Attic Greek Infinitives

It is used mainly to express acts.

Attic greek infinitives.

The aorist tense always conveys a single discreet action i e. συνεβούλευον τοῖς στρατιώταις μὴ ταῦτα ποιῆσαι i advised. βουλόμεθα ἀποχωρεῖν we wish to withdraw. κῦρος κελεύει τὸν στρατηγὸν ἡγεῖσθαι cyrus commands the general to lead.

Mastronarde s book introduction to attic greek. An ancient grammarian once wrote that the greeks were φιλομέτοχοι participle loving. Epic greek also has the infinitive forms ἐλθέμεν elthémen and ἐλθέμεναι elthémenai. A list of words that covers 90 of tokens in a collection of attic prose texts from the perseus corpus.

The infinitive in ancient greek goes beyond this. Many of the uses of the infinitive are identical in greek and english. This is the most common tense for referring to. This is no exaggeration.

The uses of the infinitive. While both the imperfect and aorist tenses refer to past actions and so are past tenses they differ in aspect. Use the greek testament are unable to approach the subject through a study of classical attic prose. Nearly a third of greek verbal forms are participles.

τὸ ἄρχειν πόνον φέρει. The infinitive takes on a different use if an article is found in front of it. This table gives attic inflectional endings. In the indicative mood there are seven tenses.

It is unfortunate that so many students of the new testament have no acquaintance with classical greek but it would be still more unfortunate if such. For conjugation in dialects other than attic see appendix ancient greek dialectal conjugation. Nouns adjectives pronouns articles numerals and especially verbs are all highly inflected. The situation is undoubtedly to be regretted but its existence should not be ignored.

Another complication of greek grammar is that different greek authors wrote in different dialects all of which have slightly different grammatical forms see ancient greek dialects. List of principal parts by unit through unit 19 for mastronarde s introduction to attic greek first three only i e present future aorist. The ancient greek infinitive is a non finite verb form sometimes called a verb mood with no endings for person or number but it is unlike in modern english inflected for tense and voice for a general introduction in the grammatical formation and the morphology of the ancient greek infinitive see here and for further information see these tables. Ancient greek grammar is morphologically complex and preserves several features of proto indo european morphology.

An experiment with perseus new vocabulary tool. Present imperfect future aorist the equivalent of past simple perfect pluperfect and future perfect. This happens quite often in patristic writings and it is good to keep this quote handy from donald j.