The copulative ''a'' (also ''a'' copulativum, ''a'' athroistikon) is the prefix ''ha-'' or ''a-'' expressing unity in

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

, derived from

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

*''sm̥-'', cognate to English ''same'' (see also Symbel).. An example is ''a-delphos'' "brother", from *''sm̥-g^welbhos'' literally "from the ''same'' womb" (compare Delphi). In

Proto-Greek The Proto-Greek language (also known as Proto-Hellenic) is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects (i.e., Attic, Ionic, Aeo ...

, ''s'' at the beginning of a word became ''h'' by

debuccalization Debuccalization or deoralization is a sound change or alternation in which an oral consonant loses its original place of articulation and moves it to the glottis (usually , , or ). The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspir ...

and

syllabic Syllabic may refer to: *Syllable, a unit of speech sound, considered the building block of words **Syllabic consonant, a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable *Syllabary, writing system using symbols for syllables *Abugida, writing system ...

''m̥'' became ''a'', giving ''ha-''. The initial ''h'' was sometimes lost by

psilosis Psilosis () is the sound change in which Greek lost the consonant sound /h/ during antiquity. The term comes from the Greek ''psílōsis'' ("smoothing, thinning out") and is related to the name of the smooth breathing (ψιλή ''psilḗ''), ...

or Grassmann's law. Cognate forms in other languages preserve the ''s'': for example, the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

prefix ''saṃ-'' in the name of the language, ''saṃ-s-kṛtā'' "put together". Less exact cognates include English ''same'' and ''some'', and Latin ''simul'' "at the same time" and ''similis'' "similar". Other words in Greek are related, including ''háma'' "at the same time", ''homós'' "same", and ''heís'' "one" (from )., , .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Copulative A Indo-European linguistics Greek language

See also

References