Syllables

EnCyCLoPEdIA of AnCIEnt GrEEK LAnGuAGE And LInGuIStICS Volume 3 P–Z, Index General Editor Georgios K. Giannakis Associate Editors Vit Bubenik Emilio Crespo Chris Golston Alexandra Lianeri Silvia Luraghi Stephanos Matthaios LEIdEn • BoSton 2014 This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV table of Contents Volume one Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... List of Contributors ....................................................................................................................................... table of Contents ordered by thematic Category ............................................................................... transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography ........................................................................................... List of Illustrations ......................................................................................................................................... Articles A–f ..................................................................................................................................................... vii xi xv xxi xxiii 1 Volume two transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography ........................................................................................... Articles G–o .................................................................................................................................................... vii 1 Volume three transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography ........................................................................................... Articles P–Z ...................................................................................................................................................... Index .................................................................................................................................................................. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV vii 1 547 syllable weight If these syllables do not have three moras, the syllable-final consonants must either be nonmoraic, licensed directly by the syllable (Lamontagne 1993) or by the prosodic word (Rubach and Booij 1990 for Polish), or the third mora is not part of a syllable (Bagemihl 1991 for Bella Coola; Bye 1997 for Estonian and Saami; Kiparsky 2002 for certain dialects of Arabic). In Greek → metrics, as in the meters of Classical Arabic and Sanskrit, heavy and light syllables occupy distinct positions in the verse → feet, → metra and cola of various meters. Metrical positions that can be either heavy or light occur as well and go under the name of anceps positions. → Responsion is an incredibly intricate tracking of patterns of heavy and light syllables across long stretches of metrical text. Ancient Greek meter was entirely quantitative, based on heavy and light syllables, and not stress-based, so that no understanding of the meter is possible without a solid understanding of syllable weight. As in many languages including Arabic, English, and Latin, word → accentuation is attracted to heavy syllables or to the first of a pair of light ones (Allen 1973), and the high and low tones that constitute word accent are situated differently on heavy and light syllables. Word → minima in many languages are dependent on mora count (e.g., Mester 1994 for Latin), and Greek is no exception to this (Golston 1991). Lexical words (→ nouns, → verbs, and → adjectives) are minimally a heavy syllable or two lights (µµ), while function words (→ prepositions, articles, conjunctions, etc.; → Conjunctions (Non-Subordinating); → Conjunctions (Subordinating)) and derivational affixes (→ Derivational Morphology) are minimally a light syllable (µ). This is true not only of full words but of truncations as well. A number of synchronic and diachronic pro-cesses require reference to syllable weight, including → compensatory lengthening, → Osthoff ’s Law, → Vendryes’ Law, and → Wheeler’s Law. It is of course highly important that all uses of syllable weight in Greek are based on the same criteria for heavy and light. Bibliography Allen, W. Sidney. 1973. Accent and rhythm. Prosodic features of Latin and Greek: a study in theory and reconstruction. Cambridge. Bagemihl, Bruce. 1991. “Syllable structure in Bella Coola”, Linguistic Inquiry 22:589–646. Bye, Patrik. 1997. “Representing ‘overlength’: against trimoraic syllables”. In: Phonology in progress | Progress in 347 phonology. HIL Phonology Papers III, ed. by Geert Booij and Jeroen van der Weijer, 61–101. The Hague. Déniz, Alcorac Alonso. 2011. “El supuesto alargamiento compensatorio *πένσμα > πεῖσμα ‘amarre, cuerda’ en griego antiguo y otras cuestiones relacionadas”, Die Sprache 49.2:217–253. Golston, Chris. 1991. “Minimal word, minimal affix”. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society 21, ed. by Tim Sherer, 95–110. Amherst, MA. Kiparsky, Paul. 2002. “Syllables and moras in Arabic”. In: The syllable in Optimality theory, ed. by Caroline Féry and Ruben Vijver, 147–182. Cambridge. Lamontagne, Greg. 1993. Syllabification and consonant cooccurrence conditions. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. Mester, R. Armin. 1994. “The quantitative trochee in Latin”, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 12.1:1–61. Rubach, Jerzy and Geert Booij. 1990. “Edge of constituent effects in Polish”, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 8:427–463. Chris Golston Syllables 1. Introduction The syllable is a phonological unit composed of sounds. Although its phonetic basis and a precise definition are still controversial, speakers of typologically different languages have an intuitive (psychological) notion of the syllable (Ohala & Kawasaki-Fukumori 1996). Moreover, the syllable plays a fundamental role across languages in → prosody (e.g. stress assignment), → metrics, word games, and script. Evidence for syllabic structure in Ancient Greek is drawn from meter, stress rules, → phonological change, and script. Syllables consist of a nucleus (usually a vowel, V) and its margins (or edges), i.e., the sound(s) preceding and following the nucleus, known respectively as onset and coda (usually consonants, C). In terms of sonority, the nucleus constitutes the peak of the syllable, and sonority gradually decreases towards the margins (Sonority Sequencing Principle). The nucleus and coda together constitute the rhyme. Nuclei (V) are required in all languages and many languages prefer to have onsets and no codas in syllables (CV), but the number of segments in onset and coda varies considerably from language to language (Maddieson 2005). Ancient Greek belongs to the group of languages with a complex syllable structure. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV 348 syllables 2. Syllable Structure in Ancient Greek In Ancient Greek the nucleus is always a vowel (short or long). → Diphthongs (ai, oi, au, eu, etc.) were probably complex nuclei since tones occurred on both their first and their second member. Syllables without margins are allowed: eî ‘you are (2nd sg.)’, Hom. ē.ô, Dor. ā.