Part twenty-eight 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).
In this post, we look systematically at the imperfect active distinguishers in much the same way as we did the present active distinguishers in Part 13.
Before we summarise all the distinguisher paradigms we’ve seen so far, there are actually three forms in the SBLGNT not covered yet: εἰσῄει, παρῆσαν, and συνῆσαν (all in Luke/Acts). εἰσῄει is from εἰς+εἶμι (making it a compound of IA-11) and παρῆσαν is παρά+εἰμί (making it a compound of IA-10). In our text, συνῆσαν is from σύν+εἰμί but could be from σύν+εἶμι. Either way, for completeness we need to add IA-10-COMP and IA-11-COMP.
So with those, here are all the imperfect active distinguisher paradigms we’ve discussed:
| IA-1 | IA-2 | IA-3 | IA-4 | IA-5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1SG | Xον | Xουν | Xουν | Xων | Xων |
| 2SG | Xες | Xεις | Xους | Xᾱς | Xης |
| 3SG | Xε(ν) | Xει | Xου | Xᾱ | Xη |
| 1PL | Xομεν | Xοῦμεν | Xοῦμεν | Xῶμεν | Xῶμεν |
| 2PL | Xετε | Xεῖτε | Xοῦτε | Xᾶτε | Xῆτε |
| 3PL | Xον | Xουν | Xουν | Xων | Xων |
| IA-6 | IA-7 | IA-8 | IA-9 | IA-9b | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1SG | Xῡν | Xην/Xειν | Xουν | Xην | Xην |
| 2SG | Xῡς | Xεις | Xους | Xης | Xης/Xησθα |
| 3SG | Xῡ | Xει | Xου | Xη | Xη |
| 1PL | Xυμεν | Xεμεν | Xομεν | Xαμεν | Xαμεν |
| 2PL | Xυτε | Xετε | Xοτε | Xατε | Xατε |
| 3PL | Xυσαν | Xεσαν | Xοσαν | Xασαν | Xασαν |
| IA-10 | IA-11 | IA-10-COMP | IA-11-COMP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1SG | ἦ/ἦν | ᾖα/ᾔειν | Xῆ/Xῆν | Xῇα/Xῄειν |
| 2SG | ἦς/ἦσθα | ᾔεις/ᾔεισθα | Xῆς/Xῆσθα | Xῄεις/Xῄεισθα |
| 3SG | ἦν | ᾔει(ν) | Xῆν | Xῄει(ν) |
| 1PL | ἦμεν | ᾖμεν | Xῆμεν | Xῇμεν |
| 2PL | ἦτε | ᾖτε | Xῆτε | Xῇτε |
| 3PL | ἦσαν | ᾖσαν/ᾔεσαν | Xῆσαν | Xῇσαν/Xῄεσαν |
It will be worth taking some future posts to talk about the -σθα ending that crops up in the 2SG as well as some of the more extraordinary forms in IA-10 and IA-11 (along with compounds).
But for now, just capturing the common element in each row (like we did in Part 13):
| IA-1 | IA-2 | IA-3 | IA-4 | IA-5 | IA-6 | IA-7 | IA-8 | IA-9 | IA-10 | IA-11 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1SG | -ν | ||||||||||
| 2SG | -ς | -ς/-σθα | |||||||||
| 3SG | - | -(v) | |||||||||
| 1PL | -μεν | ||||||||||
| 2PL | -τε | ||||||||||
| 3PL | -ν | -σαν | |||||||||
As with the present active paradigms, some cells across inflectional classes have identical distinguishers and so those cells alone can’t identify the inflectional class (and hence all the other forms in that class). In particular:
- The 1SG can’t distinguish within the set {IA-2, IA-3, IA-8} or within the set {IA-4, IA-5} or within the set {IA-7 (if η), IA-9}
- The 2SG and 3SG can’t distinguish within the set {IA-2, IA-7} or within the set {IA-3, IA-8} or within the set {IA-5, IA-9}
- The 1PL can’t distinguish within the set {IA-2, IA-3} or within the set {IA-4, IA-5} or within the set {IA-1, IA-8}
- The 2PL can’t distinguish within the set {IA-1, IA-7}
- The 3PL can’t distinguish within the set {IA-2, IA-3} or within the set {IA-4, IA-5}
The distinctions from IA-7 on up are less important because they are tiny, non-productive classes. Looking at just IA-1 through IA-6:
- {IA-2, IA-3} can’t be distinguished by 1SG, 1PL, or 3PL but can by 2SG, 3SG, or 2PL.
- {IA-4, IA-5} also can’t be distinguished by 1SG, 1PL, or 3PL but can by 2SG, 3SG, or 2PL.
So at least for the first six classes, any of 2SG, 3SG, or 2PL uniquely identifies the class (at least within the imperfect active system).
It is interesting then that the 2SG and 3SG are the very cells most likely to cause confusion within the sets {IA-2, IA-7}, {IA-3, IA-8}, and {IA-5, IA-9} and in those cases, it is the 1PL or 3PL that can come to the rescue in identifying the class (although the value of X itself can do that given the tiny size of the IA-7, IA-8 and IA-9 classes).
If we try to group our classes along the lines we did in Part 13, we get a hierarchy very similar to that in the present:
| IA-{1, 2, 3, 4, 5} | 3PL in -ν; 1SG and 3PL identical | ||||
| IA-{2, 3, 4, 5} | long vowels before the endings; circumflexes in the 1PL and 2PL | ||||
| IA-{2, 3} | ου in 1SG, 1PL, and 3PL | ||||
| IA-{4, 5} | ω in 1SG, 1PL, and 3PL | ||||
| IA-{6, 7, 8, 9, 9b, 10, 11, 10-COMP, 11-COMP} | 3PL in -σαν | ||||
| IA-{6, 7, 8, 9} | 2SG only in -ς | ||||
| IA-{9b, 10, 11, 10-COMP, 11-COMP} | 2SG in -ς/-σθα | ||||
along with cross-cutting categories such as:
| IA-{2, 3, 8} | ουν in 1SG |
| IA-{2, 7} | ει in 2SG and 3SG |
| IA-{3, 8} | ου in 1SG, 2SG, and 3SG |
| IA-{1, 7} | ετε in 2PL |
and, ignoring accents:
| IA-{4, 9} | ατε in 2PL |
But given the closed nature of IA-7 and up, many of these will be easy to disambiguate. We’ll go through the details in a future post.