The Inscriptions from the Sanctuary of Zone and the Supposed Nominatives in -E (< *-ος) of Thracian
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/emerita.2025.1365Keywords:
Thracian language, vocative for nominative, phonetic weakening, Aegean Thrace, Linguistic contact, Greek anthroponymyAbstract
Following the publication of the Greek and Thracian graffiti from the sanctuary of Apollo at Zone, Brixhe (2006a; 2008; 2015) proposed the existence of a linguistic phenomenon common to northern Greece based on the weakening of *-o, which is transcribed with -E (= [ə]) in the inscriptions: this change allegedly took place in Macedonia, Thessaly, Thasos and Zone, one of Samothrace’s colonies on the mainland. This phonetic phenomenon, along with others, led him to postulate even the existence of a stress accent on the first syllable of a word in the variety of Thracian used in Zone. In this paper we re-examine the supposed examples of nominatives in -E (<*-ος) from Zone. They occur in a series of anthroponyms of Greek origin attested in graffiti written in the local language. We question the assumption that they are nominatives and, thereby, challenge the validity of Brixhe’s evidence for a stress accent in the local variety of Thracian.
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