[B-Greek] Origin of Infinitive

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun May 9 14:00:50 EDT 2004


Sorry, the previous message somehow got dispatched before it was quite written.

At 6:51 AM -0700 5/9/04, Eddie Mishoe wrote:
>Is this explanation generally agreed to:
>
>The so-called Infinitive Mood had its origin in the
>Dative and Locative cases of a verbal noun. LUEIN
>meant originally "for loosing" or "in loosing."

Pretty much. It's a bit more complicated; the ending -AI is what's argued
for. the oldest form of the infinitive of EIMI was EMENAI which was
attached to active verbs as -EMEN, -EMENAI, -EN, -ENAI, or -AI.

I see that Arie Dirkzweiger has cited Chantraine and Brandenstein. Here's
what Sihler (Andrew Sihler, _New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin_
(1995) says:

"§552. The Greek Infinitives. Infinitives in Greek have voice and tense and
are fully incorporated in the stem system. The case-markings of Greek
infinitives are either an endingless locative, or a dative in -AI. The
latter is historically proper to only two forms, -SAI and its middle
offshoot -SQAI, but early became identified as the infinitive tag par
excellence and was transplanted to a number of other formations."
-- 

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/



More information about the B-Greek mailing list