[B-Greek] Absurdity of Koine Greek accents (was "Allegory about learning Koine Greek")

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Jul 20 09:52:32 EDT 2009


On Jul 20, 2009, at 8:57 AM, Eric S. Weiss wrote:

> I was thinking this morning that those of us who recommend using a  
> historically proper
> pronunciation for Koinê Greek - i.e., Randall Buth's Phonemic Koinê  
> or even Modern Greek
> (what Caragounis calls the Historical Pronunciation) - should be  
> similarly consistent when it
> comes to accents.

It should be realized that this is a hornet's nest -- a real can of  
worms. It should also be realized that it would take something more  
than a tsunami to shake up the institutions that sustain traditional  
Koine Greek pedagogy.

>  I.e., since the "accent" in Koinê times only represented stress and  
> not (i.e., no longer)
> pitch, then a simple stress accent (like is done in Modern Greek) is  
> what Koinê/NT texts
> should have, and the basic "rules" we teach or use re: when to use  
> an acute vs. circumflex
> vs. grave accent should be rewritten to discuss only one kind of  
> accent (i.e., a stress
> mark), and explain the shifts in stress, rather than explain when a  
> circumflex is used, when
> an acute changes to grave, etc.

This might be difficult, and I'm not sure how one would proceed. How  
to explain the differentiation in accentuation between A/NQRWPOS  
(ανθρωπος) nom. and A/NQRWPON (ανθρωπον) acc. but   
ANQRW/POU (ανθρώπου) gen. and ANQRW/PW (ανθρώπω) dat.?

Instead of PLOI=ON (πλοῖον) we would write PLOI/ON  
(πλοίον) -- but what do we do when we add an enclitic, e.g.  
PLOION ESTIN?  I think what we do is to make it PLOIO/N ESTIN  
(πλοιόν εστιν) and forget that there ever was a circmflex on  
that OI in the traditional formulation: PLOI=O/N ESTIN (πλοῖόν  
ἐστιν).

  If we go native like those who write papyri or uncial MSS, we'll  
also omit breathing marks and iota subscripts; the subscripts too are  
remnants of obsolete long-vowel diphthongs -- some editors of  
Classical Attic print the iota as a "postscript" -- i.e. they write  
ANQRWPWI for the dative of this noun and assume that WI is pronounced  
as a long-vowel diphthong, perhaps like the Yiddish interjection, "Oi!"

But the rule would indeed have to be rewritten. A constant would, I  
assume, be that the accent can only appear on one of the last three  
syllables and that enclitics are understood to be syllables belonging  
to the word to which they attach.

>  I would guess that vowel length and nouns tending to be persistent  
> and verbs tending to be
> recessive when it comes to accents would still be part of these  
> "stress accent rules."
>
> What remains, then, is what to do with the breathing marks. Should  
> they be retained to
> differentiate between words, or should they, like the different  
> shapes/kinds of
> accents, likewise be dropped since they no longer affected  
> pronunciation. Were breathing
> marks used in texts from Koinê times by Koinê writers?

Look at BDF §14; pronunciation changes in the aspirated stops have had  
their impact on compound verbs.

As I said at the outset, it IS a hornet's nst or a can of worms,  
depending on whether you like hornets more or worms more.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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