Q&Aコーナー

質問

　 １）πούςは曲用するとποδ-とδが出てきますが、ποδ-の方が古いのでしょうか？もしそうなら、どの様な経緯でπούςが出現したのでしょうか？それとも当初からπούςとποδ-の語源があったなら、その事を記した文献はありますか？

　２）田中・松平氏の「ギリシア語入門」の、p.138 §527には「形容詞および副詞の最上級にὅτιまたはὡςまたはᾗを添えて「出来るだけ・・・」の意味を表す.」　と記されています。このうちὡςはなんとか意味が分かる気がしますが、ὅτιやᾗ (特に何故女性形か）を添えると「出来るだけ・・・」の意味をとなるのかが分かりません。

　３）AenēisはAenēāsから、どの様な経過でAeinēisとなったかを知りたいのです。とくに語尾の-isとなったかを知りたいのです。

（質問者：五十嵐嘉晴様）

回答

　1. You are right to be surprised by the long o in the nominative in Greek. Your question must be answered by historical linguistics. In Proto-Indo-European some ablauting nouns had *o in the root-syllable in the ‘strong’ cases (the nominative, accusative, and vocative), but *e in the ‘weak’ cases: ‘Foot’ had the Nominative. *pṓds, Genitive pedés.

　But this long o in the nominative *pṓds in Proto-Indo-European is phonologically unjustified and arose probably by analogy with other nominatives with a lengthened vowel. We know that it was long already in PIE also from the Doric form: πώς and from Sanskrit pāt. In Greek pṓds lost its d before s by a normal phonological process. The long o was in Classical times written as ου. (In earlier alphabets there was no difference in quantity and both short and long o were written as o). In all the rest of the cases of this noun, the short o was used, like in the PIE accusative podm and vocative pod or like in the PIE plural nominative, vocative, accusative forms.

　See further: Don Ringe, From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, Oxford 2006, especially pp. 21, 45.


　2. ᾗ ἐδύνατο τάχιστα as quickly as he could, literally ‘in which (way) he could the fastest’, X.An.1.2.4.

　Just like Latin quā, hāc, eā... (i.e. viā) some feminine noun meaning ‘way, method’ is to be imagined with many Greek words like ᾗ, πῃ (in Greek most nouns meaning ‘way, method’ are feminine).

　So ᾗ and ὡς mean ‘how’ ‘which way’ + ‘….est’.

　ὅτι is an accusative in the phrase with the superlative - and you will often encounter this function of the accusative in Greek and Latin: e.g. μέγα, multum, etc. It may be translated something like this: ‘by what measure/degree’ + ‘…est’

　See further Smyth, Greek Grammar, paragraph 1086.


　3. Aeneas and Aeneis are in the same relationship as πατήρ ‘father’ and πατρίς (i.e. γῆ) ‘fatherland’.

　-is is an adjective ending. Adjectives in -ίς -ίδος are feminine only. If they were often used, the noun could be abbreviated and the adjective then behaved like a noun.

　E.g. in the LSJ entry Ἀτθίς, ίδος, ἡ, you can see that the feminine adjective can mean different things, depending on which noun is understood: it can mean Attica, Attic dialect, or even Attic history. Aeneis is also originally a feminine adjective with some noun meaning ‘poem’ understood.

（回答者：Martin Ciesko）

2022/01/06