Declension of Ἐΰς

[y11971alex]

I’m starting my Homer courses soon, but I was slightly fazed by the adjective ἐΰς. The entries for this word in the various dictionaries seem quite scant, so I’m unable to acquire a good understanding of how this word is to be declined. Formally it seems similar to third declension -ύς, -εῖα, -ύ, but something doesn’t fit.

Wikipedia suggests that this word comes from I.E. *῾συ-, which in strong cases should lead me to expect lengthening to *῾εσυ-, which in turn seems to lead to the available nom. and acc. forms ἐΰς and ἐΰν found in LSJ. I can’t find any justification behind the genitive form (ἐῆος, ἐοῖο) and unattested dative form (*ἐῆϊ, *ἐῷ?), which logically should be based upon the weak I.E. stem ῾συ- (> gen. *εὐός?, dat. *εὐΐ?).

I’d really appreciate anyone shedding light on this situation. It’s a fantastic little word that I’d love to use but cannot quite yet.

[mwh]

Yes it’s a curious little word, which the greeks themselves didn’t know what to make of, and no wonder, given the morphological anomalies and semantic uncertainties. Use it by all means, but not until you can compose archaic hexameters—the word’s only home. And once again remember that reconstructed forms may never have had any existence.

Does your university offer a course in historical linguistics or in the prehistory of the greek language? To judge from this and other posts of yours, I’m guessing that’s really what you’re after. On ευς you should look at the Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos, if your university can provide it. Much of it is intelligible without knowledge of german.

[y11971alex]

@mwh

Yes it’s a curious little word, which the greeks themselves didn’t know what to make of, and no wonder, given the morphological anomalies and semantic uncertainties. Use it by all means, but not until you can compose archaic hexameters—the word’s only home. And once again remember that reconstructed forms may never have had any existence.

Does your university offer a course in historical linguistics or in the prehistory of the greek language? To judge from this and other posts of yours, I’m guessing that’s really what you’re after. On ευς you should look at the Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos, if your university can provide it. Much of it is intelligible without knowledge of german.

Well, as I say, I’ll dive into the luxurious world of meter starting next semester, so perhaps in the foreseeable future I shall be composing for leisure in hexameter. I do note, however, that its usage in prose would probably be out of place, as you wrote.

My university does offer a course in historical linguistics, but not as far as I know in the prehistory of the Greek language. I should like to take the course during the summer, if only for pleasure. I’ll consult that work, which I’m sure has a spot on the many shelves of the university’s library, the largest in my country. Fortunately, I also have access to several of my friends who have a working knowledge of German.

Here I come: http://search.library.utoronto.ca/details?780109&uuid=c7b994a8-baa0-40c1-912b-7d49825032c8

[y11971alex]

As an update, I went to the library yesterday. The book however did not give me notably more information about the adjective than that which has already been made known to me.

[Qimmik]

The Homeric language is an artificial language. It was never usedin everyday conversation–it evolved and existed solely as a medium for heroic song. It’s an amalgam of two or more dialects and preserves words and phrases from various phases of the Greek language. It can also be innovative, fashioning new words without regard to historical antecedents. It’s built up not so much out of individual words as out of formulas–fixed groups of words that fit the meter and that the singer can draw on in the process of composing his song while performing it.

While historical Indo-European linguistics has been a powerful tool in understanding Homeric words and phrases whose meaning and origins eluded even the ancient Greeks, there are many words in the Homeric poems that don’t necessarily conform to “neo-grammarian” analysis in terms of derivations from proto-Indo-European by invariable phonological processes.

The attested forms of the adjective ἐΰς looks like they originated from the adverb ἐΰ by slapping on a few standard (and metrically convenient) adjective endings. ἐΰς doesn’t have a complete paradigm–just in a limited number of fixed formulaic phrases. If I remember correctly, the formula doteres eaon does have a Vedic parallel (this is one of the phrases that suggests that there may have been a continuous tradition of Indo-European heroic song, traces of which show up in both Greek and Vedic), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that other forms of ἐΰς can be strictly derived from PIE. The forms that occur in the Homeric poems could very well have originated as ad hoc creations by singers who were ignorant of PIE and then became embedded in formulas.

