Talk:Hittite phonology

Value of the sibilant

@Tom 144 and Fdom5997: The table gives phonemes /ʃ, ʃː/ as existing in Hittite and then gives /(s), (sː)/ in parentheses. But then in the main body it uses the symbol ⟨s⟩ for transcription of examples (eg. “e-šu-un - [ɛ́ːsɔn]”) and has a long paragraph arguing for “alveolar sibilant” and also using the symbol ⟨s⟩. So shouldn’t the table also change the character representing the phoneme from ⟨ʃ⟩ to ⟨s⟩? And there is no explanation of the significance of the parentheses in the table either (was there one main phoneme and a separate marginal one? is the other value a supposed allophone? a competing reconstruction?). Silmethule (talk) 13:34, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

@Fdom5997: since you reverted my change and now put the /ʃ/ in parentheses – please, at least explain in the article what you mean by the parentheses. The article’s text doesn’t suggest any such value in the Hittite system. And there’s no hint at the meaning of the parentheses (separate marginal phoneme? alternative value for an existing one? an allophone?).

(I guess a good argument could be made for retracted apical alveolar [s̺] could be made, just as for Ancient Greek, Latin, etc. as the single non-contrastive sibilant – but that’s different than listing /ʃ/ as a phoneme in the table…) Silmethule (talk) 12:49, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

The parentheses strictly mean an alternative value for the existing phoneme or an allophone. If the article states that /s/ is the main sound then [ʃ] is an alternative value. Fdom5997 (talk) 15:34, 9 April 2024 (UTC)