AKHKOOTAS

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Apr 28 22:39:06 EDT 2000


At 9:20 PM -0500 4/28/00, Eddie Van Gent wrote:
>With a double omicron in this 2nd perfect Acc Pl Masc Ptc what should the
>Nom Sg be (even though not mentioned in the NT)

The Nom. sg. is AKHKOWS, gen. AKHKOOTOS (Pf 1 sg. AKHKOA, of the type
called "Attic reduplication" wherein the vowel + consonant is repeated but
lengthened the second time. Similar: ELHLOUQA (ERCOMAI), OPWPA (hORAW)
>The reason for wanting to know this is twofold:
>1) People of the koine era would have known the full morphology
>2) By knowing the morphology of this irregular participle one would needs
>also become familiar with the "feel" of the language.

I sometimes wonder whether it's really appropriate to call such a form
"irregular"--although I know we apply that to any verb that doesn't follow
the pattern which (by default) has become default. But of course these
"second perfects"--just like the "second aorists" and "second passives" are
really the archaic types that have never gone out of currency because they
are the standard forms of verbs that are used frequently enough that they
haven't undergone the leveling process which reduces verbs less-frequently
used to the standard default pattern. Perhaps we should go back to the old
fashioned way of distinguishing between "weak" and "strong" forms of the
verb morphology, although, of course, terminology won't do much to help
learn things unless the reason for the difference in morphologies is
understood.



-- 

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 at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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