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Accent quiz

Posted: April 5th, 2014, 11:49 am
by Stephen Carlson
The following forms are spelled with the same letters but have different accents:
  • ποίησαι
  • ποιῆσαι
  • ποιήσαι
What do they mean?

Re: Accent quiz

Posted: April 5th, 2014, 12:47 pm
by cwconrad
Stephen Carlson wrote:The following forms are spelled with the same letters but have different accents:
  • ποίησαι
  • ποιῆσαι
  • ποιήσαι
What do they mean?
What they mean, of course, depends considerably on contextual indicators, which are absent here; but contextual indicators, of course, would give the game away.

ποίησαι: aor. 2 sg. imptv., roughly, "do (it) for yourself"
ποιῆσαι: aor. act. inf., roughly, "to get (it) done"
ποιήσαι: aor. 3 sg. opt., roughly, "may/might get (it) done"; in older Attic, one might see ποιήσειε(ν)