[B-Greek] Periphrastic and Aspect
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed May 2 19:38:05 EDT 2007
On May 2, 2007, at 6:46 PM, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>
> THi GAR CARITI ESTE SESWiSMENOI DIA PISTEWS...Eph 2.8a
>
> "The aspect intended by ESTE SESWiSMENOI covers the
> entire journey (of salvation)" per Paul Jackson. He
> then translates it "For by grace you are being saved,
> through faith."
>
> My Idioms by Porter says the verbal aspect comes from
> the Participle part and the Mood comes from EIMI part.
i.e. ESTE tells you it's indicative; SESWiSMENOI tells you
it's perfect.
>
> 1. What is the meaning of a Periphrastic construction
> in general? What does it emphasize?
>
> 2. And, what is the meaning of this particular
> Periphrastic construction... ESTE SESWiSMENOI? Wallace
> says a Present EIMI and a Perfect participle = a
> Perfect idea, but I'm not sure how to understand that.
I'd say that you ought to read ESTE SESWiSMENOI to mean
exactly the same thing as SESWiSQE -- it's a perfect passive
2 pl. indicative.
Periphrastics in the perfect middle-passive were already
becoming common in Classical Attic, primarily because of
the awkwardness of assimilation of MAI/SAI/TAI/
MEQA/SQE/NTAI to perfect stems ending in a
consonant.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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