Enclitic Accents

5.4 Note that εἰμί appears not to conform with the RECESSIVE ACCENT rules that we learned. In fact, for the Present Indicative Active, only the 2nd person singular, εἶ, follows the recessive accent rules that apply to verbs.

All the other Present Indicative forms of εἰμί were pronounced as though they were suffixes to the words that preceded them, much like Latin –que. Such words are called ENCLITIC, meaning they lean on the preceding word for their accent. The rules for accenting ENCLITIC WORDS are as follows:

5.5 Rule 1:

    If an enclitic has ONE or TWO SYLLABLES, and the preceding word has an ACUTE accent on its ANTEPENULT, the preceding word adds an acute accent on its last syllable, and the enclitic word receives no accent.

•  Ἕλληνες → Ἕλληνές ἐσμεν. (= Ἕλληνέσεσμεν)
  • We are Greeks.

Note that the acute accent on the ultima does NOT change to grave. It is as if the whole combination of preceding word and enclitic were pronounced as one and accented recessively.

5.6 Rule 2:

Similarly, if an enclitic has ONE or TWO SYLLABLES, and the preceding word has a CIRCUMFLEX accent on its PENULT, the preceding word again adds an acute accent on its last syllable, and the enclitic receives no accent.

• παῖδες → παῖδές ἐσμεν. (= πάὶδέσεσμεν )
  • We are children.  

5.7 Rule 3:  

If an enclitic has TWO SYLLABLES, and the preceding word has an ACUTE accent on its PENULT, the enclitic retains its own accent on its ULTIMA. If the enclitic has only ONE SYLLABLE, it does not receive an accent.

• φίλοι ἐσμέν.
  • We are friends.
• λέγεις τε καὶ γράφεις.
  • You speak and you write.  

(note: τε is another enclitic word, meaning and)  

5.8 Rule 4:  

If an enclitic has ONE or TWO SYLLABLES, and the preceding word has ANY ACCENT on the ULTIMA, then the enclitic usually receives no accent.

• ἁλωτοί ἐσμεν.
  • We are captured.
• οἱ λῃσταί εἰσιν ἀγαθοί…
  • The pirates are good.

Note that sometimes ἐστι is found with a recessive accent: ἔστι. This is usually done either because the verb is at the beginning of a sentence to emphasize that something exists, or to serve as the equivalent of there is…

• ἔστιν ἡ ἀλήθεια.
  • The truth exists.
• οὐκ ἔστιν.
  • No there isn’t!