Greek Accent Research Articles

Ancient Greek Pitch Accent, Not Stress*

Ancient Greek accent involves both stress and tone (Allen 1973, Steriade 1988). We present here a new piece of evidence for the details of the tonal part, based on a lowering process whereby a H tone on the final TBU of a word lowers if the word is followed by another tonic word: H...H → L...H. This is essentially what is reported for Rimi, a Tanzanian Bantu language, where HH loses the first of its H tones (Olson 1964, ‘Anti-Meeussen’s Rule’). If correct, this motivates three tonal classes in Ancient Greek: HL* in words like basiléˈàà ‘king.acc’ (Sauzet 1989, Golston 1990) and two additional classes, H*L in basiˈléù ‘king.voc’ and H in basiˈleús ‘king.nom’.

Greek Accent in the Pronunciation of Russian Coronal Obstruents

Greek Accent in the Pronunciation of Russian Coronal Obstruents

The Invention of the Greek Prosodic Signs

AbstractAristophanes of Byzantium is credited with inventing the signs for Greek accents, breathings and vowel lengths, according to a single source: a short text found in two 16th-century Paris manuscripts. The passage has a doubtful history, but the story it tells is of considerable interest. We first provide a new edition of this text, based on a new examination of both manuscripts, and a complete translation. Secondly we argue that the author consulted a source that was in Latin and that dealt at least in part with the Latin accent. We conclude by considering the implications of our proposal for the text’s date and circumstances of composition.

Book Review: Accenting the Greek Text: John A. L. Lee, Basics of Greek Accents: Eight Lessons with Exercises

Book Review: Accenting the Greek Text: John A. L. Lee, <i>Basics of Greek Accents: Eight Lessons with Exercises</i>

ὁµότονος: When did Words Have the Same Accent?

AbstractLSJ (s.v. ὁµότονος, ΙΙ) offers the definition ‘having the same accent’ for ὁµότονος as a grammatical term. This definition does not make clear whether ‘having the same accent’ involves having the same type of accent (acute or circumflex), having the accent in the same position, or both. This article examines the use and interpretation of the term ὁµότονος in grammatical and lexicographical works and scholia. The patterns of use that emerge reflect an implicit awareness of important structural features of the Greek accent system.

Graikų ir lotynų kirčiavimo įtaka lietuvių kirčio žymėjimui

THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK AND LATIN ACCENTUATION ON LITHU­ANIAN ACCENT NOTATIONSummaryThe accent signs of most alphabetic languages ultimately derive from Greek signs devised in the 3rd century BC. This 'Alexandrine' system of accent notation was transformed into the now current ‘Byzantine’ system for Greek around 400 AD. The Greek circumflex, originally written in the form of an arc like an inverted breve, was graphically transformed into its present wavy shape (identical to the Latin tilde) some time in the Middle Ages.In 16th century Europe (not in the 17th century, as was earlier believed) an artificial, so-called ‘Henninian’, accentuation system of Greek arose. In consequence, Greek accent signs were often treated as meaningless diacritics, useful only for the distinction of otherwise homonymous word forms. A similar use of distinctive (phonetically meaningless) accents was created in the Latin script, where it was current from the late 16th to the late 18th century.The Lithuanian accentuation of Daniel Klein follows closely this humanist Graeco-Latin usage of distinctive diacritics. The same tendency is observed in other Lithuanian writings of the time as well. The genitive singular endings -ôs / -ês and genitive plural ending -û were therefore more or less regularly marked with a circumflex sign, which had, at least in printed texts, the Latin angled (not the Greek tilde-like) shape. Thus the written circumflex sign, be it by incidence or, as Kurschat suggests, as a result of the intuitive insight of old Lithuanian grammarians, coincided with the actual Lithuanian circumflex intonation; accordingly the acute sign came to denote the Lithuanian acute intonation. The actual Lithuanian accents were, however, greatly distorted in writing by formally applying Greek accentuation rules. The accent notation of the 1737 grammar Universitas Lingvarum Litvaniae, known for its exact adherence to the actual Lithuanian syllable intonations rather than to formally applied Greek rules, is nevertheless consistent with this Graeco-Latin tradition in its choice of the circumflex sign to mark the Lithuanian circumflex accent. In the printed 1737 book the accent notation appears, however, somewhat awkward – an accentless letter of a different typeface is substituted for a letter with the acute – but we argue that this oddity was not the original author’s intention but was due to the lack of accented letter punches at the Vilnius University printing house.The alternative tradition of Lithuanian accent notation, started by Simonas Stanevičius, adopted by Kazimieras Jaunius, and rejected by Kazimieras Būga, is also discussed. While different from the traditional system, it was nevertheless based on the comparison of Lithuanian syllable intonations with those of Greek.The Lithuanian accent notation was given its final form by Friedrich Kurschat, who also gave the Lithuanian circumflex sign its present wavy shape, directly and consciously, as he himself admits, derived from Greek (especially from the Greek typefaces current in Germany and France; in Anglophone countries the Greek circumflex often still has the old arc-shaped form).The factor of the common Indo-European heritage in the actual coincidence of Greek and Lithuanian syllable intonations in the end syllables (acute in the nominative, circumflex in the genitive), put forward by Adalbert Bezzenberger, has suffered numerous attacks, notably from Jerzy Kurylowicz; but it has never been convincingly disproved. It still seems that what once was an intuitive – or even incidental – choice of Greek accent signs to mark corresponding Lithuanian accents, indeed reveals a much older and deeper affinity.

