Hansen & Quinn, Greek: An Intensive Course, Unit 2
Morphological content in this unit:
20. Present Indicative Active
21. Imperfect Indicative Active
22. Future Indicative Active
23. Aorist Indicative Active
26. Infinitives and Their Use
When it comes to verbs, instruction from our morphophonological perspective differs from most other textbooks in one significant way: we do not use the term “tense.” In Greek, tense sometimes refers to time (when a verb happens, happened, or will happen), sometimes aspect (how we describe the action of the verb), and sometimes both. The morphophonological approach treats time and aspect as distinct categories. In fact, Greek verbs mark the two separately, so it turns out to be easier to do it this way.
For more, see here for time, here for aspect, and here for tense.
In what follows we talk about the present and future together and the imperfect and aorist together. This results in a slight reordering of the material in Hansen & Quinn.
20. Present Indicative Active and
22. Future Indicative Active
What we learn in Section 20 is the present progressive indicative active, not simply the present. Present is the time of the verb (“I teach”). Progressive is an aspect and means that the verb’s action is ongoing, repetitive, or incomplete (“I am teaching, I keep teaching”). Indicative roughly means that the speaker perceives the event as a basic fact. Active means that the subject of the verb does the action of the verb (“I teach” versus “I am taught”).
Often progressive aspect is marked by adding a progressive aspect marker. Many verb bases are by default progressive, which means that no progressive aspect marker is added. The verb bases we learn in this unit do not take an explicit progressive aspect marker.
As for time, Greek verbs in the indicative are categorized as past time or not-past time. If a verb is not-past time, it is by default present. We will have to mark a not-past time verb to make it future.
We know that a verb is not-past time because it uses these personal markers without an explicit past time marker:
| BASE | progressive aspect marker | /ω /ομεν /εις /ετε /ει /ουσι |
For instance:
| πεμπ/εις > πέμπεις | you send, you are sending |
To make the verb future, simply add the future time marker /σ/ to the base, and use the same not-past time personal markers that we used above:
| BASE | /σ/ /ε/* | /ω /ομεν /εις /ετε /ει /ουσι |
* Bases that end in -μ/, -ρ/, -λ/, and -ν/, dubbed Merlin futures, regularly use /ε/ to mark future time instead of /σ/. Hansen & Quinn won’t introduce verbs of this category for some time.
For instance:
| πεμπ/σ/εις > πέμψεις | you will send |
Labial stops with σ (πσ, βσ, φσ) are spelled ψ. Velar stops with σ (κσ, γσ, χσ) are spelled ξ. Dental stops (τ, δ, θ) drop before σ. See here for a summary.
Verbs in the future never have progressive aspect or aorist aspect. Except for the future perfect, the future is without aspect.
21. Imperfect Indicative Active and
23. Aorist Indicative Active
In Section 20 we learned the present progressive. In Section 21 we learn the past progressive, also called the imperfect. In Section 23 we learn the aorist indicative, which like the imperfect is always past time in the indicative. (Outside the indicative, the aorist is by default present.)
To mark past time, verbs use a past time marker that your book calls an augment. If the verb base begins with a consonant, the past time marker is ἐ/ attached to the beginning of the base (ἐ/πεμπ/ > ἐπεμπ/). We will learn later that, if the base begins with a vowel, the past time marker is a lengthening of that base (L/ἀκου/ > ἠκου/).
Verbs in the past progressive regularly use the following personal markers:
| ἐ/ L/ | BASE | progressive aspect marker | /ον /ομεν /εις /ετε /ει /ον* |
For instance:
| πεμπ/ες > ἐπέμπες | you were sending |
* The 3rd plural marker /ον was originally /οντ, but τ dropped because it can’t end a Greek word. Consequently, it looks the same as the 1st person singular. However, context will make clear which person and number the verb is.
Unlike the past progressive, which describes an ongoing, incomplete, or repetitive action in the past, the aorist emphasizes the act of a verb. It does not simply describe a completed action, though books may tell you it does. By “act of a verb” we mean the verb without regard for duration, whether ongoing or complete, or relation to the present. In this regard, the past aorist indicative is equivalent to the simple past in English: “I taught.”
