[B-Greek] Morphology of ZEUS
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Oct 8 15:15:09 EDT 2003
At 2:59 PM -0400 10/8/03, bgreek at ntresources.com wrote:
>Two forms of ZEUS occur in the NT (Acts 14:12, 13), one the acc. DIA and the
>other gen. DIOS.
>
>BDAG doesn't give much info on the variation in form. L&S provide a lot of
>examples or even more diverse forms. What is the reason for the disparity
>between ZEUS and DIOS? Is this just a dialectical variation? Or are these
>originally two unrelated words come to be used for the same referent?
>
>L&S does note that DEUS (nom?) is Boeotian and Laconian dialect; I assume
>that is true of the other 'D' forms as well?
I think that what lies behind the variants, even apart from dialectal
differences, is phonetics. You might look at Smyth, §285,12, which indicates
(1) a PIE form DIEUS, the DI before the vowel/diphthong coming to be
pronounced ZEU- (cf. the variant form ZA for the preposition DIA);
(2) a root DIf (where f = digamma) in DIOS, DIA,etc.;
Presumably the dialectal forms ZHNOS, ZHNI, ZHNA involve the same sort of
nasal -N- extension as is seen inthe formation of TINOS, TINI, TINA from
PIE KwI- TIS TI.
--
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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