A very rough analogy from non-standard English: in ordinary speech (not mine), I’ve heard the form “crunk” used as a past/past participle of the verb “crank” (meaning “to start a car”, reinforced with “done,” “done crunk”). I don’t think you can trace this back to an Old English, let alone proto-Germanic, strong verb, and this isn’t the only English verb that went from weak to strong over the history of the language.

I hope this helps dispel some of your perplexity over ἐΰς.

[y11971alex]

@Qimmik

The Homeric language is an artificial language. It was never usedin everyday conversation–it evolved and existed solely as a medium for heroic song. It’s an amalgam of two or more dialects and preserves words and phrases from various phases of the Greek language. It can also be innovative, fashioning new words without regard to historical antecedents. It’s built up not so much out of individual words as out of formulas–fixed groups of words that fit the meter and that the singer can draw on in the process of composing his song while performing it.

While historical Indo-European linguistics has been a powerful tool in understanding Homeric words and phrases whose meaning and origins eluded even the ancient Greeks, there are many words in the Homeric poems that don’t necessarily conform to “neo-grammarian” analysis in terms of derivations from proto-Indo-European by invariable phonological processes.

The attested forms of the adjective ἐΰς looks like they originated from the adverb ἐΰ by slapping on a few standard (and metrically convenient) adjective endings. ἐΰς doesn’t have a complete paradigm–just in a limited number of fixed formulaic phrases. If I remember correctly, the formula doteres eaon does have a Vedic parallel (this is one of the phrases that suggests that there may have been a continuous tradition of Indo-European heroic song, traces of which show up in both Greek and Vedic), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that other forms of ἐΰς can be strictly derived from PIE. The forms that occur in the Homeric poems could very well have originated as ad hoc creations by singers who were ignorant of PIE and then became embedded in formulas.

A very rough analogy from non-standard English: in ordinary speech (not mine), I’ve heard the form “crunk” used as a past/past participle of the verb “crank” (meaning “to start a car”, reinforced with “done,” “done crunk”). I don’t think you can trace this back to an Old English, let alone proto-Germanic, strong verb, and this isn’t the only English verb that went from weak to strong over the history of the language.

I hope this helps dispel some of your perplexity over ἐΰς.

I greatly appreciate this input.

I borrowed the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (a very thin book for a dictionary), in which I found the entry related to ἐΰς – under the title h1(e)su. It further reads that ἐΰς is “originally suffixed form of *h1es”, whence also εἰμί; the connection of the root to εὖ is directly stated, being the “combining form of [ἐΰς], good.” If anything it’s a u-stem adjective in my opinion, should this etymology be accurate, after the intervocalic sigma disappeared.

Of course, I don’t presume to use this adjective with any but the attested forms, though I merely conjecture that if Homer’s audience heard this word, they surely would wonder how it’s used as much as we do now. It hardly mades sense for Homer to use any word that his audience could not understand, if his performances were public.

[Qimmik]

“It hardly makes sense for Homer to use any word that his audience could not understand, if his performances were public.”

Actually, it’s not unlikely that there were some words that would have been unintelligible to early audiences, and perhaps even to whoever composed the poems themselves–words that had become embedded in formulas in the traditional language of the Homeric poems at an earlier stage in the tradition and were no longer meaningful when the poems were composed (as well as words and forms alien dialects). The formulas themselves may well have meant something to performers and listeners, but not necessarily what they originally meant. As early as the sixth century BCE, the Greeks were struggling to explain obscure words in the poems, and, often as not, their explanations were wide of the mark to the extent that the meanings can be recovered today by historical linguistics. Despite their inability to understand every single word, the Greeks continued to enjoy hearing performances of the poems and reading them, just as we can today without being able to explain everything.

“If anything it’s a u-stem adjective in my opinion, should this etymology be accurate, after the intervocalic sigma disappeared.”

This explanation wouldn’t explain the strange forms of this word, e.g., θεοὶ δωτῆρες ἐάων. The feminine genitive plural would have to be ἐειάων or perhaps εἰάων, wouldn’t it? And that wouldn’t be metrically possible.

