Hey, I am working with one of Alcaeus’ poems. The poem is No. S262 in Page’s Supplementum lyricis Graecis and No. 298 in I Campel’s Greek lyric - Sappho and Alcaeus. I quote below an excerpt from the poem concerning my question. Verse 21 contains the verb ‘Παρεστάκοισαν’, which most translators of the poem render as ‘stand by’. Anyway, you will not find this form in any dictionary (Perseus, TLG, Montanari, etc.). The only place where I find this form is https://morphological_el.en-academic.com/313372/παρεστάκοισαν - but meaning not ‘stand by’ but ‘melt’. So I wonder what the verb/form is… As they write on the Academic website above, i.e. ‘pres part act fem acc sg (doric aeolic)’ means ‘to melt’ or is this not true and the form is a lesbian variant of the Attic verb παρίστημι? And if so, which exact form is involved? Also pres part act fem acc sg?
It’s the perfect active participle of what would be παρίστημι in Attic, with present stative meaning, “standing” (literally, “having taken a stand and still standing”). In Attic it would be παρεστηκυῖαν. See Smyth § 700D: “Aeolic inflects the perfect participle as a present in -ων, -οντος.”
-οισαν reflects the normal Aeolic outcome of *-οντ- as -οισ-, in contrast to the Attic outcome -ουσ-:
Aeolic: -οντ->-ονσ->-οισ- versus Attic -οντ->-ονσ->-ουσ-.
(1) Note especially the original long ᾱ in παρέστᾱκα where you have η in Attic/Ionic παρέστηκα. You find this long ᾱ in dialects outside of Attic/Ionic. It’s crucial to know about it when trying to read Greek Lyric—it’s why you had trouble identifying the verb.
In general, one cannot at all rely on online parsing tools to help you with Alcaeus or similar authors (really for any Greek author, but especially for less attested dialects).
(2) A little more detail to Hylander’s derivation: -οντ- changes to -ονσ(σ)- because of the addition of the suffix -yα for the feminine participle, resulting in palatalization of a voiceless consonant:
Lesbian: *παρεστάκοντ-yα (palatalization) > *παρεστάκονσσα (simplification of geminate σσ) > παρεστάκονσα (/n/ vocalized to a glide in Lesbian, unlike other forms of “Aeolic”) > παρεστάκοισα.
It’s not necessary to follow this if you’re new to lyric. But (1) above is key and easy to spot once you know about it.
(*The -οντ– forms of the perf ptcp are one of the only things that might hold together “Aeolic” as a linguistic family. Some scholars reject the category all together.)
Thank you both! I’ve been spend the whole weekend trying to understand this topic and it seems to be clear… Especially now with the additional explanation of phalakros. Anyway, I still need a lot of practice with participles as they are not so easy - especially in the lesbian dialect and for beginners in ancient Greek like me.
For students who have finished an intro grammar textbook, I often recommend the introduction to historical phonology at the beginning of the Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek. It is helpful background if you want to go further in the different dialects.
Dear phalakros, thank you for the links. The Attic Greek project is familiar to me, but I was not aware of the Eton’s Collage tool. I would also add to your suggestions: https://digitalsappho.org/sapphos-dialect/ - which is a nice introduction to the Aeolian dialect. Anyway, how the subject of the Aeolian/lesbian dialect can be complicated I found out by analysing another verse from the aforementioned work by Alcaeus (verse 10):
If you would like to know what I mean by “complicated” please read S. R. Slings’ essay “ΑΠΑΠΠΕΝΑ ΓΕΝΗΩ. Some Problems in Lesbian Grammar” from Mnemosyne vol. 32, 1974. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4430888