Imperative of OIDA and EIMI
Stephen C. Carlson
scarlson at mindspring.com
Mon Jan 1 11:37:13 EST 2001
At 07:58 AM 1/1/01 -0600, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>They are identical in spelling and pronunciation; only the context will
>clearly distinguish their usage. Originally, to be sure, they were
>different, but loss of weak consonants (digamma in the case of OIDA, sigma
>in the case of EIMI) has led to their identity of form and pronunciation:
>(note that here W represents Digamma, normally represented by F)
>
>OIDA: WI-DQI --> WIS-QI --> ISQI (D of root WID assimilated to Q)
>EIMI: SIS-QI --> IS-QI --> ISQI (root of EIMI alternated btw/ SE and ES;
>what's probably happened in this instance is vocalic assimilation between
>the E and the I of QI; and of course you can tell that this is mere
>guesswork, very possibly wrong).
Sihler, NEW COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR OF GREEK AND LATIN (New York: Oxford,
1995), § 496.2 (p. 553) writes: "G I)/SQI is an enigma. . . .
The undisturbed outcome should have been G *E)/SQI. The question of
how attested I)/SQI arose has no answer, but even so that is an
easier question than WHY *E)/SQI would have been vulnerable to
replacement at all."
So it's a mystery why the EIMI form is ISQI and not ESQI.
Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
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