Talk:ποππύζων

Length of the upsilon

Is the upsilon in ποππύζων (poppúzōn) long or short? The entry currently suggests that it is short; however, its Latin descendant, poppȳzōn, suggests that it should be long. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 20:28, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I was having a little trouble with that. I believe the AG to be short because of LSJ, but L&S and the OLD disagree on poppȳzōn/poppyzōn. L&S suggest that it is long and OLD says it is short. I encountered this same problem with horīzōn/horizōn, which was initially listed as having a long i and similarly comes from a short accented iota in ὁρίζων (horízōn). I'm more inclined to follow the OLD's accounts and say that they are both short. I also changed the inflection of horizōn to reflect the fact that it comes from the masculine present active participle in AG, which means that the form horizontum is inaccurate and should be horizontium according to this. —JohnC5 ^{(Talk | contribs)} 21:15, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Perhaps Lewis & Short inferred long penultimate vowels from scansion. Assuming that pop·py·zon scanned –·–·– and ho·ri·zon scanned ⏑·–·–, Latin prosody would seem to leave no other possible interpretation than that the y of poppyzon and the i of horizon be long (and the first o of horizon be short), since pop·py̆·zon would seem to scan –·⏑·– whereas ho·rĭ·zon would seem to scan ⏓·⏑·–. However, I get the impression that, at least sometimes, Z was weighted as a double consonant; this, I think, is evidenced by the fact that the Ancient Greek Ζ (Z, “zeta”), when it occurred in medial position, was transcribed as SS in the Old Latin period and by this excerpt from the NED’s entry for “Z”: “Greek Ζ ζ seems to have had originally the phonetic value (zd) or (dz), but later simple (z). […] In consequence of the phonetic change of (dz) to (dy) exemplified by the spelling baptidiare for baptizare, Gr. βαπτίζειν to baptize, z in popular Latin came to denote (dy) and probably (y), as in zaconus for diaconus deacon, zeta for dieta…, zunior for junior….” If Z had the prosodic weight of two consonants, pop·pyz·zon would scan –·–·– and ho·riz·zon would scan ⏓·–·– irrespective of their penultimate vowels' quantities. In that context, with no other evidence to go on, it would be reasonable to assume that the vowels in question in those words retained the quantities of the corresponding vowels in their respective etyma. As for horizontum vs. horizontium, google books:"horizontum" (619 hits) and google books:"horizontium" (251 hits) show that both are attested, and with a frequency ratio of approximately 5:2, we can't really infer from that what overwhelmingly common usage is. Etymology doesn't seem to suggest what the correct form is; the Ancient Greek etymon's genitive plural form is ὁρῐζόντων (horizóntōn), which only really suggests *horizontōn. Because the word's nominative singular and genitive singular forms are imparisyllabic, that suggests that the genitive plural form should be horizontum, but that rule may not be applicable in the case of this Greek-type noun. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 18:25, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

@I'm so meta even this acronym: Thank you so much for this extensive answer. Now that you mention it, I recall that in Latin scansion z, x, and j/intervocalic i are all considered double consonants for the purpose of metrical length (also here), so that would account in both cases for the reading of the penultimate vowels as long. As for the question of -um vs. -ium, I can only find three hits for poppyzontium, but they are all from the same site as horizontium (here). Poppyzontum, on the other hand, seems to be unattested; so whichever reconstruction is correct eludes me. In the mean time, I intend to percolate the short penults through horizōn and poppyzōn. —JohnC5 ^{(Talk | contribs)} 21:11, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Oh, there we go then. :-) I searched on Google Books for every form currently listed by the declension table at poppyzon#Declension; the only ones that turned up were poppyzon, poppyzontis (only one hit for this form, which I cited at Citations:poppyzon), poppyzontes, poppyzonta, and poppyzonte (the last of which appears to be Classical, appearing in Pliny's Naturalis Historia; it's probably the same passage quoted in the entry — “cum pingeret poppyzonta retinentem equum” — except from a different manuscript – one which has “cum poppyzonte”). In the light of all that, we could just strip the declension table of its unattested forms… — I.S.M.E.T.A. 22:13, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

@I'm so meta even this acronym: That's very useful to know. It may be the case that the importation of masculine present active participles is too irregular to be dealt with by a single inflection template and may just need tables created on a case by case basis. The only reason I included the -ontos forms is because the OLD seems very adamant that the genitive singular of both horizon and poopyzon were in -ontos. However, if we can find no evidence of these forms, I suppose we could leave them out or perhaps parenthesize them in the template (if that is possible). The even more mysterious question comes with words like amethystizōn (ἀμεθυστίζων (amethustízōn)), which should be a fully fledged adjective in Latin. Would that mean it would import the neuter amethystizon/amethystizum or, god forbid, feminine amethystizūsa? Sorry to eat up your time with these questions concerning a rather backwater set of Latin vocabulary, but I find it terrifically interesting. —JohnC5 ^{(Talk | contribs)} 22:45, 7 October 2014 (UTC)