets. But that is not clear. Odenstedt mis~es the point that if preclassical Greek alphabets had either I or S ,the variants had to come from an earlier (unattested) alphabet. Odenstedt, of course, wants to derive the j-rune from Latin G, which is not impossible; compare the similar form of the Gothic j-letter (also Iy/) (e.g., in Braune-Ebbinghaus 1961: 10), which has more the appearance of a G, but a more feasible analog is the Venetic digraph for Iy/, 11, > I) », that is, ii combined in various artistic arrangements (see Lejeune 1974). Compare also the early OE use of uu (whence w 'double u') for fwl and the treatment by the First Grammatical Treatise (below) of Iy/, Iwf as phonological variants of li/, Iu! (cf. Haugen 1972 §3.IO).

=

=

=

5.5 Runic os an lnvented Script While I do not care to enter into the source dispute, which frequently has more of a religious than a scientific aura, it should be observed that the requirement of a single-source alphabet seems naive and obsessive. Many scripts have letters of different sourees, among them the Cyrillic and, within Germanic itself, the Gothic, which possibly added thorn to the repertory of mixed Greek and Latin Ietters, plus a very runic-Iooking IfI, lu/, andlol,

67

THE RUNIC ALPHABET

reserving qoppa and sampi for "90" and "900" (discussion w. lit. in BrauneEbbinghaus 1961:lOff; Jensen 1969:484ff; Gessman 1975:70). Vennemann (1971: 129) makes the point that the Gothic script utilized borrowings to remain "phonetically accurate". Known modern script creators freely borrow from different sources (Daniels 1992). Nor must the element of creativity on the part of script inventors be denied. Exemplaria featuring creative additions include the Cyrillic script (Diringer 1968:374ff; Jensen 1969: 494-495, 502), the Indic scripts (patel 1993), and numerous others (Gelb 1963: 143-144, 206ff; §5.4.1 above). Within the Germanic tradition, the anonymous author(s) of the early thirteenth-century Icelandic First Gramrnatical Treatise (FGT), on the philological problems and interpretation of which see Koerner (1993: 122fO, devised a phonemically detailed script (Haugen 1972). To avoid the ambiguities of adapting the Latin alphabet to Old Norse, FGT establishes nine vowelletters, each distinguished for length (by an apex) and nasality (by a dot over the vowel), illustrating each by means of (over 50!) minimal pairs. The creativity can be exemplified by the genesis of some of the letters, e.g. pp. 13-14 (Haugen 's translation) -

Qgets its loop from a and its circle from 0, since it is a blending of their two sounds, spoken with the mouth less open than for a, but more open than foro.[ ... ] ~ is made up [...] with the cross-bar of e and the circle of o. Y is a single sound made up from the sounds of i and u. 5 On the consonants, it becomes clear that FGT also knows English, Latin, Greek, and possibly Hebrew (but see Haugen), and freely uses letters from a variety of sources, including the runic tOOrn. Haugen (1950:43) formulates the underlying principle (explicitly stated in FGT 84.16): "If the symbols could not be given their Latin values, they must not arbitrarily be assigned new ones; instead, new symbols must be found or created to fill the gaps." It is probably safe to assume that FGT did not simply concoct this tenet, and that some tradition was being followed. Since it is not dear how old that tradition was, we cannot be sure that the fupark inventor(s) made the same assumption, but there is at the very least a message of caution for scholars like Odenstedt who would freely let arbitrary values be assigned. There is no reason to accord the fupark inventor(s) any less creativity or prerogative than known script designers. For instance, why not admit the 5 The description is reminiscent of the modification of the OE u-rune

n

with the i-rune I tomake the y-nme l'n-/ü/. On the form oftheFGT Yletter, see Haugen (pp.51-54).

r 68

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AN!) PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

obvious in the case of the runic eharacter P? Seholars generally accept the Norse name of this letter as more authentie than OE pom "thorn" (e.g., Page 1987:15; Polome 1991:430), but nothing forces that eonclusion. Suppose its Germanie name was in fact thorn. It certainly 'looks Iike' a thorn. Depending on one's ASSUMPfIONS about the date of the runic alphabet, neither standard contemporary Greek nor Latin had the sound Il" (Allen 1988:22-32). When confronted with asound for whieh no available script had a letter, the inventor(s) of the Jupark selected (by the acrophonic principle) a saHent word containing the sound /fll and represented it by a quasi-pictograph. On the ereation of a sign for 10/, it need only be commented that there was a long tradition for sueh a letter. The Medieval lcelandie FGT created a Iigature out of N and G (Haugen 1972 §4.9), and cal1ed it eng, reminiscent both of the Old English name of rune <22>, ing (the disputed source of whieh is diseussed in Polome 1991: 43lff), and of the Greco-Roman äYlla dgma laomal. Allen (1988:35-39) reports that Nigidius Figulus already described tbe sound as "inter litteram n et g" and discusses at length the spelling convention of using Y Igl before another velar to represent 101, a practiee continued by the Goths, e.g., laggs [laugs] "Iong" (Braune-Ebbinghaus 1961 §§50, 67-68). Given this tradition of using two Greek gammas for 101, I suggest that the inventor(s) of the runie alphabet likewise eombined a 'regular' and aretrograde r to invent the box-shaped sign 0 for IU/.6 The counter-faeing, juxtaposed I-variants, < and >, to make Ijl <12>, provide a fitting analogue (see above, §5.4 end). Based on their sophisticated phonological knowledge (below), it defies common sense to think that the creator(s) of the runic alphabet did not know severallanguages AND THEIR SCRIPfS, at the very least, Latin and Greek, and probably also some Northwest Semitie language as weil. This broader range of Classical knowledge is supported by Bremmer (1991), who demonstrates a parallel between Woden-Odin and Hermes-Mercury as inventors of seripts.

5.6 Germanic Vowels and Runic Letters Phonologieal evidence for the archaie nature of the ruoie script has been adduced by Antonsen (e.g., 1975:3-6; 1982; 1987; 1989: 149ff). Given that ancient scripts eould use the same vowel signs for long and short vowels, it is strange that, if there were 10 vowels (five short lieuoal and five long lieüöäl) 10 be represented, the runic alphabet should have 6 vowelletters (u <2>, a <4>, i <11>, m<13>, e <19>,0 <24». Given that there are six vowelletters 6 Cf. van Friesen 1904 (non vidi; cited by Jensen 1969:569). A similar hypothesis. but based on the cursive farms of Greek yy. is advanced by Trnka (1939:294n.2).

69

11IE RUNIC AlPHABET

and given the assumption that long and short could be represented the same way, one is forced to conclude that the runic alphabet was invented when Germanie had paired long and short high vowels and unpaired mid and low vowels, i.e., a total of eight vowels, as displayed in (4). That, according to Antonsen (e.g., 1972), was in Proto-Germanic (more discussion in Appendix, §5. 14-5. 19). (4) Proto-Germanic VoweIs and Runic Letters lil <11> lu/<2> fil <11>

IUI <2>

leI <19> Ia! <4>

l'iJI <13>

löl <24>

Since 10ng and short lil and long and short Iu/ had always been written with the same characters, there was no problem in those cases. But where vowels were not of the same height/quality, they traditionally required separate letters; compare the Greek split between the short mid vowels leI, 10/, and their lower, more open, long counterparts H (eta) and Cl (omega) (§4.5-4.6). The differences among the non-high vowels were therefore such that they all required their own character, accounting for the six vowel signs. The implication drawn by Antonsen is that the runic alphabet had to be created during the time when Germanic had the vowel system in (4). Since that vowel system was no longer current in any Germanie language at the time of the earliest Germanic attestations, Antonsen (e.g., 1975:3-6; 1982; 1987; 1989:151) concludes that the runic script was created in ProtoGermanic times. More generally, Trnka (1939:293) notes that the older runic alphabet was "admirably adapted to the phonemic system of [... ] Primitive Germanic." 5.7 The Thirleenth Rune Antonsen's interpretation, especially regarding the thirteenth rune as lre/, has not gone unchallenged. Odenstedt (1991:373) objects because (1) the rune's (tate!) name is *(h)waz "yew", and (2) "the rune has nowhere this sound value." The second criticism is rather silly, since (a) a special letter for fit would be highly irregular, and (b) Antonsen's very point is that the Value 1'iJ1 had to antedate the inscriptions precisely because it is not attested. What is at issue here is Odenstedt's idie fixe (cf. Williams 1992:200-201) that the runic alphabet is not much older than the earliest currently extant runic inscriptions, and we have noted the lengths to which he will go to force that hypothesis to work. As to his first argument, yew is generally reconstructed *eihwaz, itself not without problems (see, e.g., Polome 1991:428). It might

70

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

also be observed that, once the value Iml ceased to be relevant, the letter would have to adopt some other value(s) in order to survive. For inexplicable (to me) reasons, a good deal has been made of the letter's appearance on the Caistor-by-Norwich roe-deer's ankIe bone (ca. 400):

R J'

~ H ~ ra?han "roe(deer)" Since the roe (deer) is etymologically *roi-ko-, Gmc. *raihaz, a very natural interpretation would be raihan, but as usual, nothing is certain. The form in Old English is rä(ha), and Bammesberger (1991:402ff) suggests that, since the diphthong lail had been or was in the process of being monophthongized around 400, this is in fact an archaic spelling for Irähanl. One can take that point one step further. Since monophthongization presupposes lowering of the glide, nothing inhibits the interpretation as amid IEI or even low lrel glide. Therefore, if one really insists on taking attested spellings as evidence for the value of the thirteenth rune, one could in fact support a value very much like that suggested by Antonsen. There can be no doubt that, in the period of attested runes, <13> was superfluous and acquired several values, most commonly li/, from its shape. My point is that it is not safe to base grandiose conclusions on presumed letter values. Even if the contemporary (attested) values of the letters were completely clear, that would have no necessary hearing on the prior (prehistoric/reconstructed) values. I conclude that none of the arguments against Antonsen's hypothesis can be regarded as having any validity. As to the form of the letter, Odenstedt (1991:373), in bis now familiar manner, wants to derive the thirteenth rune from Latin Z, whicb arbitrarily got reassigned the same value as I. His analogue is even more perplexing. He cites B, D, G, 0, in the Etruscan alphabet as evidence, but of what? Since they were not reassigned arbitrary values, the analogy is incomprehensible. Tbe form of <13> is not so radically different from that of a <4>. One is reminded of tbe creation of the Old English rune for a by simple modification of the old a-rune, now lrel, as in resc "asb-tree" (see, e.g., Page 1987:17; Bammesberger 1991:375ff). It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that a similar, earlier, modification of the a-rune <4> resulted in the thirteenth rune, by lowering the bottom branch and adjoining it on the left. Alternatively, some combination of A and E (i.e., a bind-rune) could yield the same result.

1-

5.8 Phonological Basis olthe Order olthe Runic Letters The letters of the older runic alphabet occur "in an arrangement that differs markedly from the order of letters in all other alphabets" (Antonsen 1989: 140). Antonsen goes on to affirm that "we still have absolutely no idea

71

1HE RUNIC AlPHABEf

how this arrangement came about." He speculates (ibid.): "the best guess is that it had to do with the manner in which the runes were taught and learned, the result of some mnemonic device which is no longer retrievable." In this section, it will be demonstrated that the order has a phonetic rationale, a mnemonic device was in fact involved, and it may be retrievable. Before positing the phonetic matrix, let us make some assumptions: (i) since the order differs from that of the prototype scripts, while most of the symbols remain stable, the letters must have been consciously rearranged; (ii) given that the letters were rearranged, there must have been some principled reason(s) or basis for the rearrangement; (iii) the principles are (at least partly) defined by the initial letters of the runic alphabet,jUpuk, which could serve as a mnemonic for the whole system;7 (iv) it is hardly accidental that the order of letters in jUpark begins with a labial (lip-rounded) C-V pair (fu), 8 proceeds to (inter)dental p, then to 'central ' a-T, and finally to velar k, estabIishing a phonetic grid in which the remainder of the alphabet is to be situated and by which the placement of the letters is to be determined and evaluated; (v) any time a labial consonant appears, it begins a 'series', as on the grid in (5); and (vi) other (non-Iinguistic) factors may also playa role in the arrangement of the letters, but that is beyond the scope of this work. 9 (5) The Runic Matrix

lip-rounded f u w P b m 0

dental

p n i z s t e I d

centraVpalatal a

r

velar k g X

y ie

o

7 It is, of course, Inle, as Professor Antonsen (p.c.) insists, that ''fu jxlTk as the name for the runic alphabet is a strictly modern (19th century) invention, pattemed after alphabet." My point is that users of the foJmk could not fail to notice that the first six letters followed, or established, a pattern for the rest (paralieis in main text below). 8 For the traditional c1assification of vowels according to their affects on consonants, see P. Miller (1972). More recently, aements (1991) argues thata unified set of articulators defmes Place for both consonants and vowels; cf. the discussion in Kenstowicz (1994:462-469). 9 For the idea of a script fitting a matrix, see Sampson (1985:120-144) on the Korean Han'gül script, Allen (1953:20) on the Sanskrit vamasamamnaya, and Watt (1987,1989) on the Canaanite matrices (cf. main text below). The Runic Matrix can be described, with Watt (1989:71) as a "standard textbook illustration of Westward-Facing Man". It is as conscious and deliberate an arrangement as the "Eastward-Facing" varnasamamnaya abecedarlum and matrix (discussion in Watt 1989). For the empty and doubly-occupied cells, see §5.12 below.

