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Introduction
Traditional grammars of classical Greek enumerate
two forms of the aorist. For the beginner this terminology
is extremely misleading: the second aorist contains two distinct
conjugations. This article covers the formation of all types
of aorist, with special attention on the athematic second
aorist conjugation which few verbs take, but several of them
happen to be common.
Not Two, but Three Aorists
The forms of Greek aorist are usually divided into
two classes, the first and the second. The first aorist is pretty
simple, but the second aorist actually holds two distinct systems
of morphology. I want to point out that the difference between first
and second aorists is only a difference in conjugation. The meanings
and uses of all these aorists are the same, but I'm not going to
cover that here. See Goodwin's Syntax
of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb, or your favorite
Greek grammar, for more about aorist syntax.
In my verb charts I give the indicative active forms,
indicate nu-movable with "(n)",
and always include the dual forms. Beginners can probably skip the
duals unless they are starting with Homer.
William Annis is Unix
System Administrator (i.e., a professional computer geek) in Madison,
Wisconsin. He divides his spare time between reading history and bad
science fiction, bonsai and classical languages, especially Greek.
William combines his computer skills with classical studies at the web
site, www.aoidoi.org, which is dedicated to the study of classical
Greek poetry, and includes articles about Greek meter and poetics, the
full texts of Greek poems, often accompanied commentaries with
vocabulary, syntax and cultural notes. William is a moderator for the
Greek board on the Textkit forum.
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