Question regarding οὐ

Greek Learning Greek
1

I’m brand new to Greek, so forgive my extremely basic question. I’m working through the first Athenaze book at the moment (among a couple of others) and saw this sentence in the answer key:

ὀ Δικαιόπολις οὐκ οἰκεῖ ἐν ταῖς Ἀθήναις.

What confused me was that οὐκ has no accent on it, just a breathing mark. My first thought was that this meant it was an enclitic, but given my admittedly basic understanding, if it were an enclitic, that would mean Δικαιόπολις would have an additional acute accent on the last syllable, giving: Δικαιόπολίς οὐκ. That leads me to believe it’s either a typo–doubtful since the trend of no accentuation on οὐ persists throughout–or that οὐ is something other than an enclitic. If the latter, I’d love to know what it is and why it neither follows the rules of every other word I’ve learned so far–namely that they are either accented or enclitics, which lean on the accent of the preceding word.

Just to tack on a second question: is ἐν an enclitic or is it whatever οὐ is? I see ἐν also isn’t accented in this example sentence, however it is preceded by a word with a circumflex accent on the ultima, which from my understanding would mean a mono- or disyllabic enclitic that follows would not carry an accent. For this reason I can’t tell if ἐν is an enclitic leaning on the circumflex of οἰκεῖ or if it is always unaccented like οὐ seems to be.

This is my first post, so yeah, hi!

2

You are looking at proclitics, the mirror images of enclitics.

3

Good question (too rarely asked), but I can’t answer it. The ancient grammarians, at least some of them, thought it should in fact have an accent, and it is conventionally given one (an acute) when it ends a clause or sentence (e.g. Περικλῆς οἰκεῖ ἐν Ἀθήναις, Δικαιόπολις δὲ οὔ. “Pericles lives in Athens, Dicaeopolis doesn’t.”); but not otherwise.

ἐν carries no accent. The same is true of some other monosyllabic prepositions, e.g. εἰς (but not πρός). They tie themselves to the next word (not to the preceding one, like enclitics), so they can be called proclitics (“forward-leaners”), though they have no effect on accentuation.

I suppose we might think of οὐ the same way. That’s how Smyth presents it, see bedwere’s link. But the other negative, μή, does have an accent. Go figure.

Smyth is good on facts, less good on explanations (e.g. he won’t tell you why ὁ has no accent but τόν does). We learn just to accept these things, and not to ask awkward questions. :smiley:

Welcome to Textkit!

4

Proclitics–great! Thanks a lot to both of you. :mrgreen:

5

Chandler is worth reading on this.

EDIT: See below for links to some of the sources.

932.

In conformity with the best Greek manuscripts, though contrary to the express precepts of the ancient grammarians, the following monosyllables are unaccented when they precede the words to which they belong; ὁ ἡ, οἱ αἱ of the prepositive article (ὅ=ὅς, ἥ, οἵ, αἵ, ὅ of the postpositive article or relative pronoun are accented), the relative adverb ὡς, the negative οὐ οὐκ or οὐχ, the conjunction εἰ or αἰ, and the prepositions ἐκ ἐξ, ἐν εἰν, ἐς εἰς ὡς, as ἐκ κεφαλῆς ἐς πόδας: ὁ μάντις ἦν ἐν τῇ τέχνῃ: εἰν Αἵδου: σάφα οὐκ οἶδ’ εἰ θεός ἐστιν: ὡς ἐκ κακῶν ἐχάρη: εἰς Φωκέας ὡς πρὸς συμμάχους ἐπορεύετο: ἡ οὐ διάλυσις: οἱ ἄνδρες καὶ αἱ γυναῖκες.

Ὡς, > as> , is oxytone when it follows the word to which it belongs, as θεὸς δ’ ὣς τίετο δήμῳ. When it stands for οὕτως some make it oxytone, but there seems more authority for writing ὧς, as ὣς or ὧς εἰπών.

Οὐ (or οὐκ), when it means > No> , or stands at the end of a sentence, is oxytone, as

P. Ζεὺς δ’ ἔστ’ ἐκεῖ τις, ὃς νέους τίκτει θεούς;
D. οὔκ, ἀλλ’ ὁ Σεμέλην ἐνθάδε ζεύξας γάμοις.
Eurip. Bacch. 467.

B. νὴ τὸν Δί’, αὕτη πού ’στί σοί γ’ ἡ Δαρδανίς.
P. οὔκ, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἀγορᾷ τοῖς θεοῖς δᾲς κάεται.
Aristoph. Vesp. 1371.

S. 1. αἰβοῖ· φέρ’ ἄλλην, χἀτέραν μοι χἀτέραν,
καὶ τρῖβ’ ἔθ’ ἑτέρας. S. 2. μὰ τὸν Ἀπόλλω ’γω μὲν οὔ.
Aristoph. Pax 15.

δίδωμ’ ἕκουσα τοῖσδ’ ἀναγκασθεῖσα δ’ οὔ.
Eurip. Heraclid. 551.

The prepositions are also oxytone under the conditions mentioned above, #913.

933.

