[B-Greek] A Question Of Form
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Sep 23 14:07:04 EDT 2003
At 12:56 PM -0400 9/23/03, Barry W. Hickey wrote:
>Why does TIS take the form of TI in the nominative/accusative singular when
>in the neuter? I expected it to be TIN. Am I totally off base or is there
>something going on that I'm not aware of.
The history of this interrogative or indefinite pronoun, which is precisely
equivalent to Latin QUIS m.f., QUID n. is somewhat complex. The primary
stem is *kwi- which is Greek TI-; TIN- is a secondary stem on which the
classical and Koine declensional forms of the accusative m./f. and the
oblique cases, as well as the neuter nom. & acc. pl., are based. The neuter
nom. and acc. sg. was originally TID, but a final -D evanesced early in
Greek as did in fact all final consonants other than -S, -N, and -R.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list