a typo (?) in Dickey

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Tugodum
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a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Tugodum »

Am wondering whether I am missing something or the accented enclitic here is a typo:
τοῖς παρὰ τῷ δικαστῇ ἐστ ξένος Μαραθῶνι. (p.221)
Dickey herself says (p.5): "If the preceding word has a circumflex on the ultima, there is no change. Thus...ἀγαθῶν τινων."
Last edited by Tugodum on Sun Aug 20, 2017 4:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

I believe this is the rule that applies:

A paroxytone receives no additional accent: a monosyllabic enclitic loses its accent (χώρᾱ τις, φίλος μου), a dissyllabic enclitic retains its accent (χώρᾱς τινός, φίλοι τινές) except when its final vowel is elided (174 a)

Smyth, H. W. (1920). A Greek Grammar for Colleges (p. 42). New York; Cincinnati; Chicago; Boston; Atlanta: American Book Company.
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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Tugodum »

Barry--
The case in hand is the circumflex on the ultima (before a disyllabic enclitic). Your examples do not seem to be ad rem.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Tugodum wrote:Barry--
The case in hand is the circumflex on the ultima (before a disyllabic enclitic). Your examples do not seem to be ad rem.
Yes, which has the same result. Smyth apparently didn't feel it necessary to include every possible variation.
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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by jeidsath »

It does appear to be a typo. The native grammarians said that after a perispomenon enclitics lose their accent, just as Dickey states. See Chandler 972, "φῶς ἐστι" and "Ἑρμῆς ἐστι." Chandler cites:
Apoll. de Pron. 54 A; Herod. π. ε. μ. 1143; Charax, 1150: ἄλλοι δέ τινες συγχέουσιν, ὡς καὶ Ῥωμανὸς λέγων, εἰ περισπωμένη προηγεῖται, οὐ παρέχουσι τὸν τόνον αὐτῇ, οἷον καλοῦ μοῦ· εἰ δὲ ἄλλος τόνος εἴη, παρέχουσι τὸν τόνον, οἷον πόθεν τις, ὅθεν με. ψευδὲς δὲ λίαν ἐστίν: Charax, 1157. Hermann, de emend. rat. Gr. Gr. p. 71, contends that φῶς μοῦ, οἷον τινῶν are alone correct. They may be so, but our only authorities, the native grammarians, say that they are not.
There are some other cases when enclitic εἰμί become orthotone, but they don't apply here (see Chandler 940).

I'm afraid that I can't find this on pg. 231 of my edition of Dickey's Introduction to Composition. Is that page number right?
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Tugodum »

jeidsath--
Thanks a lot--both for your informative answer and for noticing a typo in my reference to Dickey. It is p. 221, will correct it in my posting.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by mwh »

The native grammarians, as the quote from Chandler shows, were not in agreement among themselves. And even if they were, their dogmas are not necessarily reliable. This is where linguistics comes in. I wouldn’t get too worked up about such a trivial matter myself.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Tugodum »

mwh -- Perhaps on your level this does not matter yet on that of a beginner, which is mine, it is important to know whether it is, plausibly, a typo or Dickey meant it this way.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Tugodum »

mwh wrote:I wouldn’t get too worked up about such a trivial matter myself.
This is a text-book in composition. Supposedly, it is to teach me, among other things, how to put the accents correctly, isn't it?

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by mwh »

It does seem to be an inconsistency on Dickey’s part. I doubt that it’s a typo, it’s more probably a slip—an insignificant one, for I don’t think there’s any real difference between ἐστι and ἐστὶ here, but she ought to have stuck to the rule she’d given. (I haven’t consulted what she actually says, so I can’t say if there is in fact inconsistency.)
To be honest I don’t understand Dickey’s Greek sentence (nor do I understand Charax’s quote from Romanus ap. Chandler).

