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Indefinite or interogative?

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Indefinite or interogative?

Postby Bert » Sat Nov 11, 2006 9:09 pm

The second part of line 486 and line 487 of book 2 reads
οá½￾δέ τι ἴδμεν·
οἵ τινες ἡγεμόνες Δαναῶν καὶ κοίÏ￾ανοι


I can't translate this with τινες as an indefinite pronoun and the translations I checked take it as an interogative.
Why does it not have an accent?
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Postby IreneY » Sat Nov 11, 2006 9:49 pm

Well I know that τις, τινός is an enclitic but I can't for the life of me remember for sure if the definite article is one and this is the reason that τινές lost its accent mark.
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Postby perispomenon » Sat Nov 11, 2006 9:55 pm

Pharr paragraph 554 lists the indefinite pronoun τὶς, τὶ as an enclitic, so that would explain it losing the accent.

I didn't see τινες as an interrogative therefore, but as an indefinite pronoun. Not sure about how I would translate it exactly. Perhaps '(we don't know) which ones were the leaders and chiefs of the Danaans', so 'who were the leaders and chiefs of the Danaans'.
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Postby Bert » Sun Nov 12, 2006 12:13 am

IreneY wrote:Well I know that τις, τινός is an enclitic but I can't for the life of me remember for sure if the definite article is one and this is the reason that τινές lost its accent mark.

á½￾ is enclitic but τίνες (interogative) is not supposed to lose its accent.
perispomenon wrote: Pharr paragraph 554 lists the indefinite pronoun τὶς, τὶ as an enclitic, so that would explain it losing the accent. I didn't see τινες as an interrogative therefore, but as an indefinite pronoun.

Yes but my difficulty was in translating it as an indefinite and others seem to take it as an interogative.

perispomenon wrote:Not sure about how I would translate it exactly. Perhaps '(we don't know) which ones were the leaders and chiefs of the Danaans', so 'who were the leaders and chiefs of the Danaans'.

I was looking at another text where it says οἵτινες instead of οἵ τινες .
So I looked that up in Cunliffe and Middle Liddell. Guess what perispomenon, you hit the nail right on the head. It is like a relative pronoun with an indefinite force and it is often used in indirect questions.
So your translation would be the right one.
Looking at the other translations again I realize that they are not really translated with in interogative pronoun but with a relative pronoun.
I should have noticed the difference before but sometimes the obvious is overlooked.
Thanks you two for replying.
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