72

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWIEOOE

The only extra assumption in (5) is that h <9> was still a voiceless velar fricative lXI (see Trnka 1939; Antonsen, e.g., 1982:8-9, accepts the distribution [X] before consonants, [h] before vowels), but nothing crucial depends on that; agiottal Ih/ would occupy the same position. Of the variable position of Ipl and 1i:J1 in §5.2, either can be motivated. If 1i:J1 precedes, it falls into place with palatalizing segments like Iy/; if it folIows, it takes its place among the front vowels lil and leI. Both considerations together give additional credence to Antonsen's theory that the phoneme was indeed Ii:J/. The variable position of the last two letters is more interesting. Phonetically, there is no way they can be reversed that would keep all of the labials and dentals in their proper slots. Why then the alternative·order on the Kylver stone (3a)? Surely it is no accident that the runic letter <24> bears an indisputable resemblance to the Greek omega in shape and phonetic/phonemic value, motivating its position at the end of the alphabet. What the grid (5) shows beyond reasonable doubt is that the other abecedaria (3b/c) have the correct coda from the point of view of the phonetic organization. Consequently, in (1) and (2), löl should be labeled <23> and Idl <24>. 5.9 Clou and Manner Projectiom ofthe Runic Matrix

Consider another possible arrangement of the runic letters in (6). (6) Class and Manner Feature Display of Runic Alphabet

contin.: f l 1>3 ZlS s16 X/h9 syllabic: U2 Cl4 in i:J13 sonorant: rs Ws nlO Y12 stop: vcl.: ~ P14 vcd.: g7

d24

It cannot be accidental that, on a sequential projection from 11 to du, the letters all fall in place as natural classes with respect to their major category features. The odd letter ;8, conspicuously hearing the number <13>, fonns a kind of dividing line. The continuants to the left of 'center' are arranged front to back; the most strident (sibilants) stand alone on the right. The vowels to the left of center occur in two clusters, back lu/lai before front lil Ii:J/, which in turn subdivide into high before low. The mid vowels leI 101 occur (mirrorimage) front before back to the right of center. lO The resonants are more 10 Altematively, one might assume, following the discussion of Watt (1989:81-82) of midpoint divisions in Canaanite abecedaria, that was the dividing line, in which case the mysterious vowel <13> should be another mid vowel. As noted above, that is a possibility.

THE RUNIC ALPHABEf

73

difficult and suggest a projection that is not yet clear. As they stand, there is a curious i nterspersing. Possibly Irl is 'placeless' (§ 1.2) and stands alone, followed by front to back Iwllnl/yl (glide-nasal-glide) on the left and Iml 111 101 (nasal-lateral-nasal) on the right (on the patterning of nasals and laterals, see Rice 1992:62).1l Perhaps most interesting is that the arrangement follows a principle identified by Watt (1989:71) for the Ras Shamra Matrix (§5.11 below), altemating similar and dissimilar classes. The stops subdivide very naturally into voiced and voiceless, and in both cases, the order is velar > labial> dental, conforming to the SH and/or independent feature geometry (§ 1.2). Moreover, dentals also come last in the Canaanite matrices (below).

5.10 Antiquity o/the Phonological Matrix: Byblo. The phonological knowledge underlying the runic fupark is of greater antiquity than the runic script, as shown by Watt (1987, 1989) in his analysis of the Phoenician Byblos Matrix (ca. -1000), and even older cuneiform Ugaritic script of the Ras Shamra Matrix (ca. -1400), on which see Dietrich & Loretz (1988), Segert (1993). Both are descendants of an earlier ProtoCanaanite script whose organization can be assumed to have had a similar phonological basis (see Segert 1993:87fO. The Byblos Matrix (Watt 1987:2) is reproduced in (7), with phonological interpretation in (8).12 (7) The Byblos Matrix

I ~

~

11

1

Y ~''l

0

III

J1

'I-

IN

~

r

4..J

IV

V

7

L\

~ \j/

cp

$

~

"f ? -I-

11 Tom Sawallis suggests to me (p.c.) that tbe sonorant series might be arranged acoording to descending tongue height, hut simultaneously cautions regarding tbe subde nature of such an observation, especially in the absence of detailed phonetic information. On tbe otber band, if the observation is correct, that would provide detailed phonetic information. Needless to say, nothing can be based on such circular reasoning. 12 The interpretation in (8) is m08tly from Watt (tbc; matrix and all of its categories), but partly from Faber (1981, 1990, 1993), especially for the interpretation of the sibilants.

74

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWlEOOE

Like the Runic Matrix (5), the Byblos Matrix has 'gaps' due to the lack of all the phonemes necessary to complete a feature matrix. Empty cells are necessarily characteristic of any phonetic-feature-based script (cf. Allen 1953 on the Indic prätisäkhya tradition). Watt (1987: lfO states: (1) the number of empty cells is minimal; (2) the chance of just any random order of letters fitting such a grid is infinitesimally smalI; (3) reversing any two letters would complicate the matrix; and (4) statistically, it would take about a trillion random arrangements of tbe letters before accidentally bitting on tbe one that fit tbe Byblos Matrix. (8) Phonological Interpretation of Byblos Matrix III I TI LARYNGEALS 13

1) 2)

Bll...ABIALS

1 h

b w

~

m p

3) 4) 5) 6)

IV

V

ALVEOLARS VELARS DENTALS

g

d

dZ Y n

1;1

~

k

1

~

q

ts

r t

5

5.11 The Ras ShamraMalrix A Ugaritic abecedarium (9), from ca. -1400, exhibits the same phonologica1 motivation for the ordering of letters, as clarified by Watt (1989:62). (9) Phonologica1 Interpretation of Ras Shamra Matrix (Watt) EXTREME BACK EXTREME FRONT

n

I

MIDDLE

III

Laryngea1sl Labials & Interdentals Alveolars Pbaryngea1s & Palatals non-frlc. frlcalive

1)

1a

2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

h

~

b w m p

BACK

DentoAlveolars stop cont frlc. non-fric.

g

p

V

Velars

z

a

FRONT

IV

II

d ~

1;1

Y n

k

~

q

5

Z

1 tS

r y

13 'Laryngea1', as Watt (1989) explains in considerable detail, is merely a traditional coverterm for glottals and pharyngeals, i.e., 'extreme back' sounds (pharyngea1 cavity, in current feature geometry). Watt also provides extensive discussion of the other categories.

1HE RUNIC ALPHABET

75

Wbile tbe Byblos Matrix has 22 letters with 8 empty cells, tbe Ras Sbamra Matrix bas 27 letters witb 21 empty cells. Watt's divisions could potentially be simplified to reduce tbe number of empty cells (more easily in the 1987 version), but Watt (1989:83-84) defends tbe empty ceHs and their distribution, based in part on the rhythm of pronouncing the letter names. In fact, Watt claims, tbe arrangement was set up to be recited vertically as weil as horizontally. Also, as noted by Watt, tbe system is pattemed in terms of contrasts - (extreme) back/front> middle > back/front (1989:71).14

5.12 Empty CeUs anti the Antiquity ofthe Runic Matrix Recall tbat tbe Runic Matrix (5) bas 24 letters with 11 empty cells, five double occupancies, and one slot witb tbree phonemes. This can be reduced by recognizing, witbin a given place feature, independent projections of consonants and vowels, a non-problem for tbe Proto-Canaanite scripts. It can hardly be accidentaI tbat, of tbe 6 multiple occupancies, four are paired C and V sets, viz. jlu, alr, nli, and y/ &8. Tbe suggestion is that tbe inventor(s) of the runic alphabet viewed c1ass and pi ace features almost as independent planes. One can forever debate tbe precise categories and projections of these matrices, but (i) there is always going to be a trade-off between empty cells and tbe number and type of categories recognized, and (ii) the leading idea must not get obfuscated among mounds of semi-irrelevant details. Wbatever class, place, and manner categories are ultimately adopted, the essential point remains tbat a number of scripts since tbe middle of tbe -second millennium bave employed essentially tbe same pbonological knowledge in their construction. Tbat knowledge includes words, syllabies, segments, and the organization of segments, not only according to the Sonority Hierarcby, but also by place features and manner of articulation. Tbe runic script itself bears evidence of antiquity, botb in tbe epigraphic factors in §5.3, and in the letter orders. At first glance, the Canaanite matrices appear to be quite different from tbe runic in (5). However, recall that the projection in (6) exhibits the stop order witb dentals at tbe end, as in (8) and (9). Moreover, tbe laryngealletters in tbe first slot of the Canaanite matrices had long since been reanalyzed as vowels (see cbap.4). When the laryngeal category is disposed of, next in order are tbe labials, witb wbich the Runic Matrix begins. Then, P follows tbe original interdental position in (9). A 14 Given the grammatical treatises of Sumerian formatives in Old Babylonian from ca. -1700 (Jacobsen 1974), it is ciear that there was an even oider tradition of intricate grammatical analysis. which. although morphological. indicates that the tools oflinguistic theorizing were availabie.

76

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEOOE

number of letters also occupy the sarne relative position as in the ProtoCanaanite script (Appendix A). Most conspicuous are the 'middle' four (p z s t): Ipl <14> before /21 <15> is a perfect match with Proto-Canaanite <17> and <18>, as also Isl <16> before Itl <17> matches Proto-Canaanite <21> and <22>. The major divergence from the Canaanite scripts, then, involves the realization that after labials, the rest of the dentals can be grouped with the interdentals, in which case the minimally-differentiated front-back system of labials> dentals> velars follows naturally. In several places, Watt (1989) seems to larnent the demise of the matrix. But perhaps the matrix (in modified form) did survive, in the Runic Matrix. 5.13 Concbuion

The anangement of the Runic Matrix may not appear to be economical, but there is a good deal that is not known regarding the assumptions about phonological theory made by the inventor(s) of the runic alphabet. If there was a 3-dimensional conception that would enable vowels to be projected on a separate plane from consonants of the same place features, some of the abenances (such as double-filled cells) disappear. The sarne might hold for the curious interspersing of nasals and non-nasals (§5.9). If somehow nasals were conceptualized to project onto an independent plane, that seemingly uneconomical anangement (by some current criteria) would also vanish. It is statistically significant that the letters of the jupark, in order, fit a phonetic matrix precisely, allowing for 'gaps' in the system. The empty cells are due to the phonological system of Proto-Germanic rather than to deficient knowledge. One need only consider how many empty slots a phonemic script for English would have, if based on class, place. and manner features. The 'secret' of the runes may have been the metaknowledge underlying the arrangement of the letters, the matrices and projections in (5) and (6), and other interconnections and generalizations that remain to be established. In a cultural tradition of interest in numerology, astrology, and the calendar (see Hopper 1969), is it coincidental that Iy/. as in year, is the twelfth letter, and Id/. as in day, the twenty-fourth? (On the Germanic names of the runes, see Düwel 1983:106-110 w. lit.; Elliott 1989, chap.5; Polome 1991; cf. Page 1987: 14ft). As to historical continuity, it is of interest that the first letter is If/, as infee, Gmc. *fehu (Goth. faihu) "cattle; goodS", corresponding culturally to Proto-Canaanite 'blp- "ox-head". Such interconnections may turn out to motivate the derailments of economy, as interesting as the phonological grid underlying the script. All of this constituted the privileged information of the rune-carving guild, the knowledge that made the runes a ·secret'.

77

1HE RUNIC ALPHABEr

APPENDIX: The Proto-Germanie Vowel System

5.14Long VoweLr

Germanic inherited the basic vowel system (10) from Pre-Germanic (Le., following the merger of *laI with *Ial , vowel lengthening in laryngeal environments, and ignoring special conditioning factors, such as accent, etc.). (10) Pre-Germanic Vowels

u o

e

ü

ö

a

ä

Germanic then shifted *Iöl to löl and *101 to Ia/: *oktow> Goth. ahtau "eight"; *bhr4er> Goth. bropar (0 =löl) "brother". Presurnably this 'shift' was phonetically motivated by higher and lower allophones. The so-called *eJ (PIE *leI) had lower reflexes (löl, leI, läJl) while *e2 (see below) had higher reflexes (lei, lie/). This suggests that in Germanic, as in Greek, the IE vowels */e/, */öl were (phonetically) lower, as shown in (11). (11) Proto-Germanie Lang Vowels (Stage I) Ü

e

Ü

ö-.

e

(ä)

ö

That this was the ease is clear from loanword evidence: Germanie I öl was borrowed into Latin as löl (*bök-, e.g., OHG Buohhunna) > Latin (si/va) Bäcenis, wbile Lat.löl and löl were borrowed as Gme./ü/, löl respectively; cf. Lat. Röma "Rome" > OS, OHG Ruma; Lat. Remitli "Romans" > Goth. Rumoneis (see Streitberg 1896, §59; Antonsen 1972: 134 w. lit.). In some natural way, this aceounts for the reflexes of PIE *leI as weil as for the rnerger of *Iöl with löl (a phonetie trend continued in English where OE stdn > stone, Iuim > horne , etc.), since löl was fairly low, viz. [öl. 5.15 Core Short Vowel Reflexes IE */el tended to have bigher reflexes and merge with */i/, while */01

went in the opposite direction (see Antonsen 1972:132-134; 1982:10-12): (12) Proto-Germanic Short Vowels (Stage I) u

u

e

o a

e<

a

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ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEOOE

