Imperfect outside the Indicative
Jonathan Robie
jonathan at texcel.no
Tue Jul 14 08:12:18 EDT 1998
At 05:16 PM 7/13/98 -0400, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>BUT--the imperfect (indicative) retains one function in Koine that it had
>in Classical Attic: it is used in both protasis and apodosis of present
>counterfactual conditions. I've never been able to figure out a good reason
>why the indicative should function in Greek for a counterfactual
>condition--but of course the aorist indicative does so in past
>counterfactual conditions also.
English is weird in a similar way: "If I was going downtown, I would tell
you.", c.f. "If I go downtown, I will tell you".
Jonathan
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Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
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