The Attic declension is a group of second-declension

Second declension

The second declension is a category of nouns in Latin and Greek with similar case formation. In particular, these nouns are thematic, with an original o in most of their forms. In Classical Latin the short o of the nominative and accusative singular became u.Both Latin and Greek have two basic...

 noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s and adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s in the Attic

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek". It is sometimes included in Ionic.- Origin and range...

 dialect of Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

, all of whose endings have long

Vowel length

In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...

 vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s. In contrast, normal second-declension nouns have some short vowels and some long vowels. This declension is called Attic because in other dialects, including Ionic

Ionic Greek

Ionic Greek was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic dialect group of Ancient Greek .-History:Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C.By the end of the Greek Dark Ages in the 5th Century...

 and Koine

Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....

, the nouns are declined normally.

History

In Proto-Greek

Proto-Greek language

The Proto-Greek language is the assumed last common ancestor of all known varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean, the classical Greek dialects , and ultimately Koine, Byzantine and modern Greek...

, Attic-declension nouns had long ᾱ ā and digamma

Digamma

Digamma is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet which originally stood for the sound /w/ and later remained in use only as a numeral symbol for the number "6"...

 (ϝ w) before the endings. The Doric

Doric Greek

Doric or Dorian was a dialect of ancient Greek. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon. Together with Northwest Greek, it forms the...

 dialect preserved the ᾱ, but lost the digamma by the classical period. In the Aeolic

Aeolic Greek

Aeolic Greek is a linguistic term used to describe a set of dialects of Ancient Greek spoken mainly in Boeotia , Thessaly, and in the Aegean island of Lesbos and the Greek colonies of Asia Minor ....

 dialect, the digamma was retained as upsilon

Upsilon

Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet.  In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw. The name of the letter is pronounced in Modern Greek, and in English , , or...

 (υ u).

In the Ionic

Ionic Greek

Ionic Greek was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic dialect group of Ancient Greek .-History:Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C.By the end of the Greek Dark Ages in the 5th Century...

 dialect, the ᾱ changed to long η ē. In Attic, η was shortened to ε e and, if possible, the vowel of the ending was lengthened to ω ō or (if it was a diphthong

Diphthong

A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...

 with iota

Iota

Iota is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 10. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Yodh . Letters that arose from this letter include the Roman I and J and the Cyrillic І , Yi , Je , and iotified letters .Iota represents...

) ῳ ōi.

• Doric νᾱός (Aeolic ναῦος) → Ionic νηός → Attic νεώς "temple"

  nāós (naûos) → nēós →

• νηοῦ → νεώ (genitive)

  nēoû →

• νηῷ → νεῴ (dative)

  nēōî → neōí

The shortening and lengthening was caused by quantitative metathesis

Quantitative metathesis

Quantitative metathesis is a specific form of metathesis or transposition involving quantity or vowel length...

, the switching of vowel lengths. In the forms where there is no lengthening, the change is simply vowel shortening.

Accent

When the last syllable

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 second-from-last syllable. In a word of three syllables, the names of the syllables are antepenult-penult-ultima.-Etymology:...

 is accented, it takes an acute, even if the non-Attic form has a circumflex.

If the non-Attic form is accented on the third-from-last syllable, the Attic form is accented on the same syllable, even when it violates the rules of accent. Normally the accent would be forced forward to the second-to-last syllable.

• Homeric
  Homeric Greek
  Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. It is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek. It later served as the basis of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry, typically in...
  
   Μενέλᾱος → Ionic Μενέληος → Attic Μενέλεως (not *Μενελέως)

This is as if εω were analysed as one long vowel instead of a short vowel and long vowel. This occurs with the Homeric first-declension ending -εω (synizesis

Synizesis

Synizesis is a sound change in which two originally syllabic vowels are pronounced as a single syllable without change in writing. In Latin and Greek, this was often to preserve meter, but similar changes occur naturally in languages....

).

See also

• Ancient Greek nouns
  Ancient Greek nouns
  In Ancient Greek, all nouns are classified according to grammatical gender and are used in a number . According to their function in a sentence, their form changes to one of the five cases...
  
  : Attic declension
• Quantitative metathesis
  Quantitative metathesis
  Quantitative metathesis is a specific form of metathesis or transposition involving quantity or vowel length...
  
  
• Ancient Greek dialects
  • Attic Greek
    Attic Greek
    Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek". It is sometimes included in Ionic.- Origin and range...
    
    
  • Ionic Greek
    Ionic Greek
    Ionic Greek was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic dialect group of Ancient Greek .-History:Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C.By the end of the Greek Dark Ages in the 5th Century...
    
    
  • Koine Greek
    Koine Greek
    Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....