I have a rather big list of Ancient Greek words which I would like to correct, i.e. to join prefixes and roots:
ἀπό-ὁρμάζω
ἀπό-ὑπνώσσω
ἀπό-ὑστερίζω
ἀνά-κέω
ἀνά-κεντάω
…
Is there a formal rule establishing the orthography of the resulting word, so ἐν-εἰμί becomes ἔνειμι? The main problem are diacritics I guess. Is dissimilation possible in some cases?
P.S. More complex case: ἀνά-εἰμί goes to ἄνειμι.
??
It’s not clear what you want to do, or why. Do ancient Greek words need correcting, and what do you mean by that?
Orthography is a matter of convention, and conventions are variable. In Ptolemaic times ενιμμεγαροιϲ was the accepted orthography for what we now write as ἐνὶ μεγάροις, and is no less “correct.”
As for ἔν-ειμι: in compound verbs, whether in -μι or -ω, the accent is recessive, i.e. it comes as close to the front as it can (so antepenult in -μι verbs).
And ἀπο-ὑπνώσσω, to take one of your sample words, would become ἀφυπνώσσω as a matter of course. Similarly with ἄνειμι.
One principle is worth more than a list of thousands of potential words.
P.S. A better game would be to guess where each of the words comes from. Attic prose?, Homer?, tragedy? And in what kind of context. That would be a less sterile sort of enquiry.
Hi, agreed with Michael. If you look at e.g. Smyth 884b, where a prep. is the first part of a compound, the ‘usual euphonic changes occur’.
This means the rules you’re looking for are basically all the rules for euphony of vowels and consonants, rules of accent etc. See e.g. Smyth secs 46 and ff. in Part I (as an example, check out how ν before consonants works at secs 91 and ff.).
Smyth’s sections on euphony are called ‘historical developments’ in the Cambridge grammar (pgs 16–34). Also check out ch. 23 on word formation.
As Michael noted, the result can be different at different times and in different dialects. I don’t know about Ptolemaic personally, but e.g. in Homeric you get some forms that differ from Attic.
As a final point to consider, even if you got all the rules right, the words you produce might not be attested.
Cheers, Chad
I have a list of hyphenated word (such as ἀνά-εἰμί) and want to convert them into the form I find in the LSJ dictionary (ἄνειμι). I was asking about exact rules how it can be made automatically. I suppose that all these words are for Attic dialect.
I have read about contraction and crasis in Ancient Greek, thank you for directing me to the ‘euphonic changes’.
I think you have this back to front. ἀνά-εἰμί is not a hyphenated word, it’s scarcely a word at all. It merely reconstructs the morphology of ἄνειμι. It’s all quite elementary. If you’re not familiar with the processes involved, Chad directs you to relevant sections in Smyth which describe them.
Not everything can be automated, thank god.