Augment?

[pster]

1) ἔοικα is a perfect with present meaning. The pluperfect with imperfect meaning is ἐῴκειν. Is this a case of augment?

2) And with a verb like ἥδομαι, ἡσθήσομαι, ἥσθην, it seems like you really need to know more than the principal parts to conjugate it, for example, to know that the aorist passive subjunctive retains the eta at the beginning. Comments? observations?

[Paul Derouda]

I'm quoting and translating Chantraine (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque):

ἔοικα...old perfect form based on (ϝ)έ(ϝ)οικα...

ἐῴκει ... seems to be based in definitive on *(ἐ)-ϝέ-ϝοικ-ει...

So my guess is yes, it is an augment. Or that's how I'll interpret this.

[annis]

2) And with a verb like ἥδομαι, ἡσθήσομαι, ἥσθην, it seems like you really need to know more than the principal parts to conjugate it, for example, to know that the aorist passive subjunctive retains the eta at the beginning. Comments? observations?

What would the eta become? If there's an eta in the present form, it's not going to go anywhere in non-indicative aorists or perfects. Take a look at ἡγέομαι, for example.

But in general, the "principal parts" formulation for Greek falls flat on its face quite a lot. Staring closely at a good, unabridged dictionary is going to be your safest guide, with the verb appendix in Smyth or a work like Veitch's Greek Verbs: Irregular and Defective useful supplementation when gazing at the fine print in the LSJ makes you go cross-eyed.

[pster]

2) And with a verb like ἥδομαι, ἡσθήσομαι, ἥσθην, it seems like you really need to know more than the principal parts to conjugate it, for example, to know that the aorist passive subjunctive retains the eta at the beginning. Comments? observations?

What would the eta become? If there's an eta in the present form, it's not going to go anywhere in non-indicative aorists or perfects. Take a look at ἡγέομαι, for example.

But in general, the "principal parts" formulation for Greek falls flat on its face quite a lot. Staring closely at a good, unabridged dictionary is going to be your safest guide, with the verb appendix in Smyth or a work like Veitch's Greek Verbs: Irregular and Defective useful supplementation when gazing at the fine print in the LSJ makes you go cross-eyed.

Right. Thanks. I guess what I was thinking and should have written was "more than the principal part." If one only knew the aorist, then one could reasonably believe that the subjunctive and optative would be, as is typical, products of de-augmentation. And I guess I was thinking along those lines because I was thinking about de-augmenting ἐῴκει. Thanks for the book reference, but that might make me go cross-eyed too! I am going to order Tutti I Verbi Greci soon. Would that fit the bill?

And is there a simple discussion somewhere of when and how verbs lack principal parts? For example, basic deponent verbs can be expected to lack aorist active and perfect active, ie principal parts 3 and 4. Is there a simple list of such laws/regularities somewhere?

[annis]

Honestly I don't see much point in Tutti i Verbi Greci these days. You're posting here, so you presumably have fairly regular access to the internet or at least a computer. In a world with Perseus (internet) and Diogenes (on your own computer), there's not much call for TVG, which is just to help people parse unusual verbs. It's really not a great tool for familiarizing yourself with important verbs.

All the popular Greek verbs — the ones that get invited to all the parties and which everyone wants to know — are such unique creatures that general rules about them will have so many exceptions that there's little point. I mean, who can tame ἔρχομαι? There are patterns and commonalities, which are best learned from observation (in my opinion, of course). Any big overview explaining things is either going to be too general to help with specifics, or so detailed that you might as well have used the dictionary anyway.