[B-Greek] Conjugating ZAW

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Aug 22 13:48:47 EDT 2007


On Aug 21, 2007, at 11:02 PM, Stephen Baldwin wrote:

>
> Ladies and Gentlemen:
> Another quick morph-like question.
> I'm curious about the A -> H shift in ZAW e.g. P-A-I:
> ZW, ZHiS, ZHi, ZWMEN ...
>
> According to MBG, there was once (or is) a consonantal iota in the  
> root that:
> ZH+I^ > ZA (p268 footnote 14.)
>
> I'd be interested to know more about this -- MBG of course does not  
> touch further on it. My Smyth likewise.
> If anyone is inclined to add to my background knowledge, I'd be  
> pleased to learn!

I've always thought that CRWMAI ("take advantage of") and ZW were  
really -H- contract verbs, insofar as their conjugation can only be  
explained in terms of CRHy-OMAI, CRHy-ESAI, CRHy-ETAI, KTL. and ZHy- 
W, ZHy-EIS, ZHy-EI, KTL.

Hofmann's 1950 _Etymologisches Woerterbuch des Griechischen_ lists  
ZHN as deroved frp, IE root *gwye- (where the "e" is long) and says  
that Attic ZW= derives from ZHy-W.

>
> Steve Baldwin
> stbaldwi at hotmail.com
>
> (incidentally, do we have a standard transliteration for  
> consonantal iota?)

No, we don't. I've sometimes used "y" for that purpose, as in POLEWS  
< POLHyOS (gen. of POLIS). I have used it thus above.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Ret)




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