Langue poétique, hyperdialectalismes et langue de chancellerie. Le cas des textes thessaliens et l’origine de ενεκα

 

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The attestation in Thessalian dialect inscriptions (3rd/2nd Cent.) of forms which are unexpected from the etymological point of view may be explained as due to the confluence of two factors: the influence of the literary (Attic and Ionic) prose and, at the same time, the tendence to give them a Thessalian colour. This is visible even in the case of three forms which show unexpected geminates. In enneka, the geminate reflects the thessalisation of Hom. Ion. Att. ei{neka, which goes back to the Homeric metrical lenghtening of PGr *eneka (: Myc. e-ne-ka /(h)eneka/): a new etymology of the form is proposed in support of this view. The same explanation applies for the theonym Ennodia (as against neut. pl. enodia ‘paths’ in the same inscription), which reflects Eijnodivh/a (Hsd.+), Hom. eijnovdio~. For its part, the place name Govnnoi (Govnno~) reflects Hom. Gouneuv~, gounov~ ‘hill’, which show the phonetic outcome of *ĝon-ó-. The irregular spellings <enn>, <onn> turn out to reflect an artificial thessalisation of Ion.Hom. <ein>, <oun>, whatever their origin could be, at a time when Thessalians write stubbornly in dialect, as a manifestation of their identity.

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