LSJ:

Ep. word freq. in nom., “ἐῒς [this is an obvious mistake in the on-line version] πάϊς Ἀγχίσαο” Il.2.819, etc.; once in acc. “ἐΰν” 8.303; neut. always ἠΰ (v. ἠΰς) (εὖ only as Adv.): irreg. gen. sg. “ἐῆος, παιδὸς ἐῆος” 1.393; “υἷος ἐῆος” 15.138, 24.422,550; “ἀνδρὸς ἐῆος” 19.342; “φιλότητι καὶ αἰδοῖ φωτὸς ἐῆος” Od.14.505; always at end of verse (exc. in Od.15.450): freq. with v.l. ἑοῖο, as Il.18.71: irreg. gen. pl. ἐάων good things, good fortune, 24.528; “θεοὶ δωτῆρες ἐάων” Od.8.325; δῶτορ ἐάων ib. 335, h.Hom.18.12, 29.8, cf. Hes.Th.46,111.

It only seems to exist in a restricted number of forms in specific formulas fitting specific metrical slots.

By the way, the American Heritage Dictionary is the work of Calvert Watkins, who was one of the most outstanding Indo-European linguists.

[y11971alex]

@Qimmik

“It hardly makes sense for Homer to use any word that his audience could not understand, if his performances were public.”

Actually, it’s not unlikely that there were some words that would have been unintelligible to early audiences, and perhaps even to whoever composed the poems themselves–words that had become embedded in formulas in the traditional language of the Homeric poems at an earlier stage in the tradition and were no longer meaningful when the poems were composed (as well as words and forms alien dialects). The formulas themselves may well have meant something to performers and listeners, but not necessarily what they originally meant. As early as the sixth century BCE, the Greeks were struggling to explain obscure words in the poems, and, often as not, their explanations were wide of the mark to the extent that the meanings can be recovered today by historical linguistics. Despite their inability to understand every single word, the Greeks continued to enjoy hearing performances of the poems and reading them, just as we can today without being able to explain everything.

Of course. There’s bound to be some words that some people just wouldn’t know. What I meant was the Homer probably wouldn’t have attempted to use an extremely obscure or otherwise unintelligible word.

“If anything it’s a u-stem adjective in my opinion, should this etymology be accurate, after the intervocalic sigma disappeared.”

This explanation wouldn’t explain the strange forms of this word, e.g., θεοὶ δωτῆρες ἐάων. The feminine genitive plural would have to be ἐειάων or perhaps εἰάων, wouldn’t it? And that wouldn’t be metrically possible.

I meant “I’m not ready to substantiate” by “in my opinion”. This deduction comes from Watkin’s entry that read that ἐΰς was a suffixed form from the root ἐσ-; give that, the suffix had to be υ-. Reading Beekes’ work, I think he also mentions that perfect active participles are adjectives with υ- stems; therefore, I suspect that feminine forms of υ- stems do not necessarily need to take the εῖα- suffix in the nominative, with respect to the feminine declension of that participle εἰδυῖα for *εἰδυἱα for *εὐδυσια etc. The same processes could be seen with his citation of the Mycenaean participle te-tu-ko-wo-a interpreted as τετυκϝοἁ.

LSJ:

Ep. word freq. in nom., “ἐῒς [this is an obvious mistake in the on-line version] πάϊς Ἀγχίσαο” Il.2.819, etc.; once in acc. “ἐΰν” 8.303; neut. always ἠΰ (v. ἠΰς) (εὖ only as Adv.): irreg. gen. sg. “ἐῆος, παιδὸς ἐῆος” 1.393; “υἷος ἐῆος” 15.138, 24.422,550; “ἀνδρὸς ἐῆος” 19.342; “φιλότητι καὶ αἰδοῖ φωτὸς ἐῆος” Od.14.505; always at end of verse (exc. in Od.15.450): freq. with v.l. ἑοῖο, as Il.18.71: irreg. gen. pl. ἐάων good things, good fortune, 24.528; “θεοὶ δωτῆρες ἐάων” Od.8.325; δῶτορ ἐάων ib. 335, h.Hom.18.12, 29.8, cf. Hes.Th.46,111.

It only seems to exist in a restricted number of forms in specific formulas fitting specific metrical slots.

By the way, the American Heritage Dictionary is the work of Calvert Watkins, who was one of the most outstanding Indo-European linguists.

Thank you for the information. This entry I had already consulted before I approached the library for the German lexicon.