International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Alexandra Evdokimova
Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Linguistic, Moscow, Russian Federation; 
[e-mail]
Byzantine Accentuation between Papyri and Graffiti. 
Linguistic Peculiarities of Greek Graffiti in the Byzantine Balkans
Greek texts became consistently accentuated already in the 10
th
century manuscripts, when 
the pitch difference between acute and circumflex stress vanished. Before this epoch, according to 
the earlier findings the accentuation marks were used rather sporadically. But this conclusion is far 
from certain as there is no comprehensive publication of all accentuated Greek texts belonging to 
an earlier epoch, although there are some studies of accentuation in different papyri groups (either 
thematical or geographical). Most authors describe two main accentuation systems: Alexandrine 
(marking of the unstressed syllable etc.) and Byzantine (accents on the stressed syllable), but in the 
Byzantine Greek inscriptions there are other accentuation systems as well.
The gravis instead of the acute and circumflex changed its meaning and usage during the 
substitution from the Alexandrine accentuation system to the Byzantine. One of the general step of 
this substitution began an orthographic reform, done near 400 y. AD by Theodosius Alexandrinus. 
The gravis in the final syllable of the textual unity and other gravis usages, for example the marking 
of the unstressed syllable, were eliminated. But the analysis of the Byzantine accentuated inscriptions 
showed us, that even the XIV-XV cc. was used the system of the unstressed syllable marking by the 
gravis, and also the gravis usage in the meaning of the acute, appearing as the stress shift near the 
enclitic or the marking sign for the clitic.

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There is also the tendency of the gravis shift to the left, which Laum described as the reflex of 
the old Alexandrine accentuation system, characterizing that the gravis was on the all unstressed 
syllables. Analysis of the general gravis usage, and the quotation of it’s shifting, gave to Fournet an 
opportunity to make the conclusion, that the gravis, which many scientist accustomed to deal as a 
Byzantine accentuation system gravis in the two syllable word with stress on the second syllable is 
exactly a simple shift of Alexandrine gravis to the right, not a change of the acute to the gravis.
We haven’t any certain decision about the changes of the acute to the gravis and the same of 
the gravis to the acute. If they were occasional or there was one system. The consequential usage 
only one of these signs appears in some papyri and the inscriptions, in others we can observe both 
signs: the acute marks the stressed syllable and unstressed syllable, the gravis is used only on the 
final syllable inside of the syntagmas.
For some papyri was found such interesting phenomenon as the intonation shift or the special 
stress melodism, which appear when the gravis is placed to the not stressed syllable and the acute 
is saved on the stressed: μὼμέσθαι (Parthenios Alcman, 44) φὲρόισαις (Parthenios Alcman, 61), 
θὼστήρ (Parthenios Alcman, 81) For comparison with some analyzing examples of the stress shift 
from gravis to acute, which we can see in the book Fournet citations from the papyri with texts 
of Homer: [κα]ματὼί (X 399) μαχὴί (ΧΙ 736) Ασὶνήν (ΙΙ 560). The similar phenomenon inside of 
the diphthong we can see and in the Byzantine inscriptions found in Georgia. Probable that the 
combination of two signs: acute and gravis inside of the diphthong was used for changing circumflex.
Analysis and decipher of more than 350 Byzantine Greek graffiti from Cappadocia, Pont, Kiev, 
Georgia, Bulgaria, Northern Greece, Athens, Constantinople etc. showed that besides the lexical and 
phonetic peculiarities of their dialect some of the inscriptions have accentuation systems different 
from the Byzantine one. For example, two systems mostly used in Cappadocian and Pontic graffiti 
are 1) elements of Alexandrine accentuation system: gravis as marker of an unaccented syllable; 
accent is on the first part of the diphthong; accent marks on the forth or fifth syllable and two or 
more accents above a word; 2) the last syllable of an oxytonic word is marked by gravis when a) it 
forms a syntagme with the next word; b) the next word has an initial stress. The latter also prevails 
in Greek graffiti from the Northern Greece, Bulgaria, Kievan Rus and Georgia on a par with accent 
mark as a marker of semantic emphasis. At first an interesting phenomenon, a shift of stress to the 
right, was testified in the documentary papyri, where the accent can be above the consonant. Our 
analysis found out some cases of using this phenomenon in the inscriptions of different dialects, but 
there is no sufficient amount of data yet for associating this shift of stress with a particular dialect.
The situation with the accentuation in the Greek graffiti from Byzantine Balkans is quite interesting, 
because we have in this territory different type of texts by their origin and by the origin of their authors. 
Some of them were written by Greeks, some not. Those inscriptions written by autochthons show us 
some reflexes of the other Balkan languages and the understanding of the different system of Greek 
accentuation. All the materials were compared with Byzantine inscriptions from the related languages 
territories and some other territories with Greeks and other ethnos. We can see two opposite each 
other tendencies: copy all the signs in all the words “super correct” Byzantine accentuation system 
and different methods of the Alexandrine accentuation system usage as more logical. And undoubted 
there are some interesting uncommon cases, which I’ll show in my report.

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