[B-Greek] EPILELHSMENON
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Feb 11 19:36:56 EST 2008
On Feb 11, 2008, at 6:47 PM, Mitch Larramore wrote:
> Luke 12.6 has
>
> OUCI PENTE STROUQIA PWLOUNTAI ASSARIWN DUO KAI hEN EX
> AUTWN OUK ESTIN EPILELHSMENON ENWPION TOU QEOU
>
> I ran across EPILELHSMENON and had no idea what it
> could be. I guessed it was Perfect Passive, so I
> reduced it to EPI + LHS-. Can someone work backward
> and show me how one arrives at EPILELHSMENON beginning
> with EPILANQANOMAI?
The root is LAQ/LHQ (actually LAQ with a long-alpha form and a short-
alpha form, the long-vowel form of the root shifting to eta in Attic-
Ionic dialects).
The principal parts: pres. LANQANW, fut. LHSW, aor. act. ELAQON, aor.
mid. ELAQOMHN, pf. act. LELHQA, pf. mid. LELHSMAI. The middle is
really the standard intransitive form "forget" or "lose awareness
of" (with genitive complement); the active means "make unaware" or
"cause to be unaware." The future LHSW is from the long-vowel root LHQ
+ S-; the perfect active is from the long-vowel root LHQ: LELHQA; the
perfect middle is alsofrom the long-vowe root LHQ: LE-LHS-MAI with the
standard phonological shift of dental consonant to a single -S- (PEIQ-
SW > PEISW; PEPEIQ-MAI > PEPEISMAI.
How do we work back from EPILELHSMENON to a lexical lemma? Take off
the prefix EPI-; take off the middle-participle ending and its
inflected ending MENON; recognize that LELHS is a perfect stem with
reduplication so that the key root element is found in LHS; the -S- of
LHS- could be a root consonant, but it's very likely resultant from a
dental consonant (T D Q): look for EPILH or EPILA with a dental
consonant T, D, Q.
On the other hand, LANQANW/LANQANOMAI is an irregular verb whose
principal parts should be committed to memory early in the study of
Greek. The root analysis I've discussed is all secondary analysis. The
Greek speaker/writer knows EPILANQANOMAI, EPELAQOMHN, EPILELHSMAI the
same way that the English speaker/writer knows GO, WENT, GONE or SING,
SANG, SUNG.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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