For the contrast of lil and Iel in rootlstressed syllabies, and the 'nonnal' reflexes, cf. *medhu (Gk. IlEeU methu "wine", Skt. madhu- "sweet") > OF mede, OHG mete, OE me(o)du "mead" vs. *widhu- (Gall. Vidu-, O.lr. foi "tree") > OS widu, OHG witu, OE (widu »/wudu "tree, spear, etc.", Eng. wood. Occasionally there are doublets, like OHG skiflslreJ (OE scip > ship), OS, OF, OE wuifbeside OHF woif "woIr', whieh, according to Hock (1973), are due to the coa.Iescence of, e.g., NOM *wuifaz > *woifaz (> wolf) and VOC *wulfe (> wulj). This leaves the Gennanie languages with doublets to (re)distribute. Signifieantly, in neuters like OHG Jel "skin", berg "mountain", horn "horn",joh "yoke", etc., where there was never a distinction between nominative and vocative, no doublets exist (*fil, *birg, *hurn, *juh), despite other places where an eli- or olu-alternation occurs in these words, as infillen "to skin", gibirgi "mountain range" (Gebirge), etc. 15 5.16 Short Vowels in Un,tressed Syllßbles The fate of leI and lil in unstressed syllables is less certain. OHG 2pl. pres. beret« *1Jher+e+te) "you (p.) bear, carry" may be erucial evidence, if it is not leveled. Antonsen (1972: 123, 138-139) takes it for original and contrasts it with 3sg. birit, from *1Jher+e+ti, Gme. *~ritXi).16 Antonsen claims that unstressed */el did not affect the vocalism of root syllabies. The idea that leI became [i] in unstressed positions has been signalled as the explanation of alternations like iklek "I" (runie ek/ik, OS ec/ik, ON ek, OE je, etc.) and putative derivations like *seghes (Sb. sdhas "power") > *se yiz > *si}iz > Goth. sigis, ON sigr, OS, OHG sigi, Germ. Sieg "vietory". Meid (1967 §111) derives the final -i- from the *-is- of Skt. arc-($- "ray, beam", ete., and Antonsen (1972:139) diseusses e-raising before */z/. Hollifield (1980:34) reformulates as e-raising to lil in unaccented syllabi es exeept before Ir/. In the case of OHG (etc.) sigi, there is another possibility - a Caland compound 1S lbis is dialect-intemal. Cross-dialectally, there Me exceptions, pointed out to me by Antonsen (FAX of 30 Nov. 1993): Germ. Gold, Eng. gold vs. Dan. guld; Eng. ward « IwurdJ) beside Germ. Wort, and even OHG skijlskef, Dan. skib, Swed. skepp "ship", etc. 16 Jay Jasanoff (p.c.) thinks that 2pl. beret is most likely leveled from the a1ready leveled form berat. Hollifield (1980:34-35) claims that unstressed Ie/ (except before Ir/) became lil in Germanic, wherefore he believes that the Monsee-Vienna fragments preserve the Gmc. 2 pI. in quidit "speak, say", etc., forcing the conclusion that forms like beret Me leveled from leveled berat. Antonsen (FAX of 30 Nov. 1993) finds it unlikely that berat would have been leveled to beret in light of 1 pI. beram es and 3 pI. berant, and reiterates the problem of explaining the absence of umlaut in the 2 pI. pres. ind. versus its presence in 2 sg. biris, 3 sg. birit. He challenges the lengths to which scholars go to maintain a traditionaI rule ("all unstressed PIE leis become lil in Gmc.") Suffice it to say, there is little agreement on whether or not all cases of unstressed lei became lit. Nothing here depends crucially on that detail.

TIffi RUNIC ALPHABEf

79

form *segh-i- (extensive discussion of such formations in Bader 1962, chap.l; Nussbaum 1976; see also Szemerenyi 1990:204-205 w. lit.), beside the neut. -s-stem *segh-es-, in names like Sige-ricus (cf. Goth. reiki, OHG rlrhi, Germ. Reich "kingdom"), Germ. Siegreich; Germanic-Latin Segi-m erus,etc., and these names show contamination with sigis; cf. Se/igis-mundus (6th cent.), Sigi(s)-bertus (6th cent.), Sigis-meres (5th cent.), etc. Since there is independent evidence for a later preservation of final lil than lei, forms like *se y-i- and *peretJi suggest a possible solution. Suppose lei became [i] before lil of the following syllable (cf. Streitberg 1896 §63). Such a rule has a considerable amount of support from early attestations. To begin with, the early evidence for ist (ca. 350) from *esti "is",l7 and Sigi- in runic Ssigaduz « *Sigi-hajJUZ) [K 47: Svarteborg, Sw., ca. 450], agrees with the onomastic evidence, pointing to an e-raising rule as early as the 1st century; cf. (ca. 100) Segi-merus (Tacitus, Annals 1.71 [2x]), Segi-mundus (Tacitus,Annals 1.57), but Sigi-m~us (Velleius Paterculus 2.118.2 [fl. ca. 30]). Velleius Paterculus' Sigi-merus is particularly interesting because it appears beside Segestes (2.118.4); cf. (-1st cent.)Segestes in Strabo (7.1.4) and in Tacitus (Annals 1.55 [3x], 57 [4x], 58, 59 [3x], 60, 71). Given older Seges- and Segi-, there is no reason for later Seges- beside Sigi- unless Sigireflects a change in Germanie about that time. 18 By everything known about Germanie compounding, there is no way the radical *e of Segi- could not have been stressed, viz. Segi-merus (cf. Streitberg 1896: 53, 55, 121, 142; Bennett 1972: 104). The change of Segi- 10 Sigi- around tbe 1st century agrees with that in the name of the Finns: Latin (ca. 100) Fenni (Tacitus, Germans 46x) but Finni, 4>(VVOL (2nd cent.: Ptolemaeus, Geographia 2.11.16, 3.5.8); cf. ON Finn(a)r, OE, OS, OHG Finn, and runic Fin(n)ö "Finnish woman" (K 86; ORI 74, Berga stone, Södermanland, Sweden, ca. 500). Another reasonably early example of radical e-raising is found in tbe word for "friend": runic uiniz (K 135: S0nder Rind, Denmark, 500; cf. earlier ekwinai "1 for a friend": 17 A number of factors presumably played a role hefe, e.g., the normal cUtic status, plus the fact that fif was probably lost (after dentals and therefore?) after ftl on verbs, as in Latin; cf. "'mari> Lat. mare "sea", Gmc. "'mari (Goth. mari-saiws "sea", OS, OHG meri, OE meri/mere) "lake; sea", but *eti > Lat. et "and", Goth. i p "yet, but", ambiguous because Gothic lost finalfif in absolute fmal position (cf. Streitberg 1896:54f1). Hollifield (1980: 175) also accepts the Idea that *-i, "though generally retained in Proto-Germanic, was lost in the personal endings of the verb at least as early as CODlDlon Germanic." 18 Not everyone agrees on the validity of the loanword evidence, as Antonsen (FAX of 30 Nov. 1993) points out to me, citing Marchand (1959). My point is, simply, that where there is DO conflict between the internal and extemal evidence, there is no reason to doubt their mutual corroboration.

80

ANCIENT SCRlPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEOOE

ORI 12: Rogaland, Norway, 300), which yields ON vinr, OS, OHG wini, OE wine, Eng. (Good)-win. Since the Indo-European root is *wen- (Lat venus "love", Skt. vtinas "lust", van(- "desire''), the Proto-Oermanic fomi would have been something like *wen+i+s, and the change to Iwin-i-zI obviously occurred weH before 300, since there is no trace of the inherited radical *e anywhere in Oermanic.

5.17 New Long Vowell Following yet another e-raising rule, this one in nasal clusters (cf. *wendaz [Lat ventus "wind"] > Ooth. winds, OE, Eng. wind), a sequence of the type *-Vox-Ioses the nasal with compensatory lengthening. The historical sequence was something like (13) for Ooth. peihan "to thrive, prosper" (cf. O.lr. con-tecim "coagulate") and Ooth., OS, OHO /iluin "to catch" (cf. Lat. pang-ö "fasten, fix, settle"). For discussion, see Vennemann (1971:102ff); Hollifield (1980:32); Voyles (1992:60-6i). (13) Same Early Germanic Phonological Changes 1) Pre-Oermanic *tegk+on+om 2) Orimm 's Law *"eox+onom 3) Omc. vowels (etc.) *.,eux+an(an) 4) e-Raising before Nas. *.,iUX+an S) Nas. Deletion *llix+an 6) Other tnh+an

*paok+on+om *faux+onom *faux+an(an) *fäx+an fäh+an

Nasal Deletion (13-5), despite much support in the literature (some references above), ultimately brought new läl into the system, but the precise dates of that change are unclear. As Jay Jasanoff insists (p.c.), the reflexes of Nasal Deletion remained distinct form the lil reflex of *eJ (OE säton "we sowed") into Old English, where it fell together with the reflex of *-ans- (etc.); cf. *gans (OHO gans etc.) > OE gos "goose", like ptJhte «*"aux-tön [Hollifield 1980: lSOff, 160ft]; cf. OHO dit:hta) "I thought" (cf. Streitberg 1896:76; Antonsen 1972:127). This suggests that Nasal Deletion was in fact rather a nasalization process and that its output was a nasal(ized) vowel. Moreover, this new vowel did not fall together with new läI in Ioanwords in some dialects; cf. OHO suochtlri (= Ooth. sokareis) "seeker" vs. OE (Beowulj 253) (leas)-sceaweras "(deceitful) observers; spys" (NOMpl) with shortening of - ä(from Latin -tlrius). Adducing shortening in the extreme northwest corner of Germanic (Lowe 1972:214) does not explain why that never affected the reflex from the nasal, again pointing to a distinctive contrast in NW Gennanic between long läI and long nasalized 1,1. What lends this hypothesis same

THE RUNIC ALPHABEf

81

credence is that the 3 sg. pres. of ON fd "to get, grasp" (= Goth. filtan, OE fon "to seize") is given by the First Grammatica1 Treatise (§5.5 above) as f~r, i.e., If~/, showing that in the 13th century, the vowel of fK.h)- was still nasalized. Therefore, Nasal Deletion should be refonnulated as a Nasalization process (cf. Streitberg 1896 §93).

5.18 The Stattu 0/ i! Another potential problem for the segment-letter match in §5.6 involves the status of the peculiarly Gennanic *iZ. There is no problem with *eI wbich bears the reflexes of JE *leI (*se-ti-s [cf. Lat s e-vi"I sowed", semen "seed"] > Goth. se JlY, OE s iiJd > seed). Throughout Northwest Gennanic the reflexes of this vowel were kept distinct from a new bigher vowel, traditional *iZ. It is fair to say that there is extremely little agreement among scholars on the origin and development of this vowel in Gennanic, and this is not the place for a lengthy digression on this topic, so I will concentrate on areas of general agreement. It has long been rea1ized that this high, tense, elose */el was a Germanie innovation (cf. Streitberg 1896 §79). As noted by Streitberg, the new vowel was categorially limited. It occurs in only two words with any claim to antiquity within Germanie (Streitberg 1896:65): Goth. fera, OHG fera, feara, fiara "side", of unknown origin, and *hir "here" > Goth., ON, OE, OS her, OHG hiarlhear. Kurylowicz (1952) has explained the latter essentially as a new lengthened grade based on alternations like OE se/se "tbis; he", he/he "he", etc., whence the vowel of her was held in place by the alternation he : M(r).l9 The second category is the NW Germanie preterit of the 7th class, e.g., OE llitan : lit "let", replacing an older reduplication pattern, in Goth. letan : lailot. One possibility here (so already Streitberg 1896 §79(3); cf. Kurylowicz 1952) involves contraction and/or compensatory lengthening, viz. *he-hait (Goth. hai-hait) "named" > OE heht/Mt, etc. The details of this formation remain murky despite much recent attention (e.g., Fulk 1987; Kortlandt 1991). Nevertheless, one of the sources of the new vowel is unequivocally compensatory lengthening:*mizd ö (Goth. mizdo) "reward" > 19The traditional account deriving *Mr from *ktiir (cf. Streitberg 1896 §79.1) is reiterated in Voyles (1992:72-74. and §2.33). Jay Jasanoff (E-mail message of 22 Oct 1993) supports a variant of the morphologica1 solution, comparing OHG th .., OE par "there" vs. (with short . vowel) Goth. (?), ON par "there",OHG thara "thither". "The long li, then. must have originally been an expressive variant [...]." OHG hera "hither" (> Germ. her) has a short Je! vs. the *e of her/hiar/hier "here". "The conclusion naturally suggests itself that [ ...] Gm<:. *hir is a deictica1ly lengthened vatriant of *her." To that I would only add that. quite naturally, the alternation with heiM, etc., could have been a contributing factor.

82

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWlEDGE

*merdu > OE meord (Ix) > med, Eng. meed; *kizn- "fir, pine tree" > *kern > OE een "torch". As also noted by Streitberg, the status of the new vowel was reinforced by loanwords, e.g., Vulgar Lat. mesa « Lat. mensa) "table" > Goth. mes, OE mese, etc. Another contributing factor may involve *ei before a low vowel, in which case OHG stiaga "stairs" (vs. stigan "to dimb") would result from different leveling processes (see Antonsen 1972: 131 w. lit.). Voyles (1992, §3.4.2) derives this form also from a long diphthong. Whatever the details, it seems reasonably dear that in Gothic the new vowel fell together with inherited *leI; cf. Goth. her "here" and loanwords like Vulgar Lat. Gr«:us "Greek" > Goth. Kreks, OE er«, etc. If we assurne that spellings like haihait "called" represent [hehe:t], with /e:/ from *ai (see discussion in Vennemann 1971:111-126), then tbis was even lower than the inherited */e/, which evidently had a higher realization in Gothic than in the rest of Germanic (cf. §5.14). 5.19 Proto-Germanic Vowels and the Runic Alphabet To conclude this discussion, the evidence is substantial that the ProtoGermanic long vowel system reconstructed in §§5.6, 5.14, is correct. The Gothic-specific monophthongization of *ai, *au to Is/, 131 is irrelevant, and there is no evidence in Gothic for the new *tP, i.e., for a vowel any different from the inherited front mid vowel. The evidence is good that the new bigher vowel originated through contraction, compensatory lengthening, and a derivational process involving a new lengthened grade that affected several morphological categories, especially preterits of the seventh dass of strong verbs. Given the new contrast in front vowels, loanwords with higher front vowels could now be accommodated with the new vowel. As to the matching of runic letters and Proto-Germanic vowels, even if one assurnes that the new vowel *tP was post-Gothic, there remains the potential problem that creation of a new *Iäl (§5.17) may have been preGothic, i.e., within Proto-Germanic. At the same time, as emphasized by Vennemann (1971:104), it is a peculiar phoneme in Gothic in that, in native words, "it occurs only before Ihl and very infrequently." In other words, it is sufficiently new in Germanic that its phonemic status has not yet been reinforced (cf. Antonsen 1972:127). This suggests that, ifNasal Deletion (135) was indeed Proto-Germanic, it could not have been more than a century before the first Gothic attestations. While it does not prove anything, being from a different dialect, runic hilzai "on a steed" (OR! 11: Möjbro stone, Uppland, Sweden, 300), from *konk-oy (cf. Lith. Smzkils "fast"), lends some credence to the suggesion that Nasal Deletion was Proto-Germanic, albeit

THE RUNIC ALPHABEf

83

somewhat late. 20 On the other hand, if the testimony of the First Grammatical Treatise (§5.17) is to be trusted, it seems preferable to formulate Nasal Deletion as Nasalization and to accept that long nasal(ized) vowels subsisted inta the dialects, in which case the same vowelletters were used to represent non-nasal and nasal vowels, as likely in hiihai "on a steed" on the Möjbro stone. 21 If that is the correct interpretation, it continues to follow that the runic alphabet was created sometime between Stage I (11) and the innovation of new /ä/ [± nasal]. This overview of the early development of the Germanie long vowels confirms a safe period of several centuries between Stage I (11) and the changes that brought in first new */ä/, then new */e/. Tuming the argument around, given the inventory of runic vowelletters in §§5.1, 5.6, it is clear that a matching set of those letters with vowel phonemes could only have been made during the time when Germanie had four short and four long vowel phonemes, i.e., in Proto-Germanic, after the changes in (11) and (12), and before Nasal Deletion with compensatory lengthening (13-5). At any time later than that, some important vowel phonemes would not have been represented by that inventary of letters.

