Variation in voiced stop prenasalization in Greek

Ancient Greek clusters of nasal (N) plus voiceless unaspirated (T) or voiced stop (D), merged to ND in Middle Greek, yielding ND or D in different modern dialects. Impressionistic studies suggest that currently there is stylistic variation between D and ND in all dialects, with ND as the high variant. Our study reveals that age, not style, is the most important factor in ND/D variation, with speakers under 40 using dramatically fewer ND tokens than older speakers; at the same time NT, a variant which reflects spelling conventions and is possible only across word boundaries, emerges as a careful style marker. This abrupt change of pattern coincides with important sociopolitical changes in Greece, such as the official demise of Katharevousa, the high variety of Greek diglossia. Thus, this change in apparent time suggests a real sound change in progress away from the previous pattern of stable variation.* (Modern Greek, diglossia, voiced stop prenasalization, stop-voicing) * We would like to thank Wolfson College, Oxford, and the Astor Travel Fund of the University of Oxford for providing the funds for the lead author to visit The Ohio State University where most of the data analysis was carried out. Thanks are also due to Mary Beckman for advice and help in Columbus, Bruce Connell for allowing us to use equipment from the Oxford University Phonetics Laboratory for the recordings in Greece, and the audiences at the Annual Meeting of the LSA (Los Angeles, 1993), and at seminars at Oxford and Reading Universities, for their helpful comments. Glossologia, A Greek Journal for General and Historical Linguistics Vol. 11-12.131-166 (2000) (Preliminary version in Historical Linguistics: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 52.203-233 (1999).) 2 Ever since the pioneering work of Labov (1963), it has been recognized that the study of sound change cannot be divorced from a consideration of synchronic variation. Similarly, the social context in which variation occurs must be taken into account, for there is a crucial social dimension in the spread and generalization of sound change throughout a speech community. In this paper, we examine variation in the realization of voiced stopsi in Modern Greek, and arrive at the conclusion that the ways in which the phonetic variation correlates with various social factors indicate a sound change in progress. What makes this Greek case of some interest is the fact that the resolution of stable variation, which has been present for at least several centuries, has been induced by political and concomitant social changes that have taken place in Greece in the past 20 years. We first present the historical background to the Modern Greek situation, which is important for the assessment of the nature of the variation reported on. We then turn to a sociophonetic study, followed by a discussion of our results. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND iA decision had to be made on whether we should refer to “voiced stops” or “nasal+stop” clusters with regard to what surfaces as oral or prenasalized voiced stops in Modern Greek. Both terms are phonologically loaded, but we decided to use the term “voiced stop” as it is phonetically accurate, and we do not wish at present to make any claims about the phonological status of surface voiced stops in Greek. Glossologia, A Greek Journal for General and Historical Linguistics Vol. 11-12.131-166 (2000) (Preliminary version in Historical Linguistics: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 52.203-233 (1999).) 3 Three types of homorganic nasal-plus-stop clusters occurred in Ancient Greek: nasal (N) plus voiced stop (D), nasal plus voiceless unaspirated stop (T), and nasal plus voiceless aspirated stop (Th), as summarized in (1a-c): 1. Ancient Greek nasal-plus-stop clusters: a. ND: [mb, nd, Ng], spelt respectively b. NT: [mp, nt, Nk], spelt respectively c. NTh: [mph, nth, Nkh], spelt respectively Relatively early on in the development of Post-Classical Greek, during the Hellenistic period (Browning 1983: 26-7; Sturtevant 1940: 83-5), the aspirated voiceless stops changed to voiceless fricatives, even in the clusters with nasals, and thereafter the original NTh clusters followed their own path of development more akin to that of N + /s/ clusters (the other nasal-plus-fricative cluster). The ND and NT clusters, on the other hand, merged to ND (Tonnet 1993: 40-46). The oral closure of the Ancient Greek voiced stops, which in other environments became voiced fricatives, was maintained after nasals, while the Ancient Greek voiceless unaspirated stops, which otherwise remained stable throughout the language’s history, became voiced after nasals. The postnasal voicing of NT clusters was most likely a Byzantine/Middle Greek innovation, beginning around the 6th or 7th centuries and completed by roughly the 10th to 12th centuries AD.ii iiThe relationship between this innovation and the tendency towards postnasal voicing of dental stops in Greek of the Hellenistic and Roman periods (Bubeník 1989: 239) is unclear, and irrelevant in any case to the later developments under consideration here. Glossologia, A Greek Journal for General and Historical Linguistics Vol. 11-12.131-166 (2000) (Preliminary version in Historical Linguistics: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 52.203-233 (1999).) 