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This blog is intended to assist readers in learning koine (New Testament) Greek. Welcome!

Sunday, February 1, 2009

The interrogative pronoun τίς, τί

The paradigm for τίς, τί is as follows:

(The paradigm is in the usual order: masculine, feminine, and neuter, reading across; nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative cases reading down; the plural forms are listed below the singular forms.)


Notice that the masculine and feminine forms are identical; this is why the word is listed as τίς, τί instead of τίς, τίς, τί.


Notice also that each word has an accent, and that the accent on the two-syllable forms is on the first syllable.

The endings of τίς, τί follow, more or less, the endings of third declension nouns.









τίς, τί is an interrogative pronoun; that is, it introduces a question. The meaning is something like: who? which? what?


E.g., τίς λέγει; Who is speaking?

τί βλέπει; What is he/she saying?


The neuter singular form, τί, is also often used to mean 'why?'

τί λέγει ταύτα; Why is he/she saying these things?


τίς, τί must be distinguished from τις, τι. More on that in the next post.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Evyenia:

τί βλέπει

Should this not be "What is he/she seeing?", not saying??

David

Evyenia said...

Yes, you are correct - my mistake! Συγγνώμη!