Elision and Prot' elision

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yadfothgildloc
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Elision and Prot' elision

Post by yadfothgildloc »

Does Greek have Protelision similar to Latin?

Would diatribh\ e)/stiv go to diatrib\ 'stin or stay un protelided?

annis
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Re: Elision and Prot' elision

Post by annis »

yadfothgildloc wrote:Does Greek have Protelision similar to Latin?
Greek does have protelision, but it's not terribly common (only epsilon suffers it) and only after certain words, like μή. (Smyth §76).

Normally you'll get crasis, which is basically contraction across word boundaries. So, for τὸ ἐμόν, rather than *τὸ ’μόν you get τοὐμόν. (Smyth §62-69).
Would diatribh\ e)/stiv go to diatrib\ 'stin or stay un protelided?
This is tricky. In Epic and elegiac verse the final eta was evidently shortened, but there's no change in writing to mark this. Other kinds of poets would reorder the words to avoid hiatus. Some prose authors would as well, especially Philodemus, whose conscious avoidance of hiatus for most words makes for quite difficult reading.

Most editions of prose texts do not write elision, or do so only occasionally, though we expect that elision still happened during reading.
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

Skylax
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Post by Skylax »

I know a line from Aristophanes that reads :ποῦ, ποῦ ’στι ; ποῦ, ποῦ, ποῦ ’στι ; ποῦ; "Where, where, where is he ? (bis)" (Birds, 1122, imitating bird's voice)

yadfothgildloc
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Post by yadfothgildloc »

It's in the context of an iambic poem.

I'll check the Smyth reference, and thanks for the Aristophanes citation.

(Hopefully the poem will be done later today...)

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