ô ‘dawn (acc. sg.)’, etc. In Proto-Greek (→ Proto-Greek and Common Greek), liquids, nasals and → laryngeals could stand as syllabic nuclei. For instance, patrási ‘father (dat. pl.)’ goes back to an older *ph₂.tṛ.sú. Similarly, in the Homeric formula lipoûs’ androtêta kaì hḗbēn ‘leaving behind manliness and youth’, the anomalous scansion of androtêta (heavy-light-heavy-light) probably conceals an older *a.nṛ.tā.ta (lightlight-heavy-light). Any → consonants preceding the nucleus constitute the onset. The syllabification of VCV clusters is always V.CV within words in Anc. Gk, e.g. thu.ga.té.ra ‘daughter (acc. sg.)’, phō.nḗ.sō ‘speak (1st sg. fut. indic. act.)’, and usually so across words, e.g., kalòn agôna ‘beautiful contest (acc. sg.)’ ka.lò.na.gô.na, showing the universal preference for onsets. Any consonants after the nucleus constitute the coda. Generally speaking, the syllabification of a VCCV cluster is VC.CV, e.g. sun.tém.non.tos ‘cut down (masc./neut. gen. sg. ptc. pres. act.)’, plḗk.tēs ‘striker’ (for exceptions, see 3). The same principle holds for geminates: híp.pos ‘horse’, ál.lē ‘other (fem.)’. The complexity of tolerated onsets and codas in Anc. Gk. varies according to the position of the syllable in the word. For instance, while st- is a possible word-initial onset in stóma ‘mouth’, the syllabic structure in hístamai ‘I stand’ was hís.ta.mai, not **hí.sta.mai, as shown by the scansion of such syllables in meter. 3. Combinations of Consonants Not all combinations of consonants were permitted as word-initial onsets and some occur more often than others. Actual combinations are given below: – stop (labial or velar) + stop (dental): pterón ‘wing’, bdéō ‘break wind’, phthónos ‘envy’, ktízō ‘build’, khthṓn ‘earth’. – p/k + /s/: psukhḗ ‘soul’, xíphos ‘sword’. – stop + liquid: prôtos ‘first (masc. sg.)’, blṓskō ‘come’, phrḗn ‘mind’, treîs ‘three’, thrónos ‘seat’, tlḗmōn ‘enduring (masc./fem.)’, gráphō ‘scratch’, khrusós ‘gold’, etc.; dl- occurs in Myc.: de-re-u-ko /dleûkos/ ‘sweet (new wine)’ = Attic gleûkos. – d + w: Corinth. p.n. Dwēnía. – stop/nasal + nasal: pneûma ‘wind’, tmētós ‘cut’ (masc.), dnóphos ‘darkness’, dmêsis ‘taming’, thnḗiskō ‘die’, knízō ‘scratch’, gnôsis ‘inquiry’, khnóē ‘nave’, mnêma ‘remembrance’. – s + stop: spoudḗ ‘haste’, sphḗn ‘wedge’, stóma ‘mouth’, sthénō ‘have strength’, skéllō ‘dry up’, skholḗ ‘leisure’, sbénnumi ‘put out’, zeûgos ‘yoke’ /zdeûgos/. – s + m: smerdaléos ‘terrible to look (masc.)’. – w + r (only in dialects with no w-loss): Elean wrā́trā ‘covenant’, Arc. wrḗsis ‘resolution’, Myc. wi-ri-za /wríza/ ‘root’. Three consonant onsets are limited to s + voiceless stop + liquid or nasal: sklērós ‘hard (masc.)’, stratós ‘army’, sphragízō ‘close’, stlengís ‘sort of tiara’, splḗn ‘milt’, sknipós ‘dim-sighted (masc.)’. Most clusters above conform to the Sonority Sequencing Principle (Selkirk 1982): sonority increases from the onset to the nucleus and decreases from the nucleus to the coda. Clusters not abiding by this principle (sonority plateaux like pt or mn and sonority reversals like sp or wr) cannot be accounted for as sequences with an empty nucleus; there is no evidence that e.g. spheîs ‘they’ had an underliying syllable structure /sø.phêːs/ (ø = empty nucleus). Complex onsets resyllabified across words when possible, e.g. méga sthénos ‘great force’ me.gas.the.nos. Only s, r and n are allowed at the ends of → prosodic words in Anc. Gk. (proclitics like ek ‘out of ’ and ouk ‘no, not’ do not constitute prosodic words on their own, as shown by their lack of accent). Complex clusters occur word-finally only if they end in s: phléps ‘vein’, phlóx ‘flame’, sphínx ‘sphinx’. In some dialects final -ns and -rs are preserved: the Cret. and Arg. definite article tóns (masc. acc. pl.) = Att. toús, Cret. maíturs ‘witness’ = Att. mártus. Unlike → Ionic and Proto-Greek, → Attic and other dialects favored stop + liquid/nasal (known as muta cum liquida clusters) as onsets word-internally: pa.trí ‘father (dat. sg.), hú.pnos ‘sleep’. The recurrence of this structure in Attic drama suggests a feature of everyday speech. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV syllables So-called correptio Attica (‘Attic abbreviation’) seldom affects voiced stop + liquid clusters and never voiced stop + nasal. Determining syllable affiliation in word-internal clusters of more than two consonants is not an easy task. If a muta cum liquida is involved, the cluster of voiceless stop + liquid/nasal probably formed a complex onset in Attic and elsewhere: ekh.thrós ‘hated (masc.)’, ós.tra.kon ‘(fragment of a) vessel’, per.knós ‘dusky (masc.)’, stil.pnós ‘glittering (masc.)’, ár.thron ‘joint’, splán. khna ‘innards’, Cypr. p.n. a-ku-we-u-su-ti-ri-jo /Aguweus.tríō/ (gen. sg.). In other cases, complex codas with an increasing sonority slope are perhaps preferred to complex onsets, but the evidence from the meter and script is inconclusive (Allen 1973): pémp.tos ‘fifth (masc.)’, márp.tō ‘take hold of ’, árk.tos ‘bear’, plank.tós ‘wandering (masc.)’, é.melp.sa ‘celebrate with song and dance (1st sg. aor. act.)’, árxai /árk.sai/ ‘command (inf. aor. act.)’, érg.ma ‘work’, Myc. a₃-ka-sa-ma /aiks.máns/ ‘point of spear (acc. pl.)’. The only four-consonant clusters permitted are nasal/liquid + stop followed by muta cum liquida: kámp. tra ‘case’, thélk.tron ‘charm’, and these must of course be heterosyllabic. Morphological transparency sometimes plays a role in syllabification. In Arg. awrḗteue ‘act as president (3rd sg. imperf. act.)’ (< an(a)-wrḗteue) and in Arg. wewrēména ‘decide (nom./acc. n. pl. ptc. perf. mid./pass.)’ the spelling -wr- corresponds to the morphological syllabification a.wrḗ.teu.e and we.wrē.mé.na. Expected *au. rḗ.teu.e and *weu.rē.mé.na would be morphologically opaque. A morphological boundary precludes correptio Attica in ek.lúō ‘undo’, ek.nikáō ‘win completely’. 4. Syllable Weight → Syllable weight (Gordon 2006) plays a fundamental role in the prosody of many languages, with syllables acting light (monomoraic) or heavy (bimoraic) depending on their internal composition. In Anc. Gk., open syllables with a short vowel as their nucleus are light: tó.de ‘this (nom./ acc. n.)’, é.phe.re ‘bring (3rd sg. imperf. act.)’. All other syllables are heavy: ték.tōn ‘carpenter’, poi.eî ‘do (3rd sg. pres. indic. act.)’, tḗ.kō ‘melt’. There is no evidence that superheavy syllables, e.g. skḗp.tō ‘pretend’ contrasted phonologically with heavy ones (Alonso Déniz 2010–2011). As with most languages, onsets play no role in syl- 349 lable weight: the first syllables of skho.lḗ ‘leisure’ and stro.phḗ ‘twist’ are light. Unexpectedly, wordfinal syllables ending in a single consonant (s, r or n) are phonologically light as regards → accentuation (→ Rule of Limitation): ánthrōpos ‘man’, ánthrōpon (acc. sg.), but anthrṓpou (gen. sg.). Anc. Gk. poetry was fundamentally based on regular patterns of light and heavy syllables. Statistical analysis of heavy syllables in the biceps position of the hexameter (→ Epic Meter) allegedly suggests that CVːC(C) syllables (i.e., syllables with a coda and a diphthong or long vowel as nucleus) were heavier than CVː ones, and that both types of syllables were heavier than CVC(C) ones (Ryan 2011). The hypothesis remains highly controversial (Devine and Stephens 1976). 