4 Evidence for the merger of NT and ND comes from several sources. Spellings such as in 7th century papyri (Tonnet 1993: 45-6) for Ancient Greek ({·pempej}) ‘sends’ point to a merger on the assumption that the first indicates the nasal; thus the remaining letters, , must represent something else, and that cannot be the voiceless stop {p}, which would have been spelt simply with the letter , not the digraph . Therefore must stand for the voiced stop {b} here. Equally revealing are reverse spellings, understandable in the context of a merger of NT and ND, e.g., ‘mouse’ for etymological , or ‘Gypsywoman’ from earlier (Tale of the Quadrupeds 150, 285 (14th c.)). Finally evidence comes from the use of spellings in loan words with ND in the source language, e.g., ‘news’ from Latin {mandatum}, ‘Lombards’ (Chronicle of Morea 1012 (13th c.)), or ‘crams one’s mouth’ (Prodromos IV, 73 (12th c.), a verb derived from the Latin bucca ‘mouth’. From this ND outcome in Middle Greek, two major developments are found in Modern Greek dialects (Mirambel 1959; Newton 1972): (i) preservation of ND word-internally, and simplification to D word-initially, and (ii) simplification to D in all positions. Newton (1972: 94 ff.) observes that the former outcome is found “throughout the south east [...], most of northern Greece and much of the Peloponnese” (the Peloponnesian dialects being the basis for the modern Athenian dialect on which Standard Modern Greek is based). The latter outcome is found in “all Cretan, Thracian and eastern Macedonian dialects, as well as those spoken in the islands which belong to the northern complex” and the Ionian islands of Kephalonia, Ithaki and Zakinthos (Newton 1972: 95)iii. Thus the two dialect types differ according to the presence or absence of a nasal in iiiOther developments also occured but to a lesser extent. For instance, Mirambel (1933) mentions some Modern Greek dialects of Asia Minor which, at least around the turn of the century, had nasals without stops as the outcome of ND; e.g. Cappadocian has Glossologia, A Greek Journal for General and Historical Linguistics Vol. 11-12.131-166 (2000) (Preliminary version in Historical Linguistics: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 52.203-233 (1999).) 5 the outcome of earlier ND in word-internal position. For example, from Ancient Greek ({·pente}) ‘five’ and ({·andra-}) ‘man’, representative modern dialects, like Rhodian (a south eastern dialect) and Cretan in (2), show: 2. a. Rhodian: {·pende} Cretan: {·pede} b. Rhodian: {·andras} Cretan: {·adras} The sound changes discussed so far concern the lexical level, i.e., applied within word boundaries. In addition, stop voicing now applies post-lexicallyiv, i.e., across word boundaries, although the environments in which it takes place have not yet been given a full descriptionv. It is not our intention here to give a full account of the rules of post{meno} ‘enter’ (versus Standard Greek {beno}), from earlier {embeno}. Also, in a few dialects, the nasal assimilated completely to the following stop, yielding DD, an outcome “found at least in the Dodecanesian islands of Simi and Kalimnos” (Newton 1972: 95), and also in parts of Cyprus and Chios (Mirambel 1933: 164). Despite such differing outcomes, for the vast majority of dialects over a large area covering the central part of the Greek-speaking world the outcomes that are found are either ND or D. Since these are the only outcomes present in the dialects which provided the basis for the formation of the modern Standard language we focus our attention on them. ivBased on the Neo-Grammarian view of sound change, in which sound changes apply at first without regard for word boundaries, our expectation is that these rules applied postlexically in Middle Greek too, but there is no firm evidence for this. vFor instance, Newton (1972: 97) talks about “close syntactic structures” which include, among others “the nasal-final forms of the article before a following noun”. He adds, however, that the notion of “close syntactic structure” is not easy to define and gives as an example the fact that the word {an} ‘if’ undergoes nasal assimilation in point of articulation to a following voiceless stop, but does not trigger voicing of the stop, as in Glossologia, A Greek Journal for General and Historical Linguistics Vol. 11-12.131-166 (2000) (Preliminary version in Historical Linguistics: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 52.203-233 (1999).) 6 lexical stop voicing in Greek. Suffice it to say that it applies at least when certain function words, such as the negative markers {Den} and {min}, and all articles and weak object pronouns ending in /n/ precede a noun (or a verb) beginning with a voiceless stop; e.g., 3. a. {Den ka·pnizo} → {De(N) ga·pnizo} ‘not I-smoke’ b. {ton tu·rista} → {to(n) du·rista} ‘the tourist/ACC’ c. [tim pi·razo] → [ti(m) birazo] ‘her I-tease’vi The post-lexical context presents an added problem, however. In most occurrences, a head noun or verb with an initial voiceless stop is not preceded by a word-final nasal that would trigger voicing of the stop. As a result, the voicelessness of the stop is maintained underlyingly and frequently surfaces, as in the nominative singular case (4a), and when a verb is followed by a nonpronominal object (4b), or is preceded by a pronominal object which does not end in a nasal (4c): 4. a. {o tu·ristas} ‘the tourist/NOM’ b. {pi·razo tin e·leni} ‘I-tease Helen’ c. {ta ka·pnizo} ‘them I-smoke’ /an pis/ --> {am pis} ‘if you-say’. Nespor & Vogel (1986) on the other hand, claim that nasal assimilation and stop voicing are two prosodic rules of Greek which operate optionally (and together) in the Clitic Group prosodic domain, while MalikoutiDrachman & Drachman (1992) account for stop voicing by syllabification rules. viIn all cases, the nasal assimilates to the stop for place of articulation. Nasal assimilation is a more widespread phenomenon than stop voicing, and as it is not always connected with stop voicing (see Lodge 1993, Newton 1972), it will not concern us here. Glossologia, A Greek Journal for General and Historical Linguistics Vol. 11-12.131-166 (2000) (Preliminary version in Historical Linguistics: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 52.203-233 (1999).) 