[B-Greek] Questions regarding accentuation

Vasile Stancu stancu at mail.dnttm.ro
Sat Jul 19 10:35:39 EDT 2008


I understand such argumentation well enough and I have no doubts regarding
the developments of the language through the centuries until it became what
it is today, as it has been exposed. But even today, the "koine" English
seems to be affected by many changes and I believe they should not be
readily acceptable. For instance, Japanese people make sistematic mistakes
in writing due to the fact that they do not have the sound "L" in their
language; often times I find in written documents "crose" instead of "close"
etc. Then, a French would hardly pronounce a correct "the", which has
widespreadly become a kind of "ze", etc. Many Italians that speak English
find it difficult to pronounce correctly words that end in a consonant:
"because" would probabably become a kind of "becauser". Yet, I doubt that
any of us today would admit that such tendencies are indeed legitimate
changes of the language.

May I have just one more question: why evidence such as that which is
embedded in the laguage itself as it is written are not taken into account
at least as seriously as the multitude of external facts? I mean, it seems
to me that the rules of accentuation have very much to do with a kind of
care for as "fluid" a way of speaking as possible; it is as if the speaker
of Ancient Greek (Koine included, in my opinion), by the way he applies
accents, is very careful in the "conservation" of the energy he employes in
the process of speaking. (This reminds me of the breething tecniques a
singer has to master if he is to sing properly). Why the accent cannot go
farther that the Antepenult? Probably because there would be not enough
"energy" for the speaker to properly utter the last two or more syllables -
at least not euphonically, by Greek standards/sense of those times. Why the
accent rushes to go ahead one more syllable if the Ultima turns from short
to long? The same reason, I guess. Why there cannot be a circumflex on the
Antepenult? Probably because this kind of accent implies both the rise of
pitch and its fall to the initial level within the same syllable, and,
again, there is not enough energy to properly utter the last two syllables.
Why the acute is yet acceptable on the Antepenult? Because it rises the
pitch on the syllable where it stands and then the pitch falls on the next
one. Are these aspects true, or is it the excessive enthusiasm on my part
when I percieve such rigour in the old language?

Vasile STANCU



-----Original Message-----
From: Randall Buth [mailto:randallbuth at gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 4:06 AM
To: greek B-Greek; Vasile Stancu
Subject: Questions regarding accentuation

Vasile STANCU
HRWTHSE

> 1. Mastronarde says (1:2), "By 400 C.E. a stress accent had fully
supplanted
the pitch accent".

> Question a: How can such a fact be proven? Or, at least, supposed? >

Several answers to this.
First, 400 CE/AD is way too late for fitting into the rest of the
Greek langauge.
Second, like with many things that are studied or measured outside the realm
of the five human senses, one actually measures and observes things that
cause, or are caused, or are related to the phenomenon in question.
Third, with ancient Greek this is related to the long and short vowel
system.
That system allowed a PERISPWMENOS accent on a long vowel where the
first half of the vowel was high/rising and the second half was low/falling.
A
long vowel with a OKSYS high tone either had a high tone on the second
half of the
vowel or throughout the long vowel.
Fourth, this is related to a process called monophthongization, where a
vowel
sound with two qualities or a changing quality becomes a single sound.
Fifth, this is visible in the period 350BCE to 150BCE when the
following dipthongs
became single quality vowels: EI became I, AI became E, and OI became Y,
also
W mega became O mikron.
Sixth, one must know the outcome of the process in order to know that E did
not
become AI. We have that from the fact that modern Greek ends up with 5
single
quality vowels.
Seventh, one must connect the dots with a theory they makes linguistic
sense,
that matches what we see in languages around the world.

Linguists who try to explain the Greek vowel shifts in 350BCE to 150BCE find
that the reasonable culprit (catalyst) was a loss of phonemic (meaningful)
vowel length, with a corresponding loss of a platform for PERISPWMENA
accents. The resulting 'stress' accent may have sounded 'lilting', with some
musical quality depending on how high the 'stresses' were, but it no longer
functioned with the raising and falling tone distinctions assumed for 5-7
century BCE.


> Question b: Somebody who has some musical sense/training, please try to
utter a sentence for yourself in whatever language, with pure stress accent
(please control the pitch so as to keep it at the same level). I have tried
this and the result is something very strange... I do not know of a language
today where people should normally employ such kind of accent.>

Good observation. In fact 'stress' regularly co-occurs with a higher tone in
stress languages. The amount of tone shift will differ, of course. STress
usually affects vowel length, too, for that matter, but that is irrelevant
in a
language that does not have meaningful distinctions based only on vowel
length. (PS: many languages have vowel length without tone distinctions.)
To these stress-tone shifts, one must add prosodic shifts, changes in
tone due to the phrase or sentence structure.

> 2. Mastronarde says (1:3), "One approach to pronounciation by a modern
student of the language is to ignore the accent; but for mnemonic purposes
it is more practical and helpful to give a slight stress to the accented
syllable".

> Question: Would it be not useful - also for mnemonic purposes - to
differentiate between the way an acute is modifying pronounciation as
compared with the circumflex, since, for example, Mastronarde says at 1:7,
"If long and accented, U may have a circumflex ... or an acute ... In this
case the type of accent must be learned for each word or particular form".>

Yes, if one is learning Attic Greek. PERISPWMENOS accents were
'high-low' carried on long vowels only, while OKSYS accents were 'high'
carried on any vowel. BARYS was apparently only a marking convention
that mean 'optional' high tone on final syllable high-tone words.
High tone was pronounced when at the end of a phrase and whenever the
word was alone, otherwise it was dropped in rapid speech.

For Koine Greek such a system becomes anachronistic. The only
meaningful difference between PERISPWMENOS and OKSUS was that
final syllable PERISPWMENOS always kept its high tone, while tones
with OKSYS markings would drop their tone in rapid speech. Human
languages naturally do the opposite: We use modern English for
reading Shakespeare, or reconstructed shakespeare for Shakespeare,
and either for Chaucer, but no one uses Chaucer for Shakespeare
or Chaucer for modern.

Would it help to artificially impose the older system on the KOINE?
Well, you would be producing a language that the original users
themselves did not use, neither in speaking or in writing. In one
sense, that is what the later Byzantine scribes did with the
writing system after 9 c. CE/AD. But they did not pronounce
those differences, it was a writing convention only, and writing
is a slow phenomenon that allows users to do things that are
neither natural nor part of the actual language.
In addition, your chances of success with the older system are not
high. You would need to hear and communicate with people
correctly producing this. I only hear people doing this when reading
printed texts, not when speaking freely.

and you might find that trying to master a fluent Koine is enough
of a challenge. Then you can read the 'ancients' in the same way
that Josephus or Luke read Xenophon or Platon.

blessings
Randall Buth
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life





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