[B-Greek] Regular or Irregular

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Feb 4 10:15:01 EST 2004


At 6:47 AM -0800 2/4/04, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>I think I am right when I say that most future tenses
>are formed by adding -S to the present tense principle
>part (regular verbs?). However, liquid verbs form the
>future by the suffix -ES and Attic futures are formed
>by the suffix -SE. Am I correct in my understanding?
>And are these suffixes (the liquid and Attic)
>considered "irregular" as far as KOINE is concerned? I
>am having a hard time knowing when to memorize certain
>rules and when to just know that irregularities are
>going to be there.

You're right, but it would be easier, Mitch, just to learn the principle
parts of all irregular verbs--liquids will fall into that category and add
to them the verbs in -IZW; both these groups--still in the NT Koine--form
contract futures.
Off-hand I can't think of any "Attic futures" in Koine--there were a couple
of these -AW futures in classical Attic, but I can't think of any in Koine.
I just checked ELAUNW which formed a future in -ASW that lost intervocalic
S and conjugated like an alpha contract verb, but I see from BDAG that this
appears in the LXX with future in -ASW, so I think that the liquid verbs
and -IZW verbs are the ones to be concerned about. (LOGIZOMAI has future
LOGIOUMAI from LOGISEOMAI).
-- 

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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