Accentuation
Posted: January 16th, 2014, 8:16 pm
It’s been 30 years since I took Greek and I am disabled and had to sell my 8,000 volume library which included every major grammar of Greek. Recently, my 7 year old grandson showed an interest in learning Greek so we Skype weekly and I am teaching him Koine. There are numerous decent texts online of the NT itself. The vocabulary, syntax, and morphology are fairly simple for me to recall and I find many online charts etc., but the rules of accentuation completely elude me. I seem to recall a basic set of rules learned in the first week of class for how to choose an acute, grave, or circumflex and whether it goes over the ultima, the penult, or the antepenult. I don’t find the rules anywhere online and they are skipped with a dismissive sentence in A.T. Robertson’s grammar which I found in Google Books. I downloaded a few charts declined in the second declension, but without accents. I have tried to interpolate the rules from examples in the NT. I cannot come up with a set of rules that work for all the examples I find in the NT.
When I look at the word ἄνθρωπος, I find the following:
From http://www.greekbible.com/ I construct the following:
ἄνθρωπος Matt. 4:4
ἀνθρώπου Matt. 8:20
ἄνθρωπῳ Not found. Not sure of accent.
ἄνθρωπον Matt. 9:9
ἄνθρωπε Not found. Not sure of accent.
ἄνθρωποι Matt. 7:12
ἀνθρώπων Matt. 4:9
ἀνθρώποις Matt. 6:5
ἀνθρώπους Matt. 5:19
ἄνθρωποι Not found. Not sure of accent. Same morphology as nominative plural. Likely the same accentuation.
I seem to recall the rules as something like: 1.) move the accent as close to the antepenult as the rules allow, 2.) long syllables in the ultima pull the accent away from the antepenult, 3.) circumflex over long syllables. These are definitely not the rules and I don’t recall any rules for when to use an acute and when to use grave. With the examples of ἄνθρωπος that I find in the NT, I can’t seem to figure out a set of rules that explain all the forms. Anyone know an internet site listing these rules? Anyone ever type them up for students who would be willing to paste them here? Do these rules exist? Or have I created a vague and false memory?
When I look at the word ἄνθρωπος, I find the following:
From http://www.greekbible.com/ I construct the following:
ἄνθρωπος Matt. 4:4
ἀνθρώπου Matt. 8:20
ἄνθρωπῳ Not found. Not sure of accent.
ἄνθρωπον Matt. 9:9
ἄνθρωπε Not found. Not sure of accent.
ἄνθρωποι Matt. 7:12
ἀνθρώπων Matt. 4:9
ἀνθρώποις Matt. 6:5
ἀνθρώπους Matt. 5:19
ἄνθρωποι Not found. Not sure of accent. Same morphology as nominative plural. Likely the same accentuation.
I seem to recall the rules as something like: 1.) move the accent as close to the antepenult as the rules allow, 2.) long syllables in the ultima pull the accent away from the antepenult, 3.) circumflex over long syllables. These are definitely not the rules and I don’t recall any rules for when to use an acute and when to use grave. With the examples of ἄνθρωπος that I find in the NT, I can’t seem to figure out a set of rules that explain all the forms. Anyone know an internet site listing these rules? Anyone ever type them up for students who would be willing to paste them here? Do these rules exist? Or have I created a vague and false memory?