Ｉ was looking up a grammar (Goodwin’s Syntax of the moods and tenses) about the 1st person subjunctive used for exhortation.
And there were sample sentences with aorist subjunctive, like
“Epischeton, matho^men” (aor. of manthano^)
“Episches, embalo^men …” (aor. of emballo^) Then I wondered what was the difference between the aorist subjunctive and the present subjunctive.
I looked for the place in the same grammar where the aorist subjunctive would be explained, but there was found only an explanation for the aor.subj. in dependent clause, while the exhortation is an independent sentence.
So, please direct me where to look at. I have the above grammar and the Smyth’s grammar.
I hope you won’t mind if I direct you to a document Paul and I wrote for Textkit eight years ago. I’ve updated it a bit — Greek Verb Aspect. It addresses this very issue.
how I understood the difference of the aorist subjunctive from the present subjunctive
The exhortation in aor. subj. eipo^men would mean “let’s say” with an aspective nuance of seeing the action as punctual, not durative, not taking some continued time.
And when the subjunctive is used, only the aspect of the verb is expressed, the force of tense being abandoned.
Could you hear another question ?
In eipo^men, is eipon treated as aorist like other regular verbs’ aorist ?
Sorry to jump in gentlemen, but based on that, would a greek speaker or writer have considered that there still was a choice between aorist or, as Junya says, a durative form? In what instance would the phrase ‘let’s say’ (or similar) be used other than in a punctual sense?
I’m still a beginner and vague about the use of aorist,
but I could understand about the use of aorist the more by what you pointed out.
Tell me.
An action that is (considered) as punctual is always expressed by the aorist tense ?
In another word, an action that cannot be considered as durative is never expressed by the present tense ?
I’d like to piggy-back on Junya’s question: what are the nuances of using one rather than the other of a perfective, durative or punctual tense? In particular, why would the imperfect be used over the present?
The reason I ask is that I have an interest in Aristotle’s τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, and I am not quite sure why he uses ἦν rather than ἐστίν.
This overlaps with Junya’s question as far as the use of the present is concerned.
No. This is one of the most confusing things about verb aspect — in interacts with the intrinsic meaning of the verb in complex ways. So, every verb has what we can call a “lexical aspect.” That is, the meaning of the word itself can imply a time structure. For example, “sneeze” or “trip” are not things that we normally think of as actions that go on for very long. In the linguistics biz, we refer to the telicity (from τέλος) of the verb. “Trip” is telic, since it has a natural end-point, “walk” is atelic, since in theory it can go on for some time. (See the link above for more details and remaining theoretical questions around these.)
In Classical Greek, both telic and atelic verbs can occur in either aspect, perfective or imperfective. Telicity has to do with the meaning of the verb, whereas aspect has to do with the presentation of the action of the verb. However — there’s always a however — there are some interactions. For example, only atelic verbs can be used in the aorist (perfective) for an inchoative sense. Smyth calls this the “ingressive” aorist, §1924-1925.
As I always do at this point, I strongly urge people to get their hands on Rijksbaron’s The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction: Third Edition. It is still in print and inexpensive. He covers all these issues.
Perfective = punctual. Did you mean “perfect” above?
The reason I ask is that I have an interest in Aristotle’s τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, and I am not quite sure why he uses ἦν rather than ἐστίν.
Philosophical Greek, like Philosophical English, can be… strange. I have always found Greek philosophers’ use of forms of εἰμί quite puzzling. I get the impression that Aristotle’s phrase here remains puzzling to people to this day. To quote the SEP:
Aristotle turns in Ζ.4 to a consideration of the next candidate for substance: essence. (‘Essence’ is the standard English translation of Aristotle’s curious phrase > to ti ên einai> , literally “the what it was to be” for a thing. This phrase so boggled his Roman translators that they coined the word > essentia > to render the entire phrase, and it is from this Latin word that ours derives. Aristotle also sometimes uses the shorter phrase > to ti esti> , literally “the what it is,” for approximately the same idea.)
This very issue was also discussed here on Textkit not too long ago.
It is certainly a deep subject.
Apparently the philosopher Charles H. Kahn has been struggling with it for over 40 years. For those interested in this topic, here is a link to a BMCR review of one of his books:
I still get the terminology all messed up. Perfect, imperfect and aorist are each of a different type, right? Whatever those different types are called. And so I was concerned with the difference between two tenses of the same type, such as present and imperfect. As in τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι.
Thank you! And thank you for the Rijksbaron reference. Amazon tells me it will be here tomorrow.
No. This is one of the most confusing things about verb aspect — in interacts with the intrinsic meaning of the verb in complex ways. So, every verb has what we can call a “lexical aspect.” That is, the meaning of the word itself can imply a time structure. For example, “sneeze” or “trip” are not things that we normally think of as actions that go on for very long. In the linguistics biz, we refer to the telicity (from τέλος) of the verb. “Trip” is telic, since it has a natural end-point, “walk” is atelic, since in theory it can go on for some time. (See the link above for more details and remaining theoretical questions around these.)
Do you have a Japanese colleague or friend ?
Japanese language has, like Greek, an extensive usage of verb aspect (like, much use and intermingling of past and perfect tenses when talking about a present time matter).
Though I am still a beginner in Greek, I feel Japanese and Greek are very similar in the use of aspoect.
Sometimes, when I literally translate the Greek into Japanese, the use of aspect, i.e. what it implies, is very understandable to me, a Japanese.
It may be easier for Japanese to learn about the Greek aspect than for English speakers.
So if you have a Japanese friend, try asking him how Japanese use asperct.
“To ti e^n einai”, if it means “What it was to be”, would imply in Japanese “What it was for us to be”, or “What it meant for us (in some past time shared by us, like in our previous lecture, or in our customary use) to be”.
By the use of a past tense, the questioner urges the hearers to be reminded of the past.
As I always do at this point, I strongly urge people to get their hands on Rijksbaron’s The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction: Third Edition. It is still in print and inexpensive. He covers all these issues.
I will buy it, since Goodwin’s Syntax of the moods and tenses of the Greek verb, which I have, seems to be similar to it but didn’t answer my question this time.
An excellent suggestion. Some people think that you can only learn things about Greek by studying other ancient Indo-European languages (usually Sanskrit). But there are many features about Greek that have parallels in modern languages: e.g., certain principles of word order are similar to Hungarian (see Dik, Word Order in Ancient Greek, 1995); some of the particles (and also aspirated consonants) were similar to those in Hindi; the long and short vowel contrast might have sounded like Finnish; the pitch accent has parallels in Serbo-Croatian; etc. etc.
An excellent suggestion. Some people think that you can only learn things about Greek by studying other ancient Indo-European languages (usually Sanskrit). But there are many features about Greek that have parallels in modern languages
In learning the Greek aspect, I have thought I should be conscious about my own language’s use of aspect, to compare it with Greek for an easy, analogical understanding.
And, carefully observing my own speech, I can find much use of aspect, resembling Greek, though I’m not yet sure if the “analogical understanding” of Greek aspect from the uses of aspect in Japanese that resemble Greek is really valid or not.
In English speaking areas, are there learners (not linguistic scholars) who study in such a way ?
