[B-Greek] EFH - imperfect or aorist
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Nov 29 17:43:23 EST 2003
At 4:53 PM -0500 11/29/03, <bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca> wrote:
>There was a discussion on this list some time ago about whether EFH is the
>imperfect or the aorist form of FHMI.
>In classical Greek there is a distinction between imperfect and aorist
>namely, EFHN and EFHSA. Is it possible that every occurrence of EFH in the
>GNT is an imperfect, and that the aorist, if it had occurred, would be
>with the Sigma tense formative?
>Or is there conclusive evidence that the aorist form changed from EFHSA to
>EFH?
It would not have changed from EFHSA to EFHN as EFHN is clearly the older
form. There's quite a variety of forms for this important verb over the
range of Greek dialects; it's worth consulting Smyth §782-788. For the GNT,
however, I think it's safe to say that all the forms are either present or
imperfect, which is to say that in the GNT the form
EFHN/EFHS/EFH/EFAMEN/EFATE/EFASAN is imperfect.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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