Re: Mari Broman Olsen (was Aorist resources)

Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Tue, 10 Dec 1996 11:38:09 -0500

At 06:19 AM 12/10/96 -0600, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

>Just so that the water, which is hardly translucent now, be muddied beyond
>necessity, it should be noted that the imperfect and pluperfect do not
>exist but in the indicative mood (nor have infinitive & participle), and
>that the future, although it has infinitive and participle, is found
>outside the indicative ONLY in the optative, which is for practical
>purposes obsolete in Koine, which by nature has future reference,and which,
>I think, appears (future optative) almost exclusively in conditional
>clauses in indirect discourse in classical Attic--well, I guess it could
>appear in indirect questions as an alternative to the indicative.

But Carl, this is very helpful, because it narrows our search space. The
only "true tense" remaining that is used in these other moods is perfect. If
we can come up with time references in contexts that indicate a time
different from that of the perfect. Of course, NUN won't do it, since it
reinforces the time reference of the perfect instead of cancelling it. I
just tried a few other possibilities without any luck. I'll come back to
this when I have more time, maybe.

Jonathan

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