Attic Greek

Distribution of Greek dialects, ca. 400 BC.

Attic Greek is the dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek.

Provenience and range

The distinction between East and West Greek developed in Mycenaean times or before, by logical deduction. Mycenaean Greek represents an early form of East Greek. Because of the disappearance of Linear B, the writing system of the Mycenaean Greeks, which was a syllabary, the further development of dialects remains opaque. The earlest Greek alphabet appears at about 750 BCE, as well as some inscriptions in Attic Greek.^[1]

Inscriptional Attic Greek persists copiously until the 4th century BCE, when it is replaced by its similar but more universal offspring, koine. The Athenian Empire of the 5th century BCE and the adoption of Attic Greek by king Philip II of Macedon (father of the conqueror, Alexander the Great) did more than any other events to insure the spread of Attic and then of koine.

The earliest literature, however, was not written in Attic. Athens remained relatively obscure until its constitutional changes leading to democracy in the 5th century BCE, the start of the classical period.

The first extensive literature in Attic are the plays of the dramatists, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander. Also in this remarkable century of literature (and much of the next) were written the works of the Athenian philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. The military exploits of the Athenians led to some universally read and admired history, the works of Thucydides and Xenophon. Slightly less known because more technical and legal are the orations by Antiphon, Demosthenes, Lysias, Isocrates and many others.

The spoken Attic dialect ranged over Attica, Euboea, some of the Cyclades and coastal locations along the west and north coasts of the Aegean Sea. Literary Attic was widely studied at first in the civilizations of the Mediterranean and then by Europe and the extension of European civilization to other parts of the world. Students learning ancient Greek usually start with Attic, proceeding to Xenophon, or the koine of New Testament Greek, but a few begin with Homeric Greek.

Alphabet

A ballot voting for Themistocles son of Neocles under the Athenian Democracy. Note the last two letters of Themistocles are written boustrophedon and E is used for both long and short e; that is, this is the epichoric alphabet.

Today's Attic literature is published in accented upper and lower case letters with rough or smooth breathing marks (an initial h or lack of it)and subscript iotas. The casual reader might think that the ancient Greeks had access to this script when writing, for example, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are often asserted to have been written about 800 BC. If they were, it was not in the Greek alphabet.

The first use of the alphabet remains unknown. By the time it was attested for general use in the 8th century BCE^[2] it was already divided into a west and east form, from which the Etruscan/Latin alphabets and the later Greek alphabet came respectively. The earliest alphabet was simply the Phoenician alphabet used to spell Greek, with some letters used for the vowels, such as Aleph. Strictly speaking, aleph is not a letter but only a "chair" for the unrepresented vowel.^[3]

As the utility of an alphabet became manifest local varieties sometimes called "epichoric" came into use.^[4] The early Attic alphabet did not distinguish between long and short vowels. It lacked Ψ and Ξ, using ΦΣ and ΧΣ instead. Lower case and iota subscript (a mediaeval invention) were still far in the future. Digamma stood for a w.

Meanwhile in Ionia a new Ionic form of the alphabet was coming into being. It distinguished between long and short o (Ω and Ο) and stopped using Η to mark the rough breathing. Instead it created a sign for a long e with it, keeping Ε for the short. The digamma dropped out and Ψ and Ξ came into existence.

By 403 the by now internationally experienced city-state of Athens had perceived a need for standardization, so it officially adopted the Ionic alphabet in that year. Many cities had already adopted it. When the ordinary Greek citizen read inscriptions and the educated Greek read literature what they saw was an all upper case Ionic alphabet. By the time lower case, iota subscripts, accent marks and punctuation had appeared in the middle ages, Attic Greek had not been produced by native speakers for some centuries.

Phonology

A few of the most salient phonological characteristics of the Attic dialect are stated below.

Vowels

• Attic-Ionic changes an Indo-European ā to ē (long α to η); e.g., Latin māter/ Attic mētēr ("mother"). Attic keeps the ā after e, i, r: Attic chōrā/ Ionic chōrē, "country". Apparent exceptions are from subsequent sound changes: Attic *korwā to *korwē to korē, "girl".
• East Greek changes an Indo-European short a to short e: Artemis/ Artamis.
• Attic/Ionic interchanges i and u to assimilate with an i or u in a following syllable: biblion/ bublion, "book".
• In cases where an earlier ě or ǒ become ē or ō, Attic has spurious (non-original) diphthongs: eimi/ ēmi from *esmi, "I am", where the e lengthens to compensate for loss of s.
• Ancient Greek υ was originally pronounced as the oo in food and was replaced in other dialects by ου, but in Attic developed into a sound like the French u or German ü: Attic kurios, Boeotian kourios, "lord."
• In the original long diphthongs āi, ēi, ōi, the i stopped being pronounced. The mediaeval iota subscript captured this fact.
• Ā or ǎ followed by ě or ē contracts to ā, by ô or ō to ō in Attic: nikā-ein to nikān, "to conquer"; *Poseidāwōn to *Poseidāōn to Poseidōn, "Poseidon." However, ě followed by ā remains uncontracted: Timěās (personal name); while ě followed by ě becomes the spurious diphthong, ei: *treies to *trees to treis, "three", and ě followed by ǒ becomes the spurious diphthong, ou: *geněsǒs to *geněǒs to genous, "of a gens."
• In Attic ē followed by a long vowel may become ě followed by a short vowel (quantitative metathesis): epic nēos but Attic něōs, "of a ship"; Ionic basilēǒs but Attic basilěōs, "of a king."
• Sometimes one phoneme is created from two by taking away one of them (hyphaeresis): Attic bǒēthŏs for epic bǒēthŏǒs, "help."

