Vowel hiatus resolution in Koine Greek: the sequence [i.a] in the documentary papyri

Abstract

The application of new tools for the analysis of the digital corpus of the Greek papyri allows us to access more data than those traditionally mentioned in the manuals. There are spellings that reflect different results in the processes of vowel hiatus resolution. Their review allows us to assess the impact of the phenomenon.  Also, we can study its frequency over time, resizing previous approaches. For heterosyllabic vowel sequences [V₁.V₂], in which V₁ = /i/ and V₂ = [- close] [- front] vowel, we can observe the existence of graphic variants that reflect both the disappearance of V₁ and V₂. From the data study and typological comparison, we can establish that the stress distribution conditioned the most frequent variants: omission, possibly with preceding reduction, of V₂ in unstressed heterosyllabic endings of proparoxytone words; omission of V₁ in paroxytone heterosyllabic endings with stress displacement from V₁ to V₂. In the sequence [i.a] resolution data, we can see a high variability of results in equivalent contexts. The typological comparison also supports that non-phonetic factors may conflict with the phonetic determinants.