[B-Greek] Speaking Greek CD--Stress
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Wed Oct 22 19:14:05 EDT 2008
Thank you Maria,
for the note on the JACT CDs. Your notes are helpful
for understanding their methods and purpose, even before
hearing them, which I look forward to.
I have a comment on their comments on stress.
You quoted their introduction:
"In the course of time the musical accent yielded, certainly by the
fourth century AD, to a stress accent, with which we feel much more
at home as English speakers and its stress accents prevail still in
modern Greek. Given the practical difficulties for English speakers
of attempting a musical accent over long stretches of text, we have
used exclusively, and hope more or less consistently, a stress
accent in the recorded extracts."
The dating mentioned here seems misleading, though their practice
on stress would fit with the KOINH.
Most linguistic studies that try to explain the post-Alexander Greek
vowel shift attribute it to a collapse of length in the vowel system,
with a corresponding collapse of circumflex vs. high tone distinction,
resulting in what would be called a stress accent. (Stress accent
results in a simple two tone 'high/low' system without length
distinction, as opposed to a tripartite tone, high, high-falling, low.)
What all of this means is that the tripartite pitch accents dropped
out of normal Greek during the 3-2 c BCE. That some
grammarians discussed it, maybe even practised it in school,
into the Christian era is not surprising, but hardly definitive. We
have teachers who will read "Chaucer".
I have only heard the Daitz recordings and some internet samples
with a pitch accent, though I look forward to listening to these.
(I've requested a review copy)
I have a friend that I speak Koine with, who uses a pitch accent,
and it is easy enough to follow though not completely consistent.
He distinguishes OKSYTONOS from PERISPVMENOS but does
not generally drop the BARYTONOS like the old grammarians say.
Personally, I use a stress (high tone for both OKSYTONOS and
PERISPWMENOS) because of a primary interest in KOINH.
(for more on the KOINH, you should see website below.)
Randall Buth
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list