Accentuation

Abstract

The accents marks in modern editions of Ancient Greek texts primarily reflect the accentual system of an educated register of the Koine of the early 2nd c. BCE. In this system, phonological, morphological, and lexical factors conspire to associate a pitch accent with one syllable of each lexical word. The phonology of the language permits limited contrasts in accentual position (λιθοβόλος vs. λιθόβολος = litobólos vs. litóbolos) and type (ἰσθμοί vs. ἰσθμοῖ = istmói ̯vs. istmôi)̯; in the latter case, the syllable marked with an acute accent hosts a High tone, and that marked with a circumflex hosts a High-Low falling contour tone. In any given form, the maximum number of phonologically licit accentual contrasts is three. Within the bounds set by the phonology, morphological and lexical factors, e.g. the inherent accentual properties of particular suffixes, further determine the accentuation of a word. Comparison with related Indo-European languages, especially Vedic, shows that the Greek system developed from an earlier system that likely lacked a contrast in accent type but permitted more positional contrasts; Greek accentuation is more dependent on the rhythmic structure of the language. 1. THE NOTATIONAL SYSTEM The accent marks written in modern editions of Ancient Greek texts derive from a grammatical tradition that most likely began in Alexandria in the early 2nd c. BCE, with Aristophanes of Byzantium, to whom the invention of the written signs is attributed, and his successor as librarian, Aristarchus of Samothrace. Given the important functional role that accent played in the language, conveying accentual information in writing facilitated the difficult task of reading poetic texts written in scriptio continua. For example, the unaccented graphic sequence απονου = aponou could represent ἀπ ̓ ὄνου = ap’ ónoː 'from a donkey' or ἀπο νοῦ = apō nôː 'from (your) senses' (cf. Aristoph. Nub. 1273). These lectional signs conveyed the accentuation of the Koine spoken during that period, and to a lesser extent, the accentuation of other dialects; it is possible that the scholars also consulted oral traditions, e.g. rhapsodic performances of the Homeric poems, 1 The apostrophe shows that a word-final short vowel has been elided (deleted), in this case /o/. Here, as often, elision avoids vowel hiatus. 2 I have chosen the (combining macron =) IPA mid tone to convey the “grave” accent, which is an underlying high tone that has been lowered in the (post-lexical =) phrasal phonology. See further below. This is the author’s accepted version of Gunkel, Dieter. 2014. “Accentuation.” In Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. Vol 1: A–F, ed. Georgios K. Giannakis et al., 7–12. Leiden/Boston: Brill. 2 to determine the accentuation of forms that were unfamiliar to them. In the 2nd c. CE, Aelius Herodian codified the tradition in περὶ καθολικῆς προσῳδίᾱς = perī katolikɛ̂ːs prosɔːid̯íaːs 'On Prosody in General', which served as the basis for later works on accentuation. In the early accented papyri, which date from the 2nd c. BCE onwards, notational conventions vary, as does the frequency with which written accents were applied. The notational system familiar to us, where each accented word is marked with an acute, circumflex, or grave, was first applied in minuscule manuscripts of the 9th c. CE by scribes following the precepts of the same grammatical tradition. The early works on accentuation including Herodian's do not survive as such, but scholia and short treatises based on them provide us with indirect access. On the grammatical tradition, the papyri, and the manuscripts, see Probert 2006:21-52 with refs. 2. PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY OF THE GREEK ACCENTUAL SYSTEM Phonetically, accent may be studied from an articulatory, acoustic, and perceptual standpoint. It is clear that the most salient perceptual correlate of ancient Greek accent — what the Greeks themselves 'heard' — was pitch, at least until the 2 c. BCE. Within the word, pitch peaked during syllables marked with an acute or grave accent, and it both peaked and fell again during syllables marked with a circumflex. Phonologically, we may say that syllables marked with acute accent hosted a High tone and those marked with a circumflex hosted a High-Low tone, i.e. a falling contour tone. Evidence for the phonetic nature of Greek accent comes from several sources. The words used to refer to 'accent' have to do with musical pitch, e.g. τόνος = tónos refers to the ‘tension’ and therefore to the perceived pitch of vibrating strings, and the basic meaning of προσῳδίᾱ = prosɔːid̯íaː is 'singing along (to music)'. The adjectives used to specify the three different types of προσῳδίᾱ = prosɔːid̯íaː are ὀξεῖα = oksêii̯a̯ ‘high’ for acute, βαρεῖα = barêii̯a̯ ‘low’ for grave, and ὀξυβάρεια = oksubáreii̯a̯ ‘high-low’ for circumflex. Fragments of non-strophic musical compositions dating from as early as the 3 c. BCE — the Delphic hymns in particular — provide a richer source of phonetic detail. As in vocal music traditions in a number of languages with contrastive tone (Devine and Stephens 1994:160-171), the fragments display a relatively strict correspondence between the pitch movements of speech and the melody of the music it is set to (Devine and Stephens 1994:172-194; Probert 2006:47-48; West 1992:199). For example, the accented syllable of a word is set no lower than its unaccented syllables, such that the pitch peak of a word corresponds to a local peak in the music. If a syllable bearing a circumflex is set to a twonote melism, the first is usually higher, respecting the falling pitch contour of circumflex accent. The grave accent, a phrasal sandhi variant of the acute, proves to be a lowered version of the acute (Devine and Stephens 1994:180-183), and it is possible to reconstruct the accentual contour of entire words. For example, 3 τόνος = tónos and προσῳδίᾱ = prosɔːid̯íaː are the source of English tone and prosody. This is the author’s accepted version of Gunkel, Dieter. 2014. “Accentuation.” In Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. Vol 1: A–F, ed. Georgios K. Giannakis et al., 7–12. Leiden/Boston: Brill. 3 in a proparoxytone word of five syllables (e.g. ἐκλεγόμενος = eklegómenos), pitch rose steadily over the initial two unaccented syllables, peaked at the accented syllable, then fell steeply over the first post-accentual syllable and less steeply over the final syllable (Devine and Stephens 1994:183-189).