TIS and TIS

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Sep 8 08:19:11 EDT 2002


At 1:32 PM +0300 9/8/02, Iver Larsen wrote:
>> >1 Cor 14:16 TI LEGEIS OUK OIDEN -what(ever) you are saying, he doesn't
>> >know/understand.
>>
>> I think I would prefer to understand TI in these constructions as the
>> interrogative pronoun rather than as an indefinite pronoun. It's true that
>> older Classical Greek used hO TI, the relative interrogative,
>> more commonly
>> than the straightforward interrogative pronoun in indirect questions, but
>> the interrogative pronoun was always an option and I think that's what we
>> have here.
>>
>
>Thanks for the correction, Carl. Yes, it is better and certainly normal to
>analyze these as interrogatives. I am not sure why I was thinking of the
>indefinite, maybe because of the uncertainty involved and the possibility of
>translating it: "Any (word/thing) you say, he will not understand it". I
>don't know if that is indeed possible.
>
>However, this leads me to the question of whether the interrogative TIS and
>indefinite TIS are always easy to distinguish. Apart from accents the forms
>are the same. Do these accents represent a different intonation or stress in
>ancient Greek or is the distinction between them purely a matter of syntax
>and semantics, rather than phonology and morphology?

I think this is a fair question, Iver, and also a good one to raise for
pedagogical reasons because students in earlier stages of learning Greek
often find this distinction troubling--the more so if they don't pay close
attention to the accentuation of the interrogative and indefinite forms of
TIS/TI. I think there surely was, at an earlier stage in the language, a
clear difference of intonation between the oxytone and barytone forms of
TIS and TI--but I think that in most instances this distinction itself was
assisted or even occasioned by a characteristically distinct positioning of
the indefinite in an ENCLITIC position, of the interrogative in a marked
INITIAL position in the phrasing. Granted that there might be a few
collocations/contexts wherein the differentiation is questionable, yet
generally I don't think there's likely to be any confusion at all.

>Normally the
>interrogative is used substantively, but not always. And the indefinite can
>also be used substantively, although not so commonly. Normally the
>interrogative is in the beginning of its clause, but the indefinite can also
>be in that position.

That is true; another way of saying this is that both can function in both
pronominal and adjectival roles, but while I certainly haven't attempted to
do any sort of count, my gut feeling (FWIW) is that the interrogative
TIS/TI is far more frequently pronominal while the indefinite TIS/TI is far
more frequently adjectival. It is relatively rare, I think, for adjectival
TIS/TI to precede the noun to which it refers, but that CAN happen, and in
the right circumstances (i.e. in a string of enclitics) the adjectival or
even the pronominal TIS/TI preceding its noun may even be oxytone, e.g.,
EA/N TIS/ TI/ POTE POIHi ... = "if anyone ever does something ..." That's
obviously a made-up example, but I think I've seen that sort of thing from
time to time (particularly in Homer?).
>
>What about places like
>Mt 10:11: EXETASATE TIS EN AUTHi AXIOS ESTIN
> - make enquiries as to who in it is worthy? or - if there is a worthy
>person in it?

This TIS is clearly interrogative and oxytone; the introductory verb is
commonly enough used to indicate a question.

>Would the second option need an EI or (E)AN in Greek?
>Mt 7:9: TIS ESTIN EX hUMWN ANQRWPOS
>-  what person is there among you, or - is there any person among you...

I suppose that you mean: if the question is transformed into indirect form;
e.g., TOUTO hUMAS ERWTW EI TIS ESTIN EX hUMWN ANQRWPOS; here I think the
TIS becomes indefinite--and loses its accentuation--because the EI (or EAN)
clearly introduces the indirect question. In fact, the ANQRWPOS is even
redundant here and we could very well have TOUTO hUMAS ERWTW EI TIS ESTIN
EX hUMWN (hOSTIS ...).

>1 Cor 10:31: EITE OUN ESQIETE EITE PINETE EITE TI POIEITE
> - so whether you eat or drink or what(ever) you do

Yes, this is pretty clearly indefinite; the context pretty clearly is not
interrogative but simply conditional; the TI is enclitic .

>Rom 8:24: hO GAR BLEPEI TIS ELPIZEI
> - who hopes for what he sees? or - does anyone hope for what he sees?

I can recognize how some might consider this TIS indefinite, and I guess
some might even say it's a "judgment call"--but I wouldn't hesitate to call
this interrogative in its broader context of 1 Cor 10. It would be possible
to understand the TIS as indefinite and mark a pause after the TIS, but the
meaning of the sentence would change radically to: "For what a man (=
anyone) sees, he hopes for." That is intelligible--but it doesn't suit the
context.

>The Friberg tagging system has marked the first two as interrogative, the
>third as indefinite, the fourth as undecided between the two options.

I'd only quibble about the fourth: as I've tried to show, it is possible to
interpret the TIS as indefinite, but in the context of the passage it seems
to me that it can only be interrogative.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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