Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-8r8nv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-10T05:05:55.581Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Greek Aspirated Perfect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

E. H. Sturtevant
E. H. Sturtevant*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

[Greek perfects in -ϕα or -χα from verb-stems ending in π, κ, or γ owe the aspiration to Indo-Hittite perfect endings beginning with a voiceless laryngeal: 1st sg. -xa and 3d pl. .]

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 16 , Issue 3: July-September , September 1940 , pp. 179 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © 1940 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 Zur Geschichte des Perfects im Indogermanischen mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Griechisch und Lateinisch 284-323 (1884).

2 KZ 27.311-3 (1885), 28.176-84 (1887).

3 Griechische Grammatik1 423 (1880).

4 For the system of Indo-Hittite laryngeals with which I operate, see Lang. 16.81-7, especially 81 and fn. 2. The first laryngeal rather than another must be assumed in this ending because of Lat. -ē- and the lack of a written laryngeal in Hittite.

5 De Saussure, BSL 34.CXVIII (1892); Cuny, Revue de phonétique 2.118-20 (1912). Cf. Kurylowicz, Études indoeuropéennes 1.46-72, who correctly concludes that γ voices a preceding voiceless mute (Skt. pibati from IH pi-bγe-ti in my writing), while the other three laryngeals aspirate such a sound (e.g. Skt. tiṣṭhati < IH ti-st'.-eti). Kurylowicz is wrong in confining this aspiration to Indo-Iranian, as is shown by Gk. = Skt. vettha and by the aspirates discussed in this paper.

6 Whitney, Sanskrit Grammar 287, §798a. Cf. Edgerton, Lang. 10.243 and fn.2.

7 Av. vaozirəm (3d pl. plup. middle of vaz- ‘travel’) also points to IE ə, since IE appears as a in A vestan.

8 This does not amount to proof. Attic may be older than , and prehistoric Attic may have had *.

9 This suggestion I owe to Sapir. On the Hittite ḫi- conjugation, see Sturtevant and Bechtel, Lang. 14.10-9.

10 KZ 39. 253. Now that we see the justification for the aspiration, we need not share the scepticism of Brugmann-Thumb, Griech. Gramm. 375 and of Schwyzer, Griech. Gramm. 772.