EI with or without accent

Clwinbery at aol.com Clwinbery at aol.com
Fri Dec 6 21:29:18 EST 2002



In a message dated 12/6/02 7:59:04 PM, bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca writes:

>In my grammar it says that EI (if) never gets an accent.  We can use this
>information to distinguish this word from EI (2nd sg. of EIMI)
>I attempted to translate Rev.20:15. There EI occurs with an accent, so
>I tried to translate it with "you are".Needless to say I ran into trouble
>and ended up cheating by checking an English Bible and found it translated
>with "it".
>Can someone explain this to me?
>Thank you

KAI\ EI)/ TIS OUC hEUREQH EN THi BIBLWi THS ZWHS GEGRAMMENOS.

Note the lack of an accent on TIS. This necessitates an accent on EI so that 
you have the combination of smooth breathing ) and acute accent /. It takes 
the acute instead of the grave even though followed by another word because 
that word does not have an accent. The rules of accent related to proclitics 
and enclitics may be found in Brooks and Winbery, Morphology starting on page 
36.

How do you know that EI is the particle "if" instead of the second sing. of EI
MI?  Context. The latter will not make sense. Also in the GNT the second 
sing.  of EIMI will have a circumflex accent with a smoothe breathing.

Grace,

Carlton Winbery
Louisiana College



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