[B-Greek] Morphology of hUPERHFANEW?

Clwinbery at aol.com Clwinbery at aol.com
Wed Apr 16 23:20:45 EDT 2003


In a message dated 4/16/03 9:16:07 AM, bgreek at ntresources.com writes:

>Is there any principle/rule that explains why hUPERHFANEW has an eta between
>the prefixed preposition and the verbal stem? (= hUPER + FAW) I would
>*guess* it has to do with the juxtaposition of rho and phi, but it doesn't
>seem necessary to have a vowel here for euphonic purposes, much less a
>long
>vowel.
>
>(For the curious, it appears only in Mk 7:22 in the NT, but I ran into
>it in
>Ignatius>Polycarp 4.3.)

These are called "epenthetic" eta or epsilon. They are added for euphony. The 
word is more difficult to pronounce without them. In this case it would 
require a full stop in moving from a liquid to a labial. Mostly they are used 
in different verb stems like GINOMAI in the future, GENHSOMAI or MENW in the 
perfect, MEMENHKA.

Carlton Winbery
Louisiana College


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