Late Koine/Early Middle Greek Grammar?

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Zythros Jubi
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Late Koine/Early Middle Greek Grammar?

Post by Zythros Jubi »

Where can I find a Medieval Greek or late Koine grammar, if any? Well, I'm making a version of Sicilian Byzanto-Romance (descendant of Medieval Greek/late Koine spoken in Sicily) and use the Sicilian Vowel System (except in some learned words).

In this ATL, Alexios I Komnenos recaptured the island from Muslims (assuming that the Normans failed) and vassalized Naples, Amalfi and Salerno, and many Langobards became hellenized; the de Hautevilles are Byzantine tributaries, thus elongating Greek influence in Southern Italy. In the west of Sicily, there are more Muslims, both Arab immigrants and converts, and a Romance language was spoken; in the southern and eastern coasts, Greek was still prevalent. After the Fourth Crusade, a Kingdom of Sicily was created only including the island, ruled by d'Anjou dynasty, while Campania became a fief of Emperor Friedrich II, and the local Greeks converted to Eastern Catholic church. Modern Graeco-Sicilians, numbering over 1 million, use a version of Latin script, and live on the southern and eastern coast of the island except for Messina, where in some neighbourhoods they speak a variety of Calabrian-Salentino Greek, which is the same as in OTL. Graeco-Sicilian (a temporary name), along with Italian and Sicilian, are official languages of the autonomous region of Sicily. Additionally, different from OTL, Maltese dialects are still spoken in Pelagie islands and Pantelleria, and are official in those communes; there may be another Greek dialect spoken between Naples and Salerno. (BTW I'm still unsure about this TL; it would be more exciting if the Fourth Crusade went to Egypt as planned, I suppose)

I've referenced Ray Brown's TAKE (Greek counterpart to Latino Sine Flexione) and found it likely to have lost neuter and case distinction. Final -ς and -ν are lost. As for ancient voiced stops, they become fricatives except when geminated/preceded by another plosive or fricative; μβ νδ become geminate nasals, μπ ντ γκ behave like Modern Greek, while μϕ νθ γχ are possibly /nf nt ŋk/; γγ is /ŋː/ spelt <gg> except before /i e j/ where it becomes /ndz/.

On geminates: Σάββατος becomes sàmmatu, cf. Byzantine Greek σάμβατον. But what happened to (σ)μάραγδος remains to be seen: it would likely become a masculine noun by analogy, namely màraddu, but it should not be confused with those /ɖɖ/ from /ll/, which is popularly spelt <dd> but <ll> in official orthography. Aside from loanwords, Ancient Greek has no geminate voiced consonants; however in Graeco-Sicilian /gd bd/ became /dː/ and there seems no source for /bː gː/. For example, ἀμύγδαλον becomes mìddalu and ἑβδομάς becomes eddumada.
Last edited by Zythros Jubi on 31 Mar 2017 13:20, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Late Koine/Early Middle Greek Grammar?

Post by Znex »

I've no idea myself, but I wanted to say I really like the potential feel of this. It feels a bit like an Akkadian Maltese Greek mashup. [:P]

Can't wait to hear more in any case!
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Re: Late Koine/Early Middle Greek Grammar?

Post by Zythros Jubi »

My main references are Languages of the World/Materials 129: Siciliano by Rainer Bigalke, and 16: Italia, Manuale di Fonetica by Luciano Canepari for Sicilian; both are in Italian, of which I have little knowledge. Another concise grammar of Sicilian in English is available, but it seldom uses IPA, and is not in detail. As for Greek, I am reading both New Testament Greek and Modern Demotic grammars. In this Hellenlang, there are no longer case distinctions and neuter sg./pl. become masc. sg. & fem. pl. respectively, as in Italian and Romanian. I have no idea in verbal morphology yet.

