[B-Greek] verb stem, present stem

Chet Creider creider at uwo.ca
Wed May 26 20:16:53 EDT 2004


--- David Lew 
<<http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2004-May/http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek>davidlew 
at 163.com> wrote:
 > What is the relation of "the Verb Stem" and "the
 > Aorist Stem"?
 >
 > In the "Learn New Testament Greek" by John H.
 > Dobson, p. 108, he says,
 > " we study ... verbs in which one stem indicates
 > continuing or repearted action (present stem), but a
 > different stem indicates single or completed action,
 > or action where there is no reference to
 > continuation or repetition (aorist stem).
 >
 > And in "New Testament Greek: An Introductory
 > Grammar" by Eric G. Jay, p. 16, he says,
 > " it is convenient ... in such cases to speak of
 > verb stem and present stem".
 >
 > My question is: Is the "Verb Stem"  the "Aorist
 > Stem"?

It is useful in the study of many languages to identify a stem -- the core 
part of a verb to which are added inflectional endings showing tense, 
person, mood, etc.  (If one wants to be extra careful one may speak of 
derived stems and bare stems or roots.  Derived stems would be stems marked 
in some way (e.g. by affixation) as derived, e.g. "organ-ize" would have a 
root, "organ" and a derivational suffix, "-ize".)

Greek verbs are interesting in that the form of the stem can change when 
used with the inflectional apparatus for different tenses.  In many cases 
the form of the verb used with present and imperfect tenses is built upon 
the form used with the aorist tense (or aspect).  Jay's example is BALL-
(BALL-W "I throw") formed from BAL- (BALEIV -- aorist infinitive (with 
circumflex accent on final syllable) by lengthening the "L".  Provided you 
remember that the "aorist stem" is used throughout the aorist paradigm 
(indicative, imperative, subjunctive, optative, infinitive) there should be 
no harm in using that term.  Jay's usage, however, is a common one (see
Smyth, _Greek Grammar_, para. 367 in the 2nd ed.) and it opposes the 
verb-stem to tense stems, of which the present stem is one, but so are the 
future, the first aorist, the second aorist, etc. (see para. 368 and 
elsewhere in Smyth).

Chet Creider 




More information about the B-Greek mailing list