[B-Greek] Re: Accents
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Nov 22 16:05:16 EST 2004
At 3:24 PM -0500 11/22/04, Jeremiah & Elisa Ketchum wrote:
>To get the discussion back to Greek, you said that there were instances where
>where accents are "very important". I generally don't pay that much attention
>to accents -- the only marks I really look for are rough breathing for
>pronunciation and iota subscripts for identification. Could you give me a few
>examples of important uses of accents?
To list just a few, without any intention to be exhaustive:
hO with rough breathing but no accent is the article, but hO\ with rough
breathing and a grave accent is the neuter singular relative pronoun;
similarly hH with rough breathing and no accent is the article, hH\ with
rough breathing and grave accent the feminine singular nominative relative
pronoun.
ESTIN with smooth breathing but without an accent is the enclitic form of
the third-person singular of EIMI "be" commonly used as a simple copula,
but )/ESTIN with smooth breathing and acute accent is the "existential"
form generally appearing initially in a sentence and indicating the
existence of the person or thing that is its grammatical subject.
HN--i.e. )H=N with smooth breathing and circumflex over the Eta, is the
imperfect third-singular of EIMI, but hHN--i.e. (H\N) with rough breathing
and grave accent over the Eta is the feminine singular accusative relative
pronoun.
TIS may have an acute accent over the iota--TI/S--in which case it's the
interrogative pronoun, or it may be an unaccented enclitic with the sense
of the indefinite pronoun "someone" or "a certain one."
EIS with a smooth breathing and no accent over the Iota--EI)S--is the
preposition meaning "into" or "onto"; hEIS with rough breathing and
circumflex over the Iota--hEI=S--is the nominative singular masculine of
the numeral meaning "one"; similarly EN with a smooth breathing and no
accent over the Epsilon is the preposition meaning "in," "on" or "at"; but
hEN with rough breathing and an acute or grave accent (as the case may be
in context)--hE\N is the neuter singular nominative or accusative of the
numeral meaning "one."
hOTI with rough breathing and acute accent--hO/TI--is the conjunction
introducing a clause of quotation or explanation, but the separated hO TI
with rough breathing and acute accent over the Omicron--hO/ TI--although
actually the same word as the other, is conventionally printed that way to
differentiate it as the neuter relative indefinite pronoun.
There are others, but these are indeed important. Others may add to the list.
--
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/
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