Basic Greek Grammar: Lesson Seven
Aorist Active, Middle, and Passive Indicative
We mentioned the aorist tense at the beginning of our semester as a simple past. As we learn totranslate this tense, our normal gloss will therefore be a simple English past (e.g. “I loosed”).When we discussed the imperfect tense, we mentioned that an epsilon augment is a sign of the pasttenses; thus, aorist will have an augment as well, which will behave just like the augment in theimperfect tense. Like the imperfect, aorist also follows secondary endings. However, there is one moresign of the aorist that an imperfect does not have – a
σα
infix. This is similar to the
σ
infix of the future,and amalgates with labial, dentals, and velar/palatals in the same manner.Putting these signs together, we get the following paradigms for aorist active indicative (with thesecondary
active
tense endings); and aorist middle indicative (with the secondary
middle/passive
endings):
Aorist Active IndicativeAorist Middle IndicativeSingularPluralSingularPlural1
ἔλυσα
I loosed
ἐλὐσα
µ
εν
We loosed
1
ἐλυσά
µ
ην
I loosedmyself
ἐλυσά
µ
εθα
We loosedourselves
2
ἔλυσας
You loosed
ἐλύσατε
You loosed
2
ἐλύσω
You loosedyourself
ἐλύσασθε
You loosedyourselves
3
ἔλυσε
(
ν
)
He/she/itloosed
ἔλυσαν
They loosed
3
ἐλύσατο
He loosedhimself
ἐλύσαντο
They loosedthemselves
As we have already discovered, the present and imperfect tenses share the same form for the middleand passive voices; but aorist, just like future, has a different form for the passive. Just as the future passive has the sign of a
θη
infix, aorist passive has the same sign. Aorist passive will thus becharacterized by an augment; a
θη
infix; and secondary
active
endings, as shown below:
Aorist Passive IndicativeSingularPlural1
ἐλύθην
I was loosed
ἐλύθη
µ
εν
We were loosed
2
ἐλύθης
You were loosed
ἐλύθητε
You were loosed
3
ἐλύθη
He/she/it was loosed
ἐλύθησαν
They were loosedWe have already seen how the
σ
infix of aorist and future tenses amalgate with certain verb stems; wealso need to know that the final consonant of certain verb stems will change before the
θη
infix of future and aorist passive tenses, as seen in the chart below:
Changes to Final Consonant of StemExamplesLabials
π
,
β
+
θ
=
φθ λείπω
becomes
ἐλείφθην
Palatals
κ
,
γ
+
θ
=
χθ ἄγω
becomes
ἤχθην
Dentals
τ
,
δ
,
ζ
,
θ
+
θ
=
σθ βαπτίζω
becomes
ἐβαπτίσθην
Second Aorists
In English, there are two basic ways of forming the simple past tense. The regular way is a “d” or”ed”suffix (e.g. call, call
ed
); but a second fairly common way is a stem change (e.g. buy,
bought
; run,
ran
).Greek is similar; the normal way to form the aorist is by the rules we have just been examining,including the customary
σα
infix; but there is another fairly common way: a stem change instead of the
σα
. Aorists that are marked by a stem change are called second aorists.Second aorists do not have the
σα
infix; but they do have the other signs of the aorist tense – anaugment and secondary endings. This means that, for active and middle second aorists, the endings willlook just like imperfect endings; hence, the only way to tell if a verb following the second aorist patternis imperfect or aorist is to look for the stem change. Some stem changes are very obvious, but othersare more subtle, so an attentive regard to spelling may be necessary in some instances. Since
λύω
follows the first aorist pattern, we will use
λείπω
, “I leave,” as our paradigm verb for the second aorist pattern. The stem change marking the aorist form of
λείπω
is simply the omission of an
ι
– from
λείπ
-to
λἰπ
-. Thus,
ἔλειπον
is imperfect, “I was leaving,” while
ἔλιπον
is aorist, “I left”. The chart belowshows the second aorist active and middle endings.
