[B-Greek] 1st declension/ vowel length and accents

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Sun Oct 2 07:48:18 EDT 2005


On Oct 2, 2005, at 7:32 AM, TuNeCedeMalis67 at aol.com wrote:

> These are some notes I took after reading a PILE of textbooks and   
> webpages
> on 1st declension. Can someone please tell me if this is  right? Or  
> if I need
> to know anything else? We often need to know if an alpha is  long  
> or short,
> if we are to accent a
> word correctly, right?

Yes, we do. I think this is a pretty good summation; I would have  
preferred to see regular BG transliteration in upper-case characters,  
but what you've set forth seems pretty accurate and I would add only  
the one subcategory to your first-declension masculines.

>
> There are 4 subdeclensions of 1st declension  nouns:
> long alpha
> short  alpha
> eta
> masculine

I would subdivide the masculine into two groups: nominatives in -HS  
and nominatives in -AS (long A does not change to H after I, E, or  
R): HSAIAS is an instance of a masculine noun with long A stem.

> long alpha  usually comes after rho, iota, or epsilon. All alphas  
> are long in
> the
> long alpha subdeclension.
>
> Eta usually comes after consonants other than rho. All the etas   
> and alphas
> are long
> in the eta subdeclension.
>
> Short alpha can  come after any stem, and is rarer than long alpha  
> and eta.
> After consonants  other than rho, short alpha turns to an eta in  
> the genitive
> and dative  singular .After rho, iota, and epsilon, short alpha  
> becomes a long
> alpha in  everything other than Nom. sg., Acc. sg., and Voc. sg.
>
> masc 1st  declension is declined like the eta subdeclension, except  
> for: hs
> in  the nom. sg., ou in the gen. sg., and short a in voc. sg.
>
> "pure alpha"  can be long or short.
>
> "impure alpha" is a short alpha after a consonant  other han rho.
>
> Alpha is usually long. We can identify a short alpha in  the  
> following ways:
> An accented antepult in words with 3 or more  syllables; an alpha  
> in the
> nominative after a consanant other than  rho; an impure alpha if  the
> genetive  is listed.
>
> ---
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>


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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