In the grammar of
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
, including
Koine, the aorist (pronounced or ) is a class of
verb
A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...
forms that generally portray a situation as simple or undefined, that is, as having
aorist aspect. In the grammatical terminology of classical Greek, it is a ''tense'', one of the seven divisions of the
conjugation
Conjugation or conjugate may refer to:
Linguistics
* Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form
* Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language
Mathematics
* Complex conjugation, the chang ...
of a verb, found in all
moods and
voices.
Terminology
In traditional grammatical terminology, the aorist is a "tense", a section of the verb paradigm formed with the same
stem across all
moods. By contrast, in
theoretical linguistics
Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics which, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to theory of language, or the branch of linguistics which inquires into the n ...
,
tense refers to a form that specifies a point in time (past, present, or future), so in that sense the aorist is a
tense-aspect combination.
The literary Greek of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BC,
Attic Greek, was the standard school-room form of Greek for centuries. This article therefore describes chiefly the Attic aorist but also the variants at other times and in other dialects as needed. The poems of Homer were studied in Athens and may have been compiled there. They are in Epic or
Homeric Greek
Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the ''Iliad'', ''Odyssey'', and Homeric Hymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of Ionic, with some Aeolic forms, a few from Arcadocypriot, and ...
, an artificial blend of several dialects, not including Attic. The Homeric aorist differs in morphology from Attic, but educated Athenians imitated Homeric syntax.
Conversely, Hellenistic or
Koine Greek
Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
was a blend of several dialects after the conquests of Alexander. Most of the written texts that survive in Koine imitate the Attic taught in schools to a greater or lesser extent, but the spoken language of the writers appears to have simplified and regularized the formation of the aorist, and some of the features of Attic syntax are much less frequently attested.
Morphology
A verb may have either a first aorist or a second aorist: the distinction is like that between
weak (''try'', ''tried'') and
strong verbs (''write'', ''wrote'') in English. A very few verbs have both types of aorist, sometimes with a distinction of meaning: for example (to set up or cause to stand) has both and as aorists, but the first has a transitive meaning ("I set up") and the second an intransitive meaning ("I stood").
First
The
stem of the first aorist is often marked by in the active and middle voice,
and in the passive voice. Because of the (
sigma), it is also called sigmatic aorist.
Compensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered b ...
affects first aorist forms whose verbal root ends in a
sonorant (
nasal or
liquid: , , , ).
In
Attic and
Ionic Greek (also in
Doric, with some differences), the in the first aorist suffix causes
compensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered b ...
of the vowel before the sonorant, producing a long vowel ( → or , → , → , → , → ).
In
Aeolic Greek (which contributes some forms to
Homeric
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
), the causes compensatory lengthening of the sonorant instead of the vowel, producing a
double
A double is a look-alike or doppelgänger; one person or being that resembles another.
Double, The Double or Dubble may also refer to:
Film and television
* Double (filmmaking), someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character
* ...
consonant ( → , → ).
The present stem sometimes undergoes sound changes caused by a suffix — for instance, (
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
: , English consonantal
y). In this case, the aorist is formed from the verbal root without the present-stem sound changes.
Kiparsky analyzes the process as
debuccalization
Debuccalization or deoralization is a sound change or alternation in which an oral consonant loses its original place of articulation and moves it to the glottis (usually , , or ). The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspir ...
of ''s'' () to ''h'' in
Proto-Greek
The Proto-Greek language (also known as Proto-Hellenic) is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects (i.e., Attic, Ionic, Aeo ...
,
metathesis of ''h'' and the sonorant so that ''h'' comes before the sonorant, and
assimilation of ''h'' to the vowel (Attic-Ionic-Doric) or to the consonant (Aeolic).
* ''men-sa'' → ''men-ha'' (debuccalization) → ''mehna'' (metathesis) → ''mēna'' or ''menna'' (compensatory lengthening)
First aorist endings
Most of the active and middle forms of the first aorist contain an . The indicative forms are similar to the imperfect, and the other moods, except for the subjunctive, are similar to the present, except with an in the endings instead of an or . The first person singular indicative active, second person singular imperfect middle, the second person singular imperatives, infinitive active, and masculine nominative singular of the participle (bolded), however, do not follow this pattern. The subjunctive active and middle have endings identical to the present active and mediopassive, while the passive has endings identical to the present active.
Most of the passive forms of the first aorist have endings similar to those of the root aorist.
Second
The stem of the second aorist is the bare
root
In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...
of the verb, or a
reduplicated
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwar ...
version of the root. In these verbs, the present stem often has ''e''-grade of
ablaut
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
and adds a
nasal infix
The nasal infix is a reconstructed nasal consonant or syllable that was inserted ( infixed) into the stem or root of a word in the Proto-Indo-European language. It has reflexes in several ancient and modern Indo-European languages. It is one of ...
or suffix to the basic verb root, but the aorist has zero-grade (no ''e'') and no infix or suffix.
Zero-grade
When the present has a
diphthong (e.g., ), the second aorist has the offglide of the diphthong ().
