Part thirteen of a tour through Greek inflectional morphology to help get students thinking more systematically about the word forms they see (and maybe teach a bit of general linguistics along the way).
Let’s summarize all 10 active distinguisher paradigms we’ve seen so far (this will probably only layout properly if your browser is wide):
| PA-1 | PA-2 | PA-3 | PA-4 | PA-5 | PA-6 | PA-7 | PA-8 | PA-9 | PA-10 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INF | Xειν | Xεῖν | Xοῦν | Xᾶν | Xῆν | Xναι | Xέναι | Xόναι | Xάναι | εἶναι |
| 1SG | Xω | Xῶ | Xῶ | Xῶ | Xῶ | Xμι | Xημι | Xωμι | Xημι | εἰμί |
| 2SG | Xεις | Xεῖς | Xοῖς | Xᾷς | Xῇς | Xς | Xης | Xως | Xης | εἶ |
| 3SG | Xει | Xεῖ | Xοῖ | Xᾷ | Xῇ | Xσι(ν) | Xησι(ν) | Xωσι(ν) | Xησι(ν) | ἐστί(ν) |
| 1PL | Xομεν | Xοῦμεν | Xοῦμεν | Xῶμεν | Xῶμεν | Xμεν | Xεμεν | Xομεν | Xαμεν | ἐσμέν |
| 2PL | Xετε | Xεῖτε | Xοῦτε | Xᾶτε | Xῆτε | Xτε | Xετε | Xοτε | Xατε | ἐστέ |
| 3PL | Xουσι(ν) | Xοῦσι(ν) | Xοῦσι(ν) | Xῶσι(ν) | Xῶσι(ν) | Xασι(ν) | Xέασι(ν) | Xόασι(ν) | Xᾶσι(ν) | εἰσί(ν) |
As we’ve already noted, some cells have identical distinguishers (for example, the ῶ of PA-2, PA-3, PA-4 and PA-5). More on that shortly.
But first note something about PA-6—it subsumes the next three paradigms and, in fact, in the case of 2SG subsumes every paradigm except PA-10. In otherwords, a word form from another paradigm technically matches PA-6 too. If you go back to part 10, you’ll see that our exemplar for PA-6 was δεικνύναι, δείκνυμι, and so on. The only reason PA-6 doesn’t have a vowel like PA-7, PA-8, PA-9 is that the vowel is always υ and hence it was dropped out of the distinguisher analysis. But we have no reason at this stage not to supposed the upsilon is an important part of the PA-6 paradigm (it just doesn’t distinguish cells within the paradigm). So I’m going to tentatively put it back for the purposes of comparing across paradigms. I’ll call this modified distinguisher paradigm PA-6a.
In repeating the paradigm of paradigms with this small modification:
| PA-1 | PA-2 | PA-3 | PA-4 | PA-5 | PA-6a | PA-7 | PA-8 | PA-9 | PA-10 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INF | Xειν | Xεῖν | Xοῦν | Xᾶν | Xῆν | Xύναι | Xέναι | Xόναι | Xάναι | εἶναι |
| 1SG | Xω | Xῶ | Xῶ | Xῶ | Xῶ | Xυμι | Xημι | Xωμι | Xημι | εἰμί |
| 2SG | Xεις | Xεῖς | Xοῖς | Xᾷς | Xῇς | Xυς | Xης | Xως | Xης | εἶ |
| 3SG | Xει | Xεῖ | Xοῖ | Xᾷ | Xῇ | Xυσι(ν) | Xησι(ν) | Xωσι(ν) | Xησι(ν) | ἐστί(ν) |
| 1PL | Xομεν | Xοῦμεν | Xοῦμεν | Xῶμεν | Xῶμεν | Xυμεν | Xεμεν | Xομεν | Xαμεν | ἐσμέν |
| 2PL | Xετε | Xεῖτε | Xοῦτε | Xᾶτε | Xῆτε | Xυτε | Xετε | Xοτε | Xατε | ἐστέ |
| 3PL | Xουσι(ν) | Xοῦσι(ν) | Xοῦσι(ν) | Xῶσι(ν) | Xῶσι(ν) | Xύασι(ν) | Xέασι(ν) | Xόασι(ν) | Xᾶσι(ν) | εἰσί(ν) |
Now let’s capture the common elements in the rows:
| PA-1 | PA-2 | PA-3 | PA-4 | PA-5 | PA-6a | PA-7 | PA-8 | PA-9 | PA-10 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INF | -ν | -ν | -ν | -ν | -ν | -ναι | -ναι | -ναι | -ναι | -ναι |
| 1SG | -ω | -ῶ | -ῶ | -ῶ | -ῶ | -μι | -μι | -μι | -μι | -μί |
| 2SG | -{ι}ς | -{ι}ς | -{ι}ς | -{ι}ς | -{ι}ς | -ς | -ς | -ς | -ς | εἶ |
