Deciphering BDAG

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Scott Lawson
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Joined: June 9th, 2011, 6:36 pm

Deciphering BDAG

Post by Scott Lawson »

Under the entry καταμαρτυρέω in BDAG it has; "bear witness against, testify against τί τινος testify someth. against someone..."

Why does it have τι with the acute accent and seemingly the accusative interrogative pronoun?
Why does it have τινος with no accentuation at all since in the genitive it would have it either on the penult or the ultima depending on whether it is an interrogative or an indefinite pronoun?

Do the forms of τίς that appear after a word indicate that the verbs are transitive and that they take only those forms of nouns or pronouns such as the accusative or genitive as indicated by the entry on καταμαρτυρέω?

Not looking to far down in the entries below καταμαρτυρέω in BDAG, I see κατανεύω, which means signal (usually by means of a nod) to someone.
Here τινί is presumably masc./fem. dative and no other form of the pronoun appears. Does that indicate that κατανεύω is transitive and only has its complement in the dative?

Again, not much farther down is καταξιόω. Same questions about τινά; is it its complement only to be found in the accusative?
Scott Lawson
MAubrey
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Re: Deciphering BDAG

Post by MAubrey »

Scott Lawson wrote:Under the entry καταμαρτυρέω in BDAG it has; "bear witness against, testify against τί τινος testify someth. against someone..."

Why does it have τι with the acute accent and seemingly the accusative interrogative pronoun?
Why does it have τινος with no accentuation at all since in the genitive it would have it either on the penult or the ultima depending on whether it is an interrogative or an indefinite pronoun?
The answer to both these question is identical. Both these forms are indefinite pronouns rather than interrogative. The accentuation for both is following the standard orthographic rules for Greek accents. When τινος is enclitic, it attaches to the previous word. And because it is attached, the accent of τὶ is no longer on the last syllable. The pronunciation is essentially: τίτινος. The same thing happens with other enclitics.

There is also the situation where a form of τίς appears as a question word rather than an indefinite pronoun. In such cases, it invariably will take an acute rather than a grave for reasons of phonological phrasing (e.g. Mark 1:27, which also has an attached enclitic: Τί ἐστιν τοῦτο;)
Scott Lawson wrote:Do the forms of τίς that appear after a word indicate that the verbs are transitive and that they take only those forms of nouns or pronouns such as the accusative or genitive as indicated by the entry on καταμαρτυρέω?
Yes.
Scott Lawson wrote:Not looking to far down in the entries below καταμαρτυρέω in BDAG, I see κατανεύω, which means signal (usually by means of a nod) to someone.
Here τινί is presumably masc./fem. dative and no other form of the pronoun appears. Does that indicate that κατανεύω is transitive and only has its complement in the dative?
Yes.
Again, not much farther down is καταξιόω. Same questions about τινά; is it its complement only to be found in the accusative?
Yes.

The τὶς forms tend to parallel the syntax of the English "something/someone" that follow. LSJ does essentially the same thing, though they don't include the accusative and they add a κατὰ option as well. The latter isn't in BDAG because it isn't attested in BDAG's corpus of texts (assumingly) and perhaps the same is true for the lack of the accusative in LSJ. I've marked the pronouns in bold below.

καταμαρτῠρέω, bear witness against, τινος Antipho 2.4.10, D.19.120, 29.9, Mitteis Chr.31 v 33 (ii B.C.), etc.; κατά τινος.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
Koine-Greek.com
Scott Lawson
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Joined: June 9th, 2011, 6:36 pm

Re: Deciphering BDAG

Post by Scott Lawson »

Thanks!
Scott Lawson
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