Primary and Secondary tenses
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Oct 22 16:59:41 EDT 2002
At 12:59 PM -0700 10/22/02, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>My name is Mitch Larramore. This is a first post for me.
>
>I am very new to Greek as I am only in high school right now.
>
>Can someone explain to me what and why Greek has Primary tenses and
>Secondary tenses. Why are the Primary Tenses the ones they are like Present,
>Future and Perfect? What is important to remember about this two tense system?
Welcome to the list, Mitch. You'll find that discussions on the list range
from questions of beginners, like your own, to some very specialized
questions about constructions in Biblical Greek texts.
I would say that the primary importance of the distinction between primary
and secondary tenses probably lies in knowing which sets of endings to use
for which tenses and moods. The primary endings (-W/-EIS/-EI, etc.,
-MI/-SI/-TI, etc.) are used for the primary tenses and for the subjunctive
of all tenses (all that have the subjunctive, bearing in mind that the
imperfect, pluperfect, and future have no subjunctive); the secondary
endings (-N/-S/-_, etc.) are used for the secondary tenses and for the
optative of all tenses that have an optative (of course the optative is
relatively rare in New Testament Koine Greek but does occcasionally appear
there and it is quite important in the older Classical Attic or Homeric
Greek). Of course the perfect indicative and first/sigmatic aorist
indicative have their own distinct sets of endings with alpha-base.
There's another function of the distinction between primary and secondary
tenses that is important in Classical Attic but not in the later New
Testament Koine: that is that in the older Classical Attic subordinate
clauses following main clauses in a secondary tense will be in the optative
mood rather than in the subjunctive; by the NT era, such subordinate
clauses are likely to be in the subjunctive. For instance, in the
celebrated verse John 3:16, the ending clause
(... hINA PAS hO PISTEUWN EIS AUTON MH APOLHTAI ALL' ECHi ZWHN AIWNION) has
subjunctive verbs APOLHTAI and ECHi; in the older Classical Attic these
would have been optatives APOLOITO and ECOI. If you're just beginning with
Greek, some of this may not mean much to you yet, but you will come to
understand it later. There's an awful lot of work involved in learning this
wonderful language, but if you keep at it long and hard enough, it will
repay your efforts greatly.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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