Comparative Grammar of the Greek Language
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fie 50330 g Presented to the LIBRARIES of the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO by Ronald Peters THE STUDENTS' SERIES OF HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE GRAMMARS EDITED BY JOSEPH WRIGHT ; COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE BY JOSEPH WRIGHT PH.D., D.C.L., LL.D., LITT.D. FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD ' Nur das Beispiel fiihrt zum Licht Vieles Reden thut es nicht ' HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON, NEW YORK AND TORONTO 1912 [All 7'tghts reserved] OXFORD : HORACE HART PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY PREFACE In writing this Grammar I have followed as far as possible the plan adopted in the other Grammars of the Series, my object being to furnish students with a concise account of the phonology, word-formation, and inflexions of the language. As the book is not intended for specialists ^ some more or less important details have been intentionally omitted. This is especially the case in regard to those dialects which have been preserved in such scanty fragments as to render it impossible for us to give a full account of their phonology. It must not, however, be assumed that these dialects have been entirely omitted ; on the contrary, I have made considerable use of them in the phonology and elsewhere, wherever they have helped to throw light upon the development and history of the other dialects, such as Attic, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic. Much of the time and labour spent on this Grammar has been taken up with selecting examples from the vast amount of material which I had collected to illustrate the sound-laws of the various dialects. This selection was necessary if I was to keep steadily in view the class of students for whom the Series of Grammars was originally planned, otherwise it would have been far easier to produce a Comparative Greek Grammar at least three times the size of the present one. In spite of this great compression of the material, I venture to think that I have included within a modest compass all that the ordinary 1 In Greek Philology. vi Preface student will require to know about the subject, and I believe that the student who thoroughly masters the book will not only have gained a comprehensive knowledge of Comparative Greek Grammar in particular, but will also have acquired the elements of the Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Latin, and Germanic languages. Examples have been more copiously used from these than from the other branches of the Indo-Germanic family of languages, because it can be safely inferred that the students who study this Grammar will already possess a practical knowledge of one or more of them. This Grammar makes no pretence whatever of being an original and exhaustive treatise on the subject. In a book of this kind there is practically no scope for a display of either of these features, but I have contrived to bring within a comparatively small space a great deal of matter which will be new to students, and especially to those who are unable to study the subject in works written in foreign languages. All that I have attempted to do is to furnish our countrymen with a systematic and scientific treatment of Comparative Greek Grammar based upon the philological books and articles of the best workers of the present day in the wide field of Comparative Philology. Specialists in the subject will accordingly find little that is new in the book. In Greek as in all the other Indo-Germanic languages there are still innumerable points which have never been satisfactorily explained, and not a few points about which there is a great divergence of opinion even among the best philologists. In all such cases I have carefully considered the various explanations which have been proposed, and have given those with which I agreed without, as a rule. Preface vii stating my authority, but where I was unable to agree with any of the proposed explanations I have generally preferred to state that the phenomenon in question has never been satisfactorily explained or that the explanation is unknown, rather than burden the book with attempted explanations with which I did not agree. I have generally omitted to give the authorities for various statements made throughout the Grammar, except in special cases where I thought it desirable to refer the student for further information to the sources which deal more fully with the case in point. I gratefully acknowledge the help I have derived from the learned books and articles by the splendid band of German Philologists who have done so much to throw light upon the history and philology of the various Indo- Germanic languages. On pp. xiv-xvii will be found a select list of the books and articles which I have found most useful in the writing of this book, but a mere place in a list would not adequately express my indebtedness to the works of