* present "leave", aorist (e-grade in present, zero-grade in aorist)
When there is no vowel in the present stem besides the e of ablaut, the aorist has no vowel, or has an from a
vocalic or .
* present "fly", aorist (e-grade in present, zero-grade in aorist)
* present , aorist (e-grade in present, zero-grade → in aorist)
Reduplication
Present stems of verbs with a reduplicated aorist often do not have e-grade or an infix or suffix.
* present "lead", aorist (bare stem in present, reduplicated stem in aorist)
Second aorist endings
The endings include an or (
thematic vowel
In Indo-European studies, a thematic vowel or theme vowel is the vowel or from ablaut placed before the ending of a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word. Nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the Indo-European languages with this vowel are thematic, and tho ...
). In the indicative, endings are identical to those of the
imperfect
The imperfect ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to ...
; in non-indicative moods, they are identical to those of the
present.
Second aorist passive
A second aorist passive is distinguished from a first aorist passive only by the absence of . A few verbs have passive aorists in both forms, usually with no distinction in meaning; but "I appeared" is distinguished from "I was shown".
There is no correlation between the first/second aorist distinction in the active and the passive: a verb with an active second aorist may have a passive first aorist or vice versa.
Root
The root aorist is characteristic of athematic verbs (those with a present active in ). Like the second aorist, the stem is the bare root, and endings are similar to the imperfect in the indicative, and identical to the present in non-indicative moods. It is sometimes included as a subcategory of the second aorist because of these similarities, but unlike the second aorist of thematic verbs, it has no thematic .
The singular aorist indicative active of some athematic verbs (, ; , ; , ) uses a stem formed by the suffix and takes first aorist rather than root aorist endings.
Syntax
The aorist generally presents a situation as an undivided whole, also known as the
perfective aspect.
Aspectual variations
The aorist has a number of variations in meaning that appear in all moods.
Ingressive
In verbs denoting a
state
State may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State
* ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States
* ''Our S ...
or continuing action, the aorist may express the beginning of the action or the entrance into the state. This is called ingressive aorist (also inceptive or
inchoative
Inchoative aspect (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical aspect, referring to the beginning of a state. It can be found in conservative Indo-European languages such as Latin and Lithuanian, and also in Finnic languages or European derived languages w ...
).
* "I am king" (present) — "I became king" or "I ruled" (aorist)
*: ''basileúō'' — ''ebasíleusa''
Resultative
The resultative aorist expresses the result of an action. Whether this is truly distinguishable from the normal force of the narrative aorist is disputable.
* "I was deliberating" is imperfect; "I decided" is aorist.
Indicative mood
The aorist usually implies a past event in the indicative, but it does not assert pastness, and can be used of present or future events.
*
: I am undone if you will leave me, wife.
::
Narrative
The aorist and the imperfect are the standard tenses for telling a story. The ordinary distinction between them is between an action considered as a single undivided event and the action as a continuous event. Thus, for example, a process as a whole can be described in the imperfect, while the individual steps in that process will be aorist.
*
yruswas playing in this village... in the road with others of his age. The boys while playing chose to be their king this one.... Then he assigned some of them to the building of houses, some to be his bodyguard, one doubtless to be the King's Eye; to another he gave the right of bringing him messages;....
*:
Here the imperfect "was playing" is the whole process of the game (which continues past these extracts); the aorists the individual steps.
[Rijksbaron, §6.1]
The narrative aorist has the same force, of an undivided or single action, when used by itself:
*
And when the men who in former days were wont to do him homage saw him, they made their obeisance even then, although they knew that he was being led forth to death.
*:
:: ''Were wont to do him homage'' is the imperfect, ''made their obeisance'' the aorist, of "kowtow".
Complexive
On the other hand, if the entire action is expressed, not as a continuous action, but as a single undivided event, the aorist is used:
Herodotus introduces his story of Cyrus playing with:
*
Now when the boy was ten years old, the truth about him was revealed in some such way as this:
*:
The aorist is also used when something is described as happening for some definite interval of time; this particular function can be more precisely called the temporal aorist:
*
My father Cephalus was persuaded by Pericles to come to this land and lived (there) thirty years.
*:
Lysias
Lysias (; el, Λυσίας; c. 445 – c. 380 BC) was a logographer (speech writer) in Ancient Greece. He was one of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian Canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace i ...
,
Against Eratosthenes 4
Past-in-the-past
The other chief narrative use of the aorist is to express events before the time of the story:
*
they persuaded the Himeraeans to join in the war, and not only to go with them themselves but to provide arms for the seamen from their vessels (for they had beached their ships at Himera)
*:
It thus often translates an English or Latin pluperfect: the Greek pluperfect has the narrower function of expressing a state of affairs existing at the time of the story as the result of events before the time of the story.
Gnomic
The
gnomic aorist expresses the way things generally happen, as in proverbs. The empiric aorist states a fact of experience ( ''empeiríā''), and is modified by the adverbs ''often, always, sometimes, already, not yet, never'', etc. (English tends to express similar timeless assertions with the
simple present
The simple present, present simple or present indefinite is one of the verb forms associated with the present tense in modern English. It is commonly referred to as a tense, although it also encodes certain information about aspect in addition ...
