About Lingual Mute Stem Consonant Declension Nouns

[malolosgreencat]

My question is in regards to this part of Lesson 26 of "First Greek Book"

http://daedalus.umkc.edu/FirstGreekBook/JWW_FGB26.html

I kinda understood the rest, but I have a question about these 2:

250. In the nominative singular and dative plural of the first three nouns the final lingual (τ δ θ) of the stem is dropped before ς. νύξ therefore stands for νυκτ-ς, νυκ-ς, κς becoming ξ. So νυκτ-σι, νυκ-σι, νυξί.
251. The fourth noun γέρων rejects σ in the nominative, and lengthens ο to ω. Final τ is dropped, since this letter cannot stand at the end of a word. In the dative plural both ν and τ are dropped before σ, and o is lengthened to ου.

Is the example in 251 going to always happen when the consonant in question is a semivowel or does that happen only when its an n?

[polemistes]

According to Smyth 242 the 3rd declension masculine and feminine stems in ν, ρ and σ reject ς and the preceding vowel is lengthened if it is short.

Edit: And Smyth 243 also mentions that masculine stems in οντ drop the τ, and I guess then also reject the ς, and lengthens the ο to ω.

[mwh]

The reconstructed morphology of the nom.sing. is γεροντς ⟩ γεροντ ⟩ γερων (ο lengthened to compensate for the loss of the τ). Outside of the nom.sing. the stem γεροντ- remains unchanged, e.g. gen.sing. γέροντ-ος, nom.pl. γέροντ-ες; except that in the dat.pl. γέροντσι (an impossible combination in Greek, cf. γεροντς eliminated in nom.sing.) becomes γέρουσι.

Not all nouns with nom.sing. in –ων have –οντ- in tbe stem (some have just -ον- or –ων-), but many do. Dictionaries provide the gen.sing. ending in addition to the nom.sing., so that you know the declension and can form any part of it. The nom.sing. is often the odd man out, but gen.sing. is the key to the whole declension.

You’ll find much the same phenomena in verbs (e.g. παύ-ουσι 3 pl.) and participles (e.g. παύ-ων, -οντος, dat.pl. -ουσι, or παύσ-ας, -αντος, dat.pl. –ασι). I don’t know if you’ve reached them yet.

But most people, unless they’re interested in historical linguistics, don’t bother mastering the reconstructed morphological developments but simply learn the forms. Once you start reading Greek you get used to them.

Incidentally, ν is not a semivowel but a consonant.

[Timothée]

Green Cat, you probably noticed that some of the 3rd declension masculine and feminine nouns have the -ς in the nominative singular, some do not. Those that have it are sigmatic, those that do not are asigmatic. Neuters will not have this sigma.

I doubt that there used to be a -ς in the nominative γέρων. It did have -ς in Indo-European, according to Avestan and Gothic evidence, amongst others, but from the Greek point of view I’m suspicious. It’d seem to be a Greek asigmatic innovation, something of the ilk of the type σῶμα, which is also an innovation with -ντ- (syllabic n, cf. Latin carmen, τ being analogical). Compare to ὀδούς : ὀδόντος, which is an οντ-stem and yet it does preserve the σῖγμα in nominative.

[mwh]

My goodness. I first started my post by writing “The reconstructed morphology of the nom.sing. as presented in your book”, but cancelled the qualification as fussy and unhelpful. I wasn’t about to contradict his book unnecessarily, especially when he’s only just started to learn the language (so that he can write a story with parts in Attic Greek, with a view to animation). All power to him.

But anyway, Malolosgreencat, there you have it, from a proper historical linguist. Incidentally, has the book even told you that these nouns belong to what’s conventionally (and for no good reason) known as the “3rd” declension? (There are only three, but the third's a doozie, as you're discovering.)

[malolosgreencat]

You’ll find much the same phenomena in verbs (e.g. παύ-ουσι 3 pl.) and participles (e.g. παύ-ων, -οντος, dat.pl. -ουσι, or παύσ-ας, -αντος, dat.pl. –ασι). I don’t know if you’ve reached them yet.

But most people, unless they’re interested in historical linguistics, don’t bother mastering the reconstructed morphological developments but simply learn the forms. Once you start reading Greek you get used to them.

Incidentally, ν is not a semivowel but a consonant.

The book says consonants are divided into three groups: semivowel, mute and double consonant. And the parts that I didn't reach...

Technically I did reach them but...well...since all the jumping from noun to adjective to verb and so on and so forth was confusing and I was missing the connection on why they are jumping from one to another...I decided to do something different by starting again from page 1 and then concentrating on 1 thing at a time first.

[Hylander]

"The book says consonants are divided into three groups: semivowel, mute and double consonant."

I think you're misunderstanding something. These look like three classes of present tenses of verbs. And there are other classes, too.

In general, the semivowels (which sounded something like the sounds represented in English by y and w) were present in previous stages of the language, but by the classical age (fifth century BCE) and later, the semivowels had more or less disappeared -- i.e., people had stopped pronouncing them distinctly as separate consonants. However, the semivowels left traces in the 3rd declension of nouns and the formation of present tenses of verbs, and elsewhere in the language.