What is this word?

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
Barry Hofstetter
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Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: What is this word?

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Alan Bunning wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:
τοξα εν εκιστης θεω γης ειρηνης εν ανθρ.
Alan, about τοξα. Does your automatic parsing (lemmatising) routine interpret this τοξα to mean, "Arrows (are flying) torturously to the god (or to the tortured god) of the peaceful earth inside a person."? :lol: :? Dada sixteen centuries too early.
Treating it as a spelling error of δοξα.
That's pretty clear, and this is part of the fun of ostraca -- not only do you get letters missing for various reasons, but you often have spelling irregularities and various other types of solecisms. Back to the original question:

ανθρ. = ἀνθρώποις

γιν = γίνεται or a spelling variation on ἐγένετο, ἐγίνετο.

I have no idea what's going on with εκιστης except that it's in the right position for ὑψίστοις. I suspect what we are looking at is just some really bad copying. I agree it would be helpful to see the original shard.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: What is this word?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Alan Bunning wrote:
Shirley Rollinson wrote:Before we spend more time working with a printed copy of what someone thought they saw on the ostracon, we need a photo of the ostracon itself.
Step 1 is to locate where the ostracon is at present, and who has it.
Step 2 - contact them and ask them to publish a photo of the ostracon.
Step 3 - then we can think about what the letters/word are and what they might mean.
It is LDAB 5902 supposedly housed at O. 118, Cambridge University Library if someone wants to pursue that. However, in my experience such transcriptions are usually pretty good and rarely are they improved by observing the actual artifact. So in the meantime, can anyone speculate on the nature of εκιστης assuming that those would be the correct letters?
Could you scan the whole text and post it? Like lines 1 till the end.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Robert Crowe wrote:
Robert Crowe wrote:Alan Bunning wrote:
can anyone speculate on the nature of εκιστης assuming that those would be the correct letters?


ἑκίστης could arguably be derived from ὑψίστοις under the transformation of labials to gutturals within Indo-European languages. This change, though, while common between different languages within the family, is not so evident within one particular tongue. This would be the only example I know of in Greek.
Upon further reflection, κῶς for πῶς between Ionic and Attic comes to mind.
Assuming that they are the correct letters, and knowing that from the 3rd century AD onwards, ε could be αι or ε. There is an -ιζειν verb αἰκίζειν "to mistreat"; pass. "to be tortured". In the part of morphology called (wrongly in many cases) derivational morphology, -ιζειν verbs can be made into a passive adjective -ιστος. You can see that in the allegorical story about the marriage feast the word σιτιστός is the passive adjective "(hand) fed" (rather than left to exercise while grazing, resulting in tough meaty muscles), culturally interpreted as "fattened", derived from the verb σιτίζειν "to feed". Theoretically, the verb αἰκίζειν could be expressed as an adjective αἰκιστός, ή, όν "tortured", "mistreaded". From the 3rd century AD onwards, the pronunciation of η and οι might be equivalent. So, ἑκίστης might be understood as αἰκιστοίς, which might be the dative plural of the neuter "tortured things".

Having said all that, I think that taking it as that is as sensible as waving one's sandal in the air to follow Brian. Young children have an innate ability to acquire language despite the many acolutha and ungrammatical sentences they encounter. Recognition of errors and making assumptions about what should be said is a natural part of language acquisition, at all ages. Here, in a devotional hymn, possibly quoting Luke, a word derived from αἰκίζειν might be out of place.

I think that in this case, perhaps an attempt at dictation, we could easily put too much emphasis on what is written here.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Shirley Rollinson
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Shirley Rollinson »

I contacted the Cambridge Library, re. ostracon LDAB 5902
They sent me a couple of photos, which are too large to upload to B-Greek, so I've uploaded them to my website - they are at
http://www.drshirley.org/pics/greek/DSC_0712.jpg
and
http://www.drshirley.org/pics/greek/DSC_0713.jpg
as one can see, the ostracon has been broken, and parts of the inscription are missing.
Dr. Freeman would appreciate it if you could send him information about the inscription.