In the Handbook of Phonetics / Manuale di Fonetica (MDF hereafter), of which some chapter have English translation but not Chapter 16, Canepari uses his own variant of IPA called "canIPA". Four dialects of Sicilian are involved in the book, namely those of Catania, Palermo (Sicily), Catanzaro (Calabria) and Lecce(Salento); there are two other variants in Magna Graecia, one of Gallo-Italic and one of Albanian. All these dialects have a five-vowel system, and reduced to /a i u/ when unstressed. According to Bigalke, there is spirantization of voiced plosives in many varieties to some degree. The traits above will be taken into account.
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a Greeklang/Byzmance (Re: Late Koine/Early Middle Greek Gram

Post by Zythros Jubi »

I. Phonology
The phonemic inventory is as follows: (to be continued)
/p pː t tː k kː/ <p pp t tt c/ch cc/cch>
/tsː tʃ tʃː/ <z-/-zz- ci cci>
/dzː/ <z-/-z->
/bː dː ɖː gː/ <bb dd ll gg/ggh>
/f fː θ θː s sː ʃ ʃː x xː/ <f ff th tth s ss xi xi/sci x/xh xx/xxh>
/v ð ɣ ʐː/ <b/v d g r-/-rr->
/m mː n nː ɲː/ <m mm n nn gn>
/ɾ l j w/ <-r- l j/gi u>

/a e i o u/ <a e i/e o u/o>
  1. The letters <c, g, x, sc> are palatalized before <i> and <e> (denoted by Ci above).
  2. <r> is retroflex word-initially and when geminated; <tr dr str> are [tʂ dʐ ʂː~ʂtʂ] respectively.
  3. /ɲ ɖ ts dz ʐ Cj Cr/ and /Cl/ (in learned words) are always geminated except initially.
  4. <v> is seldom used, for etymological reasons, and never occurs word-initially except for loanwords; it is used to represent the <υ>, <αυ ευ> before a vowel, e.g. <evàngeliu> "gospel", <paràscevi> "Friday"; I've not decided yet whether to spell pre- and posttonic /i u/ etymologically (except word-finally; otherwise ivàngiliu and paràscivi); in other cases it is used to mark epenthetic /v/ in hiatuses, e.g. <ùviu> "egg", from Doric ῶ̓ʹβεον, whereas Koine ᾠ̓όν.
  5. /s/ is voiced intervocalically.
  6. /xj kj gj/ are phonetically [çː cː ɟː]<xhi chi ghi/gli>;
  7. /gj/ is the merger of two former combinations /gj/ and /ʎː/; in some accents, such as in Syracuse /ʎː/ is retained for <gli>.
  8. Stresses other than penultimate are marked by a grave accent.
Last edited by Zythros Jubi on 31 Mar 2017 15:55, edited 2 times in total.
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Siceliot (Re: Late Koine/Early Middle Greek Grammar?)

Post by Zythros Jubi »

This Helleno-bogo-speedlang is now tentatively named Siceliot, spoken by Siceliots (Σικελιῶται).
When dealing with diachronics, I came up with a question: what are the origins of Central-South Italian /ɲ/ (apart from Latin gn) and /ʎ/, and how did the contrast between /ɲ-nj/ and /ʎ-lj/ arouse? (There are no such contrast in modern Greek.)
PS: 1. Did Latin gli+V become /ʎ/ in Italian?
2. When did Medieval Greek combinations /CiV/ and /CeV/ merge into /CjV/ as in Modern Greek?

Any suggestions:
1. What happened to /ps ks pn kn tm kt/xt/xθ pt/ft/fθ mn θl xl vl ɣl xm xn skn/ and so on , especially word-initially?
2. How would Siceliot family names (what endings/suffixes they use) and given names (using Latin or Greek derivations) look like?
3. How deeply would the Italo-Dalmatian/Norman/Ibero-Romance/German influence be, in which subsets of lexicon respectively?
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Re: Late Koine/Early Middle Greek Grammar?

Post by Zythros Jubi »

I'm using An Essential Grammar of Modern Greek by Holton et al., and looking up Wiktionary for Greek roots containing awkward clusters above:

βδ: βδέλλα "leech", since it has an alternative form αβδέλλα in colloquial Modern Greek (hereafter MG), and is of pre-Greek origin; thus it'll be addella /adˈdɛɖɖa/ (geminate consonants are written doubled);
πτ: πτωχός "poor", MG φτωχός, /pt kt/>/ft xt/>/tt/ & /pʰtʰ kʰtʰ/>/pθ kθ/ > /θθ/ are expected, therefore **ttuxu; should I enable initial geminates? Similarly φθάνω "arrive", MG φτάνω, should be **tthanu;
πν: πνεῦμα "spirit", as a general rule /vm vn/ > /mm mn/ first, thus *ˈpnɛmma; as a general rule, when plosive/fricative (except γ) preceding a nasal, an epenthetical vowel is added, thus pinemma;
βγ: this one is quirky. βγαίνω< ἐβγαίνω < ἐκβαίνω "go out", βγάζω < ἐκβιβάζω "put, place"; I prefer changing to geminate ββ, thus ibbenu and ibbiazu;
θλ: this one is rare and I only found θλῖψις "pressure, oppression"; *ˈθlipsis>*ˈθlissi>*ˈflissi/*ˈxlissi>*ˈxjissi>*ˈxissi, thus xhissi;
γδ: rare; γδέρνω "flay", <εγδέρνω<ἐκδέρω, thus iddernu;
κτ: κτήνος "beast", MG alternatively χτήνος, likewise becomes **ttinu; similarly χθές "yesterday", altern. ἐχθές, becomes itthè;
χν: χνάρι "trace", MG altern. αχνάρι, <MidGr ἰχνάριον; an epenthetical vowel is added, thus xinariu;
μν: μνήμα "grave", becomes nnima;
τμ: τμῆμα "section, segment", an epenthetical vowel is added, timima (may be replaced by Latin loanword)'
γν: γνώμη "will, opinion", /ɡn/>/ɲɲ/, thus gnumi;
χλ: χλόη "grass", /xl fl/>/xj/, thus xhioi.

So what matters here is initial gemination; there is a rule that all default word-initial geminated non-continuant (i.e. except mm nn r gn ss sci) consonants become single when not followed by a vowel, thus perhaps I should add a prothetic vowel before those /tt/'s (atthanu ittinu uttuxu)?

In addition, /ps ks/ become /ss/; so MG ψάρι "fish" < MidGr ὀψάριον "what is eaten with bread" becomes ssariu.
Last edited by Zythros Jubi on 02 Apr 2017 12:13, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Late Koine/Early Middle Greek Grammar?

Post by qwed117 »

This is supposed to be Sicilian, right? Word initial gemination are come in those languages
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Re: Late Koine/Early Middle Greek Grammar?

Post by Zythros Jubi »

Just a thought experiment about what a Greeklang would look like if it is spoken in Sicily today, in an ATL where the island was under Byzantine domination from Basil II to Fourth Crusade (with a brief interruption). There are some peculiar traits such as omega becomes /u/ and ypsilon becomes /ju-u/ in non-learned vocabulary, of which the latter is considered conservative; oxytone disyllables become paroxytone, and longer oxytone words become proparoxytone, owing to an iambic prosody pattern; vowel reduction in non-stressed and non-secondarily-stressed syllables. On the other hand, the nominal morphology is even simpler than Griko/Grecanic: only pronouns distinguish cases, namely nominative and accusative; neuter nouns merge with masc.sg. and fem.pl. respectively; genitive pronouns become possessive pronouns with gender and number agreement etc. How complex its verbal morphology will be remains to be decided. indicative and subjunctive are definitely merged due to sound changes.

Initially it was in bilingualism with local Vulgar Latin (then Southern Italian); after Muslim conquest some Arabic/Berber loans were added. Significant changes took place after 1204 when German and northern Italian immigrants entered the island (as a HRE fief) then after that French, Spanish and Catalan influence increased as a result of Aragonese then Spanish domination. The language remained largely unwritten and the lingua franca was Sicilian; liturgical and written language was Ecclesiastical Greek until Counter-Reformation, when Latin liturgy was imposed for some time, thus knowledge in Greek script dropped considerably, and folk literature in Latin alphabet emerged. Ignorant of Greek etymology, the Siceliotes spelt their language with quite a shallow and inconsistent orthography. It was not until the personal union between Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily in 1735 that a Greek Catholic church was established, the Byzantine Catholic Church of Two Sicilies, which also includes believers from the local Arberesh/Albanian community, and Greek liturgy was restored. During 19th century, with the culmination of Greek independence movement in Ottoman Empire, there was a stronger call for autonomy for Greeks in Two Sicilies, and education in Katharevousa spread over Greek communities. Siceliot Greek began to be written in Greek alphabet etymologically. This did not last long after unification of Italy, when education was only allowed to be Italian and Greek publication was banned. After WWII, municipality with Siceliot plurality and majority were allowed to use Siceliot Greek as a official language and a literary language based on Syracuse dialect was established.
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