2
nd
Aorist Active Indicative2
nd
Aorist Middle IndicativeSingularPluralSingularPlural1
ἔλιπον
I loosed
ἐλίπο
µ
εν
We loosed
1
ἐλιπό
µ
ην
I loosedmyself
ἐλιπό
µ
εθα
We loosedourselves
2
ἔλιπες
You loosed
ἐλίπετε
You loosed
2
ἐλίπου
You loosedyourself
ἐλίπεσθε
You loosedyourselves
3
ἔλιπε
(
ν
)
He/she/itloosed
ἔλιπον
They loosed
3
ἐλίπετο
He loosedhimself
ἐλίποντο
They loosedthemselves
Most verbs that follow the second aorist pattern in the active and middle voices will follow the normalfirst aorist pattern in the passive. There are, however, a few verbs which follow the second aorist passive pattern; but those that do generally just drop the
θ
from the infix, and look the same otherwise,as the second aorist passive verb
γράφω
, “I write,” will show.
2
nd
Aorist Passive IndicativeSingularPlural1
ἐγράφην
I was written
ἐγράφη
µ
εν
We were written
2
ἐγράφης
You were written
ἐγράφητε
You were written
3
ἐγράφη
He/she/it was written
ἐγράφησαν
They were written
Relative Pronouns
It's time now to introduce a couple more kinds of pronouns. The first, relative pronouns, are very easyto recognize; they look just like the regular first and second declension endings with no stem at all,only a rough breathing mark and accent; it's important to notice the accent, because that will help youdistinguish the relative pronoun from certain articles. Like other pronouns we've seen (personals,demonstratives), the neuter nominative and accusative singulars lacks a final
ν
, but is otherwise
perfectly regular. Following is the paradigm.
Relative Pronouns
masculine
feminine
neuter
sing.plur.sing.plur.sing.plur.nom.
ὅς οἵ ἥ αἵ ὅ ἅ
gen.
οὗ ὧν ἧς ὧν οὗ ὧν
dat.
ᾧ οἷς ᾗ αἷς ᾧ οἷς
acc.
ὅν οὕς ἥν ἅς ὅ ἅ
Like all pronouns, the relative agrees with its antecedent in gender and number, but its case is usuallydetermined by its own grammatical function. Greek relative clauses will be similar to English relativeclauses. Here are a couple examples:
οἱ
ἄνθρωποι
οἵ
γινώσκουσιν
ἡ
µ
ᾶς
µ
ένουσιν
. “The men who know us remain.”
ὁ
ἄνθρωπος
ὅν
γινώσκο
µ
εν
µ
ένει
. “The man whom we know remains.”Since these relative pronouns are referring to persons, we translate them as “who”/“whom”. For impersonal objects, we'd use the English relatives “which” or “that”. Notice a couple things: the accentis all that differentiates the article from the relative pronoun in the first sentence; and the grammaticalfunction of the relative pronoun determines its case in both instances. In the first sentence, “who” isfunctioning as the subject of the verb “they know” in the relative clause; hence, it is in the nominativecase; in the second sentence, “whom” is functioning as the direct object of the verb “we know” in therelative clause; hence, it is in the accusative case.We said above that the case of a relative pronoun is
usually
determined by its own grammaticalfunction, as we have just seen in these examples; however, this is not always so. Relatives aresometimes influenced by what grammarians call “attraction;” this means that they will sometimes takethe case of their antecedent, regardless of their own grammatical function. Here is an example:
πινεῖ
ἐκ
τοῦ
ὕδατος
οὗ
δώσω
αὐτῷ
... “He will drink from the water
which
I will give him...”Here, “which” is the direct object of the verb “I will give,” and should be in the accusative case; but therelative is taking on the case of its antecedent, “water,” which is genitive (since it's the object of the preposition
ἐκ
). Sometimes, the opposite happens: the antecedent takes on the case of the relative pronoun. This is called “indirect attraction”. Here is an example:
τὸν
ἄρτον
ὃν
κλῶμεν
,
οὐχὶ
κοινωνία
τοῦ
σώματος
τοῦ
Χριστοῦ
ἐστιν
; “The
bread
which webreak, is it not the fellowship of the body of Christ?”Here, the antecedent, “bread,” is functioning as the subject of a S/LV/PN construction (the bread...is thefellowship), and should thus be in the nominative case; but it is taking the accusative case of therelative, which functions as the direct object of the relative clause's verb, “we break”. This happensfairly frequently, but usually poses little problem for understanding the meaning of the sentence.
One final note: relatives are frequently used alone, without an antecedent. When this happens, we will
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