UCLA

This dissertation investigates the historical development of Greek syllabification from Mycenaean through the Archaic first-millennium dialects, with particular attention to its implications for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) syllable structure. It develops a unified account of Greek syllabification by integrating linguistic, orthographic, metrical, and philological evidence within an Optimality-Theoretic (OT) framework.The study draws primarily on Mycenaean and Homeric Greek, the earliest attested stages of the language, while also incorporating comparative Indo-European evidence where relevant. Four complementary sources of evidence are examined: sound changes and synchronic phonological processes sensitive to syllable structure; Linear B orthography and inscriptional practices; metrical evidence from Homeric poetry; and observations preserved in the ancient grammatical tradition. Philological analysis and phonological modeling are employed jointly to reassess longstanding problems concerning Greek and PIE syllable structure.The dissertation reaches four main conclusions. First, a comprehensive reexamination of the evidence shows that Liquid Metathesis was not a productive feature of Mycenaean phonology. Second, the directionality of sonorant vocalization in Mycenaean is demonstrated to be governed by syllable well-formedness rather than occurring in free variation, supporting an analysis in terms of vowel epenthesis conditioned by syllabification. Third, Linear B orthography is shown to be compatible with an independently established account of Greek syllable structure based on cluster heterosyllabicity, allowing both regular spelling conventions and apparent exceptions to be derived within an OT model. Fourth, the comparison between Mycenaean and Homeric Greek indicates that the Greek linking vowel -o- originated as a phonologically conditioned repair strategy before being reanalyzed as a stem-level morphological process. A Stratal OT analysis accounts for this development and relates it to other changes in Greek syllable structure between the second and first millennia BCE.Taken together, these findings reconcile linguistic and orthographic evidence that has traditionally been regarded as contradictory and support a reconstruction of Greek syllable structure based on cluster heterosyllabicity. They further indicate that Mycenaean preserves several properties of PIE syllable structure that predate innovations attested in the first millennium BCE, demonstrating that linguistic, orthographic, metrical, and philological evidence can be integrated within a single account of the early history of Greek phonology.