[B-Greek] IWTA -- long or short?

Brent Hudson brent at riveroflifembchurch.com
Fri Sep 19 07:28:07 EDT 2003


Thanks Barry and Carl for the pointers.  Since this student just learned the alphabet last Wednesday, I think I'll hold off on the suggestion of reading massive quantities of poety till a bit later :-)  

As for LSJ, thanks for the tip.  I have found several since words now that have the macron on the iota.  My initial confusion was based on Smyth writing O MIKRON with a long iota but LSJ not doing so.  Upon reflection that must be due to O MIKRON occuring in LSJ in the paragraph not as a headword.  Thanks again for your help,

Brent Hudson


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 9/19/2003 at 6:26 AM Carl W. Conrad wrote:

>At 10:03 PM -0300 9/18/03, Brent Hudson wrote:
>>I had a student ask how to tell if an IWTA is long or short.  The best I
>>could do on the spot is say that if it has a circumflex then it is long
>>(Smyth 4).  Do I just tell this person that unless they want to memorize
>>200+ accent rules they will need to get used the angst of ambiguity?
>>
>>I have looked through Smyth and Mounce's Morphology and several other
>>grammars that I have on my shelf and I have not been able to locate any
>>"rule of thumb" for determining the length of the iota.  While Smyth is
>>good at marking the long iota with a macron, LSJ isn't and so looking up
>>suspect words is not easy or even possible in many instances.  Any help on
>>this one would be appreciated?
>
>I've seen Barry Hofstetter's response to this and I agree that finding an
>iota that must be scanned long in verse is the surest bet, but (a) I think
>that a long iota is relatively rare (perhaps when it's a result of
>contraction and in some proper names), and (b) I think long iota's ARE
>marked in LSJ but not short iotas; e.g. it is marked in hIMEROS, "desire."
>-- 
>
>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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