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

James Tauber jtauber at jtauber.com
Tue Sep 12 16:40:48 EDT 2006


Ignoring the footnote, what form would you expect if you followed the  
rules? If you are unsure of rule ordering, try different orders. What  
result would you get? If the ending, after intervocalic sigma drop  
were actually EIAI, would that invalidate the POIHi spelling?  
(bearing in mind EI is a spurious diphthong)

Note that POIEI was an earlier alternative form of the 2sg present  
middle. Both it and POIHi would likely have been pronounced the same  
in the 1st century, mind you.

It should be noted that Mounce's rules, in general, conflate  
historical change with synchronic morphophonology. It is highly  
misleading to think that Greek speakers generated the inflected forms  
through the application of those rules.

James Tauber


On 13/09/2006, at 3:34 AM, Stephen Baldwin wrote:

> 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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