Query re "movable NU" and -AW and -OW verbs in Imperfect
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Oct 29 05:36:24 EST 2002
At 9:18 AM +0300 10/29/02, William Gardner wrote:
>>From Bill Gardner in Nairobi, Kenya:
>
>I am teaching NT Greek for the first time this year, and have come up a
>question for which I can't seem to find an answer.
>
>Regarding the "movable NU", I realize that by NT times, more often than not
>it was included in the 3pl Present (-OUSIN) and 3sg Imperfect (-EN), even
>when there was no following vowel.
>
>Regarding the 3sg Imperfect (-EN), for verbs with stems ending in
>consonants, e.g. LEG-W, the NU is (usually) there, while in verbs with stems
>ending in E, e.g. FILE-W, I was able to confirm that the NU is not added. I
>assume this is because the resulting ending, i.e. -EI, actually ends in a
>glide (semi-vowel) rather than a vowel.
>
>However, for -AW and -OW verbs, I cannot find whether the 3sg Imperfect
>endings would have the added NU or not, i.e. -A or -AN, -OU or -OUN.
>Conceivably, the -A ending might take the NU but not the -OU, or both or
>neither, but I can't confirm from the resources that I have consulted.
You will not find the movable NU added to the imperfect 3d singulars of
-AW, -EW or -OW verbs because these are actually long syllables--diphthongs
(long -A, -OU, and -OU respectively); the movable NU is attached only to
short -E or short-I (as in the dative plurals in -SI and 3d pl. indicative
present and perfects).
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 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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