Just wondering, why were macrons chosen to mark long vowels as opposed to something like an acute accent mark? The later seems to visually relate more to the apex seen sometimes in surviving classical Latin stone carvings and are more widely supported with contemporary fonts. Macrons as well can sometimes be a bit intrusive in some fonts; either being too heavy or running into adjacent glyphs, both of which impair reading. Acute accents seem less visually disruptive. Also, I believe languages like Hungarian and Slovak make use of acute accents to mark long vowels.
I know the acute accent is used in some cases with Ecclesiastical texts to mark stress; perhaps this was significant enough to warrant not causing confusion?
I think that’s part of the reason. The apex was initially used to mark long vowels. This could lead to two possibilities:
The apex was used for “special” vowels, and when romance language emerged, it was naturally used to mark stressed vowels
Long vowels were often in the stressed syllabe, so the apex was associated with stress, and it was used as such in romance languages, as well in Latin when vowel length lost its importance in usual Latin.
The consequence, as you point it, is that it became the marker of stressed vowels and couldn’t suit to mark long vowels anymore.
On Google Books I see it used in English-language specific grammars as early as 1827, which contradicts my first guess, that it was some influence of telegraphy and Morse code.
An interesting question! (sorry just catching up late).
I’ve never really thought about this… my best guess is that it was adopted by analogy from the printing conventions of early books which printed a symbol similar to macron (tilde-like) over the vowel in long syllables where a following nasal (m or n) was omitted by the printer, which seemed to be a common convention back then. Perhaps then it was adopted (with the form changed into a macron) to mark a long vowel by analogy, even where there was no omission of any nasal. No idea really.
I had a quick look in a short essay on punctuation at the back of an Aldine I bought in Naples a while back (Epitome orthographiae, 1575) but couldn’t find anything on it there.
I just found it drawn in the Greek manuscript version of Theodorus Gaza’s grammar, which dates from 1476/1479. It has “μακρᾶ” followed by the line drawn in red ink. The printed version, a few decades later, drops this.
Yes, it surprised me too, hence the quotes. When he is using it as the adjective, he accents it μακρά (see the previous page). But he apparently gives the substantive as μακρᾶ. This may simply be to distinguish them.
The βραχεῖα is given as the breve, which means that short and long are marked exactly as today. The hyphen (ὑφέν), used for words broken on lines, is given as ~, and so can be distinguished from the μακρᾶ. The perispomene is an inverted breve, as was usual with the bookhand.
Long and short vowels were quite often marked in literary papyrus texts (esp. Lesbian), and the practice was continued in medieval. The Greek conventions were carried over into Latin (where however use of the apex could confuse things).
[μακρά among the προσωδιαι in Joel’s manuscript, though oddly accented, is fem.sing. (cf. its partner βραχεῖα), so its -ά is long; and is correctly notated as such.]
The two quantity marks are followed in Joel’s manuscript by three other items of lectional apparatus: the ἀπόστροφος, our “apostrophe,” indicating elision; the ὑφέν “hyphen,” sublinearly linking two lexical components that constitute a single word (on the same line, not like our hyphen); and the διαστολή “separator,” looking something like a raised comma, the opposite of a “hyphen” (e.g. εστι’ναξιος).
These are all well attested in literary papyri. They’re designed, obviously, to help the reader effect the correct lexical articulation in texts written in scriptio continua (no gaps between words), as was conventional in antiquity.
There are well-chosen papyrus examples, with photos, in E.G.Turner’s Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World.
I’m in book 3, and ἡ μακρᾶ has not been repeated. It always appears as μακρά. The circumflex version seems to either be an error, or to refer specifically to the sign itself.
I’ve seen that sublinear use of ὑφέν in papyri and the old codices (and the word is “ὑφ’ ἕν” after all!!), but in this (late) manuscript at least, I have not seen the sublinear use. Instead he does three things with it, two that pretty much match our hyphen.
Use 1: Written inline at line end to signify wordbreak (as we use it). The only difference is the tilde shape.
Use 2: Written above the character, but otherwise seems to be mostly used where we would use prepend hyphen. Ex., talking about endings on and so: -ω, -εις, -ει, but the hyphen written above the character. Because the hyphen is written with the tilde shape, and not a straight line, it’s always distinguishable from the macron.
Both hyphens are written above. That ligature for “σαν” in ἔστωσαν took a little bit for me to work out.
Use 3: There is a “nomina sacra” on page 12. That “ἄνος” with the hyphen above the omicron is the nomina sacra form for ἄνθρωπος.
EDIT: Use 4 The sublinear use does occur as well in this manuscript. See αὐτο-ενεργητϊκόν and αὐτο-παθητϊκόν on page 21. The hyphen is marked below the line on each, indicating a single word.