How is the diphthong υι pronounced in the restored Koine pronunciation? Presumably the same as the simple υ vowel.
How about when it is a morphological suffix in the datives singular of certain third declension words (υϊ)? Should they be pronounced as if they have a dieresis, even when the editor hasn’t written one.
This problem arises while reading Longus where the editor is inconsistent in his use of the diaeresis for the dative singular of πίτυς.
in the restored Koine pronunciation
Are you asking how it’s pronunced by Randall Buth — the inventor of restored Koine (cribbing from Teodorsson by way of Horrocks) — or by Longus? If it’s the first, then you can just send him an email asking about it. If it’s Longus, it’s hard to see what that would have to do with restored Koine or editorial inconsistencies.
https://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/koine-greek-pronunciation/
Buth does not directly address this particular question (oddly), but he does provide a couple of examples which indicate that it’s essentially a victim of itacism.
-υι in this declensiοn never contracts to a single syllable so far as I know, so πιτυι will be three shorts. (There’s no need to mark the diaeresis.) –υες and-υας may of course contract to –υς (long υ). Cf. e.g. ὑς.
His first relevant example:
Papyrus 109.2 τωι οιειωι τῷ υἱῷ ‘to the son’ (100 CE)
suggests that there was no diphthong in 100 CE at least. His second:
Babatha 21.17, 25 δια ενγυιου διὰ ἐγγύου ‘by guarantor’ (130CE)
suggests that υι was pronounced the same as υ.
What type of reference is “Papyrus 109”?
Is Longus writing with the hustorical vowel lengths in mind, or with the (then) current pronunciation in mind?
There is plenty of evidence that the υ/ι confusion of Egyptian papyri is a regional peculiarity. Inscriptions confuse υ with ου in 2nd century AD. Wulfila still needed υ in the 4th century for Greek transcription. And at the end of the millennia, the Byzantines called the letter ὒ ψιλόν, apparently still needing it to distinguish it from the δίφθογγος.
For my question, broadly speaking either.
For your question about not seeing how editorial conventions, pronunciation systems relate together, I would suggest that in such cases knowledge is empirical rather than revelatory. Buth is basically Gignac animated, and there are range of interpretations of how that system is realised.
It may help you to see the relationship to Longus if instead of conceptualising Buth as a set discrete values, you could think of them as starting points or way points, within the development of Greek pronunciation. Longus’ Greek won’t coincide with Frankenstein’s Monster “Adam” as laid out by Gignac and stitched together and brought to life by Buth. That created system, however, gives a closer model of what Longus’ might have been read as, than either Allen’s or the Standard Modern Greek systems do.
It is difficult is “see” extrapolated values. They are more along the lines of guided guesses .
That is the diphthong οι, not υι that they are differentiating it from, isn’t it?
Does your υ/ι mean υ vs. ι or υ vs. υι?
That is the diphthong οι, not υι that they are differentiating it from, isn’t it?
Correct. It suggests that υ approached οι and had still not approached ι by the end of the millennium (for educated Byzantines).
Does your υ/ι mean υ vs. ι or υ vs. υι?
It means υ/ι. υ/υι confusion is a peculiarity occurring before vowels. Allen thinks that it represents [üyy] in Attic.
Oh dear. This thread seems to have gone badly off track. The diphthong υι, as in υιος, which was pronounced in various ways at various times and in various places, is not to be confused with –υι as a dat.sing. termination (as in πιτυι, gen. πιτυος), which was consistently disyllabic (both vowels short), so far as we can tell. There no reason to suppose that Longus or any other literate person would have pronounced it differently.
How do you pronounce “/”?
Unless the diaeresis has another function, wouldn’t a diaeresis in this ending be useful for a semi-educated modern reader?
Enough already. Even a semi-educated reader is expected to realize that terminal –υι would not be diphthongal. Adding a diaeresis sign (outside of an elementary grammar book) would imply that it sometimes is.
To complicate matters, some searching seems to turn up a handful of exceptions in -υς, -υος. In Homer:
αὐτός τ’ ἀμφὶ νέκυι κατατεθνηῶτι μάχωμαι. (Il. 16.526)
σύμβαλον ἀμφὶ νέκυι κατατεθνηῶτι μάχεσθαι (Il. 16.565)
δυσμόρῳ· ἦ γὰρ ἔμελλον ἔτι ξυνέσεσθαι ὀιζυῖ (Od. 7.270)
ναυτιλίῃ καὶ ποσσὶ καὶ ὀρχηστυῖ καὶ ἀοιδῇ. (Od. 8.253)
πλεῖον δαιτυμόνων· οἱ δ’ ὀρχηστυῖ καὶ ἀοιδῇ (Od. 17.605)
νέκυϊ and νέκυι seem to alternate, as well as ὀιζυῖ and ὀιζύι. Poetic license maybe?
The -υι ending in Attic Tragedy is exceptionally rare, I found, so I have trouble making any sort of comparison. Only two lines in all of Euripides/Sophocles/Aeschylus:
γήρυϊ παιδολέτωρ (Eur.Rhesus 549)
στεφανωσαμένη δρυῒ καὶ πλεκταῖς (Soph.Fr. 535.5)
If we are discussing real examples of variations, let me list what Hercher has in his edition of Longus that gave rise to this issue:
The one with diaeresis doesn’t show up in a Perseus search though.
Those are not “real examples of variations.” Those are modern editorial inconsistencies in a non-metrical text.
The Homeric examples, in contrast, have their quantity fixed by the scansion, and so give us an insight into how the word would have been pronounced at the time.
For example:
δυσμόρῳ· ἦ γὰρ ἔμελλον ἔτι ξυνέσεσθαι ὀιζυῖ
An υϊ instead of υῖ would give you an extra beat at the end.
@jeidsath How you do like “to complicate matters.” In my first post I didn’t see fit to muddy the already muddied waters by mentioning the tellingly few Homeric instances of monosyllabic –υι that you have found, for there the anomaly is to be accounted for in much the same way as many of the other multitudinous prosodic anomalies in Homer. In tragedy and elsewhere –υι would be disyllabic, as indeed it is in the two instances you give (in anapests and lyrics respectively; it’s not readily accommodated in iambics, hence its rarity there). In prose, as in Attic verse, it will routinely be disyllabic (two shorts), πιτυι like πιτυος.
To reassert the point: υι- (as in υἱος etc.) is fundamentally different from –υι (as in πιτυι etc.)—morphologically, phonologically, whatever way you care to slice it.
@εκηβ. The text to use is Michael Reeve’s (Teubner), an exemplary edition by an exemplary editor. He quite properly prints πίτυι, without signalling the diaeresis. It is to be pronounced with three short syllables (Longus respects quantity).
This will be my last post in this rather ridiculous thread.