Origins of CEW

Richard Ghilardi qodeshlayhvh at juno.com
Wed Jun 12 17:53:43 EDT 2002


Carl:

Thanks for the lucid explanation. My hypothesis was nothing more than a
stab in the dark. I am trying to be less dogmatic where my knowledge is
so spotty.


Richard Ghilardi -- qodeshlayhvh at juno.com


On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 06:21:15 -0400 "Carl W. Conrad"
<cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu> writes:
> 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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