From: James Ernest (jernest@hendrickson.com)
Date: Tue Jul 03 2001 - 11:06:49 EDT
Smyth discusses the division of Greek words into syllables for the purpose
of breaking words at line endings -- and also pronunciation, but who cares
about that? ;-) -- in para. 140 (page 35). Goetchius (The Language of the
New Testament, p. 318 n. 2) has a simpler restatement of basically the same
rules (he ditches Smyth's [i.e., the ancients'] weasling about sigmas
followed by other consonants).
Here's how Goetchius puts it:
(a) A single consonant goes with the following vowel:
LU-SO-ME-QA
(b) Any group of consonants that can begin a word (in Greek) goes with the
following vowel:
PI-STEU-O-MEN A-QLH-SIS MI-KROS TI-KTW KRU-PTW
(c) A consonant plus M or N goes with the following vowel:
PRA-GMA MI-MNH-SKO-MAI
(d) Other consonant groups are divided:
EL-PIS ER-XO-MAI
(e) Compounds are divided at the point of junction:
EIS-HL-QON PROS-ER-XE-TAI
My questions:
(1) Does anyone know of a fuller or better discussion (i.e., explicit and
unambiguous rules that correspond to somebody's actual practice)? I find
nothing in BDF; my Moulton-Howard morphology is on loan, but I could
probably scrounge another somewhere.
(2) Where might I find a list of all consonant combinations that can begin a
word (needed for rule b in both Smyth and Goetchius).
(3) I suppose there's no reliable way to automate rule e....
James
________________________________________________________
James D. Ernest, Ph.D.
Associate Editorial Director, Hendrickson Publishers
s-mail: Hendrickson Publishers, 140 Summit Street, P. O. Box 3473
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e-mail: j.d.ernest@bc.edu (accessible to me anywhere)
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web: http://www.hendrickson.com/
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