[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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