[B-Greek] Etymology

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Mar 28 15:23:38 EST 2003


At 8:49 PM -0800 3/28/03, Jerker Karlsson wrote:
>If I have understood this right its not possible to point out the specific
>gender of the participle that has undergone the transformation into a
>regular noun, since all active participles has -NT- as the formative
>element regardless their gender.

That is essentially correct.

The question of gender is of some
>interest to me since Thyers lexicon points out EXON (i.e. neurt. ptc.) as
>a possible origin of EXOUSIA, and EXOUSIA, like APOUSIA and PAROUSIA, is
>most likely formed in analogy with the older OUSIA.

Well, EXON is sometimes used as a so-called "accusative absolute" such as
functions only with impersonal verbs. But the impersonal verb here is
EXESTI, normally taking a dative and infinitive (e.g. EXESTI MOI TAUTA
POIEIN = "It is permitted to me to do these things" = "I am allowed to do
these things." So no, there's no particular reason to trace EXOUSIA to the
neuter EXON any sooner than to any other particular gender; rather it is
from the simple participial stem EXONT- (the neuter participle, in fact, is
actually EXONT, but -T will not stand as a final syllable in a Greek word
and drops off so that the resultant neuter form is EXON.

>I'm also keen to know if it is significant that OUSIA was made from the
>participle stem and not the active stem, i.e does it because of this
>denote state rather than action. Looking at the examples above (APOUSIA,
>PAOUSIA, OUSIA, EXOUSIA) the all seem to bear the notion of a state,
>absence, presence, existence, *permitnce. Does this circumstantial nature
>of these words derive from the fact that they all are taken from the
>participle form or does it lie inherent in the stem ES itself?

The stem of the verb alternates between ES-, SE-, and SO-. I don't think
you can say that the participle as such is more stative than the finite
verb forms; this lies more in the nature of this particular verb, which in
fact has no aorist or perfect tenses.
-- 

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/


More information about the B-Greek mailing list