Analogy and Sound Change in Ancient Greek

A key observation that has emerged out of the examination of different stages of a language is that no language is static; all aspects of language are subject to change, including the sounds, the forms, the sentence structure, meanings, etc. Indeed, as far as Greek is concerned, the evidence presented in the chapters on syntactic change between Classical and Hellenistic Greek and on movement towards Modern Greek shows that Greek in the post-Classical period was a vital living linguistic system, one that did not stand still but rather underwent changes and evolved. Moreover, the same is true of earlier stages of Greek, that is from early Greek of the second millennium B.C. up to (and beyond) the Classical period, and for domains of grammar other than the syntax. Information on change in Greek over this chronological span comes from several sources. First, there is the direct evidence obtained by comparing two stages of the same dialect. Second, different dialects of Greek can be compared with one another, and judged against the comparative evidence of Indo-European languages other than Greek (see the chapter on Indo-European) to see which one is innovative, the assumption being that if two dialects disagree on some feature, at least one of them has undergone an innovative change away from their common starting point. Finally, variation within a single dialect generally indicates that a change has occurred and the new form and the older form are competing with one another. Since Attic Greek is the usual point of reference for Ancient Greek and especially for Classical Greek, the focus here is examples of change in Attic, so that the dialect comparisons are those which show Attic to be innovative. In some instances, the changes reflect developments that occurred before Attic is attested but which are