ACCENTUATION AND QUANTITY
In respect of accentuation the Greek language has the advantage above most others that, while in Latin, English, or German the proper intonation of a word in doubtful cases can only be known by an appeal to a dictionary or to an authoritative speaker, in Greek every word in a book, as it stands before the eye, exhibits and perpetuates the tonic relation of the syllables to one another. The student has but to observe the rise or fall of the syllables on his page as he would do the notes in a piece of music, and he cannot go wrong. Only a few characteristic points require to be laid down to make the principle on which the practice depends intelligible.
The wordaccent, taken from the Latin grammarians, evidently signifies a certain music of speech, a singing to or with (adandcano) an articulate word; while the expression used by the Greek grammarians, τόνος from τείνω, indicates a stretch, stress, or intension of the voice on the syllable so affected. Taking these two elements together we see that a Greek word, say καλός,beautiful, with the mark of the acute accent on the last syllable—hence called oxytone, from ὀξύς,sharp—is pronounced with an elevation of the voice, which brings along with it a dominance of the syllable on which it stands above the other syllables with which it is connected. It stands to reason that after such a dominance given to one syllable the voice, if there be a subsequent syllable, will fall; and so, as in πραγμάτων, the final syllable will be pronounced ina lower tone which is called grave. In the general use this lower-toned syllable requires no special mark, being sufficiently indicated by its necessary subservience to the accented syllable; with the Greeks, however, it seems to have been the practice to pronounce an oxytone word, when it occurs in the middle of a sentence, in a lower tone than at the end, and so the word καλός in the middle of a sentence, as in καλὴ παρθένος, is marked with a grave accent from left to right instead of from right to left; but this, though it lowers the tone, does not affect the dominance of the syllable. It is just as if in music the same note, with the same rhythmical dominance, were sung an octave lower. Practically, the learner need not concern himself curiously about the matter.
It is a rule, both in Greek and Latin, that no word can be accented farther back than the third syllable from the end, the antepenultimate, the favourite accent of the English language. But, while this rule, in a musical point of view, preserves the language from such a rattle of insignificant sounds as inlámentable,mílitary, and not a few other quadrisyllables in our unmusical English tongue, it manifestly requires a correction from the side of penultimate and oxytone accentuation to achieve the just balance of the music of speech. In this respect Greek is decidedly superior to both Latin and English; for, while Latin rejects the sonorous cadence of the accent on the last syllable altogether, English uses it only in some verbs, remnants of the past participle of Latin verbs, as inrejéct,suppóse,accépt, and such-like; and in the case of the penult the fine swelling cadence of the Greek words, in which the acute accent of the penult is followed by a final long syllable, altogether fails, as in πραγμάτων, which an Englishman, following his English ear, will pronounce not only πράγματων but πράγματον, as if ω were ο. The student, therefore, will carefully train his ear to give all oxytone words their full value, and never to say ἄγαθος ὁ θέος instead of ἀγαθὸς ὁ θεός, or κάλος ὁ ἄνηρ for καλὸς ὁ ἀνήρ.
By the quantity of a word we mean the comparative duration of the sound, exactly as in music ais related to a;and in Greek the accentuation stands in a very marked relation to the quantity of the syllables, which in practice asserts itself prominently as follows:—
(1)It is an invariable condition of the antepenultimate accent that the last syllable be short, as in ἄνθρωπος, a man; and in consequence,(2)If in the course of flexion a word with an antepenultimate accent takes a long final vowel, as in the genitive and dative singular of the second declension, the accent of the first syllable is advanced to the penult, as in ἀνθρώπου.(3)The converse takes place in verbs, where the accent is naturally on the root, as in λέγω, of which the imperfect is ἔλεγον; but in the aor. mid. indic., while the third person is ἐλέξατο, the first person is not ἐλέξαμην, but ἐλεξάμην.
(1)It is an invariable condition of the antepenultimate accent that the last syllable be short, as in ἄνθρωπος, a man; and in consequence,
(2)If in the course of flexion a word with an antepenultimate accent takes a long final vowel, as in the genitive and dative singular of the second declension, the accent of the first syllable is advanced to the penult, as in ἀνθρώπου.
