[B-Greek] BBG: Elementary Parsing Question Contract Verbs

Stephen Baldwin stbaldwi at hotmail.com
Tue Sep 12 15:34:35 EDT 2006


Ladies and Gentlemen:
Please forgive this elementary question.
But in reviewing contract verbs, I am slightly puzzled.

AGAPAW P-MP-I 2sg is AGAPAi from AGAPA + E + SAI
POIEW P-MP-I 2sg is POIHi from POIE + E + SAI

The sigma is intervocalic and will drop, leading to a veritable soup of 
vowels.

According to Mounce, BBG 18.18, footnotes 3 and 4 describe the morphology 
from the addition of the connecting vowel and the ending to the final form:
3: (AGAPAW) AESAI > ASAI > AAI > AI > Ai
4: (POIEW) EESAI > ESAI > EAI > HI > Hi

According to the above algorithm:
1. The contract vowel and the connecting vowel contract
2. The sigma drops
3. The final three vowels contract as a vowel+dipthong pair

This works for AGAPAW above, but for POIEW, according to Mounce, the E 
contract and E connecting vowel contract to E. This does not follow the 
contract rules as I have learned them (E+E > EI). There doesn't seem to be 
any explanation for this inconsistency (if indeed it is one).

Have I missed something?
Is there an explanation? Is the above method correct? Is the EE > E merely 
an irregular form?
I have searched in vain for clear precedence rules (to borrow the 
mathematical term) when it comes to morphology such as the examples above. 
If anyone has any guidelines, I'd be pleased to hear from you.

Thank you for your patience
Steve

Stephen Baldwin
stbaldwi at hotmail.com





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