Foreign accent syndrome caused by a left temporal-parietal ischaemic stroke.

Karanasios P, Loukopoulou P, Zampakis P, Tiligadas T, Makridou A, Doukas V, Argyriou AA. Foreign accent syndrome caused by a left temporal-parietal ischaemic stroke. We present the first reported case of a Greek patient with foreign accent syndrome (FAS) secondary to a left temporal-parietal ischemic stroke. A 76 year-old right-handed, Greek in origin, male was referred because he had suddenly manifested changes in speech expression. The neurological examination revealed that his prior typical English-Australian accent resembled a mixture of Greek and English-Britain accent consistent with FAS, though he had visited only once Greece the last 15 years and never had been to United Kingdom. A brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan depicted an ischemic temporal lesion in the language-dominant left hemisphere, affecting the left posterior superior and middle temporal gyri, as well as the ipsilateral inferior supramarginal angular gyrus and posterior insula. We might suggest that FAS in our patient was induced because of interrupted cortical-subcortical feedback pathways. The phenomenon of subcortical-cortical diaschisis might also have contributed to its clinical manifestation.

Perception of foreign accent syndrome speech and its relation to segmental characteristics

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is an acquired neurogenic disorder characterized by altered speech that sounds foreign-accented. This study presents a British subject perceived to speak with an Italian (or Greek) accent after a brainstem (pontine) stroke. Native English listeners rated the strength of foreign accent and impairment they perceived in speech of the FAS subject, alongside that of two native English speakers and Italian, Greek, and French L2 speakers acting as controls. The FAS subject was perceived to be as foreign-sounding as the L2 control speakers, but was also perceived as mildly impaired. The FAS subject's own perception of accents was also explored and it was found that his ability to distinguish presence and absence of accent does not seem to be affected. The relationship between listeners' perceptions and features of the FAS speech is explored via correlational statistics and qualitative analysis. Impressionistic phonetic analysis, supplemented by acoustic analysis, confirmed a number of features consistent with a typical Italian (and also Greek) accent and the Italian and Greek L2 speakers. A pre-stroke and a post-stroke sample from the FAS subject were compared and the nature of post-stroke changes in segmental realizations is discussed.

Modern Greek accent and faithfulness constraints in OT

In Modern Greek nominals, the accent is sometimes faithful to the properties of stems, and sometimes to those of affixes. Several facts challenge solutions based on stipulating the ranking of faithfulness constraints in OT, however. These include the fact that accentual dominance of affixes correlates with their semantic markedness (marked Case; marked number); the fact that neighboring cells within a paradigm tend to be accentually uniform; and the fact that control of accent shifts from affix to stem when stems are followed by Class Markers. These facts are argued to motivate an approach in which faithfulness effects and their relative magnitudes are not primitive notions, but are rather derived in certain specific ways that take account of both the internal structure of representations and their overall distance in space.

Med Izvirnikom in Prevodi by Jože s&gt; Krašovec (review)