| 3SG | -{ι} | -{ι} | -{ι} | -{ι} | -{ι} | -σι(ν) | -σι(ν) | -σι(ν) | -σι(ν) | ἐστί(ν) |
| 1PL | -μεν | -μεν | -μεν | -μεν | -μεν | -μεν | -μεν | -μεν | -μεν | -μέν |
| 2PL | -τε | -τε | -τε | -τε | -τε | -τε | -τε | -τε | -τε | -τέ |
| 3PL | -σι(ν) | -σι(ν) | -σι(ν) | -σι(ν) | -σι(ν) | -ασι(ν) | -ασι(ν) | -ασι(ν) | -ᾶσι(ν) | -σί(ν) |
The INF, although coming in two variants, has the property that it gives us enough information to know every form of the word in the present indicative active.
No other slots in our paradigms do that.
- The 1SG can’t distinguish within the set {PA-2, PA-3, PA-4, PA-5} or within the set {PA-7, PA-9}
- The 2SG can’t distinguish within the set {PA-7, PA-9}
- The 3SG can’t distinguish within the set {PA-7, PA-9}
- The 1PL can’t distinguish within the set {PA-2, PA-3}, the set {PA-1, PA-8}, or the set {PA-4, PA-5}
- The 2PL can’t distinguish within the set {PA-1, PA-7}
- The 3PL can’t distinguish within the set {PA-2, PA-3} or within the set {PA-4, PA-5}
Among other things, this is why the 1SG isn’t a great choice of lemma (or headword, or citation form) for a lexeme. It’s the reason so many dictionaries and lemmatizations show the circumflex verbs uncontracted (e.g. ποιέω for ποιῶ) even though in many dialects, including the Koine, that’s a nonsense word. Even then, most dictionaries don’t distinguish PA-7 from PA-9 (τίθημι vs ἵστημι) although admittedly that’s not as important as they aren’t productive.
In almost all respects, the present active infinitive is the perfect lemma for the present active forms of a verb. Some have argued against the infinitive as lemma as it doesn’t form a clause by itself (although nor do verbs with obligatory complements). A close candidate is the 3SG, the benefit of which is how common it is. The main downside is just it doesn’t distinguish PA-7 and PA-9. But one could hardly go wrong focusing on the INF and 3SG as the forms to most associate with each present active verb.
It should be noted that even though the 1SG is the worst predictively, it’s completely predictable from any other forms. Also, despite some ambiguity in the 1PL and 3PL, they can be predicted from one another. Similarly, all the singulars in the PA-7 and PA-9 words predict each other.
Another way of thinking about this is to group our paradigm classes by their shared properties:
| PA-{1, 2, 3, 4, 5} | INF ends in -ν, 1SG in -ω/-ῶ | thematic or omega verbs | ||||
| PA-{2, 3, 4, 5} | circumflex throughout endings | circumflex or contract verbs | ||||
| PA-{2, 3} | οῦ in 1PL and 3PL | |||||
| PA-{4, 5} | ῶ in 1PL and 3PL | |||||
| PA-{6a, 7, 8, 9, 10} | INF ends in -ναι, 1SG in -μι | athematic or μι verbs | ||||
| PA-{6a, 7, 8, 9} | 3SG in -σι(ν), 3PL in -ασι(ν) | |||||
| PA-{7, 9} | η in singulars | |||||
There are the other cross-cutting categories:
| PA-{1, 8} | 1PL ends with ομεν |
| PA-{1, 7} | 2PL ends with ετε |
If one ignores accentuation, one could conceivably also come up with cross-cutting categories such as PA-{1,2} which shares the ει in the INF, 2SG, and 3SG. Or PA-{4, 9} which both have ατε in 2PL. Or PA-{1, 2, 3} which all have ουσι(ν) in 3PL.
Next we’ll look at the middles.