Enclitic forms of EIMI as emphatic?

Rodney J. Decker rdecker at bbc.edu
Fri Feb 11 10:20:57 EST 2000


Yesterday I ran into something in the grammars that was new to me. 
Robertson, 233-34 and Moulton-Howard, 203 discuss the significance of the 
enclitic forms of EIMI, proposing, if I understand them correctly, that the 
enclitics serve as emphatic forms of EIMI and express existence or 
possibility rather than being a simple, nonemphatic linking verb. (There 
are exceptions: at the beginning of a sentence or following one of a half 
dozen conjunctions.)

That is, the usual form of ESTIN is accented ESTI/N and is not emphatic; 
but the enclitic form, which is emphatic, is accented E/STIN.

Robertson's comments are based, I think, on the WH text. I notice that our 
current NA and UBS texts do not print an accent on the enclitic form at all 
(ESTIN).

In light of the nonexistence of the accents in the original text (so far as 
we can tell), are there other factors that are involved in this 
explanation? Is it a valid one? Is it a useful/significant one?

Any comments or clarification would be appreciated.


Rod




****************************************************
Rodney J. Decker, Th.D.       Baptist Bible Seminary
Assoc. Prof./NT  PO Box 800, Clarks Summit, PA 18411
rdecker at bbc.edu      http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/
The *Resources for NT Study* site is accessible at:
http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/rd_rsrc.htm
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