Re: Stress placement systems

On 9/19/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> 2. It is clear that ancient Greek words had *pitch* accent. The pitch was:
>   (a) *not* dependent upon syllable quantity, but *solely on vowel length*
I don't have my Greek grammars with me, but I seem to recall reading
something about syllables which were "long by nature" (physei makra,
IIRC) and syllables which were "long by position" (thesei makra), the
distinction being something along the lines of "has a long vowel" vs
"ends in two or more consonants", or something like that, which does
seem to indicate that syllable quantity played a part.

I don't remember the details, but I think it was something along the
lines of whether the accent was acute or circumflex?

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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