i i8 SEER, 83, I, 2005 Likemost conference proceedings the paperspublishedhere are of uneven quality, but one or two are quite outstanding. Since the nineteenth century linguistshave been tryingto confine Sorbianto a Procrusteanbed suppliedby the other Slavonic languages. Some of this was an impulsive reaction to the attitudes of the likes of Leskien (see above). But now we have a younger generation of scholarswho are not satisfiedwith any of this. EdwardWornar rejectsthe traditionalview thatUpper Sorbianperfectiveverbscannot express the actualpresentorbe combined with phasalverbs,such as 'to begin', a view that is simply not borne out by the evidence. General observations about Slavonic aspect, as if all Slavoniclanguageshad somethingin common in this respect, are (he says)misguided. Even among the Slavonic languages aspect varies from one language to another. Aspect in Upper Sorbian is not a grammatical but a lexical category and it is doubtful whether grammatical verbal aspect ever existed (pp. I55-68). Another investigation into aspect is offeredby WalterBreu. Based on fieldworkwith informantsfrom Ralbitz and Crostwitz, it does not go quite as far as Wornar,but agrees with him at least thataspectin Upper Sorbianis differentfromthatin otherSlavoniclanguages (PP. 143-54). Its specificqualityin Lower Sorbianhas yet to be explored, but by revealingsomething of its truenaturein Upper Sorbian,Wornarand Breu have begun to dispel the confusionby which Sorbiangrammarhas long been troubled. Her~ford College, Oxford GERALD STONE Krasovec, Joze. MedIzvirnikom in Prevodi. Studijskazbirka, 3. Svetopisemska druzba Slovenije, Ljubljana, 2001. 784 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography .Indexes. SIT II,900. IN the winter of I980, on the eve of the most momentous period in the constitutional history of the country, the Slovenian Bishops' conference accepted a proposalfor the preparationof what would be chronologicallythe seventh complete Slovene translationof the Bible Slovenski standarni prevod celotnega Svetega pismaiz izvirnihhjezikov (Ljubljana,I996). Overall editor of the work is ProfessorJoze Krasovec, holder of four doctorates and Professorof Old Testament exegesis in the Theological faculty of the University of Ljubljana,who has keptwith meticulouscare a fullrecordof the project.After a shortintroductionextollingthe excellence of the Bible (pp. 27-36) the three main sections deal with the historicalbackground(pp. 37-230); the Slovene standardBible translation:project and realization (pp. 231-378); attendant events and revision of the new translation (pp. 379-548). English-language summaries cover the following topics: an evaluation of literary translations (pp. 549-67); literaryaestheticin the Scripturesbasedon unityof content and form (pp. 568-86); translatability of literary works in general and the Scripturesin particular(pp. 587-604). A supplementreprintschronologically articles and interviews from the Slovene media from I990 onwards (pp. 605-752). REVIEWS II9 The interesting anthology of opinions from antiquity to modernity on the nature of translationand the duty of the translatorofferssupportto both the strictand liberalschool of thought, though some may feel that Horace, one of the firstwitnesses, has what could be accepted as the last word on the subject when he advocates faithfulnesswithout slavishnessto the text. It seems rather a pity that room could not be found for Cyril and Methodius's theory and practice, particularlyon the rightsof the vernacular.On the other hand, one would have willinglydispensedwith Nabokov'sill-temperedrantagainsteasyreading versions of Pushkin's EvgeniiOnegin and demand for monumental commentariesin theirstead. The concise accounts of early Greek,Aramaic and Latinversionsare clear and well illustrated.The transliterationof Greek is unusual in its failure to distinguish long e and o (eta and omega)from their short counterparts; preservation of the Greek accents, while not without its charm, is no compensation for potentially misleading cases like hos (with long vowel a conjunction or adverb;with short vowel a personal pronoun). Eagerness to chronicle in full the course of scholarlydebate has given the trivialflotsamof orthographicminutiae a prominence no other context wouldjustify. In some cases, e.g. the transliterationof Hebrew names (Gabriel or the more recent Gabrijel), the orthographers should prevail, while in matters involving an apparent loss of dignity (capitalizationof only one member of a compound phrase, e.g. Holy spirit)the theologians should be allowed to determine their own usage, which may if necessary be so categorized in orthographic dictionaries. Among the aids for translatorshere reprintedthe registerof orthographic rules (pp. 35 i-68) is of general interest, together with the basic HebrewSlovene glossary,with separatelists of termsfor musical instruments,and for...