Note 1.–‘There are in Greek, as in other languages, words so unimportant of themselves that they have no accent of their own, but are associated by the speaker with the really accented word to which they belong, in the same way as if the two formed one word. In Greek, however, a distinction is observed in such words: (1) those which stand > before> , and (2) those which stand > after> , the word that they refer to. The former of these unaccented words are called > proclitics > [by Hermann, not by any ancient authority], and are not furnished by the Greeks with a sign of accent: the others are called > enclitics> . They differ from each other merely by position; for e.g. τοι belongs to both in τοιγάρτοι, the first τοι being proclitic, the second enclitic;’ Göttling, Greek Accent. p. 99. This passage expresses the common doctrine concerning the nature of proclitics and enclitics. The Greek grammarians know nothing whatever about proclitics. Ὁ, ἡ, οἱ, and αἱ are oxytone, Joh. Alex. 22. 26; Apoll. de Pron. 62; Arc. 178. 12; Charax, ap. A. G. 1153: so too is εἰ, Arc. 185. 6; Joh. Alex. 40. 17; and οὐ, Arc. 183. 26; Joh. Alex. 25. 31: on the whole subject, see Göttling, Accent. pp. 388-9; Reiz, de Inclin, Accent. p. 43. Dindorf, in his edition of Sophocles, Lips. 1863, reads in (Ed. Tyr. 182, ἓν δ’ ἄλοχοι, where others leave ἑν unaccented; one cannot help wishing that editors would once for all make up their minds as to the principles on which they mean to accent their Greek.

And of course:

977.

…Editors do as well as they can in such awkward cases. Sometimes perhaps they reproduce the accents of a manuscript, and when they do, they print what may be the faint echo of a tradition going back to the best ages of classical antiquity, but which probably represents no more than the practice of the scribe’s own times. The oldest manuscript of any classical author continuously accented is comparatively modern. When manuscripts are not followed, theories of what the Greek accents must have been are generally acted on, and the result is an amount of variety in the accentuation of printed books which could hardly have been reached in any other manner. The curious reader should by all means peruse Lobeck’s unfinished essay, ‘De interpunctione cum enclisi et synalœphe conjuncta,’ in the Pathologiæ Græci Sermonis Elementa. Pars posterior, pp. 321-337.

EDIT:

The first reference to pg. 99 of Göttling is here, and from an English translation: https://books.google.com/books?id=lXESAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA99

The references to pages 388 and 389 later on are not from that translation, however, but from the German. Chandler is clearly getting much of his argument from it.

https://archive.org/stream/allgemeinelehrev00goet#page/388/mode/2up

The Lobeck essay is here, but it’s Latin so I can’t read a word of it:

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924021604313;view=1up;seq=337

6

We note that there is a general pattern that words starting on vowels are written as proclitics, whereas parallel words starting on consonants are written with the accent. Devine and Stephens has a discussion of this matter on page 357, including a list of proclitics some of which are not written as such. FWIW, I pronounce all words on that extended list of proclitics identically, as a monotone slightly lower than the pitch of the word that they attach to. (An enclitic may come in between.)

7

As opposed to starting a new topic, I’d like to tack on an additional question, this time about an enclitic juxtaposed with a proclitic. What happens when you have a proclitic + enclitic? One of the exercises in my textbook was to write “I am not strong.” I translated this as:

οὐκ εἰμι ισχῡμός.

I’m not sure what to do about εἰμι, though. Since the proclitic preceding it has no accent it can’t lean on it; does that mean the enclitic εἰμι should retain its accent, thus making the sentence

οὐκ εἰμί ισχῡμός.

? I know one could avoid this problem simply by changing the word order around so that ισχῡμός precedes εἰμι, thus giving it an accent to lean on, but for the sake of argument let’s just assume the sentence contains a proclitic + enclitic as written above.

Thanks.

8

Οὔκ εἰμι ἰσχυρός

However

Οὐκ ἔστιν ἰσχυρός

Smyth

9

Ah, silly mistake on my part, thanks for the correction–and the answer, too. 187b. of the link you posted mentions only the 3rd p. sing. having an acute accent on the first syllable, so I assume the rest of the forms would lean on the accent of the preceding enclitic? Making it

οὔκ εἰμι
οὐκ εἶ
οὐκ ἔστι(ν)
οὔκ ἐσμεν
οὔκ ἐστε
οὔκ εἰσι(ν)

10

Φαίνεται :smiley:

11

εὐχαριστέω :mrgreen:
(my attempt to say “thank you,” though I have no idea if it’s the correct way)

I will just ask my next question here, as I seem to have tons of them and they don’t warrant their own threads. In the teacher’s manual for Athenaze it says the correct answer to a translation (En->Gr) is:

ἐλθέτε δεῦρο καὶ ἐξελαύνετε τοῦς βοῦς, ὦ δοῦλοι.

I’m confused about τοῦς βοῦς. I assume that it’s the masculine plural accusative of βοῦς, in which case wouldn’t the article correctly be inflected as τούς? Therefore making it τοὺς βοῦς, given the rule of swapping a grave for an acute accent? If that’s not a typo, I’d love to hear why. Thanks in advance again.

12

It’s normally contracted to εὐχαριστῶ, but it’s fine. It should be τοὺς βοῦς.


Ἔρρωσο

13

It’s interesting that ευχαριστω is still the modern Greek word for “thank you.” Back in the second century, snooty Attic purists were insisting on χαριν οιδα, denouncing ευχαριστω (undoubtedly without foundation) as a vulgar innovation.

https://archive.org/stream/newphrynichusbei00phry#page/68/mode/2up

14

Here are the word frequency information for εὐχαριστέω. No Xenophon, but Demosthenes and respectable Κοινή authors.

15

I thought this fishy, so I checked. The alleged Demosthenes occurrence is not Demosthenes at all, but comes in a fake decree inserted into the De Corona, square-bracketed by editors. All the other examples are considerably later. See LSJ. The page linked by Hylander gives the relevant information.

Bottom line: There don’t appear to be attestions in the meaning “give thanks” prior to the 2nd cent. BCE. Then it becomes more common. I haven’t investigated its development into the stereotyped ευχαριστω “Thank you” formula, but I think it’s occasionally found in CE private letters.