Part thirty-three 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 part 29, we summarised our imperfect middle indicative paradigms as follows:

  IM-1 IM-2 IM-3 IM-4 IM-5
1SG Xόμην Xούμην Xούμην Xώμην Xώμην
2SG Xου Xοῦ Xοῦ Xῶ Xῶ
3SG Xετο Xεῖτο Xοῦτο Xᾶτο Xῆτο
1PL Xόμεθα Xούμεθα Xούμεθα Xώμεθα Xώμεθα
2PL Xεσθε Xεῖσθε Xοῦσθε Xᾶσθε Xῆσθε
3PL Xοντο Xοῦντο Xοῦντο Xῶντο Xῶντο
  IM-6 IM-7 IM-8 IM-9
1SG Xύμην Xέμην Xόμην Xάμην
2SG Xυσο Xεσο Xοσο Xασο/Xω
3SG Xυτο Xετο Xοτο Xατο
1PL Xύμεθα Xέμεθα Xόμεθα Xάμεθα
2PL Xυσθε Xεσθε Xοσθε Xασθε
3PL Xυντο Xεντο Xοντο Xαντο

This does not quite cover the imperfect middle indicative forms we find in the SBLGNT.

Recall in the previous post, we said the copula does not appear at all in the imperfect active 1SG in the SBLGNT. It does, however, appear in the middle form ἤμην 15 times.

Furthermore, even though the 1PL active form ἦμεν does appear 8 times, we also find the middle form ἤμεθα 5 times. The SBLGNT text even has both in Galatians 4.3.

We’ll create an IM-10 class for these.

We also have imperfect forms of κεῖμαι, so much like we created PM-11, we’ll create an IM-11 for 3SG forms like ἔκειτο, ἀνέκειτο, ἐπέκειτο, and κατέκειτο and for 3PL forms like ἐπέκειντο and συνανέκειντο.

Finally, we have 11 occurences of ἐκάθητο, the imperfect middle 3SG form of κάθημαι, treated as if no longer being a preverb κατά +‎ ἧμαι. We’ll create an IM-12 for this form.

Hence, we have:

  IM-10 IM-11 IM-12
1SG ἤμην - -
2SG - - -
3SG - Xειτο Xητο
1PL ἤμεθα - -
2PL - - -
3PL - Xειντο -

The remaining cells would be straightforward to fill out, but as we’re testing everything against a specific corpus and grammars, we’ll have to extend the tests before we include other forms.

In the next two posts, we’ll finish up the middles with some disambiguation rules and corpus counts.