[B-Greek] Short vowel subjunctives

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Fri Aug 19 08:09:04 EDT 2005


On Aug 17, 2005, at 6:35 PM, bertdehaan at sympatico.ca wrote:

> Hi all.
> In a thread dealing with the benefits of learning Classical Greek,  
> Carl Conrad wrote a list of "peculiarities" of Classical compared  
> to Koine.
> One of them was: short-vowel aorist subjunctives functioning as  
> futures.
>
> I've seen lots of short vowel aorist subjunctives in Homer but I  
> assumed that they were short vowel to make them work in the metre  
> of the poem.
> Is the distinction in meaning between short and long vowel  
> subjunctives that you hinted at, a concrete distinction or is it  
> vague?

This is pretty strictly Homeric dialect. You have to look in a  
Homeric grammar; Smyth doesn't really discuss this since his focus is  
on Attic; I cite from the "Short Homeric Grammar" appendix of  
Benner's _Selections from the Homeric Iliad_:

"§143. Tenses which in the indicative lack the thematic vowel use in  
the subjunctive E or O not H or W. This applies to the active endings  
-ETON, OMEN, ETE; and to the middle (or passive) endings -OMAI, -EAI,  
-ETAI, -OMEQA, -OMESQA. E.g. B 440, IOMEN (Attic IWMEN), of which the  
present indicative is IMEN. A 363 EIDOMEN (Attick EIDWMEN), of which  
the second perfect indicative is IDMEN.
"§144. This formatio;n is chiefly illustrated by two important  
classes of verbs.
     I. Second aorists of the non-thematic type:
         Indicative        Subjunctive
         EQEMEN         QEIOMEN (A 143)
         APEQEMHN    APOQEIOMAI (S 409)
         KATEBHMEN  KATABHOMEN (K 97)
         EDAMHTE       DAMHETE (H 72)
     II. First aorists, active and middle
         ECWSATO       CWSETAI (A 80)
         ERUSSAMEN   ERUSSOMEN  (A 141)
         BHSAMEN        BHSOMEN (A 144)
         hILASSAO        hILASSEAI (A 147)
         HGEIRAMEN    AGEIROMEN (A 142)"

> Ps. Thank you Carl for that message you quoted.
> I am still learning Homeric Greek (and I plan to go on to other  
> authors) in order to help me with Koine, but it is not the only  
> reason any more. For me, learning Greek has taken on a life of its  
> own.



Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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