Re: Movable nu, iota subscript

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Mon, 3 Nov 1997 10:00:25 -0600

At 7:27 AM -0600 11/3/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>While preparing lessons for "Little Greek 101", I realized that I have some
>questions about movable nu and the iota subscript:
>
>Re: Movable Nu
>
>In the UBS 3rd, I think that most of the present active forms of verbs do
>not omit the nu. Does anybody know if there are present active forms that do
>omit the nu? Someone suggested that older editions tend to omit the nu, and
>newer editions tend to insert it. Is this true?

I don't know the answer to this, but I'd think the editions would observe
the same rules for determining the original text as in every other
instance; while it is true that the movable nu doesn't affect translation,
it DOES affect reading aloud and rhythm. It was generally employed for verb
forms ending in a pause or followed by a word beginning with a vowel.
Analogous in a way would be the French retention of the original -T ending
of the 3d sg. when there is inversion of verb and pronoun in the
interrogative form: "a-t-il?" for "est-ce qu'il a?" or "parle-t-il?" for
"est-ce qu'il parle?" That is, it's function is euphonic, to avoid hiatus
between an ending vowel of one word and an initial vowel of another.

>Re: Iota subscript
>
>Is this subscript used only for:
>
>1. the last syllable of a word
>2. the vowels O, A, and W
>3. dative case
>
>If so, I would like to say so when I introduce it.

The iota subscript will only be used with long vowels, specifically long A,
H, and W; I'm not sure where or when the convention originated, but the
facts underlying it are that (1) in older Greek there were long-vowel
diphthongs with an initial long vowel and a second element I or U; (2) some
of the long-vowel-U diphthongs survived intact into later Greek as HU, AU,
although one finds WU only in Ionic dialect (texts of Herodotus or
Heraclitus, for instance); (3) the Iota element of the long-vowel-iota
diphthongs ceased to be pronounced at some point in the third or second
century B.C. (dative singulars in -WI or -HI in the papyri are written
simply as -W or -H; at some point somebody dreamed up the notion of marking
the iota that had been lost in pronunciation as a subscript to the long
vowel which it had originally followed. That's the story in a nutshell.
The subscripts we generally associate with dative singular forms because
the dative case of the -A- and -O- declensions regularly used the long A
(--> H) or W followed by I to make a long-vowel diphthong originally. Yet
there are other places where the subscript is common, as in augmented
initial diphthongs in past-tense indicative verb forms (AISQANOMAI, aor.
HiSQOMHN; OIMAI, impf. WiMHN). There are also some common words that have
subscripts because they derive from contracted forms of older words, e.g.
AiDW from the older verb AEIDW and its cognate nouns WiDH from the older
form AOIDH, TRAGWiDIA from the older TRAGAOIDIA. There are even some
instances where the iota was not consistently restored as a subscript, e.g.
APOQNHSKW/APOQNHiSKW from the older verb APOQNHISKW (originally
APOQNAISKW)--it seems to me that we do find in the NT sometimes the iota
subscript with this verb but not always. Here again, I would assume that
the editors endeavor to follow the evidence of the best MSS for determining
what most likely was in the original text.

Many of our spelling rules for NT Greek are purely conventional and some,
like the retention of the iota subscript, can't be said to have a very
great practical value--unless it is making it easier to recognize dative
singular forms! What I mean here is that spelling in many languages is much
more conservative than the spoken language--English and French are
excellent examples, while German, on the other hand, undergoes regular
orthographical reformation to reflect real changes in ordinary
pronunciation. If the GNT were reformulated in terms of the way the
language was probably pronounced at the time of its composition, we would
have fewer vowels and diphthongs to contend with. But that's a dream, and
not really a very good one. The vowels and diphthongs of the conventional
spelling in the GNT do enable us to make the distinctions such as that
between hHMIN and hUMIN that were probably not heard by the writers and
audiences of the NT era, inasmuch as U and H were likely both pronounced
like English long-E.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/