[B-Greek] Third Aorist

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jan 6 09:01:51 EST 2005


This is another of the items I noticed emerging but had to postpone
commenting on because of travel.

At 9:31 PM -0500 1/4/05, Clwinbery at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 1/3/05 3:31:58 PM, ericb at gracechurchreno.org writes:
>
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I recall this has been brought up in the past and I have looked through the
>> archives and found comments from Carl on the issue of Third Aorist, but I am
>> wondering as a student if I can come across some more sources for
>> understanding this Third Aorist. 
>>
>> It seems to me that the Third Aorist is simply a Second Aorist with abnormal
>> endings (that is an aorist with a root change, like Second Aorist, using
>> irregular endings).
>>
>> If I am right about this a Second Aorist takes the endings of an Imperfect,
>> which would make one think that finding a Third Aorist would not be
>> difficult, seeing as how this would stick out like a sore thumb.
>>
>> Anyway...Can anyone offer a correction or affirmation to my understanding of
>> the Third Aorist or direct me as I've already asked to some sources for
>> better understanding.
>>
>> Eric Biggs,
>>
>Eric,
>
>What some call the "third" aorist is really what I would classify as "root
>aorist." The stem in the aorist ends with a vowel (usually lengthened) and the
>secondary endings are added without a variable vowel (linking vowel). eg. the
>aorist of GINWSKW is EGNWN. The stem is GNO and the stem vowel lengthens. The
>augment and the secondary active endings N, S, -, MEN, TE, SAN are added
>directly to the stem.
>
>Hope this helps. You might want to see Morphology of the New Testament,
>Brooks & Winbery, especially chapter eight where we deal with classes of
>verbs.

I am not very happy with calling these aorists "root aorists" because I've
seen that term applied to second aorists that display the verb root as the
present-tense lemma does not, e.g. ELABON (LAB), EMAQON (MAQ), EPESON
(PET/POT). I think moreover that most traditional grammars classify these
aorist forms that have been called "third aorists" as "second
aorists"--"SECOND" comprising all "strong verb" aorists as "FIRST"
comprises "weak verb" aorists. My own preference when I taught Greek was to
speak of three major categories of Aorists: (1) Sigmatic (=First) Aorists
with 1sg. lemmas in -SA or -A (if liquid or nasal stem occaasioned loss of
the stem-formative sigma element), (2) Thematic (=Second) Aorists with
stems conjugated with the thematic vowel O/E (e.g. EMAQON, EGENOMHN), and
(3) Athematic (=Third) Aorists with long-vowel stems mostly in -H- although
there are a few in -W- and -U-).

Thus the "third" or "athematic/non-thematic" aorist comprises verbs such as
EGNWN/EGNWS/EGNW/EGNWMEN/EGNWTE/EGNWSAN and
EBHN/EBHS/EBH/EBHMEN/EBHTE/EBHSAN.
As Carlton noted, these verbs are conjugated with ACTIVE endings
-N/S/(T)/MEN/TE/N(T) or HSAN.

It's worth noting, I think, that these verb forms tend to be intransitive
in nature rather than such as take a direct object, although they are NOT
exclusively intransitive--EGNWN is certainly transitive and takes a direct
object.

In addition I think it's worth noting that ALL "aorist passives" are "third
aorists"--intransitive in fact and conjugated with those "active" endings.
Thus there's no difference in form between EBH ("he strode") and EBLABH or
EBLAFQH ("he was hurt" = "he suffered damage"). Of course, I've
consistently argued that these forms are open to alternative
interpretations: does EFANH mean "he/she/it appeared" or "he/she/it was
revealed"--because EFANH is the aorist of FAINOMAI, which does have an
active-causative form FAINW ("cause to appear"). I would argue that the
middle-voice form of this verb displays the more fundamental form of the
verb's "Aktionsart." That is to say, it is the middle-voice form that
essentially indicates what the grammatical subject is doing/experiencing,
while the active-voice form expresses rather the action bringing that
act/experience into being. The Durtch scholar Egbert Bakker had a
fascinating (well, I thought it fascinating, but I realize it would bore
many to tears!) article describing these relationships between voice-forms,
"Voice, Aspect and Aktonsart: Middle and Passive in Ancient Greek," in
_Voice: Form and Function," ed. Barbara A. Fox and Paul J. Hopper, John
Benjamins, 1994.
-- 

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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