From: Carlton Winbery (winberyc@popalex1.linknet.net)
Date: Tue Dec 30 1997 - 08:33:27 EST
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.
Carlton L. Winbery
Fogleman Professor of Religion
Louisiana College
Pineville, LA 71359
winberyc@popalex1.linknet.net
winbery@andria.lacollege.edu
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