[B-Greek] accentuation of proclitic and enclitic lemmata

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Sun Aug 28 11:42:26 EDT 2005


On Aug 28, 2005, at 4:55 AM, James Tauber wrote:

> The next release of MorphGNT will be a major release that includes an
> extra column: the surface form of the word *without* contextual
> changes like elision, movable-nu and various accentual changes. This
> new context-free surface form is what you might expect in a paradigm
> listing or if you asked someone to provide a particular inflected  
> form.

This is less than altogether clear to me. Perhaps an example or two  
would help. Although you're speaking below chiefly of forms of  
enclitics, it seems to me that you are NOT speaking of the lemmata,  
some of which are problematic in themselves. For instance the lemma  
of POIW IS POIEW, even though that form never appears (unless it be  
in an Ionic dialect form that doesn't contract vowels, as Herodotus);  
will your context-free form for POIEW be POIE-? Or am I  
misunderstanding completely what you're talking about when you write  
"what you might expect in a paradigm listing or if you asked someone  
to provide a particular inflected form"? For a noun like ANHR or like  
QUGATHR would this column offer ANDR- or QUGATR-?

> A few of issues have arisen around the proper presentation of accents
> on proclitics and enclitics in the fields in my database *other than*
> the text itself. In other words, the context-free surface form and
> the lemma.
>
> 1. I assume that it is always proper for both the lemmata and context-
> free surface form of proclitics to appear unaccented, even though in
> certain contexts in actual text an accent can exist. (I presume that
> this is because there is no ambiguity as to where the accent would  
> sit)

Here my question is: what is the intended utility of this column? I'm  
thinking of facts such as that oblique-case forms of third-declension  
monosylabic nouns are accented on the ultima while nominatives and  
accusatives are accented on the root-syllable. How would you list a  
form like POUS/PODOS with respect to the accent?

> 2. It appears that, in general, the lemmata of enclitics are shown in
> lexicons *with* their accents. I am inclined to do so in MorphGNT.
>
> 2a. In the case of the indefinite TIS, BDAG accents the lemma with a
> grave. Others don't accent it at all. What should MorphGNT do?

I'm not sure I see any reason to mark them; in a sense (if I  
understand what you're doing), a context-free form of indefinite TIS  
is purely hypothetical, existing ONLY in a dicitonary. I can't see  
why it should be spelled as TI\S.

> 3. It appears that, in general, the context-free surface forms of
> enclitics are shown in grammars *with* their accent except for the
> following:
>
> 3a. in the case of the indefinite TIS, the accent seems to be written
> in the context-free surface form only when it falls on the ending but
> not when it falls on the stem (I presume that this is because the
> accents are different in the indefinite forms than the interrogative
> forms)
>
> 3b. Accents are not written on the context-free surface forms of SOU/
> SOI/SE when enclitic (to avoid ambiguity, I presume)
>
> 3c. Accents are not written on the context-free surface forms of MOU/
> MOI/ME even though there is no ambiguity with the non-enclitic  
> variants.
>
>
> What are people's thoughts on what the treatment of accents should be
> in the context-free surface forms and lemmata of these words in
> MorphGNT?

Well, it's still not clear to me what you mean the utility of this  
column to be. This is not intended to be a lexicon or morphological  
compendium of any sort; why is anything more than the lemma of a word  
needed?

I do very much appreciate that your tagging of MP forms is strictly  
in terms of morphology and doesn't attempt to interpret whether MAI/ 
SAI/TAI or QH- forms are semantically middle or passive and that you  
steer clear of categorizing so-called "deponents."  But with regard  
to lemmata of verbs, one might well raise the question whether it  
would be preferable, as Randall Buth has suggested, to give the  
aorist infinitive as the lemma rather than the present indicative  
active 1st sg.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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