I’m hoping to get a little clarification if possible. I am hosting a group through Athenaze and we are using both the UK and Italian editions (Italian for the added readings). We have stumbled across something that has us stumped and I’m hoping we can get it sorted.
In the UK edition there are many sentences where τί is used to indicate “why?” where the Italian edition uses διὰ τί. Is there a specific grammatical difference between these two terms? Is one better to use in certain situations or are they completely interchangable?
The Cambridge Greek Lexicon labels this meaning of τί as “Hom+,” meaning that it occurs in basically all periods of ancient Greek. (In modern Greek I believe it’s γιατί.) They also say “(freq. w.pcl.)” and give as their primary example “τί γάρ;,” which makes sense, since it would literally mean something like English “wherefore?” They give several other examples, but διὰ τί isn’t one of them, and none of their examples use prepositions. So διὰ τί certainly doesn’t seem to be the primary or only idiom for asking a general “why” question in any dialect they’re discussing. But the entry for διά does have a whole block for causal meanings, where the word means something like “through means of.” You might want to give us a page number in Athenaze and more context.
δια τι is common enough in Attic and later. Xenophon is a fan, I recall. τι standing first without a preposition, meaning why, is common from Homer onwards. LSJ discusses the first in the δια article B.III.2, and the second in the τις article B.I.8e (explained as adverbial).
I think that is just leveling, due to the fact that they are so easy to translate “why” and gloss as “why” in dictionaries.
To take two:
διὰ τί = what is the cause?
Διὰ τί ἡμεῖς οὐκ ἠδυνήθημεν ἐκβαλεῖν αὐτό;
εἰς τί = what is the goal?
Ὀλιγόπιστε, εἰς τί ἐδίστασας; (What is the point of doubt, once you were on the water? NOT, as gets so confusingly translated “Why did you doubt?” “Peter: There was a freaking storm, dude.”)
Ὁ θεός μου ὁ θεός μου, εἰς τί ἐγκατέλιπές με; (What is your point in this, Lord? NOT, why did you do this to me?)
Anyway, that’s how it seems to me. But I haven’t done a big literature survey or anything. A few weeks ago I mentally composed a Koine forum post on τί + dative person statements, which I think can be better understood than they are currently.
Thanks for all the excellent responses. They are really helpful!
Regarding @bcrowell’s question, please see the below comparison from the two editions. There are several other similar examples but this shows the point:
From Athenaze UK (2003), page 23, line 5:
“Ὁ οὖν Δικαιόπολις, “τί μένετε, ὦ Βόες;” φησίν, καὶ βλέπει πρὸς τὸ ἄροτρον, καὶ ἰδού, λίθος ἐμποδίζει αὐτό.”
Ask a simple question here and sometimes you get a complicated answer. It’s really simple: they are synonyms with no material difference in meaning. BTW, somebody mentioned the modern Greek γιατί. That is simply derived from the earlier διὰ τί.
The διὰ τί focuses more on the cause (meaning for what reason), and the bare τί (when used like this) seems is closer to bare ‘why’, and is what gets used for rhetorical [maybe better “abstract”?] questions.
τί δὲ βλέπεις τὸ κάρφος τὸ ἐν τῷ ὀφθαλμῷ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ σου…
τί με ζητεῖτε ἀποκτεῖναι;
τί με ἐρωτᾷς;
Even if you don’t believe my proposed meaning difference, you can see that these are two different patterns of questions. Exactly the sort of thing that glosses in dictionaries and translations tend to level.
Do lexicographers have a secret handshake, like freemasons? What hoary secrets they must possess. But here, in contradiction to your claim, the LSJ lexicographers get it right. They put this usage for διά in their “Cause, Occasion, or Purpose” section and gloss “wherefore”. They include “wherefore” as only part of the range of adverbial τί, which they gloss as “how? why? wherefore?”. Notice that in all of the bare τί examples that I gave earlier, it would have a decidedly wrong emphasis with διὰ τί or “wherefore/for what reason” in English.
Notice also (as I just did) that the LSJ lexicographers also explicitly affirm my διὰ τί, εἰς τί distinction: “διὰ τί; wherefore?”, “ἐς τί; to what point? how long?; but also, to what end?”
On the distinction between why and wherefore in English, remember the line after the famous one in R&J:
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
Not the rhetorical/abstract “why were you born Romeo”. But the concrete “for what reason don’t you disown your family?”
For what it’s worth, Jean Humbert in Syntaxe Grecque states that διὰ τί is the means “par laquelle on demand aussi bien les raisons d’un état de choses existant que les intentions qui cherchent à le réaliser . . . .” sec. 515. My french is not very good, so don’t be shy if you have a better translation, but it seems to me that he is saying that διὰ τί is the means by which one asks for both the reasons for the existing state of affairs and the intentions which seek to bring it [the state of affairs] about.
He contends that διὰ + acc initially indicated causality, but later began to indicate finality, and believes διὰ τί, which asks the dual question explained above, contributed to the slippage from causality to finality in the διὰ + acc construction.
Anyhow, it’s entirely possible I’ve misunderstood Humbert, but thought I’d share since he seems to think the διὰ in διὰ τί is bringing something to the party.
I think in the grand scheme of things this is not the sort of thing you need to worry about, at this stage at least. Although in some contexts there may be a shade of difference I doubt there is any material difference in the course materials you are reading. “Why are you sleeping” and “what is the reason you are sleeping” seem to me to be equivalent questions. Perhaps in the Italian edition it was decided to use “διὰ τί” to make it clear the question was “why” rather than “what” which is how “τί” is glossed in the index of my old version of Athenaze 2.
Don’t let small points like this impede your enjoyment or progress. As you continue your studies you will appreciate how flexible Greek is and how simple questions can lead to complex answers.
Here, the UK version means: “why do you stay still, cows?”, an exasperated question, not really positing an answer. And the Italian is “what causes you to stay still, cows?”, (ans: the λίθος).
No doubt one could invent a reason for the difference but it seems to me a rather circular argument. We have two texts which use different formulations and therefore there must be a different meaning.
I never expect an answer from cows, not that I am in the habit of addressing them.
Why do you lie down? vs. What causes you to lie down? I don’t know the context. One is likely better than the other.
Maybe constructed Greek of Athenaze isn’t really on a level to withstand this sort of thing. I’ve never been super impressed by it. It’s not quite like Rouse’s or Sidgwick’s or Wilson’s constructed Greek. Certainly not the native Greek of any ancient author. But if anything, that’s a deficit in a silly textbook, and no argument not to see or learn the difference here.
There was a sermon on forgiveness today at church (very good, actually) and I happened to notice all of the different uses of τί close together in Mark chapter 2.
In the story of the paralytic, the Pharisees ask the following question in a very excited manner:
Τί οὗτος οὕτως λαλεῖ; βλασφημεῖ·
How can this man be speaking like this?!? He blasphemes! [Adverbial τί, not expecting a concrete answer]
τίς δύναται ἀφιέναι ἁμαρτίας εἰ μὴ εἷς ὁ θεός;
“Who…?” [Normal interrogative, τίς not τί, though the question itself is rhetorical]
