Re: Future subjunctive

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 29 1996 - 12:39:48 EST


On 1/29/96, Mark O'Brien wrote:

> I was recently reading some comments regarding the existence of the future
> subjunctive in one of the readings for 1Co 13:12, and I was thinking of
>doing a
> little digging in this area. Can anybody supply me some brief background info
> on the history of the future subjunctive in Greek? Thanks for your input. (I
> apologize if this has been dealt with in previous discussion.)

I'm curious where you may have read anything about a future subjunctive as
such. No such animal is generally held to exist, at least in Attic or
Hellenistic Greek. What MAY be referred to is either of two phenomena:

(1) In Homeric Greek the subjunctive (whether with short vowels -- O/E-- or
long vowels --W/H--) is quite commonly used to express intention regarding
the future, but this is NOT called a future tense as such.

(2) It is almost certain that the historical form of the future tense with
a sigma followed by O/E thematic endings derives from use of the aorist
subjunctive to express future intention in the construction noted as common
in Homer. But this is a new formation, and it is certainly never called a
"future subjunctive."

One does find in Hellenistic Greek the future indicative 2 sg. used as an
imperative, as in LXX formulation of the Ten Commandments. I've always
thought this was a Semitism, but I'm not sure that it really is.

I don't see anything in 1 Cor 13:12 that's a candidate other than
EPIGNWSOMAI, and that's a garden-variety future indicative 1 sg.

I don't know when the following originally began to emerge, but Modern
Greek does use the subjunctive with QA (= QELW NA <-- QELW hINA) to express
the future tense; in fact, it has two aspects in the future: continuous
(using QA + present subjunctive) and aoristic (using QA + aorist
subjunctive). I suppose the linguists might prefer to call these two
futures "marked" and "unmarked."

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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