Origins of CEW
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jun 11 06:21:15 EDT 2002
At 2:18 PM -0400 6/10/02, Richard Ghilardi wrote:
>Dear b-greekers,
>
>Ward Powers in one of his posts dialoguing with Carl Conrad speculated
>that the aorist of this word, ECEA, or rather the compounded form of the
>NT, EXECEA, originally contained a digamma, f, between E and A. I thought
>this might be right; so I looked up CEW in Middle Liddell and was
>surprised to find that they made the root out to be *CU. After examining
>all the forms they listed, I decided that this couldn't be right. I make
>out the root to be *CEfU. In the future and aorist tenses of Homer the
>fullest form of this root may be found:
>
>CEUW and ECEUA
>
>Here only f has dropped away.
>
>In the present and aorist systems fU has dropped out.
>
>CEW and ECEA
>
>While in the perfect and passive systems Ef has disappeared:
>
>KECUKA and CUQHSOMAI and ECUQHN and KECUMAI
>
>Thus an assumed root of *CEfU seems to account for the data presented in
>ML better than an assumed root of *CU. If this is correct, it follows
>that the EU of Homer's CEUW and ECEUA is a SPURIOUS diphthong, being
>formed merely by the loss of f.
>
>Of course I realize that my thesis is merely an inference from the data
>presented for the lemma CEW in ML. It has no basis in philological
>investigation. However, it can easily be proven true or false by
>examining the meters of Homer's poetry where CEUW or ECEUA occur. Since I
>am not familiar with the verse of Homer, I cannot do this myself. Perhaps
>Carl or someone else on the list can settle the question.
Richard, my take on this is that this is one of those roots with
vowel-gradation or "Ablaut" between "e", "o", and "zero" grade root-forms
(cf. LEIP/LOIP/LIP, PEIQ/POIQ/PIQ, ELEUQ/ELOUQ/ELUQ). In this instance it's
CEU/COU/CU, and in this instance furthermore, when the diphthongs EU and OU
are followed by a vowel, the U of the diphthong consonantizes as "f"
(digamma), so that we have present tense from CEU as CEfW --> CEW, aorist
ECEfA --> ECEA, noun COfH --> COH. The perfect tense shows the "zero"
grade, KECUKA.
Ward Powers has a very nice discussion of digamma verbs in Appendix C8.7,
pp. 255-7 of his textbook, _Learn to Read the Greek New Testament_. In
general I think that Ward's appendices are one of the finest features of
his text, even if I disagree with him over how some of this material should
best be presented or explained (for the most part, as he and I have both
acknowledged, that's precisely where our disagreements are: not over the
facts, but over the presentation and explanation). In appendix C8.76-77, p.
256 he lists and discusses -CEW and its cognate form -CUNNW. This latter he
explains as derived from a form of the root CUf such as Richard
hypothesizes above. I think it more likely that -CUNNW should be explained
as based on root -CU- with nasal present-stem formative -NO/E or
-NUO/E-->-NNfO/E (i.e. -NU- with N doubling after short-vowel and U
consonantizing before the thematic vowel linking to endings, cf. Smyth
#523.f; there certainly is a good deal of analogical formation in later
Greek, and one ought not to be dogmatic about hypotheses.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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