Consonants

• Attic typically has tt (ττ) where Ionic has ss (σσ). Buck explains it as an original *ky or *chy- becoming tt and then changing to ss in Ionic, as in glotta/glossa, "tongue", from *glochya (Hofmann). To this he adds *ty and *tw in some cases, as in tettares/tessares, "four", Latin quattuor. The case of thalatta/thalassa, "sea", is not so clear, as it is believed to have been a loan; however, there a supposed Macedonian dalmangchan.^[5] Attic sometimes used thalassa as well. It became standard in Koiné.
• Attic-Ionic uses moveable n, an n inserted at the end of a word ending in a vowel to prevent collision with a vowel at the start of the next word, under some circumstances, such as a dative or third person plural ending in -σι; or to a third person singular ending in -ε; or to esti, is. For example, pasi legousi, "they speak to all", but pasin elegon, "they were speaking to all".
• Attic lost the w (digamma) before historical times: Boeotian kalwos, Attic kalos, "good."
• Many dialects, including Attic, changed t to s before i or u: Eutretis, Boeotian place name, Attic Eutresis; Doric tu, Attic-Ionic su, "thou."
• ss became s in Attic.
• Attic is one of the h-dialects (Buck's term); that is, the spiritus asper, or rough breathing, typically came from a dropped initial s or i, but the h-dialects retained the spiritus; the others did not: Attic histamen (*sist-), Cretan istamen, "we stand."

Morphology

Morphology as used here means "word formation." It can also include inflection, the formation of the forms of declension or conjugation by suffixing endings, but that topic is presented under Ancient Greek grammar.

• Attic tends to replace the -ter "doer of" suffix with -tes: dikastes for dikaster "judge".
• The Attic adjectival ending -eios and corresponding noun ending, both two-syllable with the diphthong ei, stand in place of ēios, with three syllables, in other dialects: politeia, Cretan politēia, "constitution", both from politewia, where the w drops out.

Grammar

Attic Greek grammar is to a large extent "ancient Greek grammar", or at least when the latter topic is presented it is with the peculiarities of the Attic dialect. The grammar part of it is adequately covered elsewhere in Wikipedia. This section only mentions some of the Attic peculiarities.

Declension

With regard to declension, the stem is the part of the declined word to which case endings are suffixed. In the a-, alpha- or first declension feminines, the stem ends in long a, parallel to the Latin first declesion. In Attic-Ionic the stem vowel has changed to long e (eta) in the singular, except after e, i, r: gnome, gnomes, gnome(i), gnomen, etc., "opinion", but thea, theas, thea(i), thean, etc., "goddess."

The plural is the same in both cases: gnomai and theai, but other sound changes were more important in its formation. For example, original -as in the nominative plural contracted to the diphthong, -ai, which did not undergo the change of a to e. In the few a-stem masculines, the genitive singular follows the o-declension: stratiotes, stratiotou, stratiote, etc.

In the o-, omicron- or second declension, mainly masculines (but some feminines), the stem ends in o or e, which is composed in turn of a root plus the thematic vowel, an o or e in Indo-European ablaut series parallel to similar formations of the verb. It is the equivalent of the Latin second declension. The alternation of Greek -os and Latin -us in the nominative singular is familiar to readers of Greek and Latin.

In Attic greek an original *-osyo genitive singular ending in losing the s (as happens in all the dialects) lengthens the stem o to the spurious diphthong -ou (see above under Phonology, Vowels): logos "the word", logou from *logosyo, "of the word". The dative plural of Attic-Ionic had -oisi, which appears in early Attic but simplifies to -ois in later": anthropois "to or for the men".

Notes

1. ^ See the summary by Susan Shelmerdine, Greek Alphabet, the section in the Indo-European Database on the Greek Alphabet and the ancientscripts.com site.
2. ^ The Encyclopedia Britannica mentions the Dipylon vase from Athens as the first, giving a date of 725
3. ^ For the early forms of the letters, the full complement of letters and the first inscriptions see under History of the Greek alphabet
4. ^ Buck, Greek Dialects, uses this term.
5. ^ Beekes' Greek etymological dictionary discusses thalassa

See also

• Greek Alphabet
• Greek language
• Ancient Greek
• Greek dialects
• Ancient Greek phonology
• Ancient Greek grammar

References

• Goodwin, William W. (1879). Greek Grammar. Macmillan Education Ltd.. ISBN 0-89241-118-X.
• Smyth, Herbert Weir (1920). Greek Grammar. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-36250-0.
• Buck, Carl Darling (1955). The Greek Dialects. The University of Chicago Press.

External links

• Greek Grammar on the Web
• Ancient Greek Tutorials
• Textkit - Greek and Latin Learning Tools
• Smyth's Greek Grammar

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