[B-Greek] accents
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Mar 26 06:30:31 EDT 2008
On Mar 25, 2008, at 11:48 PM, Mark Eddy wrote:
> This does not directly relate to biblical Greek, but as I was
> studying last
> week I checked some definitions in Liddell-Scott's intermediate
> lexicon, and
> wandering over the page I came across different accentuations for
> the same
> word in two different entries. I that know some of you are more
> informed
> about Greek accentuation rules than I, so I am asking for your help.
>
> On page 366 L-S has entries for
>
> QHRATH/R
>
> QHRA/TWR and
>
> QHRHTH/R which is listed as the Ionic form of QH/RATHR.
>
> Is this last word a typo, with a misplaced accent? Or are there
> rules of
> accentuation here that I do not understand?
To respond hUSTERON PROTERON:
(b) What's erroneous in your last instance is the accentuation of QH/
RATHR -- my unabridged LSJG has QHRATH/R here, as it should. An acute
on QH- in that word would violate all rules of accentuation. Attic and
Ionic differ in treatment of original long-a vowels: in Ionic all long-
a vowels become eta; in Attic, on the other hand, long-a vowels remain
long-a after iota, epsilon, and rho: QHRA- is thus the Attic form,
QHRH- the Ionic form.
(a) QHRATH/R and QHRA/TWR are not the same word, even if they both are
words for "hunter" or "huntsman." Rather they are formed from two
different agent-noun suffixes -THR and -TWR. Why the accent should
fall on the ultima in QUGATH/R and on the penult in QHRA/TWR I don't
know. But I also don't know why the accent on hO PATH/R is on the
ultima while the accent on hH MH/THR is on the penult -- I only know
that it is so.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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