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Ancient Greek accent


Ancient Greek had a pitch accent. One of the final three syllables of an Ancient Greek word carried an accent. Each syllable contains a vowel with one or two vocalic morae, and one mora in a word was accented; the accented mora was pronounced at a higher pitch than other morae. Two-mora syllables could have rising or falling pitch patterns or normal pitch; one-mora syllables could have high or normal pitch. Rules restricted where an accented mora could appear, but within those restrictions, accent was free: it could appear in different positions in a given word. Usually a word's accent was either recessive, or as close to the beginning of the word as restrictions would allow, or it was placed on the last syllable, the ultima; but in some cases the second syllable from the end was accented even when accent rules allowed the third syllable from the end to be accented.

The rules of accent are based on the concept of mora. In the context of Ancient Greek accent, a mora is a measurement of vowel length. A short vowel has one mora, and a long vowel has two morae. A diphthong usually counts as a long vowel and has two morae, but at the end of a word the diphthongs αι and οι can sometimes count as one mora. In most noun or verb endings they have one mora, but two morae in the optative and locative. Here are the main categories of vowels, first in Greek, then in IPA, and finally in IPA with each mora written as a separate vowel letter:

Only the last three syllables in an Ancient Greek word can be accented. The very last syllable is called the ultima, the next-to-last is called the penult, and the third syllable from the end is called antepenult.

Standard polytonic orthography was created in the Hellenistic period to represent the pitch accent. There are three accents: acute (´), grave (`), and circumflex accent (). These four terms are based on Latin loan-translations of the Greek terms. Latin accentus corresponds to Greek προσῳδία "song sung to instrumental music, pitch variation in voice" (the word from which English comes), acūtus to ὀξεῖα "sharp" or "shrill",gravis to βαρεῖα "heavy" or "deep", and circumflexus to περισπωμένη "pulled around" or "bent". The Greek terms for the accents are nominalized feminine adjectives originally modifying the feminine noun προσῳδία and agreeing with it in gender.


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