20 Significantly, Voyles (1992:60-61) gives Nasal Deletion as the last in a set of changes between -400 and 200. Antonsen (FAX of 30 Nov. 1993), while confmning that hahai probably contains a long nasalized vowel, simultaneously claims that "The lack of designation of Inl is simply a consequence of the runic tradition of not designating nasals before obstruents" (§5.3.2). This seems to imply that he does not believe Nasal Deletion (13-5) has applied. Technically, of course, the form is ambiguous. In an E-Mail message (14 Feb. 1994), Antonsen clarifies that by non-phonemic, he means all cases of surface long nasalized vowels continued to be derived from underlying nasal consonant plus fricative. Throughout this study I have usedphonemic in the sense of ScbaRe (1971), Le., involving a surface contrast, whether the segments continue to be derived or are lexicalized. In other words, Antonsen accepts Nasal Deletion (13-5), but claims that its output yielded few. if any,lexical contrasts. 21 I accept, with Hollifield (1980: 150), that -ai was still a diphthong until after ca. 400 (cf. Bammesberger 1991).

6. LITERACY AND LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE 6.0 Introduction This chapter presents evidence for the implicit knowledge of words, affixes, syllabIes, and segments, independent of any kind of script. It is argued that experiments that suggest the contrary are deficient in their design and results because they are in fact testing explicit knowledge, or even metaknowledge, and consequently do not begin 10 broach what native speakers do with their language spontaneously, much less what they know about it implicitly. There can be little doubt that Iiteracy and knowledge of a script and its conventions influence judgments about linguistic units, sometimes in a manner that is contrary to speakers' implicit linguistic knowledge. But what is generally not laken into consideration in discussions of scripts and Iiteracy is the implicit Iinguistic knowledge that underlies the development and use of scripts 10 begin with, in particular, the knowledge of segments that was coded in the ancient Western scripts. 6.1 TheWord What is a WORD? There is a body of conventional thought that the word is difficult, if not impossible, to define. See, for instance, the discussion and references in Coulmas (1989:39-40). Before discussing some of the modem research on this 1opic, let us advance the hypothesis that part of the reason for the difficulty is that word can be defined in different ways, by reference 10 different parts of the grammar. The thorough discussion by Di Sciullo & Williams (1987) notes the following definitions of WORD that have appeared in the technicallinguistic literature: 1. MORPHOLOGICAL OBJEcr. The word has traditionally been defined by a set of atoms ('morphemes') plus rules of combination (affixation, compounding, etc.). Halle (1973) pointed out that every native speaker knows that un-drink-able is a possible word, but *un-able-drink, *drink-un-able are not (cf. Scalise 1984:24). The central task of morphology is then 10 ascertain the laws of form that detennine membership in this set. As the piethora of recent

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theories (see, e.g., Spencer 1991, Anderson 1992, Lieber 1992, Miller 1993, Stonham 1994) shows, tbis is not easy. 2. SYNfACfIC ATOM. The word, as a syntactic element, is, for instance, the head of XP, i.e., the head of some phrase (the head noun of a noun phrase, the head verb of a verb phrase, etc.), insertable into XO slots in syntactic structure (see Chomsky 1986). Syntactic word and morphological word are not necessarily coterminous. Not all items insertable into syntactic structure have morphological substance (e.g., PRO), and some syntactic heads consist of more than one morphological word (New York, Humpty Dumpty), a compound (China syndrome), frozen phrase (jack-in-the-box), or sentence (a how-they-do-it book). See the discussion in Miller (1993, chaps. 1,3,4). 3. LISTEME (a word coined by Di Sciullo & Williams), the Iisted units of language. If listedness is the same as idiosyncratic, listernes are of no interest The problem is, what does Iistedness entail? Different scholars define listed in different ways, entailing different implications (see Miller 1993). Since various grammatical constructs are subject to listing, listerne is not the same as morphological object or syntactic atom. 4. PHONOLOGICAL UNIT (defined by stress and other phonological properties, such as restrictions on word-final consonants and clusters~ see Levin 1985; Inkelas 1990) includes things Iike clitics and their contractions, e.g., 1'11, should've. These phonological units are not the same as morphological objects because (1) they cannot be formed by morphological rules/principles (1'11 is not just 1+ ll, like seedy is seed + y), and (2) contractions like 1'11 are produced by a phonological 'welding' of I will. With metrical phonology (see Goldsmith 1990~ cf. Spencer 1991, chap.5; Lieber 1992, chap.5), there is agreement that clitics (Spencer 1991:350-394; Anderson 1992, chap.8; 1993) are prosodically deficient metrical fragments that must be incorporated into the metrical structure of an adjacent host (cf. Anderson 1988: 165ff; Inkelas 1990). Finally, such phonological units are not equivalent to syntactic atoms because they do not undergo movement as a unit, as shown in (1). (1) Phonological Unit;t Syntactic Atom

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Dana thinks (that) who will win Dana thinks (that) who'll win who does Dana think! will win *who' II does Dana think ! win

The who will of (la) appears contracted in (lb) and with WH-movement in (lc), where the ! (= 'trace') marks the position from wbich who moved. What is important is that the contracted form who'll cannot move as a single

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syntactic unit, as shown by (Id). That implies that syntax only sees the string who will and that contraction to who'll occurs later, as a kind of phonological operation. When such contractions become lexicalized (listed), they can be moved as a unit, as shown in (2). (2) Listed Phonological Units and Syntactic Atoms (a) you should have done that (b) you should've done that (c) should you have done that (d) should've you done that [regional] The should have of (2a) appears contracted in (2b) and with what has traditionally been called AUX-inversion in (2c). The inversion of the total contracted unit (2d), whieh is still unaeceptable to many speakers, was not possible until should've evolved (regionally) into a separately listed form that eould be seleeted as a syntaetie atom (cf. Joseph 1992: 135ff, on tet's and have (0). 6.2 Word Boundarie.

Confusion about what a word is stems from the different perspectives (above), aecording to which it must be considered linguistieally. That is, a word in the lexicon (defined here for simplicity as the repository of the idiosyncratie) is obviously different from the morphological word with all of its derivations ~d inflections, and that is different from the output word with all that plus de ved phonological properties. That in turn differs from what aspect of a wo or eombination of words (compound etc.) is relevant as a syntaetie head, and so on. This does not mean that the word is diffieult or impossible to define, unless one insists on a monolithic view from a single perspective. To the contrary, the fact that the word has different properties in different parts of the grammar faeilitates an explanation of the apparent eonfusion in people's minds. All of this is part of a speaker's implicit knowledge. The eonfusion stems from attempts to make this knowledge explieit. resulting in a focus on one or another view of the word, giving the impression of ineonsisteney or inability 10 'identify' a word. Bearing in mind the problem of what aspect of a word one might make explicit when asked for 'a (unique) definition', some modem research can now be diseussed. One problem is that the experiments often make assumptions based on English orthography that are not necessarily linguistically sound. Seholes (1993b:85-86) reports a finding that Httle over 2/3 of seeond graders agree that the is a word. Oiven the possible use of word to mean phonologieal

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word, and the status of clitics as part of the larger phonological (metrical) unit which includes the head (noun, in this case), in stating that the is not a 'word' children may be either separating out functional elements from lexical (Abney 1987; Mller 1993, chap.4) and/or recognizing the normal clitic status of articles (cf. SPE 366ff; Miller 1977 §3). Either way. they are stating an implicit awareness of the problem of treating the on a par with a major lexical category item. It is interesting that the Ancient Greek syllabic scripts also wrote clitics together with the head (§3.1 etc., above), and the accent-marking tradition used the so-called grave accent to indicate metrical subordination (Wackernagel 1893; Jakobson 1937:264-265; Sommers tein 1973: 161; Miller 1976c: 16ff). Languages differ on what function words can be clitics or hosts (Kaisse 1985; Inkelas 1990, esp. chap.8). Tasks experimenters assign to children are not only ambiguous (Mann 1991:55-56) but presuppose a knowledge of English orthographic conventions, which are notoriously haphazard. One need only consider the different ways of representing compounds: wordword (bookstore), word-word (stagemanager), word word (China syndrome). Since adults frequently hesitate and have to look up the specific 'spelling' of particular words, it seems ridiculous to imagine that children wouldlshould find the conventions any less arbitrary.

6.3 Knowkdge ofWord Comtituency Scholes (l993b) perpetuates the age-old prejudice that people have no notion of word without the aid of writing. Just how/why people suddenly realize they can write words separately is not addressed. He also misses the point that by the lexical and/or syntactic definition, it is impossible not to know what a word iso He even cites counterevidence from Saenger (1991), who rightly insists, based on ancient scripts, that the word precedes writing. Nor does he address the issue of how people know what modifies what if there is no concept of the word, or, for that matter, how speakers know which words to put which derivational and inflectional affixes on, if they do not know what a word is to begin with. Based on prior experiments by himself and Brenda Willis, Scholes maintains that illiterate speakers cannot segment words like dishonesty into their constituent parts. It is true that speakers have difficulties with nonproductive morphology, but Scholes does not test productive morphology (discussion in Miller 1993:4ff etc., W. lit.). Since all speakers freely coin and understand new words involving productive derivation and inflection, they must have the implicit knowledge. Experimenters have a threefold problem: (1) separating productive and non-productive morphology; (2) getting the child to understand the nature of the task; and (3) designing the experiment in

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such a way as not to require metalinguistic transfer from implicit to explicit knowledge (i.e., test implicit knowledge). Scholes in fact borders dangerously on claiming that all forms of all words are memorized when he says (p.84), "If, then, word cannot be defined, the idea that some words have (sterns and) affixes becomes at best suspect if not patently vacuous." How, then, do speakers recognize a new word, a word they have never heard before? How do they know how to inflect a neologism? Why would anyone hearing the verb lase for the first time (recently backformed 1 from laser) automatica1ly know that it can have a past tense and that it is lased? For that matter, how, if speakers do not know what a word is, do they create a verb like lase to underlie laser to begin with? . Daniels (1992:89) rightly insists on knowledge of the word, based, for a change, not on experimental results, but on direct observation of speech situations, with self-corrections, and requests for repetition. One might also inquire how, if people do not know what a word is, they could ever question the meaning of a word they have never heard before. Apreliterate four-yearold was overheard to ask, "What does [seu] mean?" (asking about eschew). If people cannot recognize (as sucll~ords they know, how could they ever in a continuous stream of speech? detect the presence of an unknown w Since speakers clearly identify old, w, known, and unknown words, it follows that the experiments of Scholes (and others) are faulty in their design and results. They do not begin to get at what native speakers necessarily know implicitly in order to create, understand, and correctly derive and inflect new words. They do a major disservice to the linguistics community in conveying to the population at large misleading information about linguistic knowledge, thereby pretending to validate under pseudoscientific guise ageold stereotypes and prejudices. 6.4 Knowledge ofWordl in Antiquily Scholes' claim (1993b) that word cannot be defined apart from writing systems is also misleading. Again, how do speakers of languages that have never had a script derive, understand, and properly inflect new words? It is also misleading to assert (p.84) that "languages without literary traditions [... ] have no words for word." In reality, languages with literary traditions that clearly recognize words frequently do not have an unambiguous word for word. Greek },.oyoc; lOgos only has "word" for one of a very broad range of meanings, including "reckoning, account(ing); explanation; principle; reason; narrative, speech" etc. (nearly six columns in LiddeH-Scott-Jones, A Greek1 For a recent discussion of backformation. see Miller (1993: 110-115).

