Class Notes: June 30, 2007

• Class Notes and Comments
• The General Principle of Greek Accentuation

Class Notes and Comments

Lesson 4: Important Sections and points:

22. Memorize the vocabulary and the extra vocabulary. Read the blog entry "Learning Vocabulary" (the audio files are recorded by saying the article before the noun).

See Sidebar for Lesson 4 vocabulary and audio files, including the extra word from the LXX-NT vocabulary, plus the other extra words you are to learn (words that occur 25x or more in the New Testament).

23. Memorize the paradigm (pattern) of the endings for the Second Declension. Memorize the [definite] article if you have not yet done so. (We'll actually encounter it in Lesson 5 next week. Learn it by this week and Lesson 5 will be easy.)

26. Do all the Exercises after you have learned the vocabulary (Section 22, as well as the Lesson 2 and 3 vocabulary) and the Lesson grammar so you are really able to do the Exercises with understanding, and not have to keep looking back in the Lesson to know what to write.

Again, you will at times be introduced to things you have not yet learned, but should be able to deduce based on what you have learned, so don't feel badly if on occasion you get something wrong, or can't quite figure out how to translate something. It's purposeful.

The General Principle of Greek Accentuation

Here is what I shared about accenting from my Attic Greek textbook - from Unit Two, Section 4, p. 17 of Introduction to Attic Greek, by Donald J. Mastronarde:

Contonation and Mora. The apparently complex "rules" of Greek accentuation can be understood in terms of a single general principle involving the concepts of contonation and mora. Contonation is the combination of the rise of pitch generally thought of as the accent with the necessary return or fall to standard pitch which follows it. In the case of an acute accent, the contonation includes both the syllable on which the accent is written (and on which the pitch rises) and the entire following syllable (on which the pitch falls), if any, whether it counts as long or short. In the case of the circumflex accent, the contonation occurs on the one syllable on which the accent is written, for there are both a rise in pitch and a return to standard pitch on that syllable. A mora is the (theoretically assigned) "standard" length of a short vowel (α, ε, ι, ο, υ, and final αι and οι in most cases). A long vowel (α, ει, η, ι, ου, ω, υ) or a diphthong* (except for final αι and οι in most cases) occupies (theoretically) a time span equivalent to two morai.

The general principle of Greek accentuation is that the contonation may be followed by no more than one mora before the end of a word (or phrase pronounced as one word unit). This principle is in many respects similar to rules in other languages (e.g., Latin) which constrain the position of the accent according to the nature of the final syllables of a word. In Greek this principle limits the position of the acute and circumflex accents and requires the addition of an extra accent in some phrases consisting of word + enclitic.**

* Remember that so-called "improper" or "long" diphthongs (α, η, and ω with subscripted ι) are also always long. I am not sure why Mastronarde omits mention of αυ, ευ, and ηυ.

** For the definition of "enclitics," see Section 42 of Lesson 7 in Croy's textbook. Also see "proclitics" in Section 28 of Lesson 5.

By convention there are a couple exceptions to this principle when it comes to the enclitics εστι(ν) and τις/τι:
1) εστι(ν) following a word with a circumflex on the ultima is not accented; one would normally expect an acute on the ultima of εστι(ν); and
2) τινων (the genitive plural) following a word with an acute on the penult has a circumflex accent on its ultima; normally a disyllabic enclitic following such a word receives an acute accent on its second syllable.

More on Accents

Greek accenting is complex - D. A. Carson wrote a 167-page book called Greek Accents: A Student's Manual (which I own but haven't fully read or studied), and his summary of the various accent rules takes nearly 5 full pages. We never spent much time on accent rules in my Greek classes; whether that was good or bad, I don't know.

There are English-to-Greek exercises in this course, but for the most part, students want to learn to read Greek and translate it into English, not vice-versa, and the Greek they're reading will already have the accents. Thus, learning all the minutiae of accent rules (which involves knowing whether a vowel - and hence a syllable - is long or short) is probably something that most will not need to do.

The General Rules of Accent
(from Greek Accents: A Student's Manual, by D. A. Carson)

GR.1 Apart from specific exceptions later to be enumerated (largely concerning enclitics and proclitics, but also related to crasis and elision), every Greek word must have an accent, and only one accent.

GR.2 An acute accent may stand only on an ultima, a penult, or an antepenult; a circumflex accent may stand only on an ultima or a penult; and a grave accent may stand only on an ultima.

GR.3 The circumflex accent cannot stand on a short syllable.

GR.4 If the ultima is long, then:

• GR.4.1 the antepenult cannot have any accent, and


• GR.4.2 the penult, if it is accented at all, must have the acute.

GR.5 If the ultima is short, then a long penult, if it is accented at all, must have the circumflex accent.

GR.6 An acute accent on the ultima of a word is changed to a grave when followed, without intervening mark of punctuation, by another word or words.

You should recognize the above as having been listed by Croy in Lesson 1, and Croy gives additional accent rules in succeeding chapters. Carson's General Rules 4. and 5. are probably the most important, per a personal response from David H. Warren (Prof. of NT and Greek, Freed-Hardeman University, Henderson, Tenn.) to my B-Greek query regarding the importance of accents. (Though his online response to me that you can read below might seem a bit sarcastic - probably because he misunderstood what I was asking - his personal response was nice and helpful.) If you want to read that discussion, my initial post was here in the May 2002 archives:

value of accents? Eric Weiss

and the responses can be read in the June 2002 archives as follows:

value of accents? dhwarren at attglobal.net
value of accents? James Forsyth
value of accents? Eric S. Weiss
value of accents dhwarren at attglobal.net
value of accents? Vincent M. Setterholm
value of accents? Eric S. Weiss
value of accents Eric S. Weiss
value of accents? David Thiele

Some terms that you may encounter in other books:

Acute accents:
oxytone: an acute accent on the ultima (from οξεια "sharp")
paroxytone: an acute accent on the penult
proparoxytone: an acute accent on the antepenult

Circumflex accents:
perispomenon: a circumflex accent on the ultima (from περισπωμενη "drawn off from around, stripped off")
properispomenon: a circumflex accent on the penult

Also:
barytone: a word with no accent (from βαρεια "heavy")

Per Carson, in modern usage, the word, not the accented syllable, is called oxytone, perispomenon, barytone, etc., whereas with Greek literature, the accent itself is called οξεια, περισπωμενη, or βαρεια, and the noun προσωδια ("accent") is supplied: e.g., οξεια προσωδια.

A century ago Herbert Weir Smyth wrote what is still a standard and exhaustive grammar for Classical Greek. Per Carson, the accent rules for Hellenistic (i.e., New Testament) Greek differ somewhat from those for Classical Greek, but you might find Weir's ACCENT: GENERAL PRINCIPLES (sections 149-187) from the first edition helpful. (The second edition is still in print, and even though it's for Classical Greek, it is probably a book you'll want to acquire at some point if you're serious about learning Greek.)

The Website for Smyth's book uses a polytonic unicode font so you can see the correct accenting of the words I use in this post. I don't think Blogger displays polytonic Greek fonts, so I've been using unaccented unicode Greek characters. If you know how I can type and display unicode fonts with the full Greek character set, including all accents, breathing marks, iota subscript, etc., in this blog so students will see them instead of square boxes in their place, please let me know!