[Fwd: Tense of TETAGMENOI in Acts 13:48]
Carl Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Jul 2 07:01:51 EDT 1999
On 07/01/99, ""James S. Murray" <jsmurray at execpc.com>" wrote:
> "Carl W. Conrad" wrote:
> > I think the main thing to be said about the verb form TETAGMENOI HSAN is
> > that one regularly finds ONLY the periphrastic in the third plural both in
> > the perfect passive and in the pluperfect passive. The older inflected
> > forms TETACATO and TETACATAI are found in Homer, perhaps here and there
> > elsewhere in earlier Greek: reduplicated stem TETAC + NTAI/NTO with typical
> > shift of the consonantal N to the vowel A between two consonants. So you
> > wouldn't see a non-periphrastic form in Koine--and yes, I think the time is
> > relative to the time of the main verb, i.e., prior.
>
> Carl, Just to clarify, would it be true, then, that the verb tense in any kind
> of dependent clause is generally relative to the main verb; i.e. a present
> tense would denote action taking place at the same time as the action of the
> main verb, an aorist would denote action prior to the action of the main verb,
> and so forth? I understand that this is generally true with participles,
> unless it is an aorist participle describing attendent circumstances. My
> question is if this is also true of any verb form in a dependent clause? Hope
> this makes sense?
This question cannot be answered with a generalization that will cover all
types of dependent clauses, because infinitives, participles, subjunctives,
and optatives depend more on aspect than on time information.
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