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English Lexicon). Compare the more technical terms OYOlia 6noma "name; noun; word", Plllla rhima "word; verb; phrase; predicate", },.E~lC; Ibis "speech; diction; phrase; word", etc. (see Morpurgo Davies 1988:93). The usual Latin word for "word", in fact cognate to Eng. word, namely verbum, also means "verb" as opposed to ntmen "name; noun". The problem is not that native speakers do not know what a word is (how do they know names?), but rather that word as a phonological construct differs from word as a syntactic unit, and so on. There is also the tension of giving a more or less specific/technical term, depending on the type of word it is, or its function as part of a phrase, topic, etc. Finally, no one appears to have questioned how literate and nonliterate traditions alike, if the absence of a word for word implies the absence of the concept word, could have extensive discussions of different kinds of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.). The Stoics had not only defined the lexical categories of Greek words, but devised syntactic and semantic roles to predict their occurrence (Egli 1987). In a discussion of palaeography, Scholes (1993b:87ft) argues that "the ancients" (as though that were some sort of unified notion) did not have the same concept of word as we do because they inconsistently and somewhat arbitrarily divided them. In the first place, the reader will not faH to have noticed throughout Chapters 2 and 3 that word boundaries are consistently written. Secondly, as emphasized by Morpurgo Davies (1987:97), there was a clear notion of the unit 'word' that was consistent from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic period. Third, Scholes does not seem to realize that not separating words is just one convention and that it is actually later than the one featuring consistent and correct word divisions, wherefore it was a matter of choice/style/convention, not ignorance. 2 Another early convention divided phrases instead of words. For instance, the Nestor's Cup inscription (-8th century) has three metricallines, of which the first uses word dividers (the first 'word' includes a clitic) and in the second and third the first punctuation marks the caesura (Watkins 1976; see also EG 1.226-227; LSAG 235236; Heubeck 1979: 109-116; Powell 1991: 163ft). In an inscription from Corcyra (Buck 93; LSAG 232, 234(9): -625/600), punctuation marks verseline boundaries. These are all options for which decisions are made. Scholes' conclusion (p.89) that "function morphemes may have been conceptualized earlier as affixes and later evolved into autonomous words" is 2 Rex Wallace (p.c.) states: "I'm amazed that Scholes could imagine entertaining the claim that the ancients did not have 'the same concept of the word as we do'. He obviously hasn't taken a very dose look at the epigraphie materials in the various languages of ancient Italy. In all of these traditions the division into words is on the whole very consistent"

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unintelligible to me, since (1) those are not the only choices, (2) the historical process is most frequently the other way around (Miller 1993), (3) according to Scholes, illiterates should not be able to conceptualize words or affixes to begin with, and (4) the number of syntactic and phonological alternatives is greater than could be adequately represented by means of a unidimensional, linear script. In short, it is unreasonable to criticize particular orthographie conventions for failure in areas where linguists have not yetdevised adequate representations.

6.5 Acquisition ofMorphology To support the claim that preliterate children lack words and affixes, Scholes (1993b:85) cites experiments which allegedly show that "children have little realization of what a word is before five to seven years." This simply does not square with the acquisitional facts regarding languages with very complicated morphology. It is weil established that children past the phonological segmentation stage (ca. age 2 1/2+) learning polysynthetic languages make very few mi stakes in the ordering of affixes (see, e.g., AksuK~ & Slobin 1985, for Turkish; MacWhinney 1985, for Hungarian; Mithun 1989, for Mohawk; Raghavendra & Leonard 1989, forTamil). To appreciate what a staggering feat this could potentially be, consider Baker's point about learning morphology in a language like Eskimo with over 400 productive affixes. Even if a language has only 50 productive affixes and can atläch only 7 to a root - an extremely conservative figure for many languages of this type - Baker (1985:412) observes: [I]f nothing else is known, there could be on the order of 7:JJ combinations of morphemes that apriori could be part of the language - yet all but a vanishingly smaU number are not. Thus, it is inconceivable that Eskimo children get all the crucial data they need to find the right subset of these possibilities, and the structure of the data that they do get will be made opaque by phonological rules, instances of zero morphology, and so on [... ]. Therefore, by the poverty of the stimulus argument, there must be principles of Universal Grammar that constrain morpheme structure.

More simply, asemphasized by Miller (1993:27), for a polysynthetic language to be learnable, there must be universal principles of morpheme ordering to facilitate acquisition. Those principles are investigated by Miller (1993, esp. chap.2), where it is upheld that essentially the same grammatical principles determine linearization and wellformedness in syntactic and morphological structures (cf. Lieber 1992).

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6.6 Word Salience: Conclusion The fact that extremely young children already make very few mistakes with complicated morphology - long before they are literate - is proof conclusive that (implicit) knowledge of words and affixes has nothing to do with literacy or having a script. Since the linguistic reality of what children do with language differs markedly from the results of experiments, it follows that the experiments are not adequately designed to begin to broach what children do, much less what they know. If the word is so difficult to identify, how is it that ~wen a CHIMPANZEE or a PARROT can ascertain enough about (English) words to combine them cleverly into neologistic compounds of their own creation? Chimpanzees have been known to spontaneously create such constructs as water-bird to describe a duck, pick-face for "tweezers", and nose-Iake for "mask" (see the contributions in de Luce & Wilder 1983). The African Grey parrot Alex has over 40 object labels, 7 colors, 5 shapes, and can quantify up to an amount of six objects (Pepperberg 1990a/b, 1991).3 According to Pepperberg (1991:3), "He combines attribute and object labels to identify proficiently, request, refuse, categorize, and quantify over 100 different objects [... ]. His accuracy averages approximately 80% [... Alex also insists on some of his own labels, such as his spontaneous creation banerry (evidently banana + berry or cherry) for "apple". There can be no doubt that words are quite salient and that children leam them at least as readily as chimps and parrots do, perhaps initially by contextual label repetitions and/or responses to endless hours of "What's that?" Nor should it be forgotten that alilanguages have CITATION FORMS, which are inherently extra-sentential. Finally, the lack of agreement among theoreticians on any single, simple, or unique definition of word should not be imputed to the preliterate child, who could care less about adefinition but

r.

3 I realize that some may consider the discussion of animals in this connection as very tendentious. lohn Stonham has actually advised me to put this part in a footnote because "what chimpanzees may be doing when they combine 'words' is in fact combining semantic concepts, or 'signs', witbout any real knowledge of whether the units involved are simple, monomorphemic words or highly complex sentences." I assume that that is correct, but I'm not sure it matters. In bathroom towel, bathroom is a unitary concept despite heing itself a compound. Alllanguages have CITA TION forms, which all speakers know, and it seems reasonable to hypotbesize that that is what animals learn. African Grey parrots also militate against the claim of Schmandt-Besserat (1992: 184-194. 197) that the human innate capacity for counting is essentially limited to "one, two, many". While the evolution from concrete to abstract counting is likely to be correct (as in other common types of semantic change; cf. field (of study) abstracted from (corn, etc.) jield), it is due to practical exigencies and changes in the economy and technology (as she acknowledges), rather than to cognitive capacity.

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clearly has the cognitive capacity to acquire words, and therefore to 'know' (at least implicitly) what a word iso 6.7 The Syllable Children very early demonstrate awareness of syllable structure, as evidenced by rhyming, onset integrity, games, and so on (see Treiman & Zukowski 1991; Carlisle 1991; Read 1991; Taft 1992, Part V; Barton 1994, chap.6). Daniels (1992) claims that it is not accidental that the oldest writing systems (Chinese and Sumerian) and the verifiably most independent system (Mayan) were designed for languages in which the syllable and the word tend to be coterminous, or "the most salient unit of language coincides with the most salient unit of speech" (83-84). There are a number of problems here which I will ignore (such as his lack of a definition of word!) in order to adhere to the main point. Some of the oldest documented scripts (e.g., Egyptian hieroglyphic) make use of the rebus principle (picture of eye + gnu + yew =I knew you; cf. Gessman 1975:10; Davies 1987: 31,38), but none of this need imply ignorance of segments. Daniels (1992:85-87) cites modem paralleis of known illiterate script inventors, who fashioned syllabaries that feature CV combinations (mostly), in contrast to literate ones (87-88), whose creations are more segmental. But does this mean that illiterates have no conception of segments? Or does it mean only that segments and the syllable are interrelated aspects of the same knowledge, wherefore syllabaries encode both segments and their syllabic organization simultaneously? Roy Harris (1986:39) objects to the characterization of a syllabary in terms of CV combinations, which is "already to describe what a syllabary is in alphabetic terms". However, it is not necessary to make bis assumption (p. 39) that "the notion of consonants and vowels combining to form syllables [... ] is itself an alphabetic notion." One could take a linguistic perspective regarding the hierarchical structure of syllables and feature geometry (§ l.2ft). That obviates the characterization in alphabetic terms, and simultaneously explains why syllabaries encode segments and their syllabic organization. On Harris' account, it is completely fortuitous that the norm for syllabaries contains any coding of s~nts whatsoever. It should be just as much to be expected that 'syllable' signs OOutd-be just an inventory of rebus symbols. 4

4 Kathy Leffel (p.c.) makes an even stronger point: ''Ts it accidental tbat there are symbols for si, se, so, sa, etc.? Why not have more than one for a given combination? Why not have one that means 'peanut' in the middle of the system? If they aren't phonologically organized, what are they - Baskin-Robbins tlavors?"

SU,

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Daniels (1992:89) follows a long tradition in insisting on the naturalness of recognizing syllables because "the syllable, and not the segment, is what the lay person produces when asked for a small bit of speech." This is true, but misses the point that the reason is practical/physiological rather than a reflection of knowledge. Since trained linguists cannot audibly pronounce [p] without some vowel after it, it is unreasonable to expect more of 'lay people' (cf. Harris 1986:5Off).5 Despite all the evidence for conscious (explicit) awareness of syllable structure, literate speakers do very poorly on experiments that attempt to elicit that knowledge (Derwing 1992:198), again suggesting that the problem lies in the design of the experiments. Why, after all, do speakers not face the same dilemmas with syllable permutation games Iike 'Pig Latin' (§6.13.4)? 6.8 Segmentf antI Phonemes

A persistent and totally erroneous argument against segments has been promoted by the difficulty of seeing their boundaries on a spectrogram. There is no doubt about the 'fuzziness' of segment boundaries, but there is equally no question regarding the linearity of segments. 6 Regardless of how fuzzy the boundaries are, [kret] (cat), [trek] (tack) and [rekt] (act) are quite easily distinguished, so the alleged phonetic difficulties are less real than some have pretended. Bellamy (1989) goes so far as to assert, in essence, that only phonologists recognize segments, phoneticians do not. As usual, things are not that simple. Bellamy cannot possibly be unaware that for about the last ten years, one of the goals of phonologists and phoneticians alike has been to try to understand the mapping between the two, as Alice Faber of Haskins Labs assures me (cf. Kenstowicz 1994, chaps. 4, 9. 11). In other words, the problem is not the existence of segments, but rather how to program/predict the phonetic output from the phonological input. Arecent paper that deals with this problem is Cohn (1993). Sapir (1949[1933]:47) produced evidence that naive speakers are aware of phonemes. More recently, there has been a tendency to deny this aspect of 5 A word of caution is in order here. Elisa Maranzana points out to me (p.c.) that Daniels and others also use 'natmal' of the syllable because it is 'accessible' (in her sense), Le., part of explicit (conscious) awareness for all speak:ers. By contrast, I am using the term natural of segments, for which speakers have IMPUCIT knowledge (see main text below). By preempting the word natural, Daniels implies that by contrast segments are not natural. Both are equally natural, but in different ways. 6 Tbe terminology may be potentially confusing. Unearity here refers to linear sequentiality in time; it is not to be confused with NONUNEAR phonology, which refers to higher levels of organization. In that sense, segments are not here analyzed as 'linear' (see § 1.2, etc.).

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phonological knowledge. Coulmas (1989:40) goes so far as to declare that "The notion 'phoneme' [... ] is modeled on the letters of the alphabet." Bugarski (1993:8) even questions, "Which came first, the phoneme or the alphabet?" The question is puzzling. Without lexically distinctive sounds, there would be no need for an alphabet or any other script 10 represent them. Despite the rash assertion that in antiquity the 'letter' was "the smallest structural element of language" (Bugarski 1993:8), the evidence for phoneme awareness is quite extensive and, needless 10 say, Bugarski's point depends on what word one is translating as "letter". Bahizs (1965:2fO presents a useful overview of the evidence for the phoneme. One of the more interesting ancient observations is that of Sextus Empiricus (-3rd cent.), who noted that, taking into account the different pitches and quantities, the seven Greek vowel letters represent 43 (contrastive) sound-values (o,-olxE:'la stoikfteia), which is entirely correct: 10 short vowels (5 high pitch and 5 non-1oned) plus 1510ng vowels (5 rising pitch, 5 falling, 5 non-toned) plus 18 diphthongs (six rising pitch, six falling, six non-toned). Nor was he counting vowels with accent marks, since he did not count the grave accent, which, as noted above (§6.2), was equivalent to non-toned phonologically.

6.9 The Rote olthe Phoneme in Language Change To the ancient testimonies one can add the evidence for phoneme awareness from language change, where, again, the same factors affect literate and non-literate speakers alike. That sound changes can be reversed in environments where phonemic status (contrast) is lost has been known at least since Pedersen (1939). Numerous cases have been reported by Schane (1971) and Hock (1975) in which a process is given up precisely in the inducing environment in which contrast is lost. One example involves the change in Nupe, where palatalization and labialization are lost in predictable environments, cf. (tones ignored) [egYi] - [egi] "child", [egW u] - [egu] "mud", but not in contrastive contexts: [egYa] "blood" ~ [egWa] "head" ~ [egal "stranger" (see Schane 1971 §4). A similar example (with different motivation) is loss of labialization in Spanish, overviewed in (3). (3) Loss of Labialization (Spanish) eMUS> earo (k-) "dear" eiVitäs > ciudad (s-) "city" quzrtus > euarto (kW -) "fourth" quem > quie~ho" In this case, [k] and [k W ] contrasted before Ial but not before fit where fkl became es] and IkWI was simply delabialized (Schane 1971 §3; Hock 1975). Pedersen (1939:290) showed that his own Jutland dialect of Danish lost

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palatalization before lil and Iy/, while [kY] and [gY] remained before the 'open' vowels lei, hel - quite sirnilar to the depalatalization in Nupe and the one ~ posits for Ancient Greek (cf. Miller 1981, discussed in Stephens & Woodard 1986). Such cases indicate that speakers are aware (at least implicitly) of segmental contrast. LaSs of contrast - or its converse, acquisition of contrast (e.g., the phonemicization of [U] in the Prince of Wales dialect of Eskimo [Jenness 1927:170]1)- has important consequences to the phonological system (see Jakobson 1930), which supports Sapir's claim that phonemes do indeed have 'psychological reality' . It must be emphasized, with Schane (1971), that the reality of phoneme awareness has nothing to da with the claim of (some) post-Bloomfieldian structuralists that there is a discrete level of representation between the morphophonemic and allophonic. In most cases, the contrast discussed here arguably has nothing 10 do with lexicalization (i.e., development of a lexical segment contrast), which is not necessary, given the possibility of accessing a perceptual difference. How the 'reality' of the phoneme is 10 be incorporated into modem linguistic theory, or if it is even linguistic (as opposed to perceptual), will continue to be debated among theoreticians and need not occupy any more space here.

