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Title
Archaisms and Innovations in the Songs of Homer
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https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6ng8d41g
Author
Lundquist, Jesse
Publication Date
2017
Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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Archaisms and Innovations in the Songs of Homer
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Indo-European Studies
by
Jesse Lundquist
2017
© Copyright by
Jesse Lundquist
2017
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Archaisms and Innovations in the Songs of Homer
by
Jesse Lundquist
Doctor of Philosophy in Indo-European Studies
University of California, Los Angeles, 2017
Professor Brent Harmon Vine, Chair
This dissertation comprises three case studies on the history and prehistory of Homeric
language, focusing on the ways in which archaic forms are preserved, and innovated
forms created. In the first study I examine Homeric accentuation, together
with related issues of morphology and morphophonology, in the u-stem adjectives.
Beginning from the archaic oxytones θαμειαί ‘close-set’ and ταρφειαί ‘thick’, I outline
the historical developments leading to the paradigmatic feminines in -εῖα, which
are based on the masculine/neuter stems, and to the recessively accented adjectives
θάλεια ‘abundant’, λάχεια ‘wooded’, λίγεια ‘sweetly sonorous’. I propose that the
recessive accent results from the morphological isolation of these words (i.e. they lack
a masculine/neuter base), coupled with a subsequent re-accentuation to the default,
recessive accent of the language. Turning to Vedic, I will examine its cognate class
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of adjectives, whose accent is unequivocally oxytone; for instance svād-áv- ‘sweet’ is
the masculine/neuter stem to svād-v-ī,́ the feminine. But the morphophonology of
the u-stem adjectives requires further study, I argue, and must be set in the broader
context of Vedic accentuation. Returning to Greek, I look into a few nouns arguably
going back to substantivized adjectives, arguably reflecting zero-grade ablaut of the
suffix. Such nouns would correspond precisely with Vedic, where zero-grade ablaut
of the suffix is the rule (Ved. –vī)́ : ὄργυια ‘fathom, span of the arms’, ἄγυια ‘street’, and
possibly a few others. Taken together, these accentual classes chronicle the history of
u-stem morphophonology in Greek.
In the next case study I treat how innovations and archaisms developed within
one morphological category, the compound s-stem adjectives. In particular, I
investigate anew questions of accents and of ablaut grades: which are archaisms, which
innovations? To do so, I offer a revised philological account concerning the various
accentual classes of s-stem adjectives, then argue that the recessively s-stem adjectives
agree most closely with the largely overlooked Indo-Iranian evidence. Re-examining
the evidence for Greek accentuation offers in turn an opportunity to look again at
the evidence for archaisms and innovations in Greek ablaut. Greek evidence from
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zero-grade ablaut in the root of second compound members, such as αἰνοπαθής
‘terribly suffering’, sometimes understood to reflect ancient PIE derivational processes,
reflects rather a highly significant innovation in Greek morphology: the class of s-stem
adjectives transforms from a denominal to a deverbal class. I will demonstrate
that the zero-grade ablaut in the second member reflects the verbal bases from which
the adjective derives (in this case the aorist παθεῖν ‘to experience; suffer’). Why the
aorist, opposed to the present or perfect stem, so often serves as the verbal basis in
deverbal derivation will be a question I can pose, but cannot fully answer. Finally, I
will work through the Indo-Iranian– effectively just Vedic– evidence for accent and
ablaut in the cognate class of s-stem adjectives. I will establish first a philologically
sound position for the varying accentual classes in Vedic, then will ask in what ways
the Indo-Iranian evidence corresponds to the Greek. This re-examination of the
combined evidence of Greek and of Vedic leads to a substantially revised picture of the
derivational morphology of s-stem adjectives in the protolanguage.
The last study casts a wider net, turning to issues in the transmission of
Homeric poetry across Greek dialects and across generic boundaries. I focus the case
study on one form found in one formula, φρασί ‘in mind’ in the hemistich φρασὶν ἄλλα
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μενοινῶν, incontestably the older form of the dative plural of φρήν (for Cl.Gk. φρεσί),
but only contestably “Homeric”. The hemistich with φρασί is inscribed on a funerary
monument in Attica, but paradoxically may not be evidence for the Attic dialect at
all: φρασί with a-vocalism closes a Homeric verse-end formula (Hom. φρεσὶν ἄλλα
μενοινῶν), but in Homer only φρεσί is ever found; and φρασί is unknown to all other
Attic documents, while found abundantly– and more abundantly than the lexica and
handbooks let on– in texts of the Doric West (Pindar, Stesichorus, and the Orphic
leaves). In our study, complications of language and genre come to the fore: Why use
a Doric form in an Attic epigram? Why use a Homeric formula in an elegiac couplet
inscribed upon a funerary monument?
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The dissertation of Jesse Lundquist is approved.
Michael Haslam
Stephanie Jamison
Jeremy Rau
Brent Harmon Vine, Committee Chair
University of California, Los Angeles
2017
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To Calvert Watkins, in memoriam
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Praefatio: Purpose; Plan of the Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Plan of the Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Morphophonology of PIE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.1 PIE lexical accent: The Basic system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.2 PIE lexical accent: Expanding the analysis . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3.2.1 Reconstructing PIE ablaut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
I Case Studies 22
2 Archaisms and Innovations in Homeric Accentuation . . . . 23
2.1 The Problem: -υιαί, -αιαί; -εια, -εῖα, and -ειαί . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.1.1 Archaic Accentuation in the Homeric Tradition . . . . . . 24
2.1.1.1 Excursus: A Further Note on the Accentuation of
ἀνδροτῆτα . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2 Oxytone Archaisms in Homeric Greek: θαμειαί, ταρφειαί 29
2.2.0.1 θαμειαί ‘in close sets; thick’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
2.2.0.2 ταρφειαί ‘thick’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.2.1 Prehistory of Greek Accentuation in Feminine Inflection to UStem
Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
2.2.2 Prehistory of Greek Ablaut in Feminine Inflection to U-Stem
Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
2.2.3 Conclusions on the Oxytones in -ειαί . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
2.3 Oxytones in Zero-Grade -αιαί, -υιαί . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.3.0.1 Πλαταιαί . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3.1 -υιαί . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
2.3.1.1 ὄργυια, ὀργυιαί . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
2.3.1.2 ἄγυια, γυιαί . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
2.3.1.3 Other Words in -υια? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52
2.3.2 Conclusions on Words in -αιαί, -υιαί . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53
2.3.2.1 Excursus: Diachrony Forwards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
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