5. Phonology and Syllable Structure Six phonological facts are also significant for the syllable structure of Anc. Gk. (Hermann 1923, Devine and Stephens 1994): (1) In Ionic and other dialects w-loss in inherited -rw-, -lw- and -nw- clusters triggered the → compensatory lengthening of a preceding short vowel: xén.wos > Ion. xeî.nos ‘stranger’, kór.wā > Ion. koú.rē ‘girl’. Syllable weight is preserved by vowel lengthening. (2) → Osthoff ’s Law. A long vowel followed by a cluster of resonant + consonant was shortened prehistorically: *ǵneh₃-nt-os > ProtoGk. *gnōntos > Anc. Gk. gnóntos ‘know’ (ptc. masc./n. gen. sg. aor. act.). Since this shortening is explained by a cross-linguistic tendency to avoid overlong syllables, the syllabification in Proto-Gk. must have been *gnōn.tos. (3) Rhythmic lengthening (light-light-light-light > light-heavy-light-light). When adding the ending -oteros to form the comparative of adjectives, the first -o- was lengthened if the preceding syllable was light: *sophóteros > sophṓteros ‘cleverer (masc.)’ vs. kouphóteros ‘lighter (masc.)’. Note that leptóteros ‘smaller (masc.)’ confirms that the original syllabification was *lep.tó.te.ros, not *le.ptó. te.ros. (4) → Wheeler’s Law. Polysyllabic oxytone words originally showing a final dactylic structure retracted the accent to the penultimate: *gʷoukʷolós > boukólos ‘cattleman’ (vs. stratēgós ‘general’) and *patroktonós This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV 350 syllables > patroktónos ‘patricidal’ (masc./fem.), *kourotrophós ‘one who looks after children’ (masc./fem.) > kourotróphos (vs. psukhopompós ‘conductor of souls’). Had the original syllabification been **pa.tro.kto.nós and **ko.rwo.tro.phós, the stress would have remained unchanged. (5) → Law of Limitation. Stress assignment in words with recessive accentuation is limited by the weight of the final syllable. In possessive → compounds like polúbotrus ‘(place) abounding in grapes (masc./fem.)’, poikilónōtos ‘with back of various hues (masc./fem.)’ and governing verbal compounds like philóxenos ‘fond of strangers (masc./fem.)’ stress systematically falls on the antepenult. The accent cannot be retracted, however, if the last syllable is heavy: gen. pl. polupúrgōn, poikilomórphōn, philoxénōn. The same principle applies in nominatives ending in V̆ Cs: poluánthrax ‘rich in coal (masc./fem.)’, poikilophórminx ‘accompanied by the various notes of the lyre (masc./fem.)’, philokólax ‘fond of flatterers (masc./fem.)’ (Steriade 1988). (6) Anc. Gk. dialects attest to consonant gemination in heterosyllabic Cj and Cw clusters (Méndez Dosuna 1994): Att. borrâs ‘northern wind’ (<*bor.e̯âs < boréas), Meg. órros ‘boundary’ (= Att. hóros < *(w)or.wos), Thess. iddian ‘particular (fem. acc. sg.)’ (< hid.jan < hi.dí.an). 6. Writing and Syllable Structure Writing provides additional evidence for syllable structure in Anc. Gk. In the → Linear B script, some complex CC clusters are regularly rendered with a ‘dummy’ vowel that, with few exceptions, replicates the quality of the vowel of the following syllabic sign: ko-sa-ma-to p.n. /Kosmátōr/, pe-ko-to /pektón/ ‘carded’, e-na-ri-po-to /enáliptos/ ‘painted (masc./fem.)’ (cf. enáleiptos), etc. According to some (e.g. Consani 2003), these spellings are prima facie evidence for syllabification as Ko.smá.tōr, pe.któn, e.ná.li.ptos, but this openly contradicts other linguistic evidence discussed above. The orthographic syllabification ko-sa-ma-to, pe-ko-to, etc. probably conforms to the spelling rule of word-initial clusters (cf. the Law of Initials in Vennemann 1988): e.g. si-mi-te-u /Sminthēús/ ‘Smintheus’, ko-to-na /ktoína/ ‘plot’ (see Morpurgo Davies 1987). A similar rule was applied by ancient grammarians some centuries later for the purpose of splitting words at line ends. According to Herodian (2nd c. CE), since kt- was permitted word-initially (e.g. ktêma ‘possesion’), étikton ‘give birth (1st sg. imperf.)’ should be syllabified as é.ti.kton (Herod. II, 393 Lentz). Conversely, the spelling rules of the Cypro-Greek syllabary usually fall into line with the evidence of meter and phonology. Unlike Linear B, most word-internal CC clusters here are heterosyllabic, as the ‘dummy’ vowel shows: a-la-wo /al.wō/ ‘threshing-floor’ (cf. Att. alōḗ), a-ra-ku-ro /ar.gúrō/ ‘silver’, p.n. a-ri-si-ta-ko-ra-se /Aris.tagóras/, etc., but ku-pa-ra-ko-ro p.n. /Ku.pragoráo/. Unexpected ka-ra-si-ti /grásthi/ ‘eat (2nd sg. imp. aor. or pres.)’ in a metrical inscription (CEG 868, 4th c. BCE) is noteworthy: despite the spelling, meter shows that the phonetic syllabification was grás.thi, and not **grá.sthi. Bibliography Allen, William S. 1973. Accent and rhythm. Prosodic features of Latin and Greek. A study in theory and reconstruction. Cambridge. Alonso Déniz, Alcorac. 2010–2011. “El supuesto alargamiento *πένσμα > πεῖσμα ‘amarre, cuerda’ en griego antiguo y otras cuestiones relacionadas”, Die Sprache 49 [2012]:217–253. Cairns, Charles E. and Eric Raimy. 2011. Handbook of the syllable. Leiden – Boston. Consani, Carlo. 2003. Sillabe e sillabari fra competenza fonologica e pratica scrittoria. Alessandria. Devine, Andrew M. and Laurence D. Stephens. 1976. “The Homeric hexameter and a basic principle of metrical theory”, CPh 71:141–163. ——. 1994. The prosody of Greek speech. New York – Oxford. Gordon, Matthew K. 2006. Syllable weight. Phonetics, phonology, typology. New York. Hermann, Eduard. 1923. Silbenbildung im Griechischen und in den andern indogermanischen Sprachen. Göttingen. Maddieson, Ian. 2005. “Syllable structure”. In: The world atlas of language structures, ed. by Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil, and Bernard Comrie, 54–57. Oxford – New York. Méndez Dosuna, Julián. 1994. “Contactos silábicos y procesos de geminación en griego antiguo. A propósito de las variantes dialectales ορρος (at. ὅρος) y Κορρα (át. Κούρη)”, Die Sprache 34:103–123. Morpurgo Davies, Anna. 1987. “Mycenaean and Greek syllabification”. In: Tractata Mycenaea, ed. by Peter H. Ilievski and Ljiljana Crepajac, 91–103. Skopje. Ohala, John and Haruko Kawasaki-Fukumori. 1997. “Alternatives to the sonority hierarchy for explaining segmental sequential constraints”. In: Language and its ecology. Essays in memory of Einar Haugen, ed. by Stig Eliasson and Ernst H. Jahr, 343–365. Berlin – New York. Ryan, Kevin M. 2011. “Gradient syllable weight and weight universals in quantitative metrics”, Phonology 28:413–454. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1982. “The syllable”. In: The structure of phonological representations II, ed. by Harry van der Hulst and Norval Smith, 337–383. Dordrecht. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV syllables Steriade, Donca. 1988. “Greek accent: a case for preserving structure”, Linguistic Inquiry 19:271–314. Vennemann, Theo. 1988. Preference laws for syllable structure and the explanation of sound change. Berlin – New York – Amsterdam. Alcorac Alonso Déniz Syncope Syncope is the loss of a medial, usually unaccented vowel, frequently associated with the effects of a stress accent. Although not common in Greek while the accent was one of pitch (→ Accentuation), there are isolated early examples, including: (i) the aorist stem of érkhomai ‘go, come’, elth- < eluth-, the latter already an archaism in Homer preserved only in the indicative ḗluthon and infinitive elutheîn; (ii) éstai ‘he will be’ < és(s)etai, again already in Homer; (iii) in → Attic, oîmai ‘I think’ < oíomai. Being