Category talk:Ancient Greek terms with incomplete pronunciation
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Latest comment: 2 years ago by Sarri.greek in topic Default
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[edit]Although the preview-note from Module:grc-pronunciation.function make_ambig_note says «By default, Module:grc-pronunciation assumes it is short if unmarked» it is left unmarked. Dictionaries do not comment on prosody of many words e.g. ψαλμός (psalmós)
Perhaps, a Category:Ancient Greek terms with unknown/unspecified prosody? This would be useful for main forms, and inflectional forms only if different. Thank you. ‑‑Sarri.greek ♫ I 01:10, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
- @Sarri.greek: I don't think that's necessary. If a word is not attested until Koine or later, vowel length is irrelevant anyway, just make sure to set
|period=koi1
or whatever is appropriate (see Template:grc-IPA/documentation). And in a lot of cases, the length of an unmarked vowel can be deduced from other evidence. Most dictionaries never mark length on vowels in closed syllables, because closed syllables are always heavy in poetic scansion, which is why they don't give the length of the α in ψαλμός. But we know that ψαλμός comes from ψάλλω, and the future of ψάλλω is ψᾰλῶ with ᾰ, so we know that ψαλμός is ψᾰλμός. Also, if a word is accented on the penult and the final syllable has a short vowel, then the accented vowel has to have a circumflex if it's long; if it has an acute, we know it's short. So another way we know that the α of ψάλλω (psállō) is short is that the 2nd person singular present active imperative is ψάλλε and the neuter of the present active participle is ψάλλον. If the α were long, they would be *ψᾶλλε and ψᾶλλον respectively. (I don't know whether those forms of this verb are actually attested, but those forms are a good place to look in verbs where you're uncertain of the length of the stem vowel.) —Mahāgaja · talk 16:34, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
- Thank you so very much @Mahagaja for all the very helpful explanations. I am aware of the forms which show the prosody by their accent.
- I did not know that dictionaries avoid showing prosodies in words like ψαλμός (psalmós). Your line of deduction is very nice. Ι can see at @ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ the ψᾰλῶ and the note for later macron ψᾱλ- (By the way, Logeion has the new Bailly2020 which has a lot of later words and proper nouns) But I would not take the responsibility to deduce prosodies, -sorry to add this extra burden on you-.
- PS At el.wikt, there is no IPA for grc, but while fixing the inflection tables, (trying to make an appendix and I am overwhelmed by exceptions and difficulties...) some declensions came up, demanding prosody on ambiguous dichrona e.g. for νάρκη. We have a Category:with incomplete prosody and a Cat:with unknown prosody, hoping that in the future, a form which shows prosody can be found (e.g. we found πλάσται for πλάστης), or a deduction could be discussed by an expert. At the moment there is no editor for ancient greek at el.wikt :(
- Again, thank you Mahāgaja!! ‑‑Sarri.greek ♫ I 18:10, 25 April 2022 (UTC)