1. A Corpus Study of Attic Greek Alpha, Iota and Upsilon Cory Robinson

2. Attic Vowels ShortLong A E I O Y

3. Attic Vowels ShortLong A EH I OΩ Y

4. Minimal Pairs Allen (1987) “such contrasts are rare” “no more numerous than true homonyms” “the context will in any case seldom have left room for ambiguity”

5. Minimal Pairs Example from German /x/ [ç] [x]

6. Minimal Pairs Example from German /x/ [ç] [x] However… Kuhchen (little cow) [ | k h u:çən] Kuchen (cake) [ | k h u:xən]

7. Phonemic or Allophonic?

8. Allen (1987) Primarily concerned with phonetics Teodorsson (1974) “Sequences of identical phonemes” Woodard (1997) “Vowel length is phonemic in Greek”

9. Phonemic or Allophonic? Complementary Distribution

10. The Corpus

11. Lysias (c. 445 – 380 B.C.) Attic orator Everyday speech Oration 32: Against Diogeiton 700 words 1,600 syllables

12. The Corpus

14. Vowel Length First marked c. 400 – 200 B.C. Poetry Accent

15. The Corpus Sorting By syllable All syllables together For any factors correlating to the length of alpha, iota, upsilon

16. Results

17. ShortLong A85%15% I90%10% Y85%15% E/H68%32% O/Ω62%38%

18. Conclusion Distinction is phonemic No need for new letters

19. Future Work Bigger corpus Historical factors