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Greek Accent and the Rational
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
The description of our accent system by Professor Dodds as ‘Byzantine’ is of course disingenuous. Its Alexandrian origin and evolution are taken for granted since Laum and Schwyzer; the fact that Barrett could so swiftly and soundly adapt the peripheral matter of synenclisis to the system's own basic principles is a pointer to its internal soundness and consistency. Again, that a system is complex is no reason for its being jettisoned; the language itself is complex. Nor does Dodds' defeated acceptance of Dutch-English mispronunciation strengthen a case against the accent. What I think he meant was that no-one since Byzantine times has been able to interpret the accent marks in significant terms of sound; that we are therefore better rid, not of a system, but of a clueless labyrinth inefficiently described in an insufferably tedious jargon and entirely unrelated to the language which it was invented to illuminate.
This position would be understandable if it were now possible to hold it. It is farcical in the light that philologists/linguists are now throwing on Greek accent. The obstacles they have had to overcome fall broadly into two classes: first, the passive, inertial persistence of the formal, meaningless ‘rules’ on one hand, and, on the other, the cloudy mysticism of those who have never thought to examine the term ‘music’ in their glib phrase ‘musical Greek accent’. The latter class falls into two sub-classes: those who (like Maas) prosaically forbade the search after Greek pronunciation because it was musical (like stressless organ-notes!); and a few who, following A. J. Ellis and Rouse, would have us believe that they are giving us Homer ‘as he was sung’, when they apply to the hexameter what they (as I hope to prove, wrongly) attribute to Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the famous passage where his subject was not verse—but prose!
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1969
References
1 Dodds, E. R., ‘Classical Teaching in an Altered Climate’ in Proceedings of the Classical Association (John Murray, London 1964).Google Scholar The attitude towards accent is defeatist, out of step with what is now known and out of tune, I am confident, with the temper of modern youth.
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W. S. Allen's Vox Graeca, which has appeared since the writing of this article is obviously an invaluable text for school and university alike: here for the first time the learner of Classical Greek has a ready opportunity of getting at the essence of what learning another language is about—by crossing a thresholdinto a totally new room of experience.
If the strangeness and beauty of its vowels and consonants are appreciated and mastered according to Allen's recommendations, nothing but good could come from experimenting with the rise and fall in tone according tothe word accent; thus aiming to encompass the whole quality of the language and—in this of all languages—to enhance its verse-patterns.
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49 It was chiefly the late John Davison's matchless generosity and unfailing enthusiasm and encouragement that helped me to persevere in present ing what I think is the first attempt at a synoptic view of the Greek accent. So by kind permission of the Registrar of that Institution, I give my address as Davison's own beloved University of Leeds, to pay a debt of gratitude that is out of all proportion to the few scattered occasions on which I could visit him there in the flesh from my own far distant wilds.