An Analysis of Contraction in the Attic Greek Prosodic Phonology

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Rodrigo Him Fábrega

Abstract

This study deals with Attic Greek contraction, a lexical stratum prosodic phenomenon. Its primary aim is a characterization that supplies the background for a comparison with crasis, conceived as a postlexical process. Contraction is analyzed within the metrical phonology theoretical framework in terms of a previous description of Attic vowel system contrastive features. With this approach, lexical vowel coalescence obeys a tendency to eliminate contiguous syllable nuclei, an antihiatic condition connected with several mechanisms of quantitative adjustment, which adapts the syllables to the maximal permissible length of two moras per nucleus. It is argued that contraction operates from right to left, while melodic feature spreading acts from the opposite direction, as a consequence of the first nucleus primacy in the hiatus situation.

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How to Cite
Him Fábrega, R. (2019). An Analysis of Contraction in the Attic Greek Prosodic Phonology. Synthesis, 26(2), e064. https://doi.org/10.24215/1851779Xe064
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Artículos
Author Biography

Rodrigo Him Fábrega, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad de Panamá

Profesor titular en la Facultad de Humanidades de la Universidad de Panamá. Es maestro en lingüística por la Universidad de Costa Rica. Tiene publicados, entre otros, los libros Configuraciones Simbólicas y Socio-semántica del Relato. Además, ha elaborado diversos artículos sobre fonología y morfología del griego antiguo, que figuran en revistas tales como Anales de Filología Clásica y Nova Tellus.

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