6.10 TIu! PhonologylOrthogrophy Interface Bugarski (1993: 13), apparently unaware of all the evidence for the phoneme, insists that "the development of writing is crucial in building up language awareness and guiding linguistic intuitions." This misses the point that, although writing may - and doubtless does - help speak:ers 10 transfer knowledge from implicit 10 explicit, i.e., facilitate the development of one form of metaknowledge, writing is only one tangential source of explicit or metaknowledge. Indeed there is evidence that spelling has always influenced certainjudgments. Derwing (1992:195-196) reports that some speak:ers lump together words without a pronounced Iki (knit, knife) with those with (kind, eandle, ehlorine). Ehri (1993: 26-27,33-36) notes that letter names influence spelling; e.g., elephant can be spelled without the second e because it is already there in the letter-name ef; cf. also YF for wife, NIS for niee, etc. 8 7 For a useful coUection of examples of phonemicization, see Jakobson (1962[1930]:207fO on ·phonologisation'. 8 Such examples of 'syllabic notation', as Rex Wallace calls them (p.c.), were very frequent in antiquity. For Greek spellings of this type, see Wachter (1991); for Latin (and Etruscan), see Vine (1993, cbap.14).

UTERACY AND LINOUISTIC KNOWLEDGE

This is by no means unidireetional. Phoneme awareness is observable among non-readers (Lundberg 1991), and implicit knowledge of segments can influence spelling. Witness examples recorded by Ehri (1993), Treiman (1993:218), and others, of ehildren's spellings that reflect tremendous phonetie accuraey. Children go through a stage leaving out nasal eonsonants: BUP = bump, TET = tent, THIK = think, etc., whieh is more accurate than spelling with a eonsonantal segment sinee for many speakers the nasal eonsonant is deleted (Cohn 1993:67ft).9 Cohn argues for optional nasal deletion (delinking of the nasal consonant) and relinking of the feature [+nasal] to the preceding vowel, based on a eareful phonetie study of the gradient (partial vowel nasalization) effect. That is, nasalization is not phonologieal in English. The vowel bears no phonological [+nasal] speeification, as Stampe (e.g., 1973a) argued, and nasal consonant deletion is not categorica1. Spellings like SBUN spoon, SOOV stove, SOlE sky, etc. (cf. Treiman 1993: 144ft) are phonetica1ly justifiable, given that voiceless stops are aspirated in English and voieed are not. Also, voiceless unaspirated (after Ist) and voiced (being only partially voieed) share the features [-stiff glottis] and [-slack voca1 folds] (Kenstowicz 1994 § 1.9). Therefore, the non-aspiration of stops after Isl (see, e.g., Kim 1970; Iverson 1987) is eaptured by this spelling (Stampe 1973a:36-37 et pass.) in English and many other languages; cf. runie Asugasdiz "Ansu-gast-" (Myklebostad stone: ORI 28, Norway, 400); see Antonsen (1975 §4.6), Williams (1992:203). Nevertheless, when confronted with an experiment that tests (eonscious!) judgments of the similarity, many speakers 'faiI' (Derwing 1992: 195-196), again suggesting a flaw in the test 6.11 Phonology-Orthography Mapping.

While the interconnections between phonology and orthography have been the target of mueh debate, there is reasonably clear evidence that they are separate eognitive faculties. Some brain-damaged dyslexie patients ean read existing words but not made-up words and eannot judge whether or not made-up words rhyme. Both tasks require 'translation' by means of a cipher (mapping device; see Gough & Walsh 1991) from spelling to sound. This suggests that the various eonventions relating orthographie representations cannot be utilized by such patients who instead must rely on memorized assoeiations, but see also the diseussion in Willows, Kruk & Coreos (1993). Phonology and orthography are intereonnected in the sense that literate adults, even when linguistica1ly trained, have some diffieulty separating the 9 I take it as irrelevant that very young children (e.g., age 1-2) actually pronounce [hgph] for bump, etc. (Stemberger 1993: 117).

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two (cf. Derwing 1992:194). Recent experimental evidenee suggests that both orthographie and phonological representations are automatieally aceessed during word reeognition. Even rhyming words in a list are more easily detected when spelled the same (e.g., gluelclue vs. grewlclue). Phonological and orthographie representations must be separate because severely dyslexie patients, following brain injury, have been known to lose all access to the eonversion eonventions and to substitute their own. One patient pronouneed cape as Isrepil when reading the word (and had no idea what it meant), but wrote k-a-p when hearing the word. The meaning can be accessed either from hearing the word or from reading it in the patient's own spelling. See Crystal (1987:176-217), Emmorey & Fromkin (1988), Taft (1992). This provides a framework in whieh to understand how learners may either read a word correctly and proceed to speIl it incorrectly or fail to read a printed word sueh as circus because the match to the phonological represent~ ation Isrkasl (for syllabification, see § 1.7) is too opaque. On the other hand, when writing Isrkas/, the learner applies a simpler, more phonologieally transparent, set of conversion roles and writes srkis (or the like). Visual memory is important in accessing conversion conventions. One fourth-grader in Judith Miller's elass wrote wut for "what" based on conversion principles for her pronunciation IWAtI. Having written wut one time, however, she evidently realized it did not 'look right', and spelled it correetly the seeond time it came up. Judith Miller reports (p.e.) that it is not unusual for leamers to have the paper worn through by the eraser from conseeutive attempts to get a word to 'look right', illustrating some of the diffieulties of learning the idiosynerasies of English orthography. For more discussion, see the contributions in AlIport et al. (1987), Gough, Ehri & Treiman (1992), Willows, Kruk & Corcos (1993a); see also Gombert (1992), Taft (1992). 6.12 SpeUing and Metaknowledge Spelling (sinee antiquity) has always been at least partially morphophonemie (ef. SPE; Hospers 1980), etymologieal, morphologieal, heuristie, or a eombination of faetors (Sampson 1985: 194-213). Roy Harris (1986:98-99), in a diseussion of the 'same ending' (plural) of cats and dogs, notes that, sinee they are spelled the same, they eonstitute a psyeholinguistie MENTAL REPRESENTATlON, but hastens to label this "fantasizing". To the contrary, there is a clear (mental) reality to the identity, despite superficial differences, providing a rationale for the conventional spelling. Although the relationship is morphophonemie (in the teehnical sense, Le., as opposed to allophonie, sinee Isl and Izi are phonemes of English), it is generally agreed that Isl is not a linguistically adequate representation of. the plural marker (eurrently, an

UTERACY AND LINGUISTIC KNOWLEOOE

99

underspecified sibilant is assumed; cf. Kenstowicz 1994: 150ft). In that sense, s is purely conventional but psycholinguistically important (see the references in Derwing [1992: 194], who hails tbis as "one of the best-studied phenomena in all of psycholinguistics") as a unified heuristic representation (cf. Gelb 1963: 15, on 'visual morphemes'). Perhaps the choice of the unmarked (voiceless) segment s is not so bad. Genuine (underspecified) archisegments are rare (in addition to the contrasting segments) in the world's orthograpbies. In light of the complicated interactions between writing (knowledge) and phonological knowledge documented in §6.11 above, it is difficult to evaluate the fairly simple-minded claims about phonological knowledge found in most discussions of scripts. Daniels (1992:89) is nearly alone in insisting that alphabets are 'unnatural'. But his reason, that "without training, humans do not hear phonemes" (by which he apparently means contrastive segments, since phonemes are inaudible abstractions), betrays the customary prejudice that "Segments are not self-evident." Ehri (1993:39) supports the notion that "without graphemes symbolizing phonemes, they [speakers] lack a means of conceptualizing phonemes as separable units of speech" (cf. Scholes & Willis 1990; Prakash et al. 1993). It is difficult to reconcile this position with the phonological knowledge of literates and illiterates alike (§6.13 below), some of wbich approaches explicit knowledge. One suspects that the problem is one of accessing metaknowledge when experimentalists confront linguistically naive speakers with tasks 10 perfonn. Scholes (1993a) inadvertently supports this point by demonstrating that many undergraduates at the University of Florida, who are completely literate (in some sense), do not know how many 'sounds' there are in cat. 1O I would add that I have had similar experiences in the classroom, as have others (cf. Derwing 1992:203, on written registers). Also, an adult (reading teacher!) once maintained that the Ipl of thing has two sounds, t and h! In fact, she knew better. Since she spoke the Pig Latin 'dialect' that extracts the first consonant (scram> cramsay), I told her to put thing into Pig Latin. Her output was ingthay, by her implicit knowledge, not hingtay by her orthographie contamination. All of this shows that literacy/illiteracy has little to do with the problem of teaching speakers how to consciously access their implicit knowledge. All one can say at tbis point is that some speakers are better at it than others, and that it has nothing to do with literacy, but what detennines it is not yet clear. Explicit knowledge differs crucially from implicit in that 10 Maranzana (1993) emphasizes that the results typically attained do, however, indicate true phonologica1 awareness. A typical response is that cat contains two parts, [kiel and [let], which illustrates the syllabic organization of the segments.

r

100

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEOOE

implicit is not subject to such differences in individual competence. Raising implicit knowledge to the level of explicit seems to require extra talents. Gombert (1992: 8-13 et pass.) distinguishes metalinguistic activity (cognition about language) from epilinguistic, which is not consciously monitored. These correspond roughly to Chomsky's explicit and implicit knowledge, respectively (see Chomsky 1986). Gombert plots a continuum from epilinguistic to metalinguistic processes, illustrating how fluid the transition can be from implicit to explicit knowledge (cf. Birdsong 1989; Maranzana 1993). To avoid confusion, it must also be emphasized, with Maranzana (1993), that explicit (Gombert's metalinguistic) knowledge is not the same thing as the Iinguist's metaknowledge. Although native speakers necessarily know the phonological system of their language (or they could not say/understand anything), and some of that knowledge may be explicitl conscious, "they may not be able to articulate how the system works, in which case their metalinguistic knowledge would not be equivalent to their linguistic knowledge" (Maranzana 1993: 18). There is a three-way distinction between implicit linguistic knowledge, conscious knowledge, and metaknowledge, that is not covered by either Chomsky' s or Gombert' s binary theories.

6.13 Implicit Segmental Awareness The following evidence has been adduced for segments as part of everyone's implicit Iinguistie knowledge (cf. Birdsong 1989; Miller 1990: 175): 1) Toddlers (age 1-2) perform segment substitutions (lpal, /bat, /da!, Iga/, ete.), show clear signs of word reeognition, and make segment insertions, harmonie processes, and other operations within words eStampe 1980; Siobin 1985a; Gleitman et al. 1988; Fowler 1991; Stemberger 1993). 2) Preliterate children have many kinds of assimilation and substitution processes, which would be impossible without implicit knowledge of what and where segments are (Kiparsky & Menn 1977; Stampe 1980; Gleitman et al. 1988; Stemberger 1993; pace Fowler 1991). 3) Operations of all sorts presuppose (implicit) knowledge of segments or they could never be applied to words never heard before. Specifically relevant to the problem of initial clusters, many languages (including PIE and Greek) have reduplicative processes that 'pluek out' one or more consonants <;>f the cluster (see Steriade 1982, 1988). In order to do this in a systematic manner, speakers must necessarily know (implicitly, at least) what segments are present and be able to manipulate them linguistically. Again, this cannot simply be memorized, or it eould never be applied to new words. 4) In all cultures, literate and illiterate, there are word games and 'secret languages' that feature the coinage or substitution of 'code' words, andlor

UTERACY AND LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE

101

games of the 'Pig Latin' variety which metathesize consonants. vowels. or syllabies. insert segments between consonants, and so on, within individual words (see Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1976; Vip 1982; Mann 1991). Especially interesting is the dialect of Pig Latin that extracts the first onset segment, viz. scram .... [krremsey]. How do illiterates and preiiterate children do this if they cannot identify words, cluster constituents. or segments? Such word games presuppose an ability to play with individual segments on a nearly conscious (explicit) level. Before we could read/spell/write, my friends and I played a word game that inserted a copy of the root vowel after every consonant, viz. strap .... /sretrerrepre/. presupposing a knowledge of the individual segments in clusters. Bagemihl (1987:36) claims that segment-based games presuppose alphabetic knowledge (cf. Faber 1992:116). and Bellamy (1989) asserts that segments in clusters cannot be heard. How do children learn them in the first place? 11 Segment-substitution garnes in numerous languages are played by literates and illiterates alike (Mann 1991:59ff). McCarthy (1985) documents an intricate segment-based game played by prostitutes in Addis Ababa. 5) Speech eITors that anticipate/switch segments show that words/forms are stored in our brain and articulated by some sort of segmental representation; cf. shried frimp for fried shrimp. trong and slong for long and strong , Siam Tenton for Stan Kenton, frish gotto for fish grotto, etc. (Fromkin 1988). Moreover, these exhibit onset-rhyme coding (Treiman & Zukowski 1991:70). 6) Part of our knowledge of English as native speakers is that strup, splim, blark, stalm are POSSIBLE (but nonexisting) words, but that sblish, sknap, bnik, tsaml are not possible words. Since these are precisely not 'real' (existing) words of English, it is not rnemorization of a list that determines this, but (implicit) knowledge of segments and their organization (cf. Halle 1962; SPE 380ff et pass.; § 1.3-1.4 above). That speakers are puzzied when asked about such facts is not surprising, given that language knowledge is implicit rather than explicit. Very young (preliterate) children know far more about linguistic representations than the experirnenters would predict. 12 Speakers leam all sorts of facts that are not coded anywhere in the writing system. With or without writing, then, the facts of a language are acquired by every native speaker. 11 There is evidence that onsets may be acquired initially as such before they are decomposed segmentally (freiman & Zukowski 1991:71) but, again. there is the question of explaining the task to a child that young. whence the problem of eliciting unequivocal experimental results. 12 See Kiparsky & Menn (1977); Stampe (1980); Gleitman et al. (1988); Roeper (1988); Birdsong (1989); Treiman & Zukowski (1991); Carlisle (1991); Stemberger (1993); and various selections in Bloom (1994) ..

