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|name=Ancient Greek |region=eastern Mediterranean |extinct=developed into Modern Greek by the 15th Century |familycolor=Indo-European |fam2= Greek |iso2=grc|iso3=grc}} Ancient Greek refers to the stage in the and Classical Greece. The Ancient era of Greek history normally includes also the Hellenistic (post-Classic) age; however, that period formally composes its own stage in the Greek Language known as ''' Hellenistic Greek '''. For information on the Greek language prior to the creation of the Greek Alphabet , see articles Mycenaean Greek and Proto-Greek . Dialects of Ancient Greek See Also: Greek dialects The Greek Language had started shaping in local forms even before the settling of the Greek-speaking tribes into Greece , yet the actual dialectic variation took place afterwards. Throughout history the Greek language is presented in a number of dialects that did not apply on fixed geographical borders, and even if it did, those borders would be constantly altered because of the frequent migrations of the Hellenic peoples. According to its linguistic variations, the Ancient Greek language of the Archaic and Classic periods is composed by the following symbolic dialectic branches: The dialects of the pre-classical and classical period appear documented in writing beginning in the 8th century BC, and they certainly developed well before this date. The most standard formulation currently for the pre-classical and classical dialects is four or five major groups:
As each of the above dialectic branches is broken down to its individual dialects, each dialect can in turn be divided into countless local idioms. The information provided in the dialect-specific articles is a general linguistic description that is confined to the main characteristics of the Common form (''Koine'') of each dialect, without getting into detail about their numerous idiomatic variations. In that respect, the article on Doric describes the "Common" form of Doric as it is seen, e.g., in Pindar's Poetry (known as ''Choral Doric''), which differs from local forms such as Laconian , Cretan , Sicilian . The Arcado-Cyprian group appears to be closest to Mycenaean Greek, and is likely its direct descendant. Northwest/Doric is the most distinct from the others. Controversy on the early history of Greek dialects generally focuses on the nature of Aeolic and Attic-Ionic—with various configurations of independent development or relations to Mycenaean or Northwest/Doric proposed. The relations between the dialects are likely obscured by significant amounts of influence on each other. After the conquests of Alexander The Great in the 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived to the present in the form of the Tsakonian and Southern Italian dialects of Modern Greek . Doric has also passed down its Aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 4th century AD., the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek . Sound changes These sound changes since Proto-Greek affect most or all Ancient Greek dialects:
Note that /w/ and /j/, when following a vowel and not preceding a vowel, combined early on with the vowel to form a diphthong and were thus not lost. The loss of /h/ and /w/ after a consonant were often accompanied by Compensatory Lengthening of a preceding vowel. The loss of /j/ after a consonant was accompanied by a large number of complex changes, including diphthongization of a preceding vowel or Palatalization or other change to a directly preceding consonant. Some examples:
The results of vowel contraction were complex and differed from dialect to dialect. Such contractions occur in the inflection of a number of different noun and verb classes and are among the most difficult aspects of Ancient Greek grammar. They were particularly important in the large class of ''contracted verbs'', denominative verbs formed from nouns and adjectives ending in a vowel. (In fact, the reflex of contracted verbs in Modern Greek —i.e., the set of verbs derived from Ancient Greek contracted verbs—represents one of the two main classes of verbs in that language.) Sounds The pronunciation of Post-Classic Greek changed considerably from Ancient Greek, although the orthography still reflects features of the older language (see W. Sidney Allen, ''Vox Graeca – a guide to the pronunciation of Classical Greek''). For a detailed description on the Phonology changes from Ancient to Hellenistic periods of the Greek Language , see the article on Koine Greek . The examples below are intended to represent Attic Greek in the 5th Century BC . Although ancient pronunciation can never be reconstructed with certainty, Greek in particular is very well documented from this period, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represented. Vowels Short vowels
Long vowels
probably raised to by the fourth century BC. Consonants was an Allophone of , used before voiced consonants; was an allophone of used before velars, while , written (), was probably a voiceless allophone of used word initially. Consonant classes There are three main classes of consonants:
Consonant contractions In verb conjugation, one consonant often comes up against the other. Various Sandhi rules apply. Rules:
Compensatory lengthening There are different schemes for compensatory lengthening, depending on where it happens. The differences are in whether becomes or , and whether and become the closed values and or the open ones and . Augment The indicative of past Tense s adds (conceptually, at least) a prefix /e-/. This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily Aspect ual meaning. The augment is added to the Indicative of the Aorist , Imperfect and Pluperfect , but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). There are two kinds of augment in Greek, syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes ''e'' (stems beginning with ''r'', however, add ''er''). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel:
Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is ''e'' -> ''ei''. The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of ''s'' between vowels. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry, especially Epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Reduplication All forms of the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. There are three types of Reduplication :
Morphology Main article: Greek, like all of the older Indo-European Languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In Ancient Greek Noun s (including proper nouns) have five Cases ( Nominative , Genitive , Dative , Accusative and Vocative ), three Genders ( Masculine , Feminine and Neuter ), and three Numbers ( Singular , Dual and Plural ). Verb s have four Moods ( Indicative , Imperative , Subjunctive and Optative ), three Voices ( Active , Middle and Passive ), as well as three Persons ( First , Second and Third ) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated in four main tenses ( Present , Aorist , Perfect , and Future ), with a full complement of moods for each main tense, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. (The distinction of the "tenses" in moods other than the indicative is actually mostly of Aspect .) In addition, indicative forms of the Imperfect and Pluperfect exist, as do infinitives and participles for all corresponding finite combinations of tense and voice, excluding the imperfect and pluperfect. Example text ''Hóti mèn humeîs, ô ándres Athēnaîoi, pepónthate hupò tôn emôn katēgórōn, ouk oîda: eg d' oûn kaì autòs hup' autōn olígou emautoû epelathómēn, hótō pithanôs élegou. Kaítoi althés ge hōs épos eipeîn oudèn eirkasin.'' How you, men of Athens, have been affected by my accusers, I do not know; but I, for my part, almost forgot my own identity, so persuasively did they talk; and yet there is hardly a word of truth in what they have said. Plato, Apology External links
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