imperfect 3rd plural...
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jun 15 13:07:02 EDT 2000
At 10:45 AM -0700 6/15/00, William & Lisa James wrote:
>Hello, I have a question concerning the imperfect active indicative 3rd
>plural. I was looking back at my first year text (Machen) and he says
>that the secondary ending of the imperfect active can be SAN as well as
>ON. If SAN can be used, how would you be able to distinguish between the
>imperfect and the aorist 3rd plural? Would there be some sort of stem
>change since both are built on the present stem? If there is a stem
>change, like that of a liquid, would it then be considered a second aorist
>with a first aorist ending? My second year professor tells me that he has
>not seen an imperfect with a SAN ending in the new testament, but i was
>curious about other literature and if so, how do you know whether it is
>imperfect or aorist?
Athematic verbs, more commonly referred-to as MI verbs, were regularly
conjugated in older Greek with the endings: -N/-S/-/-MEN/-TE/-SAN. BUT
already in classical Attic some of these verbs were in the process of
shifting over to OMEGA type conjugation. In the GNT the fluctuation between
omega conjugation and athematic conjugation is visible in the concurrent
forms for the third plural of DIDWMI: in Mk 3:6 and 15:23 we have an
Omega-conjugation form of 3d plural: EDIDOUN, while Jn 19:3 displays the
older form EDIDOSAN--and there's no difference in meaning. That fluctuation
can also be seen in the 3d plural imperfect forms of TIQHMI: in Mk 6:56 we
find ETIQESAN, but in Acts 3:2 and 4:35 we find ETIQOUN. These forms in
-OUN have to be understood as contractions of ETIQE- and EDIDO- and the
thematic 3d pl. ending -ON.
The way you tell an imperfect from an aorist, regardless of which
conjugational-type endings are being used, is by the stem being used: the
imperfect will always show an augmented present stem (EDIDO- and ETIQE- in
the above examples), while the aorist will show an augmented aorist stem
(EDW- or EDO-, EQH-/EQE-). Compare the resultant forms of the third plural:
DIDWMI imperfect: EDIDOSAN/EDIDOUN
DIDWMI aorist: EDOSAN/EDWKAN
TIQHMI imperfect: ETIQESAN/ETIQOUN
TIQHMI aorist EQESAN/EQHKAN
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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