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Tugodum »

mwh wrote:I haven’t consulted what she actually says, so I can’t say if there is in fact inconsistency.
Dickey says (p.5), in the section titled (p.4): "Rules for the enclitics (τις, τε, ποτέ, ἐστί, etc.)" : "If the preceding word has a circumflex on the ultima, there is no change. Thus ἀγαθῶν τε, ἀγαθῶν τινων."
mwh wrote:To be honest I don’t understand Dickey’s Greek sentence
This is how she herself translates it (p.41): "The men at the juror's house have a guest-friend at Marathon."
mwh wrote:I don’t think there’s any real difference between ἐστι and ἐστὶ here
Do you mean that in the case of a disyllabic enclitic preceded by a circumflex on the ultima, one can--as a general rule--have it either way?

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by mwh »

Rules for εστι are all over the map, and largely arbitrary. Smyth, whom I believe Dickey aims to follow, gives a poorly coordinated hotch-potch (esp. 187). Editorial practice varies. It’s quite normal for enclitic εστι to be accented εστί (εστὶ) when it can’t throw its accent back. There’s also much confusion about paroxytone ἔστι (non-enclitic), which further complicates things, but of course that's a separate issue.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Tugodum »

mwh wrote: It’s quite normal for enclitic εστι to be accented εστί (εστὶ) when it can’t throw its accent back.
OIC. εστί just does not obey the rules applicable to other disyllabic enclitics, right? What is misleading in Dickey, then, is that she listed εστί among others in the title "Rules for the enclitics (τις, τε, ποτέ, ἐστί, etc.)"

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by mwh »

If she gives εστί as the enclitic, then δικαστῇ ἐστὶ is in accordance with what she says: there is “no change,” neither to δικαστῇ nor to ἐστί. Since εστί cannot throw its accent back onto δικαστῇ, ἐστί keeps its accent. (The same applies to paroxytones.) Isn’t that what she means? I don’t have the full context in Dickey, so I can’t really say.

Why ἀγαθῶν τινων and yet e.g. ἀγαθῶν ἐστίν is not explained, at least, not by Smyth, unless I’m mistaken, as perhaps I am. (I can only take so much of this sort of stuff.) What I want is linguistically coherent principles. Dickey ought to be in a position to provide them, given that Philomen Probert is her partner, but I don’t know if she does.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Tugodum »

mwh wrote:in accordance with what she says: there is “no change,”
The phrase "no change" here is ambiguous but it could have been meant by Dickey, I take it, only in one of its two possible meanings, not in both at once. I.e., either Dickey meant that a disyllabic enclitic after the circumflex is, as a rule, accented or she meant that, as a rule, it isn't. The example she provides (ἀγαθῶν τινων) seems to indicate unambiguously that she meant the former. And this is exactly the rule given, e.g., in Hansen & Quinn (p. 438): "A word ending in circumflex keeps its circumflex; the enclitic has no accent: .... -a-p-ῦ + e-e".

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by dikaiopolis »

Yes, the majority of modern grammars and editors follow the rule you noted (i.e., a disyllabic enclitic loses its accent when it follows a perispomenon), Smyth (183.b) included. (There are some exceptions, like when elision is involved or in the case of ἔστι vs. ἐστί). It’s not universal, though. You’ll occasionally see editors write things like φῶς ἐστί, but that’s relatively rare. For your compositions, I would suggest following the standard editorial practice.

These rules ultimately derive from Herodian’s (2nd c. CE) systematic treatise on prosody (which unfortunately doesn’t survive, but there are a few epitomes, the main one being attributed to Arcadius). Herodian was the main source for most of the Byzantine orthographers, including the treatise by Charax (6th c.) quoted above. Here’s the relevant section of the Herodian epitome, with context:

Ἔτι καὶ αἱ ὀξυνόμεναι λέξεις, βαρυνόμεναι δὲ διὰ τὴν συνέπειαν οἷον Ζεύς Ζεὺς δέ, καλός καλὸς ἄνθρωπος, σοφός σοφὸς ἀνήρ, ἐγκλιτικοῦ ἐπιφερομένου τὴν βαρεῖαν ἐγείρουσιν «αὐτός αὐτός μοι», «Ζεύς Ζεύς τε». τὸ δὲ τίς φυλάττει τὴν ὀξεῖαν «τίς πόθεν εἰς ἀνδρῶν» (Φ 150). ἔτι καὶ ἐπιφερομένη στιγμὴ οὐ κοιμίζει τὴν ὀξεῖαν εἰς βαρεῖαν «ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς·» (Α 84). εἰ δὲ περισπῷτο ἡ λέξις, φυλάττεται ἡ περισπωμένη «καλῶς μοι, σαφῶς γε», «ποῖ ποτε», «πῶς ποτε», «πῇ με φέρεις;» 

