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7.44 Accentuation of ἔστι(ν)

As explained in the previous section, you learned that most of the forms of the present active indicative of "to be" (am, are, is, etc.) are enclitic, meaning they do not carry an accent mark of their own. The one exception is the second person singular form εἶ, which always has a circumflex accent. Even though these forms normally do not have an accent mark, there are some circumstances where they do take an accent (see Croy section 7.42 for a discussion of accents and enclitics).

In addition, there are a few special circumstances when the specific form ἔστι takes an accent mark on the penultimate syllable (not on the ultimate syllable, which is where the enclitic stress for this verb form can fall). Here are the circumstances when you will find ἔστι accented on the penultimate syllable:

Although you certainly do not need to worry about the rules for accent when you are composing sentences in Greek, you will find it interesting to pay attention to the way ἐστι is accented in the sentences that you read in Croy and in the Greek Bible. Each time you see an example of the verb ἐστι take a look at the accent mark and see if you can determine what form of the verb you are looking at:


Biblical Greek Online. Laura Gibbs, Ph.D. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You must give the original author credit. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one. Page last updated: April 9, 2005 8:06 PM


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