Traditional Specialties at the Turn of the 21st Century: A Janus View

Traditional Specialties at the Turn of the 21st Century:A Janus View Julia Haig Gaisser It seems appropriate to mark the occasion of the APA s first meeting in the new millennium with a Presidential Panel considering both past accomplishments and new directions in several fields of classical scholarship. This panel is concerned with twentieth-century developments in four fields: linguistics, Roman history, papyrology, and Roman poetry. The speakers are Eleanor Dickey (Columbia University), David Potter (University of Michigan), Ann Hanson (Yale University), and Michael Putnam (Brown University). They have been invited to look back over the last hundred years or so and ahead as far as the eye can see, and to consider some of the following questions: What was happening in your subject around 1900? What questions interested people? How and why did new ones enter in? What s important now, and where are we going? They have been asked, not to present an overview or objective summary, but to speak from the perspective of their own interests and research. Why these specialties? I had several ideas in mind as I began to make plans for the panel. First, I wanted to feature fields with a long history in the APA. My original idea, in fact, was to find fields treated at the first APA meeting in 1869 or in the first volume of TAPA (1870). It also seemed important to consider fields that had changed greatly over time and were both influenced by and productive of new theoretical perspectives. I wanted a mix of Greek and Roman, technical and more general subjects and a mix of senior and junior scholars to address them. [End Page 287] Linguistics was an obvious first choice by almost every criterion, and especially considering its roots in the APA. The Association was founded to promote linguistic science, and the first volume of TAPA contains only lin-guistics papers (dealing with topics from Greek accent to the German Vernacular of Pennsylvania to Creole grammar and Mistaken Notions of Algonkin Grammar). Papyrology, another technical specialty, is a field that came into its own only in the twentieth century. As far as I can tell, the first papyrological paper at an APA meeting was read only in 1892 (it was J. H. Wright s Notes on the Papyrus of the ). Roman History and Roman Poetry are subjects of long-standing interest in the Association, although it is only fair to note that Greek History and Poetry appear first (TAPA 1873 has a paper on the life of Thucydides, and TAPA 1874 has two papers on Homer; the first papers on Roman History and Poetry appear only in TAPA 1880). The panel is intended to be historical, to be sure, but I expect it to point out not so much past triumphs (or failures) as future directions and possibilities. Not everyone will agree with the panelists assessments if they provoke some debate, so much the better. [End Page 288] Julia Haig Gaisser Bryn Mawr College Copyright © 2001 The American Philological Association

Naglasni problemi stare in moderne grščine

Članek obravnava značilnosti starogrškega in novogrškega naglasa. Prvi del obravnava probleme naglasnega mesta grškega naglasa v najstarejših obdobjih razvoja in naglasna pravila v jonsko-atiškem, lesboškem in dorskem narečju. V drugem in tretjem delu so predstavljena vprašanja fonetike starogrškega naglasa in proces, v katerem se je oblikoval modernogrški naglas.

Marx and Aristotle: nineteenth-century German social theory and classical antiquity

Visions and vertigo - viewing modernity from the Acropolis, George E. McCarthy. Part 1 Hegel and the Greeks - remembrance of things past: Karl Marx and the influence of Greek antiquity on 18th century Germany, Horst Mews the Polis transformed - Aristotle's Politics and Marx's critique of Hegel's Philosophy of right, David Depew the origins of the dialectic - Hegel's approriation of ancient skeptics, Stephen Smith. Part 2 Marx and Epicurus - materialism, ethics, and Greek physics: the Greek accent of the Marxian matrix, Michael DeGolyer Marx and Epicurus - post-Aristotelian philosophy of nature and Marx's dissertation, George E. McCarthy Karl Marx and Greek philosophy - some explorations in the themes of intellectual accommodations and moral hypocrisy, Laurence Baronovitch. Part 3 Marx and Aristotle - human capabilities and social structures: nature, function, and capability - Aristotle on distribution, Martha Nussbaum Aristotle, Kant and the ethics of the young Marx, Philip Kain households, markets and firms, William James Booth. Part 4 Marx and Aristotle - morality and Praxis: Marx and Aristotle - a kind of consequentialism, Richard Miller Marx's moral realism - Eudaimonism and moral progress, Alan Gilbert Praxis and morality - Marx's Species being and Aristotle's political animal, Joseph Margolis Marxian subjectivity, idealism and Greek philosophy, Thomas Rockmore.

The origins of nucleus

Intonation has frequently been regarded by linguists as on the periphery of linguistics. The study of grammar began in the classical era (see Robins 1967) and the study of phonetics also goes back a very long way (see, for example, Allen 1953). But intonation has not figured prominently in phonetic writings (if we exclude discussion of word phenomena like Greek accent). Most bibliographies of intonation do not go further back than the twentieth century (e.g. Ladd 1979a), two exceptions being Pike (1945) and Crystal (1969). But there are sufficient early writings on various aspects of intonation to justify a new sub-branch of the history of linguistics, the history of intonology. This article seeks to inaugurate this sub-branch by tracing the origins of a central theoretical concept in modern intonation back to the seventeenth century and ultimately to the renaissance.

Greek Accents: A Student’s Manual by D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985. 167 pp. pb. $8.95)

Greek Accents: A Student’s Manual by D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985. 167 pp. pb. $8.95)

Book Review: A Student's Manual of New Testament Greek Accents

Book Review: A Student's Manual of New Testament Greek Accents

Historical Development of the Ancient Greek Accent System

Historical Development of the Ancient Greek Accent System

Archiatri and the medical profession in antiquity.

