[B-Greek] the A short or long?

Jerker Karlsson jerker.karlsson at kdu.se
Wed Apr 2 09:57:33 EST 2003


>"David Lew" <davidlew at 163.com> writes:
>    I am puzzled by the accents of the fem. part. of LEGW. In the acc. of
>both singl. and plur., why do the accents stand on different A?
>    e.g. in  LEGOUSA and LEGOUSAN the A is short while in LEGOUSAS , is
>the A a long one? And why?

That is correct i.e. short A in -OUSAN bot long A in -OUSAS. This does not
partain to LEGW only however, but to all verbs that follows the fem. ptc.
declination of OUSA.

OUSA follows in principle the pattern of the first feminine declination
(as ASQENEIA).  The ending of acc. pl. -AS is long because of the historic
development of the case endings in greek, firstly -A-NS with a long A,
secondly -A-NS with a short A, and finally -AS with a long A once more,
this time caused by a compensatory lengthening of -A- because of the
dropped -N-. The development in acc. sg. is -A-M with a short A and then a
transition from M to N in word endings without any effect on the preceding
vowel.

>    And could anyone tell me under what circumstances the A will be
>short, and what long?

 When A, I, E and U are joined to form diphthongs they are always long
(AI, EI, UI etc etc). If standing alone the only way to know the length of
these vowels is to learn it by hart.

>    Another question: in the declination of SARX is there any rule for
>its accent moving?

Those words whose stem contains only one vowel will have the tone on the
last syllable in gen. and dat. sg. and pl.

Regards
/Jerker Karlsson
Lund, Sweden



More information about the B-Greek mailing list