.)
The gnomic aorist is regarded as a
primary tense in determining the mood of verbs in subordinate clauses. That is to say, subordinate clauses take the subjunctive instead of the optative.
* (not )
Tyrants make rich in a moment whomever they wish.
:
Dramatic
In dialogues within
tragedy
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
and
comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...
, the
first person singular
Singular may refer to:
* Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms
* Singular homology
* SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS)
* Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
aorist or present expresses an action performed by the act of speaking, like thanking someone (see
performative utterance
In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences which not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are describing.
In a 1955 lecture series, later published as ''How to D ...
), or, according to another analysis, a state of mind. This is called tragic or dramatic aorist. The aorist is used when the action is complete in the single statement; the present when the speaker goes on to explain how or why he is acting.
*
Sausage-seller. I like your threats, laugh at your empty bluster,
dance a fling, and cry cuckoo all around.
: : translated by William James Hickie
Indicative mood with particle
Unattainable wish
A wish about the past that cannot be fulfilled is expressed by the aorist indicative with the
particles
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.
They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...
or "if only" (''eíthe'', ''ei gár''). This is called the aorist of unattainable wish.
*
If only I had been with you then, Pericles!
:
An unattainable wish about the present uses the imperfect.
A wish about the future uses the
optative
The optative mood ( or ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope regarding a given action. It is a superset of the cohortative mood and is closely related to the subjunctive mood but is distinct from the desiderative mo ...
with or without a particle; an optative of wish may be unattainable.
Past potential
The aorist indicative (less commonly the
imperfect
The imperfect ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to ...
) with the
modal particle
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.
They vary greatly in size or quantity, from ...
(''án''),
Homeric
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
(''ké
'), may express past
potentiality
In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his ''Physics'', ''Metaphysics'', '' Nicomachean Ethics'', and ''De Anima''.
Th ...
, probability, or necessity.
*
For who would have expected these things to happen?
:
Iterative
The aorist indicative (also the
imperfect
The imperfect ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to ...
, or
past iterative in
Herodotus
Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer
A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society ...
) with ''án'' may express repeated or customary past action. This is called the iterative indicative. It is similar to the past potential, since it denotes what could have happened at a given point, but unlike the past potential, it is a statement of fact.
*
: But whenever he came past any of those who had fought under him before, he would say
:
Xenophon
Xenophon of Athens (; grc, Ξενοφῶν ; – probably 355 or 354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian, born in Athens. At the age of 30, Xenophon was elected commander of one of the biggest Greek mercenary armies o ...
,
Cyropaedia
The ''Cyropaedia'', sometimes spelled ''Cyropedia'', is a partly fictional biography of Cyrus the Great, the founder of Persia's Achaemenid Empire. It was written around 370 BC by Xenophon, the Athenian-born soldier, historian, and student of Soc ...
7.1.14
Unreal
The aorist or imperfect indicative with may express past unreality or
counterfactuality. This is called the unreal indicative. This construction is used in the
consequence
Consequence may refer to:
* Logical consequence, also known as a ''consequence relation'', or ''entailment''
* In operant conditioning, a result of some behavior
* Consequentialism, a theory in philosophy in which the morality of an act is determi ...
of past counterfactual
conditional sentence
Conditional sentences are natural language sentences that express that one thing is contingent on something else, e.g. "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the main clause of the sentence is ''con ...
s.
Participles
Outside of indirect discourse, an aorist participle may express any time (past, present, or rarely future)
relative to the main verb.
Non-indicative moods
Outside of the indicative mood, sometimes the aorist determines time (often past time), and sometimes the function of the mood determines it. When the aorist does not determine time, it determines aspect instead.
Aorist in indirect discourse refers to past time relative to the main verb, since it replaces an aorist indicative.
An imperative, subjunctive or optative in an independent clause usually refers to future time, because the imperative express a command, the subjunctive expresses urging, prohibition, or deliberation, and the optative expresses a wish or possibility.
In
dependent clauses (temporal,
conditional, etc.), the time (
past
The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience ...
,
present, or
future) of an aorist subjunctive, optative, or imperative is based on the function of the mood.
The subjunctive is used with main verbs in the present and future tenses (
primary sequence
Biomolecular structure is the intricate folded, three-dimensional shape that is formed by a molecule of protein, DNA, or RNA, and that is important to its function. The structure of these molecules may be considered at any of several length s ...
), and the optative is used with main verbs in the past tenses (secondary sequence) and to express
potentiality
In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his ''Physics'', ''Metaphysics'', '' Nicomachean Ethics'', and ''De Anima''.
Th ...
in the future.
Optative mood
Potential
In the
potential optative, the aorist expresses aspect, and the potential optative implies future time.
See also
*
Aorist
*
Perfective aspect
Notes
Bibliography
* Albert Rijksbaron, ''Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction'' (2002).
*
Herbert Weir Smyth ''A Greek grammar for colleges''(1916).
{{Ancient Greek grammar
Grammatical tenses
Grammatical aspects
Ancient Greek
Greek grammar