[B-Greek] EPILELHSMENON

Carlton Winbery winberycl at earthlink.net
Tue Feb 12 10:21:57 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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The place where I got the most help with the verb system is Funk, A 
Beginning-intermediate Grammer of Hellenistic Greek, volume III. LANQ 
	ANW is a class IV verb (one that adds N to the basic stem 
(AN, VE, NU, or NNU. One draw back is that he does not list all the 
forms in the LXX. Most of these verbs use a "second aorist" for 
active and middle which uses the basic verb stem (LAQ) plus the 
"secondary endings" - ON ES E(N) OMHN ETE ON; OMHN OU ETO OMEQA ESQE 
ONTO. Learning reasons for morphological changes also helps. Funk 
gives a lot of that.

Carlton Winbery

-- 
Carlton L. Winbery
Retired Professor of Religion
Louisiana College
318-448-6103
winberycl at earthlink.net



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