"He is following his daughter."

[spikypsyche]

I see the two Correct Responses

• Αυτός ακολουθεί την κόρη του.
• Ακολουθά την κόρη του.

And I've seen these in a lot of simple sentences. What are these two conjugations/what's the difference?

[Dimitra956826]

Okay. That's a really good question.

There is a certain type of verbs called "συνηρημένα ρήματα", or in english, "contract verbs".

Contract verbs are verbs which have a stem ending in one of three short vowels, either α, ε or ο. This stem vowel contracts with any vowel or diphthong at the beginning of the final form of an ending, when that ending is joined to it. In other words:

• verb ending in -άω = verb ending in -ώ

(Rarest cases, mostly found in ancient greek)

• verb ending in -όω = verb ending in -ώ

• veb ending in -έω = verb ending in -ώ

exp. βοηθάω - βοηθώ

πεινάω -πεινώ

διψάω - διψώ

ακολουθάω - ακολουθώ (in this case, 3rd sing. ακολουθάει - ακολουθά)

τραβάω -τραβώ

Both forms are used and correct.

Note: Some define contract verbs as all verbs which have a stem ending in a vowel. But this is not actually true. Generally, the only real contract verbs are those which have a stem ending in one of the short vowels α, ε or ο. Verbs which have stems ending in other vowels are not usually contract verbs. For instance, there are many verb stems which end in a υ or ι. Yet the stem vowel on these verbs will never contract with a vowel or diphthong at the beginning of any ending joined to it.

(As for the pronoun, sometimes its ommited and implied.) I hope I helped. ^.^

[mizinamo]

Is ακολουθεί also correct?

Hm, Wiktionary claims yes: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B1%CE%BA%CE%BF%CE%BB%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%B8%CF%8E

Curious! So it acts like an a-contract verb or an e-contract verb!

[Dimitra956826]

Yes, correct. Its one of the few cases this happens (theres no such thing like πινεί or τραβεί as far as I know). The magic of greek, I guessxD

[waynewatts2]

Why not Ακολουθά είναι την κόρη του?

[mizinamo]

"He is following he is his daughter"?

That makes no sense in either language.

Remember that Greek has no continuous aspect formed with "to be" + present participle as in English; ακολουθάει by itself can be translated not only to "he follows" but also "he is following".