Hello everybody, I have a dilemma regarding the usage of omega and omicron in compound words. As an example, let’s consider the word μόρφωσις, which is transliterated as mórphōsis because of the omega it contains. Does this omega become omicron when mórphōsis is being used as a prefix (and why)? For example, in morpho-genesis or morpho-stasis. I understand that these are modern compounds that are not found in Ancient Greek (at least to my knowledge), but I’m still curious about what form would the old Greeks settle for. In case of morphostasis, for instance, the accent would be on ‘pho’ syllable in singular and ‘sta’ syllable in dual/plural, but I don’t know if that makes any difference regarding the length of the preceedings ‘o’ vowel. My logic would be that morpho- as a prefix always utilises omicron instead of omega, but maybe I’m missing something. Thank you in advance.
I believe the compound words you’ve mentioned actually come from μορφή rather than μόρφωσις, which would explain the lack of the omega.
μόρφωσις and μόρφωμα come from μόρφη too, and get the ω through Smyth 834g. These are just a noun + suffix. Something like μορφοσκόπος is a compound word described by Smyth 871b. Smyth discusses compound words/nouns generally beginning in 869.
Your mentioned morphostasis and morphogenesis would both be compound words and work the same as μορφοσκόπος, I think.