[B-Greek] Consonantal iota
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Aug 13 09:54:58 EDT 2003
At 9:28 AM -0400 8/13/03, bgreek at ntresources.com wrote:
>Is what Mounce calls a consonantal iota the same thing as what Smyth calls a
>semivowel? Are these equivalent terms?
>
>For reference, see Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek, 2d ed., 179; 1st ed.,
>165; or Smyth's Grammar, sect. 109.
>
>I also note that a different glyph is used in Mounce and Smyth. Mounce uses
>a pointed caret under the iota (much like the Unicode character 032D),
>whereas Smyth uses a rounded mark (like Unicode 032F, or the
>"humpback"/rounded version of a circumflex). Are these considered acceptable
>alternate forms? Or is one or the other preferred?
I probably shouldn't be answering this, but I can attest as well as any
other, I guess, that there isn't any universal convention for the
representation of consonantal iota. I didn't keep Mounce's textbook with me
when I did my triage of my office library, so I can't speak for his usage.
I am used to Smyth's and it's what was used when I first learned Greek half
a century ago by Joe Billy McMinn; at Harvard Joshua Whatmough used a
simple Latin "y" and that's the convention used by W. Sidney Allen (_Vox
Graeca_). Andrew L. Sihler (_New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin_)
uses an italic *y with the asterisk preceding it to represent the original
PIE sound. If one is going to represent it in a reference document, one
probably ought to indicate that it bears the sound of English consonantal
"y" or German consonantal "j" but that there simply is no universal
convention for its representation. In my own "Compendium of Greek
Phonology" I used a "y" in a different font from that of my exposition.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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