[B-Greek] KOPIOUSIN (B/03 in Mt 6:28)
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Dec 29 06:55:39 EST 2003
At 8:01 PM -0500 12/28/03, Jonathan Borland wrote:
>Hello List,
>
>According to NA27, Codex Vaticanus in Mt 6:28 has KOPIOUSIN for
>KOPIWSIN. Is there a word KOPIOW in the Gr language, or is this an
>error or iticism? If the latter, why did NA27 include it? Was there a
>time when -AW verbs were allowed to be contracted as -OW verbs? Was
>there a time when -AW contract verbs used -OU- to distinguish present
>indicative from present subjunctive?
No, there is no KOPIOW; I think that KOPIOU=SIN (i.e. circumflexed U) is
simply a scribal error. I think that the question under discussion in the
critical apparatus is not so much the form of the 3d plural but the fact
that plurals are used in the negative clauses whereas some MSS have the
singular AUXANEI in the PWS clause. Nor do I think that Greek-speakers ever
sought to distinguish the indicative from the subjunctive in verbs where
the contraction produced the same sound.
There is a prosodic feature of the Epic (i.e. Homeric) dialect--only in
hexameter verse--termed "diectasis"--re-lengthening of W (omega) resulting
from contraction into OW for the sake of making a word fit metrically into
the hexameter rhythm; thus TIMWSI(N) deriving from contracted TIMAOUSIN
might in Homeric verse be spelled out and pronounced TIMOWSIN. But this is
a matter of protraction of the O-sound into an extra syllable; it's not at
all a matter of using a form like KOPIOU=SIN as an indicative of KOPIAWSIN.
I think this is pretty clearly a matter of scribal error.
This is really a text-critical question, and we don't normally deal with
text-critical questions on B-Greek. I've responded to it because it raises
a question of morphological usage, and I thought it important that the
suggestion that there was any deliberate distinction of subjunctive and
indicative forms of contract verbs needed to be scotched.
--
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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