Contraction

Attic more than any other dialect disliked the immediate succession of two vowel sounds in adjoining syllables. To avoid such succession, which often arose in the formation and inflection of words, various means were employed: contraction (48 ff.), when the vowels collided in the middle of a word; or, when the succession occurred between two words (hiatus), by crasis (62 ff.), elision (70 ff.), aphaeresis (76), or by affixing a movable consonant at the end of the former word (134).

Contraction.—If either of the syllables to be contracted had an accent, the contracted syllable has an accent. Thus:

a. A contracted antepenult has the acute: φιλεόμενος = φιλούμενος.

b. A contracted penult has the circumflex when the ultima is short; the acute, when the ultima is long: φιλέουσι = φιλοῦσι, φιλεόντων = φιλούντων.

c. A contracted ultima has the acute when the uncontracted form was oxytone: ἑσταώς = ἑστώς; otherwise, the circumflex: φιλέω = φιλῶ.

N. 1.—A contracted syllable has the circumflex only when, in the uncontracted form, an acute was followed by the (unwritten) grave (155, 156). Thus, Περικλέὴς = Περικλῆς, τῑμάὼ = τῑμῶ. In all other cases we have the acute: φιλὲόντων = φιλούντων, βεβὰώς = βεβώς.

N. 2.—Exceptions to 171 are often due to the analogy of other forms (236 a, 264 e, 279 a, 290 c, 309 a).

If neither of the syllables to be contracted had an accent, the contracted syllable has no accent: φίλεε = φίλει, γένεϊ = γένει, περίπλοος = περίπλους. For exceptions, see 236 b.