[B-Greek] Consonant stem ending + NTAI

Mark Lama markosl80 at yahoo.com
Wed Sep 17 16:46:17 EDT 2003


Just a further background note to this. In my understanding, it would be more accurate to say that the Indo-European syllabic nasal /n'/ became /an/ in Greek. Likewise, it became /un/ in the Germanic languages. What is important to note is that in Indo-European the /n'/ could stand alone in a syllable. Engish approximates this in words like 'open' (many would pronounce it [OH-pn]).
 
CARIS KAI EIRHNH,
 
Mark Lama

Ken Penner <pennerkm at mcmaster.ca> wrote:
Smyth (465f) says -NTAI became -ATAI (the N in an unpronounceable string of
consonants becomes sonant: A), and the -ATAI and -ATO forms were retained in
prose until about 400 BCE.

Ken Penner, Ph.D. (cand.), McMaster
Vocabulary Memorization software:
http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/westerholm/flash or
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flash_pro/join

> What I'm not following is why the Greeks didn't come
> up with a form for this occasion, or did they?

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