Beginner Question

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jun 26 08:08:47 EDT 2002


At 7:56 AM -0400 6/26/02, Highlands Diversified wrote:
>Greetings,
>
>I have somewhat of a beginner question.  Why does the genitive of PROFHTHS
>become PROFHTOU?  I didn't expect that with the final stem vowel H.  What
>exactly is happening here?

The reason is that PROFHTHS is a masculine noun; ALL first-declension (i.e.
H0 and A-stem) masculine nouns have a genitive ending -OU that has
evidently been borrowed from the O-stem declension. Thus:
	PROFHTHS, gen. PROFHTOU; POIHTHS, gen. POIHTOU; NAUTHS, gen. NAUTOU
	NEANIAS, gen. NEANIOU; OZYMANDIAS, gen. OZYMANDIOU (although you won't
		find this noun in the GNT)
It's perhaps worth noting also that there are third-declension -AD-stems
that have a nominative in -IAS but genitive in -IADOS, e.g. ILIAS, gen.
ILIADOS.
-- 

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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