Re: Underlying Circumflex in Greek

--- In cybalist@..., "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:

> >Incidentally, does anyone know why the accents are written over the
> >second element of a diphthong rather than the stressed component?
>
> Writing it over the second element indicates that we have a

diphthong

> (digraph, eg written <ou> and >ei>). You can sometime see the

accent on

> the first element, which is a clue that the two vowels are to be

read

> separately - it functions as the equivalent of diaeresis on the

second

> vowel. I can't think off hand of good examples, but I know you can

find the

> form Aide:s with breathing and accent on the first vowel (or

before, if

> capitalised) which means the word is trisyllabic.

Aide:s is a complicated example. Firstly, when a vowel with an iota
subscript is capitalised, the iota subscript becomes a normal iota,
following the full vowel. Transliterating the forms from my
abridgement of Scott and Lidell is difficult. The forms therein are ?
<A-íde:s> and Attic <hÁide:s> or <há_ide:s>, where <?> denotes a
smooth breathing, <h> a rough breathing, <a_i> is an alpha with
subscript iota, <-> indicates a diaeresis on the following vowel, and
<A> v. <a> reflects the Greek capitalisation. I would say that all
these forms are paroxytone (anglice: have an acute accent on the
penultimate), and that only the first form is trisyllabic.

Richard.