[B-Greek] BBG and Case Endings

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Sep 29 12:22:01 EDT 2003


At 9:46 AM -0400 9/29/03, Barry W. Hickey wrote:
>In BBG, Bill Mounce states that the `real` case ending for second
>declension, masculine, plural, accusative is NS.  However, he goes on to
>state that the nu drops out because of the following sigma.  If nu and sigma
>are incompatible how is it that the `real` case ending could ever be NS?

The phonetic change with respect to the case-endings took place long before
era of Koine Greek; the phonetic combination of vowel +NS regularly
resulted in a "compensatory" lengthening of the preceding vowel when the
-N- was dropped; consequently in the first declension short-A + NS became
long-AS, in the second declension ONS became -OUS (omicron lengthens to OU,
NOT to omega); in the third declension -NS following on consonant stems
became short-AS (the semi-vocalic -N- becoming a weak vowel). Actually this
phonetic process--compensatory lengthening of a short vowel originally
preceding -NS- is found at numerous points in the paradigms of nouns,
adjectives, pronouns, and verbs.
-- 

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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