From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 30 1997 - 19:33:04 EST
At 7:33 AM -0600 12/30/97, Carlton Winbery wrote:
>Part of Carl Conrad's answer to Clayton is;
>
>>(2) nouns in -IS (e.g. POLIS, but quite numerous process nouns in -SIS
>>also, such as PRAXIS, POIHSIS, FQISIS, KTL.: these have stems alternating
>>between the vocalic I (iota) before a consonantal ending (nom. -IS, acc.
>>-IN) and the diphthongal EY (epsilon + consonantal iota or Y) before a
>>vocalic ending; in the genitive and dative singular I think what happened
>>is that -EY- lost the -Y- and the -E- became -H- by compensatory
>>lengthening, and then the same vocalic metathesis occurred as in the case
>>of the -EUS nouns, so that gen. -EYOS --> -HOS --> -EWS and dat. -EYI -->
>>HYI (short I) --> -EI (long I). I don't know how the plural best explains
>>itself for these nouns; probably the -E- regularizes itself by analogy.
>>It's worth noting however that the Ionic form of nouns of this sort (e.g.
>>in Herodotus) shows the simple -I- throughout: POLIS, POLIOS, POLI,
>>POLIN/POLIES, POLIWN,POLISI, POLIAS.
>
>About the only thing Carl did not tell us about these nouns is why the
>accent behaves as it does in nouns like PO/LEWS and PO/LEWN in the gen. sg.
>and pl., not that many people really want to know. Was the EW pronounced
>as a dipthong? Probably not.
Yes, I think it probably WAS, inasmuch as it filled a single syllable, as I
remember when I first encountered the opening line of the Iliad:
MHNIN AEIDE, QEA, PHLHIADEW ACILLHOS ...
Here the -EW is the metathesized m.gen.sg. ending for 1st declension m.
nouns (later Attic and Koine -OU); it was originally -AIO, then -AO, then
-HO, then (metathesized) -EW. I've always thought it must have sounded
pretty much like a Canadian or Tidewater -OU-diphthong as in "out." Then
the ending of ACILLHOS is the older UN-metathesized gen.sg. of ACILLEUS.
One of the fascinating things about Homer is the variety of forms from
different dialects used in the formulae to serve the different metrical
requirements of different positions in the line.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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