Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer: A Linguistic Interpretation of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and the Continuity of Ancient Greek Literacy

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Oxford University Press, 12 juin 1997 - 304 pages
Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer examines the origin of the Greek alphabet. Departing from previous accounts, Roger Woodard places the advent of the alphabet within an unbroken continuum of Greek literacy beginning in the Mycenean era. He argues that the creators of the Greek alphabet, who adapted the Phoenician consonantal script, were scribes accustomed to writing Greek with the syllabic script of Cyprus. Certain characteristic features of the Cypriot script--for example, its strategy for representing consonant sequences and elements of Cypriot Greek phonology--were transferred to the new alphabetic script. Proposing a Cypriot origin of the alphabet at the hands of previously literate adapters brings clarity to various problems of the alphabet, such as the Greek use of the Phoenician sibilant letters. The alphabet, rejected by the post- Bronze Age "Mycenaean" culture of Cyprus, was exported west to the Aegean, where it gained a foothold among a then illiterate Greek people emerging from the Dark Age.
 

Table des matières

1 Introduction
3
2 The Syllabaries
8
3 SyllableDependent Approaches
19
4 NonSyllableDependent Approaches
58
5 The Hierarchy of Orthographic Strength
112
6 The Alphabet
133
7 Cyprus and Beyond
205
8 Conclusions
246
Phonetic Glossary
263
Symbols
267
References
268
Index
279
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Page vii - Marburger served as the Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California from 1976 to 1980.
Page xiii - BASOR = Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research BCH = Bulletin de correspondance hellenique...

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