[B-Greek] I need some assistance with this phrase

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sat Sep 12 11:16:16 EDT 2009


On Sep 12, 2009, at 10:57 AM, jlitteral5 at roadrunner.com wrote:

> Μὴ ἄλγει ὅτι ἀφίσταμαι.

MH ALGEI hOTI AFISTAMAI.
Protocol requires transliteration of texts cited in UTF-8 Greek.

>
> Do not grive that departs.
>
> What I come up with does not really make sense.  Is there a much  
> better way to translate this.

Would it make it any easier to analyze the form?

AFISTAMAI < AP(O)- hISTA-MAI
APO is prefix
hISTA is present stem of verb with root STA/STH, lemma in LSJ and BDAG  
hISTHMI
MAI is 1 sg. primary middle-passive ending

The verb AFISTHMI in the active means "uproot from a settled  
position," "cause to move away." This is in fact the causative form of  
a verb that would be better lemmatized as AFISTAMAI, "remove oneself  
from a settled position."


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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