[B-Greek] Word Divisions
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Apr 19 08:36:41 EDT 2007
On Apr 19, 2007, at 7:31 AM, Alan Bunning wrote:
> I am struggling with the best way to represent word divisions in
> Greek.
> Various editors have chosen to split or not split words like:
>
> DIATI - DIA TI
>
> EKPERISSOU - EK PERISSOU
>
> INATI - INA TI
>
> TOUTESTI - TOUT ESTI
Well, to anticipate questions coming in the rest of the message below,
I really think this is a matter of unresolved conventions: it is
clear to
anyone who has read a fair amount of Koine Greek that these words
have definitely become unitary expressions that have a meaning in
combination that is consistent whether or not they are spelled as a
single word or not. Another might be DIO (i.e. διὸ) which is, I
think,
the more common spelling rather than DI' hO (i.e. δι’ ὂ). I've
seen
these often enough that I recognize them and it doesn't really bother
me whether an editor chooses to spell them as one word or two. They
are like crasis (my example of DIO above) with the difference that
no characters that are pronounced are lost. I guess that if one writes
TOUT ESTI one really ought to put an apostrophe after the TOUT
to indicate the elided final O.
It seems to me that the Koine has lots more of these combinations;
there's the penchant (seen already in Aristotle) of sticking an article
in front of an adverb (e.g. TO PRWTON for PRWTON where there's
no difference of meaning). Comparable is the creation of new nouns
from substantivized prepositional phrases: e.g. hH DIAPASWN
from hH DIA PASWN CORDWN (musical "octave"), or KAQ'
hOLOU that's more commonly written KAQOLOU or even
substantived but still used adverbially as TO KAQOLOU, and
there's it's counterpart, KATA MEROS or TO KATA MEROS.
The one pretty-well established and important convention is the
distinction in print between hOTI as a conjunction and hO TI
as a pronoun, despite the fact that they are spelled the same way
in the MSS.
> The general rule I am considering is to always split the words
> unless the
> two words together would have a significantly different meaning.
> Thus, for
> the words above, I would split them since there is not a *significant*
> difference in meaning. For example, some would translate INATI as
> "why" and
> INA TI as "for what purpose", but these are not *significantly*
> different in
> my opinion, and indeed there was no space in Greek and thus they
> never were
> different! Translation of words should never be decided on whether the
> editor inserted a space or not, but whether the *context* dictates a
> particular meaning. Thus, you are just as in your rights to
> translate INA TI
> as "why" and INATI as "for what purpose" for there was no space!
> There are
> word sets, however, that have significantly different meanings when
> combined, and thus my rule would be to show them joined.
So your question is what convention you should adopt regarding these
spellings. I have no objection to showing them joined if that's really
common in the MSS>
> Okay, now for the real controversy. What about prepositions stuck
> on the
> front of verbs? Again, sometimes the combination leads to a different
> meaning than the two words separately and thus my practice would be to
> represent them as one word. But in many other cases (most cases?) the
> preposition can be treated as a separate meaning being applied with
> the verb
> (much like an adverb). For example, do we really believe that Greek
> children
> learned ANERCOMAI, ANTIPARERCOMAI, APERCOMAI, DIERCOMAI, EISERCOMAI,
> EXERCOMAI, EPANERCOMAI, EPERCOMAI, ERCOMAI, KATERCOMAI, PAREISERCOMAI,
> PARERCOMAI, PERIERCOMAI, PROERCOMAI, PROSERCOMAI, SUNEISERCOMAI,
> SUNERCOMAI
> as separate lemme?
Children certainly would say "LEMME!" or "lemme have it NOW!" But I
suppose
that you mean "lemmata" -- since this is a word we generally
pluralize au grec.
> Or did they simply learn ERCOMAI and saw the prepositions
> as separate modifying words (perhaps much like adverbs)? In these
> cases, the
> meaning of the words together is not *significantly* different than
> they
> would be treated as apart. Just because we don't have a linguistic
> category
> for prepositions preceding verbs in English, does not mean that the
> Greek
> language did not view them that way. Indeed, notice that when the
> prepositions begin with a vowel, it is not the preposition in the
> vowel that
> is not augmented, but vowel in the underlying word. This seems to
> be clear
> evidence that they were not treated together as one word!
Here again I think that the usage of the MSS is significant: the
compounded
forms are used. There is, however, some confusion and occasionally some
compounded past tenses have double augments. I think that the Egyptian
papyri are instructive here with regard to the different usage by the
better-
and less-well-educated writers -- so also with regard to spelling
practice.
What about the past of EPISTAMAI -- HPISTAMHN. This is surely a
compound of hISTAMAI, but it is a compound so early that EPISTA-
is conceived of as a verb stem or root.
> The only way I think one could ever know that two words should be
> considered
> as one word, is that when used together they have a meaning that is
> different than when they are used separately, and we would need
> someone like
> Bauer to tell us that. Yes, there should be *evidence* that leads
> us to
> treat words together, otherwise I believe that the default should
> be to
> treat them separately. As an example in English, IPICKEDANAPPLE
> ISAWAPINETREE IATEAPINEAPPLE. Here we see *evidence* that the words
> "apple"
> and "pine" can stand alone. But we also notice that when combined
> they lead
> to something different that you can eat. And then only from the
> context from
> other writings would we know that these apples do not grow on pine
> trees and
> should be treated together as a separate compound word in that
> context.
> Thus, evidence lead us to a conclusion, not an editor's use of
> spaces. This
> is obviously a radical change to the current way of thinking, but
> alas, no
> one seems to be able to explain why this shouldn't be the case.
> Perhaps
> there is something historical that Robertson failed to mention. I
> hope you
> can shed some more light on this, for I am not really wanting to
> have to
> reinvent this wheel, especially in the case of all those prepositions.
This is an interesting discussion. Some of it is dealt with in the
opening
section of BDF (pp. 7-1-, §§8-16). There was a fascinating book
published
not too long ago on the history of English orthography; it was
astounding
to learn (and I only got this from reviews; I haven't read the book) how
RECENTLY some conventional distinctions in English orthography were
established. If you read some 17th and 18th century printed English
works
you can find the same words spelled differently on the same page not
infrequently.
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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