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  • The Accentuation of Ancient Greek Enclitics:A Didactic Simplification
  • Renan Baker

This study attempts to suggest simplifying the guidelines for the accentuation of ancient Greek enclitics. The usual approach is to provide about four to seven paragraphs to treat every possible scenario of combinations between the preceding word(s) and the following enclitic(s), whether disyllabic or monosyllabic, usually with cross-references between them. Present-day textbooks and reference grammars seem to follow the traditional reference grammars such as Smyth without using the more technical terms (e.g., oxytone, perispomenon, proparoxytone, etc.).1 However, reviewing the examples given by Smyth, Morwood, and Probert and comparing the accepted rules make it possible to simplify the basic guidelines for the accentuation of those words and their preceding words.

Enclitics in the vast majority of cases do not have an accent, for they are semi-dependent words2 and as the verb from which they derive their name suggests (έγκλίνειν), they lean on the preceding word and throw "their" accent on it. Hence the preliminary explanation to the student should be that Greek enclitics never receive an accent of their own with only one exception: if the preceding word has an acute accent on its penult (the second syllable from the end), only a disyllabic enclitic receives an accent on its last syllable.3 That is to say, the student is taught to ask whether there is an acute on the penult of the preceding word, in order to understand and recognize an enclitic word with an accent. By doing so a better emphasis is laid on the most crucial point, which causes the greatest change regarding the accentuation of the enclitics. For this is one of the few cases4 in which (disyllabic) enclitics do get an accent, e.g. ἀνθρώπου τινός, ἀνθρώπων τινῶν, and n.b. λέγω τι.

Furthermore, there remains the treatment of enclitics following words with 1) circumflex on the penult, as in δῶρόν τι or δῶρόν τινος ἀνθρώπου,5 2) acute on the antepenult, as in ἄνθρωπός τις, ἄνθροποί τινες,6 3) "grave"-acute accent on the ultima, as in ψυχή τις, ψυχή τινος ἀνθρώπου,7 or 4) circumflex on the ultima, as in πῦρ τι, καλῶς ἐστι.8 These four scenarios [End Page 529] seem usually to receive a separate section or sentence in reference grammars and textbooks without any special need for it. Scenarios 1 and 2 can be fused together into one for both philological9 and didactic reasons, as they both yield to the same rule: when followed by enclitics, whether mono- or disyllabic, such words add an acute accent on their last syllable. Scenarios 3 and 4 do not require special attention, for they affect neither to the preceding word, which retains its original acute or circumflex accent, nor to the enclitic. These four scenarios can be covered by a single rule that enclitics add an acute to an unaccented ultima of the preceding word, if it does not have an acute accent on its penult.

This rule can also be applied to strings of enclitics, for in such cases an enclitic throws its accent on an unaccented ultima of a preceding word, which happens to be an enclitic: εἴ πού τίς τινα ἴδοι (Thucydides 4.47.3), εἴ τίς τί σοί φησι.10

Accordingly, the discussion can be concluded by suggesting the following simplified guidelines for the accentuation of Greek enclitics; once the explanation on the nature of the enclitics has been given, stress should be given to two major guidelines or rules:

If there is an acute accent on the penult (second syllable from the end) of a word preceding an enclitic, only a disyllabic enclitic takes an accent on its ultima; a monosyllabic enclitic has no accent.

If there is no acute accent on the penult of a word preceding an enclitic, its unaccented ultima is accented with an acute. An accented ultima retains its original accent.11 [End Page 530]

Renan Baker
University College, Oxford
Classical World 103.4 (2010)
renan.baker@classics.ox.ac.uk

Footnotes

1. H. W. Smyth, Greek Grammar, 2nd ed., rev. G. M. Messing (Cambridge 1956) 42–43, followed by the more recent reference grammar and textbooks refraining from technical terms: M. Balme and G. Lawall, ATHENAZE—An Introduction to Ancient Greek (Oxford 1995) 208–209 and J. Morwood, Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek (Oxford 2001) 224–25; but...

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