Re: Two accents in one word??

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 08 1997 - 17:53:40 EST


At 4:34 PM -0600 1/8/97, Jim Beale wrote:
>On Jan 6, 7:29pm, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>> >Jim, the rule of accent is that if a word with an acute on the antepenult
>> >(third from last syllable) or a circumflex on the penult (second from
>> >last), it receives a second accent (acute) on the ultima (last syllable).
>>
>> This is true IF, AND ONLY IF, the word in question is followed by an
>> enclitic (an accentless word that is deemed, for purposes of pronunciation
>> and accentuation, an addendum to the preceding word). In Romans 1:9 the
>> enclitic that follows is MOU. The reason for this is the instinctive horror
>> felt by a Greek speaker for an accent (pitch-mark in reality) more than
>> three syllables from the end of a word.
>
>1. Well, this has been an enlightening experience. None of my grammars have
>any information on this. Accenting is given short shrift in most of the
>ones I've seen - although Dana and Mantey say that in order to be considered
>to have a polished knowledge of Greek, one must pay close attention to the
>accents. There's little fear that I am at the polishing level - I'm still
>rough hewing! Not even BDF has anything to say on this. Where does one
>find the little gems that Carl and Carlton tossed out so non-chalantly?
>You guys blow me away! :-)

Any decent grammar of classical Attic will discuss this. NT textbooks seem
disposed to let students wrestly with everything else. It's not really the
most important thing to learn about in ancient Greek.

>2. Ack. I just did some research and found roughly 736 instances of
>double acute. My agony is now doubly acute, since this is the first
>time I've noticed it. :-(
>
>3. What about these cases:
>
> Matthew 3:11 I)SXURO/TERO/S MOU/
>
> Luke 8:46 H(/YATO/ MOU/
>
> Acts 25:10 KAI/SARO/S E(STW/S
>
> 1 Cor. 10:19 EI)DWLO/QUTO/N TI/ . . . EI)/DWLO/N TI/
>
> Rev. 19:10 SU/NDOULO/S SOU/
>
> Rev. 22:9 SU/NDOULO/S SOU/
>
>These don't seem to fit in with Carl's "if and only if" statement regarding
>the necessity of a following enclitic.

Every word ollowing the double-accented word in the above instances is an
enclitic except for E(STW/S, and that's an error. KAI/SARO/S ought to be
spelled KAI/SAROS with only one accent;that's the way it is spelled in UBS3
and UBS4.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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