Brugmann, Hirt, Gustav Meyer, OsthoiF, Jo- hannes Schmidt, and Wackernagel. In conclusion I wish to express my sincere thanks to the Controller of the University Press for his great kindness in complying with my wishes in regard to special type ; to Mr. A. Davidson, for his valuable collaboration in the making of the index verborum ; and lastly to the press-reader, Mr. W. F. R. Shilleto, for his invaluable help with the reading of the proofs. JOSEPH WRIGHT. Oxford, January^ 1912. ; CONTENTS PAGES INTRODUCTION 1-4 Classification of the Indo-Germanic languages (§ i). The Greek dialects and their classification (§ 2). CHAPTER I Pronunciation and Accentuation 5-18 Vowels (§§4-18) ; Consonants (§§ 19-27). Pitch and ' * stress accent (§ 28) ; broken ' or acute and slurred ' or circumflex accent (§ 29) ; word-accent (§§ 30-4) ; sen- tence-accent (§§ 35-40). CHAPTER II The Primitive Indo-Germanic Vowel-sounds . 18-20 The Indo-Germanic vowel-system (§ 41). Table of the normal development of the prim. Indg. short and long vowels, short diphthongs, and short vocalic nasals and liquids in Greek, Sanskrit, Latin, Old Irish, Gothic, Old EngHsh, Lithuanian and Old Slavonic (§ 42). CHAPTER III The Greek Development of the Indo-Germanic Vowel- system 21-49 i ; The short vowels :—a (§ 43) ; e (§ 44) ; (§ 45) o (§ 46) ; u (§§ 47-8) ; 9 (§ 49).^ The long vowels 1 a (§§ 50-1) ; e (§ 52) ; (§ 53) ; o (§ 54) ; u (§ 55). The short diphthongs :— ai (§§ 56-7) ; ei (§ 58) ; oi (§ 59) au (§ 60) ; eu (§ 61) ; ou (§ 62). The long diphthongs (§ 63). General remarks on the short vocalic nasals and liquids (§ 64) ; short vocalic nasals (§ 65) ; short vocaUc ; Contents ix PAGES liquids (§§ 66-7). The long vocalic nasals and liquids (§ 68). The lengthening of short vowels (§ 69). The of long vowels quantitative meta- shortening (§§ 70-1) ; thesis (§ 72). Assimilation of vowels (§§ 73-4). Epen- thesis (§§ 75-6). Prothesis (§ 77). Anaptyxis (§ 78). Vowel-contraction (§§ 79-80). CHAPTER IV Ablaut 49-61 General remarks on ablaut (§§ 81-5). The weakening or loss of vowels (§§ 86-90). The lengthening of vowels (§§ 91-4). The ablaut-series (§§ 95-6). Dissyllabic bases (§ 97). CHAPTER V The Primitive Indo-Germanic Consonants . 62-71 Table of the prim. Indg. consonants (§ 98). The normal equivalents of the prim. Indg. explosives in Greek, Latin, Old Irish, prim. Germanic, Gothic, Sanskrit, : Lithuanian and Old Slavonic —the tenues (§ 100) the mediae (§ loi) ; the tenues aspiratae (§ 102) ; the mediae aspiratae (§ 103). Consonantal sound-changes which took place during the prim. Indg. period (§§ 105-12). CHAPTER VI The Greek Development of the Indg Germanic Con- sonant-system 71-111 The change of mediae aspiratae to tenues aspiratae (§ 114). De-aspiration of aspirates (§ 115). Assimilation of consonants (§§ 1 16-17). General remarks on the semi- vowels (§§ 1 18-19) ; w (§§ 120-6); j (§§ 127-30). General remarks on the liquids (§ 131) ; 1 (§§ 132-5) ; r (§§ 136-8). on the nasals ; General remarks (§ 139) m (§§ 140-6) ; fi, 155-6). The labials n (§§ 147-54) ; g (§§ :-p (§§ 157-8) 161); bh :— b (§§ 159-60) ; ph (§ (§§ 162-3). The dentals th t (§§ 164-70) ; d (§§ 171-4) ; (§§ 175-6) ; dh (§§ 177- 80). The normal equivalents of the prim. Indg. palatals, ^3 q; X Contents PAGES pure velars and labialized velars in Greek, Latin, Old Irish, Germanic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian and Old Sla- i8i). palatals 188- vonic (§ The :—k (§§ 182-7) ; g (§§ ; pure velars :— 91) kh (§ 192) ; gh (§§ 193-4)- The qh 200); 201). The (§§ 195-6); 9 (§§ 197-9) ; (§ (§ labialized velars:—q« (§§ 202-4); 3^ (§§ 205-7); ^"^^ 209-10). The spirants :— 212-23); (§ 208) ; g^h(§§ s(§§ sh, )?h, d, z (§ 224) ; zh (§ 225) ; }>, dh (§ 226) ; j (§ 227). CHAPTER VII Sandhi . ' 111-116 General remarks on sandhi (§ 228) ; final sounds (§§ 229-30) ; initial sounds (§§ 231-2). CHAPTER VIII The Formation of Nouns and Adjectives . 116- 138 General remarks (§ 233). Root-nouns (§ 234). Suffixes in a vowel ja- -o-, -a.. -(i)jo-, ending :— (§ 235) ; (§ 236); -(i)ja-, -ejo-, -ew(i)jo- -wo-, (§ 237) ; -wa- (§ 238) ; -mo-, -ma- -meno-, -mena- -no-, -na- (§ 239) ; (§ 240) ; (§§ 241- -ino-, -ina- -ino-, -ina- 2) ; (§ 243) ; (§ 244) ; -s-no-, -s-na- "(TWO-, -avvd- -lo-, -la- -ro-, (§ 245) ; (§ 246) ; (§ 247) ; -ra- -bho-, -bha- -dhlo-, -dhla- (§ 248) ; (§ 249) ; (§ 250) -dhro-, -dhra- -ko-, -ka-, -qo-, -qa- -sko-, (§ 251) ; (§ 252) ; -ska-, -isko-, -iska- -tero-, -tera- (§ 253) ; (§ 254) ; -tewo-, -tro- -to-, -ta- -is-to-, -tewa- (§ 255); (§257); (§ 258) ; -is-ta- ; -i- -mi-, -ni-, -ri- -ti- ; -i- (§ 259) (§ 260) ; (§ 261) ; (§ 262) ; -u- -lu-, -nu-, -ru- ; (§ 263) (§ 264) ; (§ 265) -tu- (§ 266) •u- (§ 267); -eu- (§ 268). Suffixes ending in a con- sonant: en- -(i)jen- ; -wen- — (§ 269) ; (§ 270) (§ 271) -d-en- -dh-, -s- ; -nt- (§ 272) ; -men- (§ 273) ; -t-, (§ 274) -er- ; -ter- {§ 275) ; -went- (§ 276) ; (§ 277) (§ 278) ; -es- -n-es-, -w-es-, -dh-es- -jes- -wes- (§ 279) ; (§ 280) ; (§ 281), ; -as- ; -tat- -t-, -k-, -d-, -g- (§ 282) (§ 283) (§ 284) ; (§ 285).