On Sat, 03 Aug 2013 16:27:35 -0700 Stephan Stiller <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 2) Vowel lengths are not shown in closed syllables - strictly > > speaking, breve and macron are being used to show syllable weight, > > not vowel length. > About #2: > The entry of ἄγαν mentions that there is variation (always so much > variation we're confronted with for this dialect family!) between > ᾰγᾱν and ᾰγᾰν, in a note after the dictionary entry (you > remembered cases like this for your original email, I take it). It'll > be great to see an example of a superheavy syllable where LSJ doesn't > reveal anything but another dictionary will tell us about a > distinction, but if breve/macron usage there were to only indicate > syllable weight (interpreted literally as a "light or heavy?" bit > value for the syllable in question), LSJ wouldn't have bothered with > this annotation. For metrical purposes, we don't know whether the syllable is open or closed until we know what comes next. I could try claiming the final syllable is not closed, but only potentially closed, but I'd actually overlooked this exception. Also, I only recently checked what the length marks actually meant. (I looked it up in an abridgement of L&S - the full LSJ really merits a lectern.) I looked the Greek rules for scansion up as I wasn't sure how faithful a copy of the Greek rules the Latin rules are. The first document that I found using macrons and breves as part of the text was www.aoidoi.org/articles/meter/intro.pdf . It writes them above the tone accents! > (About my earlier question: It's dawning on me that perhaps someone > just precomposed whatever was typographically common or attested with > some frequency, with LSJ as a model, for which someone must have made > decisions.) Also missing are precomposed forms for the likes of <OMICRON, COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE, UPSILON>, described as a final diphthong shortened before a following vowel. Richard.