7 Therefore, at all stages of Greek in which post-lexical voicing occurred, there would be synchronic motivation for an underlying voiceless stop in all the words that show initial D in the post-lexical context for NT developments, because of the morphophonemic alternations between T and ND (or D). Thus, at each such stage, synchronic rules would be needed which mirror the sound changes: NT --> ND or NT --> D, depending on the dialect. By extension, it has been argued that all surface voiced stops can be treated as deriving from an underlying NT (among others, Kazazis 1969; Malikouti-Drachman & Drachman 1992; Newton 1972; Warburton 1970; but see also Lodge 1994 for a different perspective). Under such an analysis, there has been phonological stability with these developments for a long time in Greek; at any given stage since Middle Greek, there would be synchronic motivation for a nasal being involved in the derivation of voiced stops, whether or not the voiced stop occurring on the surface was preceded by an overt nasal. SYNCHRONIC VARIATION Developments in the last few decades suggest that both ND and D dialects exhibit variation in the realisation of voiced stops. The D dialects show ND pronunciations as high style variants (Kazazis 1968; Newton 1972), while the ND dialects show a tendency to simplify ND to D word-internally in casual speech (Kazazis 1976; Newton 1972). There are several explanations for this variation in the pronunciation of voiced stops. On the one hand, the appearance of ND pronunciations in D dialects is understandable given that “Standard Modern Greek” is described as one of the ND dialects, and ND has been the pronunciation prescribed by grammarians (see Mackridge 1990a: 71 for a discussion). The higher prestige of ND is probably also related to the influence of spelling: in Modern Greek, voiced stops are always written with a nasal element ({mb} is Glossologia, A Greek Journal for General and Historical Linguistics Vol. 11-12.131-166 (2000) (Preliminary version in Historical Linguistics: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 52.203-233 (1999).) 8 orthographically , {nd} is , and {Ng} is and occasionally wordinternally), and spelling is much more closely related to pronunciation in Greek than in other languages with historical orthography. The influence of spelling can be partly attributed to the importance of the written language during a century of diglossia in Greece: the so-called “puristic” archaizing high variety of Greek, Katharevousa, was primarily a written language, the use of which was associated with education and power (on the importance of the written language and the prestige of Katharevousa see among others Browning 1982; Frangoudaki 1992; Mackridge 1990b). Thus, the prestige of the written word may well have been reflected in pronouncing words as they are spelt, a trait obviously associated with literacy and education, hence with a formal style of speech. Kazazis (1968) for instance, mentions that a Greek first-year student visiting him pronounced {koli·(m)bo} ‘I-swim’ as {koli·mpo}, a completely unnatural pronunciation, which Kazazis interprets as the student’s attempt to appear more formal and educated in front of him, the professor. More important from our point of view, however, is the simplification of ND to D, which nowadays seems quite widespread in ND dialects, including Standard Greek, as spoken in major cities like Athens. As early as 1972, Newton notes that “in the Peloponnese there do seem to be speakers, particularly among the younger generation, whose speech would place them here [in the D dialects] rather than in group B [the ND dialects]; indeed in Athens itself the nasal is rarely perceptible at least as far as fairly rapid speech is concerned”; and further on, “many speakers in the Peloponnese and northern Greece have a very slight nasal onset [...] and indeed often seem to show fluctuation in the clarity with which the nasal element is articulated” (Newton 1972: 95). Householder (1964) suggests that in Athenian Greek at least, there are groups of words which are pronounced with ND or with D depending on their origin. This, however, does not seem to be the case any Glossologia, A Greek Journal for General and Historical Linguistics Vol. 11-12.131-166 (2000) (Preliminary version in Historical Linguistics: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 52.203-233 (1999).) 