[B-Greek] consonantal iota
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jul 4 10:48:37 EDT 2006
Perhaps the question to answer first is whether there is a
consonantal iota in ancient Greek -- or at least a consonantal Iota
that ever had any representation in the standard Greek alphabet.
Historians of the Greek language postulate that present-tense verb
endings in -ZW, -TTW, -SSW, -LLW, etc. derive from combination of a
root consonant with a consonantal Iota + O/E (Smyth §§507ff.). In
Smyth the putative iota-consonant is written as a lower-case Iota
with a semi-circular mark below it. I don't think there is a Unicode
character for that, and the character/symbol that shows up in the
printed form of Smyth does not show up accurately on the Peseus web-
page ( http://tinyurl.com/mt9dw ). I have seen the consonantal Iota
represented by a Roman "y" (lower-case) -- but even that was in the
course of discussion of the underlying phonetic basis of present-
tense verb-endings. In words like IHSOUS and IEROUSALHM (also spelled
hIEROSOLUMA) one should be aware that these proper names are written
with a smooth-breathing over the initial Iota, which is pronounced
independently of the vowel immediately following it.
On Jul 4, 2006, at 8:56 AM, Scott Wells wrote:
> Is there a consonantal iota in a font included in MS Word?
>
> Scott Wells
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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