102

ANCIENT SCRIPTS AND PHONOLOGlCALKNOWIEDGE

6.14 Conclurion This chapter has reviewed the major evidence for implicit knowledge of linguistic units and demonstrated that experimental results do not come close to accessing that knowledge. In the words of Maranzana (1993:1-2): Although the Iiteracy debate is cross-disciplinary. the arguments can be shown to be founded upon presumably linguistic givens which are unsupported by linguistic theory and lack empirical validation. [...] the implicit underpinnings of the Iiteracy debate are NOf Iinguistic, psychological or even pedagogical issues as they are most often presented but instead are issues of cultural dominance and exportation, technological determinism, and intellectual superiority.

Quite simply, Maranzana (1993:3) states, "metalinguistic performance is a capacity which CANNOT be proven to reflect grammatical competence". Nevertheless, misled by the recent pseudoscientific experimental 'evidence', some researchers have actually proclaimed that alilinguistic knowledge is imparted by the script. Bugarski (1993: 15) asserts that "Basic linguistic constructs - phoneme, morpheme, word, sentence, grammar, language, and so on - are aU [ ...] determined by the written mode of linguistic expression." Similarly, Patel (1993:203) succumbs to the bias that "The metalinguistic ability to segment continuous speech into sentences, phrases, words, syllabies, and phonemic units is considered to be part of literate cognition." Such an extreme position is untenable, as noted throughout. Even the less extreme position that segmental knowledge results from alphabetic is untenable. The most one can say is that alphabetic knowledge helps to transfer implicit segmental knowledge to a level of conscious awareness, but even that is not the same as explicit metaknowledge (§6.1Off). Moreover, the less extreme position is belied in preceding chapters by the varied knowledge represented in ancient syllabic scripts and the sophisticated knowledge of features that went into the construction of the syllabic and alphabetic scripts. In a discussion of the phonemic principle Roy Harris (1986:104) adds the disclaimer that "it is far from c1ear [... ] that the inventors of the alphabet were inspired by anything like modern phoneme theory." In fact, this is a bias, given (1) the psychological and linguistic reality of contrasting segments, (2) the fact that segments were encoded in all of the (non-pictographic) Western scripts from antiquity to the present day, and (3) there is ample evidence in support of a strong version of ARTICULATORY ICONlClTY, the idea that letters may be devised iconic to distinctive/contrastive articulator (lip, tongue) positions (Harris 1986:93). Matrices from Ras Shamra and Byblos (§5.lOfO to the runic fupark (§5.8-5.12) and the First Grammatical Treatise (§5.5), support articulatory iconicity as the origin of segmentally coded scripts.

7. IMPLICATIONS: AN IDEAL SCRIPT? 7.0 Introduction It has been observed that syllables are always part of conscious (explicit) knowledge while segmental knowledge, by contrast, is implicit but not necessarily explieit. This goes a long way toward explaining the ubiquity of syllabaries vis-a-vis the rarity of segmental scripts, but simultaneously raises several problems. The first involves our observations in earlier chapters regarding the c1ear representation of segments in syllabaries. If only syllables are salient, why is it that syllabaries normally code segments? Secondly, is there such a thing as an ideal script, and what might it be? Naturally, function is a major consideration. If the intent is to create a readily leamable script, it is suggested that a syllabary is the closest to ideal, but given the limitations imposed by the form of the script, it is not easy to design one that avoids the awkwardness of the aneient syllabaries. Consequently, it is suggested that those disadvantages constituted the primary motivation for the shift to the alphabet, a comprornise between the vowelless scripts and the syllabaries, but that there were more effieient ways the goal could have been accomplished that would have been more consistent with what is currently known about human phonological knowledge. 7.1 Realities to be Dealt With As emphasized by Daniels (1992), there must be some reason syllabaries were created in numerous places but the alphabet was not. This study has emphasized that there is something 'unnatural' about alphabets in that they attempt to represent phonological knowledge in a strictly linear manner, in apparent violation of our (at least implicit) knowledge of higher levels of organization. Not fortuitously, this correlates with the modern research which shows that syllables are always 'accessible' (in the sense of Maranzana) , 1 i.e., part of explieit (conseious) awareness, while segments belong to implieit knowledge and may or may not be consciously accessible. 1 Maranzana (1993: 13-14,60, etc.) defmes accessible as explicit conscious awareness in the absence of specific training.

104

ANCIENT SCRlPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

What about all the evidence for the antiquity of segmental knowledge, including the segmental coding of syllabaries? To state an obvious fact at the outset, since syllabaries from all over the world are segmentally coded, that proves that the script inventor(s) in each case had segmental knowledge as weil as syllabic knowledge. However, the fact remains, those scripts were invariably syllable-based, implying a conceptualization in which segments do not exist apart from their syllabic organization. The analysis of the Sonority Hierarchyas a 'syllable-structure template' (chap.l) supports this conclusion. 7.2 Script Abstractn.ess and Phonological Cues The discussion so far suggests that the early desyllabarizing scripts (those that removed all vowels), such as the Egyptian hieroglyphic (Davies 1987:30ff; Healey 1990: 16; Powell 1991:76-88) and the Northwest Semitic, or Phoenician, script (§§ 4.2, 4.5), were in fact more abstract than any other (phonologica1ly coded) system to date. Not only was there total abandonment of the syllabary principle that segments do not exist apart from their function as syllable onset or coda, but also, an antithetical countersyllabic principle was adopted to replace the syllabary principle. The result was a degree of abstraction that is still unrivalled, and which had the added advantage of being a useful heuristic for representing roots in Semitic languages (§4.11). While adopting a countersyllabic approach, the vowel-removers in fact substituted another level of programming, the word, since the only way such a script can be read is logographically: the configuration ktb is read as (some form of) "write", qtl as (some form of) "kill", and so on. Such a system is advantageous in that there are (sorne) phonologica1 cues to the recognition of the word, as English dove (bird) and dove (= dived) must be read holistica1ly rather than phonemically (cf. §O.2), but with phonologica1 cues for root/word recognition. 2 It is of course disadvantageous in that it can on]y be read by people who already know the language (but scripts are designed for native speakers, not for foreigners to learn the language; cf. SPE. p.49). While segments were abstracted in the Egyptian and Northwest Semitic/Phoenician scripts, they were not strictly segmental in the sense that there is no way texts could be read pure]y segmentally (phonemica1ly). 7.3 The Alphabet Compromise vs. More Ideal Scripts By combining the syllabary principle with the Northwest Semitic script, a number of traditions, essentially from Greece to India, created a script that 2 Such systems are not uncommon. The Mayan glyphs are morphemic with a phonological (syllabic) component (Lounsbury 1989; Coe 1992).

IMPIlCATIONS

105

was better adapted to the morpho/phonological structure of those languages, with the extra advantage that clusters could be represented in a simpler fashion (§4.13), and non-native speakers could more easHy learn to read the language (given the mixed populations of Crete and Cyprus, for instance, that could have been one realistic issue). Another way to view the syllabaries versus the consonantal scripts is as an 'all-or-nothing' situation, which resulted in an advantageous compromise. The compromise, unfortunately, was not very good because it represented syllable constituents, not as constituents of syllabies, but rather as independent segments. The very success of the alphabet was simultaneously its maximal faHure. Maranzana (1993:6lff) collects a large amount of modem research which affirms that it is easier for children initially to leam a logographic script than a 'phonemic' script, possibly suggesting3 that explicit (conscious) segmental awareness, if it develops atall, is a function (at least in part) of the maturation process. Since, on the other hand, syllables are readily accessible (explicitlconscious) to very young children, the maximally natural, advantageous, non-pictographic/non-Iogographic script would be a syllabary without the disadvantages of a syllabary, i.e., one that can represent [stra] in some more efficient way than sa-la-ra. In other words, what the studies suggest is that a good writing system would allow for onset and rime (nucleus plus coda) representations of the syllable structure of words (plus a way of representing phrases). One of the closest to the ideal of representing at least onset clusters as such is the Indic devanagari script (§ 1.1).

7.4 Devising an Efficienl Syllabary Another consistent inconsistency of the ancient syllabaries (chaps. 2,3) was their insistence on representing initial vowels or vowels in isolation differently from the same vowels with onsets. In other words, the signs for [al, [tal, [ka], etc., had nothing in common (of a non-fortuitous nature). Moreover, in [tal, [tel, [ti], [to], [tu], there was no constant element that would represent [tl. Thus, the scripts themselves reveal less segmental knowledge than do the conventions for spelling syllables with onset andlor coda clusters. The ideal, then, would combine the syllabary principle with the knowledge of syllable constituency, again, like the devanägarl script, among others. 3 In rea1ity, the experiments prove nothing since they are based primarilyon English, with one of the least phonemie orthographies. Wbat is needed is more research on scripts tbat are more phonemie. On the other band, modem research shows that "Readers learn associations between visual forms of words and their semantic referents. In 'sight reading', the words are stored in memory as visual gestalts" (Maranzana 1993:64 w. lit.). That would explain the observation that (limited) logographie systems are among the easiest to acquire.

106

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEOOE

In the ideal situation. as emphasized by Maranzana (1993). what she has called the alphabet paradigm (alphabetocentrism), should be replaced by something that is more generally accepted by linguists, psychologists, and reading specialists. To begin with, the alphabet should be portrayed honestly as the 'mixed bag' it iso Then, for a variety of reasons, noted especially in Chapters 1 and 6, everyone agrees on the salience of syllabIes. We have noted throughout a number of advantages of syllabaries, especially the closer representation of what native speakers know implicitly (though they may not be able to articulate that knowledge) about the hierarchica1 organization of speech sounds. The ideal, phonologica1ly-based orthography, then, would be a syllabary, but one without the disadvantage of a pIethora of symbols. That would mean one in which vowels are consistently segmented out to the extent that vowels in isolation and with onsets would have the same representation. Consonants likewise would have a consistent representation with deference to onset and coda positions. There is no evidence as yet for how coda clusters should be represented. More studies are needed to concentrate on the awareness of consonantal segments specifically as onsets and codas of syllabies, rather than as independent elements.

7.5 Reprise anti Conclusion Some recent experimental work (cf. the papers in Scholes 1993) suggests that nonliterate speakers do not have segmental knowledge and that only syllabic knowledge is 'real' or accessible, whence the ubiquity of syllabaries (cf. Daniels 1992, Faber 1992). The present work emphasizes that: 1) There is a difference between implicit, explicit, and metalinguistic knowledge. Maranzana (1993) shows that explicit (Gombert' s metalinguistic) knowledge is not the same as the linguist' s metaknowledge because speakers are typica1ly unable to articulate how the system works. 2) Experiments have so far tested metalinguistic knowledge. Maranzana (1993) emphasizes that the results of experiments do, however, support true phonological awareness. A typical response to a Scholes-type test is that cat contains two parts, [kre] and [ret], which illustrates the syllabic organization of the segments. The conclusions generally drawn from such experiments are faulty because experimenters have failed to comprehend the true implications of the results and to distinguish implicit from explicit knowledge. 3) There is empirical evidence from language acquisition, use, and change for the psychological and (implicit) linguistic reality of contrasting segments. Preliterate children have all sorts of substitution processes, which would be impossible without implicit knowledge of what and where segments are. There are also language games (in literate' and nonliterate societies) that

IMPllCATIONS

107

manipulate segments, speech errors that switch segments, and evidence from language change for the reversal of a process in the inducing environment in which contrast is lost, providing evidence for segmental contrast and therefore for segments. But that only means they are implicit. They may or may not be part of explicit (conscious) knowledge. 4) Segments obeying the Sonority Hierarchy (SH) are coded in all of the (non-pictographic) Western scripts from antiquity to the present day. This study supports the arguments of Steriade (1982) and others that Linear B spelling reflects (at least implicit) knowledge of the arrangement of segments according to the SH, and goes on to demonstrate that the knowledge was quite sopbisticated in devising an ingenious solution to the dilemma of wbat to do about onset clusters in coda position or the converse. The Cyprian syllabary, likewise, was based directly on the SH. Solutions to problems involving coda clusters in onset position, SH violations in tbe language, occasional attempts to represent compositional information, etc., go ligbtyears beyond anytbing predicted by Daniels, Faber, and others, and reveal that syllabaries typically represent more linguistic knowledge than alphabets do. 5) There is ample evidence consisting of aseries of phonetic-based matrices from Ras Shamra and Byblos to the runic fupark and the 13thcentury Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise tbat support a strong version of articulatory iconicity, the principle that letters may be devised iconic to distinctive/contrastive articulator (lip, tongue) positions (Harris 1986:93). The Byblos Matrix is arranged: laryngeals > bilabials > alveolars> velars > dentals, and has 22 segments and 8 open slots (gaps in tbe pbonological system). The Ras Sbamra Matrix has 27 letters with 21 empty cells (cf. the Indic and Korean Han'gül scripts, for arrangement according to pbonetic features). The Runic Matrix is arranged labial> dental> alveopalatal > velar, and has 24 letters with 11 empty cells, five double occupancies, and one slot witb three phonemes. This can be reduced by recognizing, within a given pi ace feature, independent projections of consonants and vowels, a nonproblem for the Proto-Canaanite scripts. It can hardly be accidental tbat, of tbe 6 multiple occupancies, four are paired C and V sets, viz. flu, alr, nli, yloe. The triply-filled slot bas tbe two strident sibilants Is zI along with the coronal stop Itl. Tbe suggestion is that tbe inventor(s) of the runic alphabet viewed class and place features as independent planes. 6) Different scripts bave different advantages and disadvantages. The best evidence suggests tbat a script must contain lexical information, but how that is to be accomplisbed is not clear. If we opt for a script that also codes some phonological knowledge, the ideal appears to be one based on the

r 108

ANCIENT SCRIPfS AND PHONOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

syllabic principle (arrangement of segments according to onset and coda position), but without the customary disadvantages of syllabaries. A truly complete script, representing all of our phonological knowledge, even if theoretically possible, would be too cumbersomely inefficient and confusing to read. Since reading is primarily done with long-term memory, in which a word (or some other unit) is treated as a visual gestalt (Henderson 1992; Taft 1992; Maranzana 1993; articles in Willows, Kruk & Corcos 1993a), all that is needed is a quick phonological c(l)ue to the recognition of the gestalt. 7) The alphabet was a compromise between the vowelless West Semitic (Phoenician) script and the very cumbersome syllabaries that duplicated the nucIeus for each cIustering consonant and failed to factor out identical segments. But it was not a very good compromise. One problem with the alphabet is that there is more phonological information than is needed and it appears to inhibit the speed of gestalt recognition. (For the largely irrelevant details it contains, note the frequent reaction on writing a word and deciding that it does not 'look right'.) Another problem with the alphabet, signalied throughout, is that it attempts to represent segments on a strictly linear plane in violation of our (to some extent explicit) knowledge of their organization into syllabi es.

