[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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