Ancient Greek accentuation
synchronic patterns, frequency effects, and prehistory
- ISBN: 9780199279609
- Editorial: Oxford University Press
- Fecha de la edición: 2006
- Lugar de la edición: Oxford. Reino Unido
- Colección: Oxford Classical Monographs
- Encuadernación: Cartoné
- Medidas: 24 cm
- Nº Pág.: 442
- Idiomas: Inglés
The accent of many Greek words has long been considered arbitrary, but Philomen Probert points to some striking correlations between accentuation and a word's synchronic morphological transparency, and between accentuation and word frequency, that give clues to the prehistory of the accent system. Bringing together comparative evidence for the Indo-European accentuation of the relevant categories with recent insights into the effects that loss of transparency and word frequency have on language change, Probert uses the synchronically observable correlations to bridge the gap between the accentuation patterns reconstructable for Indo-European and those directly attested for Greek from the Hellenistic period onwards. CONTENTS: I; 1. Evidence for the Greek accent; 2. Some background on Greek accentuation; 3. Continuity and change in Greek accentuation; 4. A brief history of scholarship on the Greek accent; II; 5. Introduction to Part II; 6. Words with the suffix; 7. Words with the suffix; 8. Words with the suffix; 9. Words with the suffix; 10. Preliminary conclusions; 11. Words with the suffix; 12. Complex Caland formations; 13. Summary and further consequences