correct genitive^16 —suggests the same. In a period such as this in which
a standard orthography is not developed, let alone taught comprehen-
sively, we might partly be seeing individuals’ representations of what they
Figure 2.6Athenian Agora XXV,Ostraka, no.1065.thought they heard. As Lang and Threatte have investigated, quite a
few of the ‘‘misspellings’’ or deviations may be indications of actual
pronunciation.
17
But many must simply be labeled ‘‘graphic error,’’ to
use the polite term of Threatte, and he points out that it is in general in
the private texts, as opposed to the big public inscriptions, that one finds
the greatest variety of spelling. A further fascinating suggestion about
missing letters has been made by Wachter, who examined more fully
the possible patterns in missing letters as a way of analyzing when a lapse
is a mistake or reflects pronunciation.^18 He finds that the omitted vowel
after a particular consonant is very often the vowel occurring after that
consonant in the Greek name for the consonant (e.g.,eis often omitted
aftertheta), thus a form of ‘‘abbreviated writing’’ and a common ‘‘semi-
mistake’’ generated by the fact of learning the alphabet from the letter
names (thusthetais thought to equal the soundthþe). This helps explain
the omission ofein Themistokles’ name, yet the other examples cited
above do not fit this pattern—numbers 89, 1061, 1097, 768, and 762 are
- Lang 1990, 17 has found 15 cases of this. See further Lang 1990 for lists of
omitted syllables, extra letters and so forth, and below for Wachter 1991. - Threatte 1980, 395 407 ‘‘graphic error’’ at p. 398; Lang 1982, 1990.
- Wachter 1991 (who was unable to use the Agora publication).
22 Situating Literacies