[B-Greek] sigma
John McChesney-Young
panis at pacbell.net
Thu Jun 10 22:48:24 EDT 2004
On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 16:20:44 +0200 "Jerzy Ostapczuk" <jostap at chat.edu.pl>
had asked:
>> What is the accent of sigma letter. Cricumfrexus or acutus?
>> Liddell - Scott - gives sigma with circumflexus.
>> Polish grammars give sigma with acutus.
>> What is better solution for the question? To say sigma with
>> circumflexus or acutus, and why?
And at 8:41 PM -0400 6/10/04, George F. Somsel wrote:
>Letters don't have accents. Words have accents. Even so, the accent is
>placed over the vowel rather than the consonant. Sigma is a consonant.
Is it possible Mr. Ostapczuk refers to the question of the correct
accent of the letter *name* SI=GMA vs. SI/GMA? In the entry at the
beginning of the relevant section of the alphabet, LSJ notes, "(both
accents are found in codd.)" If I understand Ku+hner-Blass correctly,
it says that the circumflex has more support (" u n k l a r i s t
d i e S a c h e be i SI/GMA , d o c h h a t SI=GMA
m e h r G e w a+ h r " - feel free to correct or polish my
translation, anyone :-)). [[1]]
Note though that Smyth section 3 (original edition linked at the
Perseus page below, and likewise in the printed 1956 Messing
revision) assigns the letter name an acute accent, as does W. Sidney
Allen's _Vox Graeca_ in Appendix C, "The Names of the Letters of the
Greek Alphabet"; neither comments on the variation.
It would be interesting to see what Frisk has to say, but the U of
Leiden Indo-European database site seems to be down yet again:
http://iiasnt.leidenuniv.nl/
and I don't have handy access to the paper edition.
John
[[1]] Section 1, note 11:
http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0019
--
*** John McChesney-Young ** panis at pacbell.net ** Berkeley,
California, U.S.A. ***
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