Accentual Cursus in Byzantine Greek Prose. 421 
tury)—and from his language a calculation was made of the total 
number of possible regular cases, and of possible irregular cases. 
This was done in the following way: a word accented on the first 
syllable such as «ewes, if preceded by an oxytone or paroxytone, 
makes an irregular form, but a regular form is produced if it be 
preceded by a proparoxytone!; a word accented on the second 
syllable such as oxomds combined with a preceding oxytone makes 
an irregular form, while any other possible accent on the preceding 
word makes a regular form; then words accented on the third 
syllable such as yevee, or on the fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh, 
may be preceded by any accent at all without producing a form 
which violates Meyer’s law. All words may now be classed ac- 
cording as they bear an accent on the first syllable, second syllable, 
and so on—seven classes. Then they may be again classed ac- 
cording to the position of the accent relative to the end of the 
word—three classes: (1) oxytone, (2) paroxytone, (3) proparoxytone. 
Then from the numbers of these two sets of classes may be com- 
puted the total number of possible regular forms, and the total 
number of possible irregular forms. Since monosyllables and ‘“ some 
dissyllables ” do not seem admissible in the reckoning on the same 
basis as polysyllabic words, they are temporarily left out of account. 
The sum total of all possible clausule resulting from every possible 
arrangement of the 12,172 words counted was 148, 157,564. Of 
these the total of possible regular forms was 95,083,089, and of 
irregular forms 53,074,475. Finally, in order to take account of 
the monosyllables, (where the written accent “gar nicht helfen 
kann”), all the clausulz in the same Life of Leontius are counted, 
and the cases containing monosyllables (834 in all) divided into 
regular (308) and irregular (26) forms. Then these percentages 
(92.22 °', regular and 7.78 °/, irregular) are added to the corresponding 
percentages of the possible forms in polysyllabic words: 
64.17 + 92.22 = 156.39 regular. 
35.83 + 7.78 = 43.61 irregular. 
These results divided by two give the following result: 78.195 °), 
regular; 21.805°/) irregular. Litzica concludes thus: Die mittel- 
griechische Sprache ist so beschaffen, dass sie zwischen den siamt- 
lichen Wortcombinationen das Verhaltniss von ungefaihr 80 dem 
Meyerischen Gesetz nach regelmassigen, gegen 20 unregelmassige 
darbietet. This, then, constitutes a test whereby a writer’s language 

* Litzica includes perispomena under oxytones, properispomena under 
paroxytones. ; 
