Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics

Abstract The vocative is the grammatical case used to address the person or entity the speaker is talking to, and can be regarded as a 2nd person deictic form. When it has a specific form (only in some singular masculine and feminine nouns), it is the bare stem, whereas in the dual and plural it always has the same form as the nominative. 1. Generalities The vocative is the grammatical case (Case (including Syncretism)) used to address the person or entity (divinity, animal, seldom object) the speaker is talking to. Its function is to establish and identify the addressee within a given speec…

Abstract The verbal grammatical category of voice pertains to the relationship between syntactic roles (subject, direct object) and semantic roles (agent, patient, experiencer, beneficiary, recipient). Ancient Greek has three morphologically distinct voice categories. The active voice is marked by act. endings ( -ō, -eis, etc.). The middle voice is marked by mid. endings (- mai, - sai, etc.). The passive voice is marked by the suffix -thē-/ -ē-. It is restricted to the aor. and fut. stems. While the act. voice is semantically unmarked, the mid. voice expresses …

Abstract Voicing refers to an assimilative process by which a voiceless sound becomes voiced; the term can also be used in reference to the feature [voice], which involves vibration of the vocal cords. Voicing is a process whereby a consonant changes from voiceless to voiced (the reverse is called devoicing). In Ancient Greek the change is always due to assimilation with an adjacent sound, either a vowel (a, i, u), sonorant (m, l, w), or voiced obstruent (b, d, g, v, z). Greek stop clusters always agree in voicing (Probert 2010:94), so voicing assimilation can be observed whenever t…

Abstract The main vowel developments in the (pre)history of Ancient Greek involved (1) the changes from PIE to the Proto-Greek five-vowel systems; (2) long diphthongs; (3) issues of vocalization; (4) assimilation of vowels to neighboring sounds; (5) extension of the long-vowel system; (6) the changes from Proto-Ionic to Ionic and Attic; and (7) (post-)Classical development of vowels and diphthongs. The main vowel developments in the (pre)history of Ancient Greek involved (1) the changes from PIE to the Proto-Greek five-vowel systems; (2) long diphthongs; (3) issues of vo…

Abstract Vowel fronting refers to a shift in the place of articulation of a vowel (i.e., the position of the highest point of the tongue during its pronunciation) to one further forward in the mouth. Vowel fronting refers to a shift in the place of articulation of a vowel (i.e., the position of the highest point of the tongue during its pronunciation) to one further forward in the mouth. Technically any of the changes which involve the raising of a front vowel (e.g. that of  ē [ɛː] > [e̝ː] > [iː] in Koine) could also be classed as fronting, since height correlates with ‘frontne…

Abstract Vowels are segments articulated with an open vocal tract. Greek had twelve vowels: /i iː y yː e eː ɛː o oː ɔː a aː/. The vowel system of late fifth-century Classical Attic is well known for its asymmetry, as it has almost twice as many front vowels as back. Considerable debate surrounds this topic, and one is hard pressed to find any two (synchronic or diachronic) accounts of the Attic vowel system that agree in all their details. See Brixhe (1996); Threatte (1980) for the inscriptional evidence; Lejeune (1972), Meier-Brügger (1992), Rix (1992), and Sihler (1995) for diachronic ov…