so marginal, some have denied that these are proper examples of syncope: oîmai, for example, has been explained as an allegro form in a word reduced to little more than a particle (so Lejeune 1987:223; Sihler 1995:75). On the other hand, Szemerényi (1964), who rejects a connection between syncope and stress and proposes a sporadic process of the deletion of vowels whose length falls below a certain threshold as the result of various environmental factors, claims to identify several dozen examples of early syncope, some of which rest on more or less doubtful etymologies, e.g. knṓdontes ‘projecting teeth on the blade of a hunting spear’ if < kunṓdontes ‘dog’s teeth’ (Szemerényi 1964:78– 82), accepted by Sihler (1995:75) but rejected by Beekes (2010:726); or Homeric típte if < tí pote (Szemerényi 1964:218–219) rather than, e.g. *kʷid-kʷe > *kʷit-kʷe > *kʷikʷte (with Beekes 2010:1478). Boeotian and Thessalian dialect forms seem particularly prone to syncope-like phenomena. Names in -ṓndās < -ōnídās are common in Boeotian but are also present marginally in Thessaly, Phocis, Megara, Euboea and Cos; the 4th c. BCE general Epaminṓndās is a famous example, but the type is already present in Aristophanes. (If this is syncope, it perhaps originates in the recessively-accented voc. -ṓnidă.) The name of the people of the Thesalian town Larisa appears in the forms Lasaíois (=Larisaíois) and Lassaíoi (=Larisaíou) in two inscriptions, one written 351 after 214 BCE, the other in the 2nd quarter of the 2nd c. BCE, but coins from the early 5th c. have Larisaíōn, Larisaéōn. → Thessalian shows the same syncope of -ris- in names in Aristo-, e.g. Astagórās, and has Áploun for the theonym Apóllōn (Pl. Crat. 405c). In Attic inscriptions of the Hellenistic period syncope of one of the vowels in the sequence -eRe- or -oRo- (where R stands for the liquids r and l ) becomes common, e.g. skórodon ‘garlic’ > skórdon, and the woman’s name Bereníkē > Berníkē. This may suggest that the accent had already become one of stress (cf. Teodorsson 1974:294; → Accentuation). For the similar phenomenon of hyphaeresis, the loss of a medial vowel in → hiatus without contraction, cf. Lejeune (1987:253–253). Bibliography Beekes, Robert. 2010. Etymological dictionary of Greek. Leiden – Boston. Lejeune, Michel. 1987. Phonétique historique du mycénien et du grec ancien. Paris. Sihler, Andrew L. 1995. New comparative grammar of Greek and Latin. New York – Oxford. Szemerényi, Oswald. 1964. Syncope in Greek and Indo-European and the nature of Indo-European accent. Naples. Teodorsson, Sven-Tage. 1974. The phonemic system of the Attic dialect 400–340 B.C. Gothenburg. Rupert Thompson Synizesis Synizesis is the loss of syllabicity (desyllabification) of a vowel followed in hiatus, e.g. Sp. línea [ˈline̯a] ‘line’, cacao [kaˈkao̯ ] ‘cocoa’. Like → contraction, → elision and → aphaeresis, it is a strategy to avoid → hiatus. After synizesis, the reduced → vowel often rises: Lat. habeat > It. abbia [ˈabbja] ‘may (s)he have’, Ioannes > Sp. Juan [ˈxwan] ‘John’. Synizesis can be right- or left-orientated: Lat. ego > *eo > Port. eu [eu̯ ], Sp. yo [ ʝo] ‘I’. The phenomenon is well attested in Ancient Greek for /i/ as shown by scansion: di̯aprépon (Aesch. Pers. 1007) ‘appear prominent (pres. ptc. nom./acc. neut.)’. It is often used to accommodate a name otherwise unfit for the meter (→ Verse): Aigupti̯ous (Hom. Od. 4.83) ‘Aegyptian (acc. pl. masc.)’. Complete loss of the → glide occurs after two → consonants: pótni̯a > Hom. pótna ‘queen’, tri̯ákonta ‘30’ > Thess. trákonta. Synizesis of /y/ is uncommon: du̯ oîn ‘two (gen./ This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV