[B-Greek] Interpreting the imperfect tense
bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca
bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca
Fri Jun 4 20:26:45 EDT 2004
The recent discussion on how to interpret the genitive case was very interesting.
My question is very similar.
The various uses of the different tenses of the Greek verbs tend to make me wonder if experienced readers (or speakers) of Greek ever have to stop and think in what way this particular tense was intended.
I'll pick on the imperfect tense for now.
There are the progressive, ingressive, iterative, customary, conative imperfects, and probably others as well.
Those of you who are very comfortable reading Greek: Do you read an imperfect tense and "feel" the imperfect aspect intended by the context?
Most of the first letter of John, or the gospel according to John I can read without having to translate it in my mind but I don't really get any sense when I come across an imperfect tense that I know whether it is intended as -..he began to..- or -..he kept on..- or -..he used to..-.
Thank you.
Bert de Haan.
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