this is their reply :
"Thank you for your enquiry regarding Ostrakon 118.
I attach a couple of snaps of the front and rear of the ostrakon in question. We'd be happy for you to upload them on the forum, with due acknowledgement to the University Library. In return, we would be very grateful if you could please provide us with as much detail as possible about the item, the inscription and a translation of the text, so that we can add this to our records and put it to use if we ever come to digitise our collection of ostraka.
Best wishes,
James
---
Dr James Freeman
Medieval Manuscripts Specialist
Cambridge University Library
West Road
Cambridge
CB3 9DR
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jason Hare
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Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Jason Hare »

Shirley Rollinson wrote:I contacted the Cambridge Library, re. ostracon LDAB 5902
They sent me a couple of photos, which are too large to upload to B-Greek, so I've uploaded them to my website - they are at
http://www.drshirley.org/pics/greek/DSC_0712.jpg
and
http://www.drshirley.org/pics/greek/DSC_0713.jpg
as one can see, the ostracon has been broken, and parts of the inscription are missing.
Dr. Freeman would appreciate it if you could send him information about the inscription.

this is their reply :
"Thank you for your enquiry regarding Ostrakon 118.
I attach a couple of snaps of the front and rear of the ostrakon in question. We'd be happy for you to upload them on the forum, with due acknowledgement to the University Library. In return, we would be very grateful if you could please provide us with as much detail as possible about the item, the inscription and a translation of the text, so that we can add this to our records and put it to use if we ever come to digitise our collection of ostraka.
Best wishes,
James
---
Dr James Freeman
Medieval Manuscripts Specialist
Cambridge University Library
West Road
Cambridge
CB3 9DR
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Those pictures are not showing up. Could you possibly upload them to PhotoBucket.com or some similar hosting site?
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
Wes Wood
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Wes Wood »

They wouldn't load on my iPhone, but that did on my work computer (chromebook).
Ἀσπάζομαι μὲν καὶ φιλῶ, πείσομαι δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ θεῷ ἢ ὑμῖν.-Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους 29δ
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: What is this word?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

They loaded okay for me, but the need to be photoshopped. Identifying the colour(s) of the ink and then reducing all other colours.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Alan Bunning
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Alan Bunning »

Shirley Rollinson wrote:I contacted the Cambridge Library, re. ostracon LDAB 5902
They sent me a couple of photos, which are too large to upload to B-Greek, so I've uploaded them to my website - they are at
http://www.drshirley.org/pics/greek/DSC_0712.jpg
and
http://www.drshirley.org/pics/greek/DSC_0713.jpg
I could not get them to load either by clicking on these links. I would get this hotlinking error:

We have detected a hotlinking error. Hotlinking is when you link to images or NON html files on 0catch.com from another host. Hotlinking is not allowed for our FREE Accounts. Hotlinking is allowed for our paid accounts. Your account can be upgraded in the user section when you have logged in.

But if I typed the URL in directly, they would load just fine.
Jason Hare
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Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Jason Hare »

Alan Bunning wrote: But if I typed the URL in directly, they would load just fine.
That worked for me, too. Thanks!
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
Shirley Rollinson
Posts: 415
Joined: June 4th, 2011, 6:19 pm
Location: New Mexico
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Shirley Rollinson »

DSC_0712-cropped.jpg
DSC_0712-cropped.jpg (528.5 KiB) Viewed 1903 times
Alan Bunning wrote:
Shirley Rollinson wrote:I contacted the Cambridge Library, re. ostracon LDAB 5902
They sent me a couple of photos, which are too large to upload to B-Greek, so I've uploaded them to my website - they are at
http://www.drshirley.org/pics/greek/DSC_0712.jpg
and
http://www.drshirley.org/pics/greek/DSC_0713.jpg
I could not get them to load either by clicking on these links. I would get this hotlinking error:

We have detected a hotlinking error. Hotlinking is when you link to images or NON html files on 0catch.com from another host. Hotlinking is not allowed for our FREE Accounts. Hotlinking is allowed for our paid accounts. Your account can be upgraded in the user section when you have logged in.

But if I typed the URL in directly, they would load just fine.
I don't know why they're not hotlinking - it is a paid account.
However, I've cropped the original graphic, so that it's small enough to upload
Hope it works.
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