,.

I:;

----

------------... ---

y

AM: "-_

APPENDIXA From Proto-Sinaitic to Greek earlv name

Proto-Sinaitic NW Semitic/Canaanite

1>

'hlp- "ox-head"

(y ~

2>

bet- "bouse"

0

3>

gaml-"throwstick"

~

4>

digg- "fisb" ?

C>"Q

4}

5>-

110- "man callimz" ?

1:

)

fs>

wo (waw)

7>

ze(n-) ??

8>

.{J€(t-) "fence" ?

9>

{i(t-) "spindle" ?

"mace"

LJ

Z q

ld

\ >

--0

tJ IJ '1

T ~.

?

1

t:::>

<:J.

:ra:~ IC)

{:

1

.ß

Y

9V

A

A

&M\>a

da7

1 B

B

ßilTa

r

ya 11 l1a

t::..

BEATa

E

E

E

TJ7QP'[

F

B(yal1l1a

I

Z

'ijTa

H

(h)ijTa

e

aiiTa

11\»«(

'\

~

E y

Y

IIr

1\

::f

?

4;

;<1}VA

Arcbaic Greek Classica1 name

.ß

<1

}ß'

I (Biblos "1-)

~

8 Ef)

aD

8

®

C!>8

H

0

~tA6v

earlvname 10> yad- "arm" 11> kapp-

'~m"

12> lamd- "ox-goad"

13>

mem- "water"

14> na.{ts- "snake"

Proto-Sinaitic NW Semitic/Canaanite Archaie Greek Classical name

0/ L!P

W

~

w

UJ/

A

~ S~

I

I

lWTa

w r

>j

K

K

Ka1T1ra

'" /' 'v~A

A

MIJ.ßoa

'4~ j r M

M

IJ.Ü

;V ;V

N

vU

J:+(XI, X)

-

t(E)'{

0

o lJ.u:pov

TI

men

F

7 ) GL

7 P( / "I/VI,-

~~~

/"'\"1

16> fen- "eye"

<5

c:::::>

17> pil- "corner" ?

C:.

-!J

18> §'Q(d-) "plant"

y

r

19> qu(p-) ?

CJ::',)

8

L../

~\/

~~ ~

1

15> (FfIk- 1)

1& -

'*

;;'1.

S,

1=

(-10th c.)

<:)

0

1

I? r (J

Y1 ~
0

<:)

( 7

y

VJ

r
9

M

«

-

...... o

(oav)

« "90"

«6mra

J

RFT

earlv name 20> ra ?S"head" 21> PJm- "composite bow"

22> tO (taw) "owner's mark" (a) [= <23>] (cf. 6)

Proto-Sinaitic NW SemiticJCanaanite.. Archaie Greek Classical name

~ß

fjf,J>Y

)~ )

L---.../

t

-+

\

~ (Biblos LfJ) 'f....

1? 5\ p p p ?( 2{ 55

p

pw

I

OlW a

;-

T

T

Tau

Y 'IV

r

y

v (4JlMv)



cj>(Elt

X

X(Elt

'"

4J(elt

n

W (~Eya)

t

cp

(b) [= <24>]

(rB)

(c) [= <25>] (cf. 11)

'-11' "V J. X (KB)

(d) [=<26>] (cf. 18)

(cp i ) '-11' "V ~

(e) [= <27>]

1

7

()

Q

NOTE: The letter forms in tbis Appendix are essentially schematic and idealized (cf. Naveh 1982: 25, 180). For details and actual forms by place and date, see Sass (1988: 183-184), Morris (1988), LSAG (1990).

--

r

APPENDIXB The Linear B Syllabary

IJI a

A e

, i

11

f'

,-

~

p

lt2

ai

au

0

u

m y t1

=t=

D ~

~

pa

pe

pi

po

C

*

Ati T <:P VI tya to

~

'1(

iii

da

de

di

ta

te

••

?

.. €)

qa

qe

~

~ ze

'r sa U ma

r

., se

me

~

twe

X

• two

w

.! si

r

mi

I' so

~

mo

~ 34

~i

)(

ku

47

iI\

qo

t

1" 22

du

er r qi

18

19

pte

t ur dwei AI-. dwo

do

ka

za

PU2

tu

1: lCl V ke ki ko

E9

pu

,

49

H

~ 79 (zu?)

~

su

" mu

56

M

~:

64 (swi?) 82 (swa?)

tu 63

~. 83

r I I

114

APPENDIX B: LINEAR B SYllABARY

i Da

~ ra

'I' Y I., ne

r re

ni

i ri

H X ja

riI wa

2

ro

jo

~ wi

"

nu

+ er f

je

we

no

ru

I

,~

-X

L,

nwa

86

~ rya

*' --

rai

•

ryo

• t

14

65 (iu 1)

K wo

, I

NarE: For the fonts, I am indebted to lean-Pierre Olivier who generously sent me a diskette of his linear B (bitmap) fonts for use with Microsoft application for "better quality" impression. I thank him also for advice on severallinear B characters, such as the identity of sign 35 with 34, and the unique 89 "peint sur un vase, dans une inscription dont iI n'est meme pas sOr qu'elle soit en linemre B" (letter of 15 Nov. 1993). For the grid, cf. Chadwick (1973:385), Hooker (1980:38), and especially §2.1 above. Rare signs, for which no values have been established, are ignored here. Logograms are also ignored.

1

APPENDIXC The Cyprian Syllabary (Masson 1961: Ag.l)

a

e

l

~

~

*

0

U

~

~

.y

0

w

)/\(

I

)I{

t

r

S2

'Ii'

i

~

)~

I

~

8

L

-

+

(u)

m )\!(

~

Y'

CD

~

n

T

I~I

1.

7/

>:

p

f

)

~

5'

~

t

~

~

l'

Ti

k

1

~

Y

f f\

s

V

~

~

~

M·

)k

z

)'(

x

)(

~

zca?

(4

-

-

~~

~

r

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1 GENERAL INDEX A. Acronym: 3,2

Cooventions

dating: 0.4

Acrophonie principle: 0.1, 4.1, 4.2,4.5,4.6,5.5 Articles: see Clitics Articulatory lcooicity: 6.14,7.4.5 Aspiration exceptafter Is/: 6.10

Alphabet 0.2,1.1,4.13, 73ff divisions (jingles): 5.2,5.9,5.11 Gn:ek: 1.1; 00.4 Attie:4.6 Ionie: 4.6 supplemental consonants: 43-4.4,4.7-4.9,4.12 syllabie features of: 4.13 Latin: 1.1,6.9 Phoeniciao: see Saipts nmic:ch.5 abecedaria: 5.2 arcbaic features: 53 older fupark: 5.1 origin: 5.3-5.7

see also Rmes Ugaritie: see Seripts

English orthographie: 6.2,6.11,6.12 graphie (as ehoices): 2.8,3.2,3.5,

4.11,6.4

D. Derivation: see Morphological knowledge Dummy vowel: 23,3.1,3.5,3.6 Dyslexics and scriprs: 0.2, 6.11

E. Etruscan: 4.7,5.3 Experiments: 6.2,63,6.5

F. Feature geometry: 1.2-1.3, 2.5, 5.9, 5.12-5.13,6.7,6.10 Features (disti.nctive): 2.1,4.2,4.5-4.7,4.11, 5.6,5.12, 5.13, 6.8-6.10, 6.12, 6.14 Fmt Grammatical Treati.se: 5.5,6.14 G.

Games: 6.13 Geminates: 23,3.1,4.7,53 Glides: 1.8-1.9,2.5,2.7,33,4.5, 5.9fT

B. Borrowing (bilingual): 4.7

L

Boustrophedon: 4.1, 5.3

India: 4.10-4.11

Byblos (Matrix): 4.1, 5.10

see Saipts (lndie, etc.) Intlection: see Morphological knowledge

C. Celtic: 5.0 Old Irish: 5.0 Chimps/parrots: 6.6 Clitics: 3.1,3.5, 6.1, 6.2 Coda consonants: 23-2.4, 3.1,3.6 Compounds: 6.1,6.2 Continuity: 2.8,3.1-3.2,3.8, 4.5, 4.10, 4.13, 5.12, 5.13

Interpunets: see Word dividers L Lexicoo: 6.1-6.3 Linguistic knowledge: 1.1,3.8,5.105.12;00.6 epilinguistie: 6.12 explicit 6.2,63,6.6,6.9, 6.10,6.12-6.14 implicit: 6.2,63,6.6,6.9, 6.10,6.12-6.14

138 tinguistic knowledge (cont.) andliteracy: 6.12,6.14 metalinguistic transfer: 6.3,6.10, 6.12-6.14 see also Phonological knowledge, Morpho1ogical knowledge, Word Usteme: 6.1 Uteracyassumptions: ch.6 Gennanic: 4.10 Greece (Ancient): 4.3,4.10,4.12 India: 4.10-4.11 Old Caananite: 4.10 Logograms: 2.7,3.2,7.2-7.3

Mo Matrix Byblos: 5.10,6.14,7.5.5 phonetic: 5.8-5.13,6.14; see Features Ras Shamra: 5.9-5.11,6.1, 7.5.5 Runic: 5.8-5.13, 6.14 Meta(1inguistic) knowledge: see Linguistic knowledge Metathesis: 1.4, 1.5,2.1,2.5 Morphological knowledge: 5.11, 6.1,6.3-6.6,6.12 polysynthetic languages: 6.5 Morphological spelling: 3.5,3.7,6.12

N. Nasals (not written): 3.1,5.3,6.10

O. Orthography children's spellings: 6.10-6.11 idiosyncrasies of English: 0.2, 6.11-6.12 not the same as phonology: 6.11 see also Conventions, Scripts Osthoff's Law: 1.5

P. Phoneme: see Features (distinctive) Phonological knowledge: 1.1,2.8,3.6-3.8 4.11,5.5,5.8,5.13; ch.6-ch.7 see also Segment, Syllable, Word Pictograph: 4.1, 4.4, 5.5 PRO: 6.1

R. Rebus principle: 6.7 Reversal (of sound change): 6.9

INDEX Runes: ch.5 and magiclsecrecy: 5.0,5.2, 5.13 Old English: 5.5, 5.7 Runic language: 5.0, 5.3 phonological system: 5.3,5.6,5.8, 5.14-5.19

s. Scripts aphabetic: see Alphabet autonomy: 0.2, 6.11 Aramaean/Aramaic: 1.1,4.5 (Proto-)Canaanite: 1.1,4.1-4.9,4.11-4.12, 5.l0,5.12,7.1ff Matrix: 5.10-5.13 Chinese: 6.7 Cyrillic: 5.5 Egyptian: 4.1,4.5,6.7,7.2 Etruscan: 5.3,5.7 Gothic: 5.4, 5.5 Greek alphabet: 1.1; ch.4; 5.3-5.5,5.8,6.8, 7.1ff Cyprian syllabary: 1.1; ch.3; 4.5 Linear B syllabary: ch.2; 4.5, 4.8, 4.12 Hebrew: 4.3 Indic: 5.4-5.5,5.8 Brähmi: 4.7,4.11 devanägari: 1.1,4.10-4.11,7.3 Hindi: 4.7 Vedic/Veda: 4.10 Japanese: 0.2, 1.1 Korean: Han'gül: 5.4,5.8 LatinlRoman: 4.7, 5.3-5.5, 5.7 Mayan: 6.7 Northwest Semitic: see Canaanite Phoenician: 1.1,4.1. 4.3-4.5, 4.7-4.9, 4.12,5.10,7.2 see also Matrix: Byblos as representation: 0.2 segmentally coded: 1.1,5.5,6.14 segmentally linear: see Alphabet Semitic: see individuallanguages South Arabian: 4.9,5.4 Sumerian: 6.7 syllabically coded: 1.1 Ugaritic: 1.1,4.1,4.4-4.5,5.4 see also Matrix: Ras Shamra Venetic: 4.7, 5.4 Segment 1.1,6.7-6.10,6.12-6.14, 7.1-7.5

r INDEX Segmentation ability: 1.1, 2.8,3.6-3.8, 6.12·6.14; eh.7 see also Phonological knowledge Shorthand (style): 0.2,2.7,3.2 Sonority Hierarehy: 1.2-1.5, 2.2-2.4, 3.3,3.8, 5.12, 6.7 coda elusters in onset position: 3.6 exceptions: 2.5-2.7,3.3-3.7 minimal sonority distance: 1.3, 1.8 onset clusters in coda position: 2.6, 3.4,4.9 see also Syllable Speech errors: 6.13 Spelling: see Orthography, Conventions Syllabary: 1.1,4.13,6.7,7.1-7.5 Syllabification: eh.l (esp. 1.6fI); 2.2, 2.5, 2.7

Syllable: 1.2-1.10,6.7; eh.7 adjunct: 1.2-1.3,3.6,3.8 parsing (algorithm): 1.6-1.9, 2.2-2.3 as 'sonority phrase': see Sonority Hierarchy structure of Eng. words: 1.3-1.4,6.13 weight: 2.2 V. Visual memory and spelling: 6.11

W. Word: 6.1-6.5 defInitions: 6.1-6.2 salience: 6.6 Word dividers: 3.1,3.5,4.1,5.2,5.3, 6.2-6.4 Writing: see literacy, Conventions

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