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 ...
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
, a perispomenon () is a word with a high-low
pitch contour on the last syllable, indicated in writing by a
circumflex accent mark
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
(). A properispomenon has the same kind of accent, but on the penultimate syllable.
Examples:
*, ''theoû'', "of a god", is a perispomenon
* ''prâxis'' "business" is a properispomenon
Etymology
''Peri-spṓmenon'' means "pronounced with a circumflex", the
neuter of the
present passive
Passive may refer to:
* Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive
* Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works
* Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of o ...
participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
of ''peri-spáō'' "pronounce with a circumflex" (also "draw off"). ''Pro-peri-spṓmenon'' adds the prefix ''pró'' "before".
[.] is the Greek name for the accent mark ().
See also
*
Greek diacritics
**
Circumflex
*
Pitch accent
A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ...
*
Ultima (linguistics)
In linguistics, the ultima is the last syllable of a word, the penult is the next-to-last syllable, and the antepenult is third-from-last syllable. In a word of three syllables, the names of the syllables are antepenult-penult-ultima.
Etymology
U ...
*
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
References
Greek grammar
Ancient Greek
Phonology
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