9 more (if it ever was, given that naive speakers do not usually know the etymology of words). Thus, more recently, Mackridge (1990a: 71) remarks: “As the situation appears today, in Athens at least, the absence of the nasal in such cases is generalized, even among people with higher education, though it is more widespread among the young, especially the males, and the less well educated [our translation]”. What emerges from the above impressionistic accounts is that in Standard Greek and many other dialects ND and D are perceived as being stylistically distinct: the observations of Kazazis (1968, 1969), Newton (1972), and Mackridge (1990a) suggest that prenasalized stops are perceived as reflecting a higher style than oral ones. Recent quantitative studies (Charalabopoulos, Arapopoulou, Kokolakis & Kiradzis 1992; Pagoni 1989) have attempted to determine some of the social and linguistic correlates of the ND/D variation (henceforth (ND)). Pagoni (1989) recorded 22 middle class informants reading a word list (a mixture of words with voiced stops and distractors) and a short passage which imitated newspaper style. She found that the realization of (ND) depends on age, with older speakers using more ND tokens than younger speakers, on education, with more educated speakers using more ND tokens than less educated ones, and on what she terms “beliefs and attitudes towards life and society” (p. 410), with more conservative speakers using, not surprisingly, more ND tokens. However, Pagoni’s sample was rather limited in three ways. First, the data represent a formal style of speech. Second, the sample included only word-internal ND, and so provides no information on the realization of ND in word-initial and post-lexical position. Finally, her speakers formed a closely knit social network of conservative middle-class educated Athenians. Pagoni herself follows Milroy (1987) in accepting that “no claim can be made that the speech samples collected in this way are representative of the speech of a whole community” (Milroy 1987: 38 quoted in Pagoni 1989: 403). Glossologia, A Greek Journal for General and Historical Linguistics Vol. 11-12.131-166 (2000) (Preliminary version in Historical Linguistics: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 52.203-233 (1999).) 10 Charalabopoulos et al. (1992), on the other hand, provide important information on the linguistic factors which influence (ND) realization, but have little to say on the social factors involved, as their sample of 20 speakers consisted of university students between the ages of 20-30, i.e., of educated speakers of the same generation. A second limitation of their study is that it included only casual speech, with all the data being elicited during an informal interview between two people who knew each other well, thereby eliminating the possibility of investigating a stylistic dimension to the variation. Third, the speakers were from Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, situated in the north of Greece. Thessalonikiotes speak Standard Greek, but they have a distinct accent, which may have biased the results; our impression as speakers of Greek, as well as that of other Greek linguistsvii, is that D is less prevalent in Thessaloniki than in Athens. Despite these limitations, certain of Charalabopoulos et al.’s observations are revealing. Particularly interesting is the comment that data from four older speakers, who were University lecturers, differed dramatically from those of the main body of the research: “The picture here is entirely different with a significantly higher tendency for prenasalization in all contexts, even in word-initial position” [our translation] (p. 296). In contrast, they observe that among the young speakers “the tendency not to prenasalize voiced stops is overwhelming, in contrast to the accepted norm that these sounds are pronounced oral in word-initial position but prenasalized word-internally” (p. 295). Finally, they mention that “no important differences between men and women were observed relating to the question of voicing and prenasalization” (p. 301). The evidence from these two studies would suggest that the current situation is merely a continuation of a long period of stable variation (in the sense of Labov 1981: 184). This viiWe thank Evagelos Petrounias of the University of Thessaloniki for his observations in this regard. Glossologia, A Greek Journal for General and Historical Linguistics Vol. 11-12.131-166 (2000) (Preliminary version in Historical Linguistics: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 52.203-233 (1999).) 11 view is further supported by (a) the fact that the ND/D variation has a history within Greek of at least several hundred years, perhaps even longer, and (b) the phonological stability of underlying NT, as noted above, resulting from the post-lexical application of the stop-voicing rule. However, there are several reasons why we would like to question this interpretation of the available data. First, we note that in both studies there were no significant differences between the speech of men and women; this lack of difference is thought to be an indication of a sound change that has been completed (Labov 1990). Second, the age of the speakers emerges as a very important factor both in Pagoni (1989) and in Charalabopoulos et al. (1992), indicating that we may be dealing with change in apparent time. Thus, although the results of these two quantitative studies provide valuable insight into the ways the social factors affect the realization of voiced stops, further study of the status of (ND) in Greek seemed necessary, in particular the investigation of whether in fact the current situation represents continued stable variation or a real change in progress altering the nature of the (now unstable) variable (ND).