Message
You are right, this was a parallel
Attic/Ionic development, and by the time of Herodotus his native accent probably
had close [e.:] for etymological *ei, falling together with contracted /e-e/. A
monophthong, at any rate, but not yet [i:].
However, I have just checked the Greek text
of the History in the Perseus database -- the spelling used there is
<Lipoxaïn> (acc.sg.), with <i>. I have no paper edition at hand to
compare, so I am left in doubt as to the provenience (or age) of the
variant with <ei>.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 9:02 AM
Subject: RE: [tied] The Scythian Brothers
In 5th c. Attic,
{ei} represents [e.:] (since /ei/ and /ee/ etc. had merged to [e.:] by
that time). Do you mean /i:/ and (etymological) /ei/ merged to /i:/ in
(Herodotus') Ionic dialect?