There are two types of aorist formations: those that mark the aorist with /σ/, called sigmatic (also called weak, or first), and those that mark the aorist without /σ/, called asigmatic (also called strong, or second). Unit 2 introduces the sigmatic aorist. It differs from the future not only because in the indicative it uses a past time marker. It also uses a different set of personal markers altogether:
| ἐ/ L/ | BASE | /σ/ | /α /αμεν /ας /ατε /ε /αν |
For instance:
| ἐ/πεμπ/σ/ας > ἔπεμψας | you sent |
We saw just above how σ interacts with stop consonants. It will interact in sometimes unpredictable ways with other types of consonants. We will address these other phonological shifts as they arise in Hansen & Quinn, but for a systematic overview see here <link>.
For more on the sigmatic aorist indicative active, see here.
26. Infinitives and their Use
The progressive active infinitive uses the infinitive marker /ειν:
| πεμπ/ειν > πέμπειν | to send |
The active infinitive marker /ειν is actually a contraction of /ε/εν, where /ε/ is a theme vowel connecting the marker to the base, and /εν is the true core of the infinitive marker.
The sigmatic aorist active uses the infinitive marker /αι:
| πεμπ/σ/αι > πέμψαι | to send |
In the form above, /σ/ marks aorist aspect. It does not have a past time marker, and so it is by default present. The difference between the present progressive and the present aorist can’t always be captured in translation, but in the case of πεμπ/ it goes something like this. If I order you to send letters with a progressive infinitive, I want you, say, to be at the post office sending letters out one after another. That’s your job for today. If however I use the aorist infinitive, I’m not really thinking about the specifics. I only care that you send the letters somehow.
Vocabulary
The first column (left) lists the base of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Words that do not decline, like prepositions and conjunctions, have no base. When the meaning of a word (right) differs from that in the book, it is because the book’s definition is outdated.
The principal parts of verbs that we have not seen before may look daunting—vowels and consonants change, letters disappear or seem to come from nowhere. All of this will be explained when the forms are formally introduced.
| ἄγγελο/ | ἄγγελος, ἀγγέλου, ὁ | messenger |
| ἀπό | from, away from (+ gen.) | |
| ἄρα | [untranslatable, introduces a question] | |
| γάρ | for | |
| δέ | and, but | |
| ἕξ | six | |
| εὖ | well | |
| ζῴο/ | ζῷον, ζῴου, τό | animal, picture |
| ἤ | or | |
| κελευ/ | κελεύω, κελεύσω, ἐκέλευσα, κεκέλευκα, κεκέλευσμαι, ἐκελεύσθην | order, command |
| λυ/ | λύω, λύσω, ἔλυσα, λέλυκα, λέλυμαι, ἐλύθην | release, free, unbind; dissolve; destroy |
| μέν … δέ … | In normal Greek this rarely means “on the one hand … on the other.” μέν simply foreshadows a complementary or contradictory clause introduced by δέ (“and, but”). It is best to leave μέν untranslated. | |
| νῦν | now | |
| ξένο/ | ξένος, ξένου, ὁ | stranger, guest, host, foreigner |
| οὐ, οὐκ, οὐχ | not | |
| παιδευ/ | παιδεύω, παιδεύσω, ἐπαίδευσα, πεπαίδευκα, πεπαίδευμαι, ἐπαιδεύθην | educate, teach |
| παρά | side of (from the side of + gen., at the side of + dat., to the side of + acc.) | |
| πεμπ/ | πέμπω, πέμψω, ἔπεμψα, πέπομφα, πέπεμμαι, ἐπέμφθην | send |
| πέντε | five | |
| πόλεμο/ | πόλεμος, πολέμου, ὁ | war |
| πρό | before, in front of (+ gen.) | |
| στέφανο/ | στέφανος, στεφάνου, ὁ | wreath, crown |
| φίλο/ | φίλος, φίλου, ὁ | friend |
| φιλία/ | φιλία, φιλίας, ἡ | friendship |
| χρυσό/ | χρυσός, χρυσοῦ, ὁ | gold |
reading morphologically 