A Grammar of the Homeric Dialect (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Grammar of the Homeric Dialect

Nauok collected in the Mélanges grace-romaine (st. Peters burg 1855-88) - a book not often seen in this country, and the dissertations of J. Van Leeuwen in the Mnemosyne. The two writers last mentioned are chiefly concerned with the restoration of the Homeric text to its original or pre historic form. Their method, which is philological rather than linguistic, may lead to some further results when the numerous mss. Of the Iliad have been examined and have furnished us with an adequate apparatus criticas.

Although very much has been te-written, the numbering of the sections has been retained, with a few exceptions; so that the references made to the first edition will generally still hold good. The new sections are distinguished by an asterisk.

I will not attempt to enumerate the points on which new matter has been added, or former views recalled or modified. The increase in the size of the book is largely due to the fuller treatment of the morphology. Additions bearing on questions of syntax will be found in 238, 248, 267, 362, 365. On the whole I have become more sceptical about the theories which seek to explain the forms of the Subordinate Clause from parataxis, or the mere juxta-position of independent clauses. In general it may be admitted that the complex arose in the first instance by the amalgamation of simpler elements: but we must beware of leaving out of sight the effect of 'contamination' in extending syntactical types once created. The neglect of this consideration is in reality another and more insidious form of the error from which recent writers on morphology have delivered us, viz. That of explaining grammatical forms as the result of direct amalgamation of a stem with a suffix or ending, without duly allowing for the working of analogy.

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