ποῖοί εἰτί?

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gfross
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ποῖοί εἰτί?

Post by gfross »

In the Reading section of Chapter Three of First Year Greek by Rouse-Mahoney, I came across a word whose definition I could not find: εἰτί. The word occurs in a question-answer context:

ποῖοί εἰτὶ εἰσι οἱ κάλαμοι; στρογγύλοι εἰσὶ καὶ μικροί.

Does anyone know its meaning?

The accentuation seems off, too, but I'm just a novice, so I can't really tell. The book, a first edition, does have a number of errata and typos that I have discovered, so maybe this is one here.

NateD26
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Re: ποῖοί εἰτί?

Post by NateD26 »

gfross wrote:ποῖοί εἰτὶ εἰσι οἱ κάλαμοι; στρογγύλοι εἰσὶ καὶ μικροί.

The question seems complete without it (I couldn't find it in the dictionary) and so does the answer.
Might be a typo as you said.

ποῖοί εἰσιν οἱ κάλαμοι; στρογγύλοι εἰσὶ καὶ μικροί.
Nate.

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pster
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Re: ποῖοί εἰτί?

Post by pster »

I believe it is a deictic iota added for emphasis. So the word is just εἶτα.

http://condor.wesleyan.edu/courses/2006 ... iciota.htm

And I believe that the accent movement is overdetermined: 1) Deictic iota always takes the accent and 2) εἰσι is enclitic. And I guess it always is a grave which makes for a rare situation accent wise.

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Re: ποῖοί εἰτί?

Post by NateD26 »

pster wrote:I believe it is a deictic iota added for emphasis. So the word is just εἶτα.

http://condor.wesleyan.edu/courses/2006 ... iciota.htm

And I believe that the accent movement is overdetermined: 1) Deictic iota always takes the accent and 2) εἰσι is enclitic. And I guess it always is a grave which makes for a rare situation accent wise.
Thanks, pster. However, what is the meaning of εἶτα here? Smyth in 2653 notes it is used in questions
to introduce surprise, irony, indignation and such, but I don't see anything in here that would merit
inserting εἶτα or its (apparently undocumented in any Greek text I've searched) deictic "relative" εἰτί.

Also, though I'm not sure about accentuation rules and there may be some dispute among scholars
regarding this, but how can εἰσί throw its accent over a non-enclitic εἰτί to ποῖοι?

I know that would happen in a series of enclitics but here it should be ποῖοι εἰτί εἰσιν οἱ κάλαμοι;
shouldn't it?
Nate.

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pster
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Re: ποῖοί εἰτί?

Post by pster »

Without context, I cannot hazard a guess as to the meaning, but it seems to be a pretty vanilla word and so easily employed. :) I don't know whether it is undocumented, but if you say so I believe you. But are you searching with the grave accent? I did a little google search and found that the same authors use it again in section IXΒ (I hope that makes sense to gfross, but google with quotes if you want to get it.) Oh wow, I missed that accent on the first word. That is weird. I didn't even look at that.

gfross
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Re: ποῖοί εἰτί?

Post by gfross »

Thanks for your comments! Yes, Rouse does use εἶτα again in Reading IXβ of Rouse's Greek Boy: A Reader. In the glossary of the book, he translates it as "then, next" and gives ἔπειτα as a synonym. However, εἰτί is not glossed. I guess that it is either a typo or that his intention was for the teacher to explain it in class. I agree; the accentuation is weird.

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