Copulative a
Ancient Greek prefix
title: "Copulative a" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["indo-european-linguistics", "greek-language"] description: "Ancient Greek prefix" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copulative_a" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Ancient Greek prefix ::
The copulative a (also a copulativum, a athroistikon) is the prefix ἁ- () or α- () used to express unity in Ancient Greek, derived from Proto-Indo-European *sm̥-, cognate to English same (see also symbel).
An example is ἀδελφός ( 'brother'), from *sm̥-gʷelbhos, literally meaning 'from the same womb' (compare Delphi).
In Proto-Greek, the Proto-Indo-European phoneme *s at the beginning of a word became *h by debuccalization and syllabic *m̥ became *a, giving the combined form ha-. The initial h was sometimes lost by psilosis or Grassmann's law.
Cognate forms in other languages preserve the original Proto-Indo-European *s. For example, the Sanskrit prefix occurs in the name of the language, सं॒स्कृ॒त , literally 'put together'. Less exact cognates include English same and some, and Latin simul 'at the same time' and similis 'similar'.
Other words in Greek are related, including ᾰ̔́μᾰ ( 'at the same time'), ὁμός ( 'same'), and εἷς ( 'one'; from Proto-Indo-European *sem-s).
References
References
- {{LSJ. a)1. ἀ-. ref.
- {{OEtymD. same
- {{OED. same
- {{LSJ. a(/ma1. ἅμα, {{LSJ. o(mo/s. ὁμός, {{LSJ. εἷς. shortref.
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