Note that the imagery of “waking up,” “putting to sleep,” “extinguishing,” “guarding,” etc. is the normal way of conceptualizing accents among ancient scholars of prosody.

In any case, if you’re interested in learning more about accentuation (and who wouldn’t be?) I definitely suggest Philomen Probert’s work. Her New Short Guide to the Accentuation of Ancient Greek comes with exercises and would be a nice complement to Dickey’s composition book. She also has a helpful piece on ancient prosody in the Brill Companion to Ancient Scholarship.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Tugodum »

dikaiopolis --This is precious! Thanks a lot. It seems clear to me now that Dickey's seemingly ambiguous turn of phrase, "no change," is just a close paraphrase of Herodian's "φυλάττεται" and thus refers not to the enclitic but to the accentuation of the word preceding it: i.e., it is circumflex that does not change, in this case, into either acute or grave; Herodian citation does not say anything of what happens to the enclitic itself.
It was, also, new to me that the period was introduced as early as 2nd c. CE; I had been probably misled by impressions from the papyri like Bodymer P66, where one can hardly see even spaces between words.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by dikaiopolis »

You’re right, the passage from the Herodian epitome has the same ambiguity and doesn’t spell out what happens to the accent of a disyllabic enclitic. The examples (ποῖ ποτε, πῶς ποτε) clarify, though, as they do in Dickey, Smyth, et al.

As for punctuation in ancient scholarship and papyri, it’s a fascinating topic (δοκεῖ μοι) and there’s a lot more that could be said. Like you noted, scriptio continua was the common practice, but you do find a small set of lectional signs (and word division) in papyri dating back to the earliest period, including both literary and non-literary texts. The dicola in the “Curse of Artemisia” and the paragraphoi in the Derveni and Timotheos papyri come to mind. Punctuation becomes more common over time, but its use is for the most part non-standardized and sporadic.

In ancient scholarship, you find more complicated, theoretical systems of punctuation, used especially to clarify syntactical problems. Nicanor’s treatise Περὶ στιγμῆς (probably 2nd c. CE, though some scholars put him in the 1st c.; fragments of a compilation of Homeric scholarship that included Nicanor are preserved in the A scholia) developed a system of eight punctuation sigla (stigmai, dots) for different pauses. One stigme is even something like an exclamation! Unfortunately, these were relegated to the higher realms of learning; you won’t find them actually used in papyri. The Τέχνη attributed to Dionysius Thrax lists three different stigmai (τελεία, μέση, ὑποστιγμή). You find elevated dots in plenty of papyri, but, as far as I know, not the low dot (like our period). For Gk papyri, by the way, you could scarcely find someone better to ask than mwh. He may know more about punctuation in the papyri.

If you’re suggesting a 2nd c. date for P66, that is likely too early…but that’s another topic.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Tugodum »

This is fascinating! I would never imagine there was such a gap between the grammarians' prescriptions and actual practice... Re P66, I meant only that it is not earlier than 2nd c., and thus probably later than Herodian.

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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Also grateful for the discussion in this thread, not only for the particulars of the discussion, but picking up several excellent resources on accents and punctuation. :D
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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by jeidsath »

It's depressing to read the ancient grammarians discuss these issues of accentuation without any seeming recognition of the idea that proper accentuation can only be making a proper phonetic record of what people say. Obviously that's not how they conceive of it. It seems for them that it was as much about convention as transcription.
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Re: a typo (?) in Dickey

Post by mwh »

Isn’t it a matter more of phonemics than of phonetics? Like the four tones in Chinese. Greek had two accents, three if you count the grave. The grammarians applied the prosodic rules that were built into the language.

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