Athematic 2nd Aorist

Greek Learning Greek
1

Hello, the textbook I’m using introduced the athematic 2nd aorist, but didn’t offer much explanation to a couple of things I found odd. I tried looking in Smyth and online but can’t seem to track it down, hoping someone could please answer a few questions I had.

-Why the difference in stem between the ind./imp./inf. vs the participle? (long vs short vowel)

-Why the -θι ending for sing. imperative, when the 2nd aorist imperative normally is an epsilon ending

and on a similar note

-Why the different ending in 3rd person plural?

The verbs presented were ἔβην and ἔγνων.

Thank you.

2

These are “root aorists” – the inflectional endings are added directly to the roots, which end in lil,l.ong vowels. This is a very archaic, fossilized type of aorist, preserved only in a handful of verbs. (The other types of aorists are thematic and sigmatic aorists.) In general, the indicative endings are the same as the thematic aorist, without the thematic vowel ε/ο.


The short vowel of the masc. and neut. participle results from the general Greek sound change known as Osthoff’s law: a long vowel is shortened before a resonant (λρμν) followed by another consonant.

Imperative -θι is inherited from Proto-Indo-European. (The thematic 2d imperative is just root+thematic vowel with no ending.)

3rd pl. indic. in -σα is clearly modeled on the sigmatic aorist, perhaps to distinguish from 1st sing. But the forms ἐβαν andHomeric βαν are attested.

Those aren’t really explanations, just descriptions of historical processes. You could describe these phenomena as “irregularities,” and just learn them by rote, but they’re the result of developments in the history of the Greek language.

3

Thanks much for the informative reply!