How far there was ever in classical antiquity a public health service, organised and paid for by the state, has been often debated by both doctors and classical scholars, with conflicting results. For fifth and fourth century Greece the amount of evidence available is insufficient to permit any certainty, but there can be no doubt that in the Hellenistic age individual cities offered special privileges in order to secure the residence of a qualified physician. But whether and in what ways such a system was carried over into the very different society of the Roman empire, and still more into that of late antiquity, are questions which have never been satisfactorily answered, and the authority of the Roman part of Pohl's dissertationDe graecorum medicis publicis, despite its increasing age, has never been seriously challenged—indeed, some more recent studies have only highlighted by contrast its high level of accuracy, judgement and, for its time, comprehensiveness. However, the discovery of three new inscriptions ofarchiatrifrom Aphrodisias affords an opportunity to re-examine the institution of public doctors in the Roman empire and thereby to throw light upon a professional designation,archiatros/archiater, which has troubled scholars ever since Herodian the grammarian attempted to settle the position of its Greek accent. By surveying the evidence according to the varied societies in which thearchiatripractised—the courts, the Eastern cities, the West and Rome in late antiquity, Constantinople and Roman and Byzantine Egypt—a much clearer picture of the spread of public doctors can be obtained without introducing anachronistic or extraneous attitudes and institutions to provide a single uniform pattern of development.

The Inflectional Accent in Indo-European

The following is a historical and comparative study of the accentual alternations that go with inflection in the Indo-European languages which retain the old 'free' accent.l I will use the term 'inflection' in a narrow sense, referring to person and number in the arerb, to case and number in the noun. A thorough synchronic analysis of Sanskrit, Greek, or Lithuanian accentuation, even if limited in this way to inflectional processes, would be a major undertaking in itself. However, we do not have to wait for this work to be completed before starting our reconstruction. The outlines of the synchronic systems can be made sufficiently clear so that basic conclusions can be drawn about the proto-system that underlies them. My procedure will be to sketch a synchronic analysis of the inflectional accent of the three branches of IE that preserves the old accentual mobility, and in the process to draw whatever historical conclusions are possible. §1 provides a sketch of the classical Greek accent system, with special emphasis on the alternation between acute and circumflex in the declension. §2 gives an analysis of Sanskrit accentuation, and its complex interrelationship with ablaut and other segmental processes. §3 then outlines how the Balto-Slanc accent systems can be derived from the same system that underlies Greek and Sanskrit. §4 deals with the phonetic realization of accent, which turns out to have interesting systematic consequences, but has so far been unjustly neglected by comparativists. The IE accent systems show some pervasive systematic properties, explanation of which is a basic requirement for any theory of IE accentuation: (i) There is a definite relationship between accentual mobility ('free' accent) and the existence of contour accents ('intonation', i.e. the contrast between acute and circumflex accent). As Table 1 shows, distinctiare contour accents

Greek Accent and the Rational

The description of our accent system by Professor Dodds as ‘Byzantine’ is of course disingenuous. Its Alexandrian origin and evolution are taken for granted since Laum and Schwyzer; the fact that Barrett could so swiftly and soundly adapt the peripheral matter of synenclisis to the system's own basic principles is a pointer to its internal soundness and consistency. Again, that a system is complex is no reason for its being jettisoned; the language itself is complex. Nor does Dodds' defeated acceptance of Dutch-English mispronunciation strengthen a case against the accent. What I think he meant was that no-one since Byzantine times has been able to interpret the accent marks in significant terms of sound; that we are therefore better rid, not of a system, but of a clueless labyrinth inefficiently described in an insufferably tedious jargon and entirely unrelated to the language which it was invented to illuminate.This position would be understandable if it were now possible to hold it. It is farcical in the light that philologists/linguists are now throwing on Greek accent. The obstacles they have had to overcome fall broadly into two classes: first, the passive, inertial persistence of the formal, meaningless ‘rules’ on one hand, and, on the other, the cloudy mysticism of those who have never thought to examine the term ‘music’ in their glib phrase ‘musical Greek accent’. The latter class falls into two sub-classes: those who (like Maas) prosaically forbade the search after Greek pronunciation because it was musical (like stressless organ-notes!); and a few who, following A. J. Ellis and Rouse, would have us believe that they are giving us Homer ‘as he was sung’, when they apply to the hexameter what they (as I hope to prove, wrongly) attribute to Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the famous passage where his subject was not verse—but prose!