(3)The converse takes place in verbs, where the accent is naturally on the root, as in λέγω, of which the imperfect is ἔλεγον; but in the aor. mid. indic., while the third person is ἐλέξατο, the first person is not ἐλέξαμην, but ἐλεξάμην.
A long syllable of course, as in προφήτης, may have an acute accent on a long vowel with the same right as a short syllable; but there are many long syllables in Greek which are marked neither with an acute nor a grave but with a circumflex, which is a prolonged accent compounded of a rise and a fall marked thus^,or for greater ease,~. These words are generally compounds of which the elements are quite plain, as in φιλοῦσι for φιλέουσι, τιμῶσι for τιμάουσι; in other words, as in σῶμα, a body, or the genitive plural of the first declension, as πολιτῶν, and some others, the single elements from which the complex tone arose were either historically known to the grammarians or legitimately assumed. At all events, every syllable in Greek with a circumflex accent is practically treated as if it had two accents; σῶμα as if it were σάὸμα, χρῶμα as χρόὰμα, πρᾶγμα as if it were πράὰγμα, and so on. It follows from this, and the principle that no word can be accented farther backthan the antepenultimate, that, if in the course of flexion a word with a circumflex on the penult receives an additional syllable so as to become, in accentual value, a quadrisyllable, the accent must be advanced; thus from τιμῶμαι,[4]I am honoured, we can say τιμᾶσθε in the second person plural, but we cannot say τιμῶμεθα, so must say τιμώμεθα. The change of accentual marking in this instance is of no practical value to the student, but in the case of enclitics, of which we shall now speak, it affects the ear most decidedly.
Enclitics are small words, which, so to speak, have not force enough to stand on their own legs, but lean (ἐγκλίνω) on the weightier word that precedes them for support, and become absorbed in it; just as in English we saydon’tfordo not, and in Italiandimmifor the Latindic mihi. These enclitics are πού, ποτέ, γε, and a few others, the oblique cases of the personal pronouns, the indefinite pronoun τις, and the verbs εἰμί,I am, φημί,I say, except in the second person singular. The effect of their being thus taken up by the previous word and forming a new whole must, in not a few cases, materially affect the position of the accent; for, while in καλός τις,a certain good-looking fellow, there is no change in the intonation of καλός to the ear, the moment I say κάλλιστος τις, I either violate the rule which forbids the accent on the fourth syllable from the end, or I keep to the rule and say κάλλιστός τις. In the same way when I say ὁ διάβολος,the devil, simply, I preserve the antepenultimate accent with full effect in its natural place; but if I apply the reproachful term to a special person, and say, as in John vi. 70, ἐξ ὑμῶν εἷς διάβολός ἐστιν,one of you is a devil, I immediately, to give the ἐστιν something to lean on, must make the διάβολος oxytone. Similarly, I cannot write πνεῦμα ἔστιν, which in accentual value would be a compound word of five syllables, but I must say πνεῦμά ἐστι (John vi. 63), when the last syllable of the supporting word with the two syllables of the enclitic become accentually a new word of three syllables with a legitimate antepenultimate accent.
If the position of the accent, a point often not a little troublesome even to natives in the orthoepy of their own language, has been relieved of all practical difficulty by the curious prevision of the Alexandrian elders, the quantity is even more simple. With the double aid of the two separate signs for long vowels, η and ω, and the quantity of the final vowel as determined by its relation to the previous accented syllables, the only difficulty that remains is obviated by the mark ¯ over the long vowels, and the ◡ over the short ones found in all good dictionaries. In the present little work it will be sufficient to mark the long vowel where it occurs in doubtful cases, and leave the short ones to be understood as short from the absence of the long mark. But the real difficulty that prevents both accent and quantity from being easily acquired by English scholars is the negligent practice of transferring Latin or English habits of accentuation to Greek words, as when θεός is pronounced likeDéus, and Σωκράτης asSócrates, and again the supposition that the accent cannot be put on a syllable without making it long, or removed without making it short. Let only the honest attempt be made to pronounce ἄνθρωπος, not asanthroāpos, but as inlándhōlder,córndēaler, and other such words, and the α in Σωκράτης, not likeainclawormaw, but like theainlatticeandscatter, and the difficulty will vanish like the gleam of a mirage before the firm foot and the cool eye of the traveller.