LINGUIST List 15.902

Wed Mar 17 2004

Qs: Lexical Polysemy; Greek Diphthong Development

Editor for this issue: Naomi Fox <foxlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Daniela.Marzo, Questions: lexical polysemy and cognitive/semantic transparency
2. Szelog, Mike, Help with Hist. & Dev. of Greek

Hi!

1) I was wondering if anyone had references to works concerning 
experimental investigations into lexical polysemy. I've read a lot on 
semantic priming, lexical decision tasks etc., but these methods are 
not of much use to me: they presuppose that I already know which 
meanings of a word I study, but I don't. For my purpose (I study the 
semantic/cognitive relations between different meanings of the most 
frequent polysemous words of English, German, French and Italian) it is, 
however, imperative to establish a representative set of meanings...

2) Do you have references to works concerning degrees of 
semantic/cognitive transparency ? I only know Dressler's degrees of 
formal transparency (DRESSLER, W. U. (1985): "On the predictiveness of 
natural morphology", in Journal of Linguistics, 21. 321-337).


Many thanks,

Daniela Marzo

Hello all, 

Just wondering if someone might be able to help with a few questions
concerning the history and development of Greek.

I am taking a look at how Coptic borrowed Greek hymns (and Greek in
general).

If I look at the way the original Greek was spelt and pronounced (Koine), I
noticed that the way it's rendered in Coptic seems to point to a late Koine
or early Modern Greek pronunciation. I'm speaking about when these hymns
were committed to writing more than when Greek entered Coptic and how it was
pronounced at that time. 

Specifically with diphthongs - it looks as if Coptic renders diphthongs with
a late Koine or early Mod. Gk. pronunciation - except for the diphthong 'oi'
in Greek. Coptic seems to have preserved the pronunciation of this diphthong
as 'oy' in "boy". 

My question therefore are, at what point in time did Greek diphthongs become
pronounced as one sound? 

Is it safe to assume that 'oi' was one of the last diphthongs to become a
single sound (Mod. Gk. /i/)? If so, at what time period did this occur? 

I don't know enough about the history and development of Greek to know when
these changes occurred. This may offer some light as to a specific time
period when these texts were committed to writing in Coptic. 

Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, 

Mike S 
mike.szelogcitizensbank.com