Wes Wood wrote:Perhaps it would help to consider this verb in a different category than either a first or second aorist. There are some verbs that form the aorist active infinitive using the ending -nai without a connecting vowel. These verbs are similar to the present active infinitives of the -μι verbs (δίδωμι---διδόναι). There are a few verbs that fit into this category: ἔγνων (aor. inf. γνῶναι), ἑάλων (ἁλῶναι), ἔβην (βῆναι), and ἔστην (στῆναι). I must admit I owe this understanding to Carl Conrad's writings, but I don't know from which one(a) I acquired it. However, any mistakes I have made in expressing his thoughts are my own.
I guess I'm in the accusative case!I'm in the dock ἵνα ἀπολογήσωμαι. I did make this point recently, but I didn't recall doing it in this forum. It dawned on me long ago that the so-called aorist passives in θη/η are conjugated with "active" secondary endings (ν/ς/_/μεν/τε/σαν) and looked, for all intents and purposes, exactly like athematic aorist active verbs (ἐφάνην, ἔστην, ἔβην ἑάλων, ἔγνων, ἔφυν). Only recently did it dawn on me that the aorist passives really
are athematic aorist active forms. They are intransitive and generally indicate attaining a state. And this is the case with ἔγνων/ἕγνως/ἔγνω. There's the marvelous phrasing of the opening of Homer's Odyssey, the song about the man who roamed far over land and sea:
πολλῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἕγνω.
"Many are the people whose towns he got to see and whose mentality he came to discern."
There's a lot more that needs to be said about the aorist active; I'm not at all sure I'm competent to do it, but I have a few inklings, including the following:
a. The aorist active is the "original" tense-aspect form of the Greek verb. From the earliest relics of written Greek there are at least four types of aorist that students must eventually come to terms with and master. First of all, there's the stigmatic aorist, rightly (or wrongly) called "First" aorist (not because it πρώτιστα ἐγένετο, but because it's the most prominent of aorist inflections): the stigmatic aorist in -σα. Then there's the "second" aorist that comes in several varieties, including the thematic type in -ον/ες/ε (inf. -εῖν), the athematic type in ν/ς/_ (info. -ναι) and the most irregular verbs of all that have -κα aorists (ἔδωκα, ἔθηκα, [ἀφ]ῆκα).
b. One aorist pattern we learn early to recognize is the transitive pattern for verbs of strong transitivity: there's a stigmatic aorist active (ἔλυσεν ὁ ᾶνήρ τὸν ἵππον, "the man untied the horse"), aorist middle (ἐλύσατο ὁ ἀνὴρ τὸν ἵππον, "the man untied his horse"), aorist passive ἐλύθη ὁ ἵππος, "the horse got loose" -- with or without the assistance of the man).
c. Aorists in -(θ)ῆναι, -ῦναι, -ῶναι are intransitive and involve entry into a state; passive transformations of transitive active verbs and intransitive verbs of locomotion (among others) take this inflection (ἁλίσκομαι "I get caught", ἑάλων "I got caught", ἵσταται "he stands, comes to a halt"; ἕστη "he stood, came to a halt.")
d. Thematic aorist actives fall into varieties that are difficult to categorize.
That's all too cursory a statement. Suffice it to say that there's a lot more to say about active aorist forms.
At any rate, γνῶναι, the intransitive aorist of γινώσκειν is itself a fascinating verb. It is a verb of perception, inherently subject-affected, but is marked for subject-affectedness only in the future γνώσεσθαι, where the intentionality of the process is deliberately marked.