Information AboutAorist Tense |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT AORIST | |
| grammatical aspects | |
| grammatical tenses | |
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There is some confusion over whether the aorist is a tense or an aspect. This reflects the double nature of the aorist in , Perfective Aspect . In other moods (subjunctive, optative and imperative), however, as well as in the infinitive and (largely) the participle, the aorist is purely aspectual, with no reference to any particular tense. Modern Greek has inherited the same system. In Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the aorist was originally just an aspect, but by late PIE it had probably already developed into a combination of tense and aspect just as in Ancient Greek, since the same system is represented in Sanskrit . MORPHOLOGY In Latin , Greek , and Sanskrit , the aorist is marked by several morphological devices, but three stand out as most common. The s-aorist The first is the s-aorist, so called because an 's' is inserted between the root and the personal ending. In Latin, for example, ''dico'' means "I say", while ''dixi'' (from ''dic-s-i'') means "I said"; in Greek, ''ακουω'' ''akouō'' means "I hear", while ''ηκουσα'' ''ēkousa'' means "I heard." (Grammatical note: the first letter of ''ηκουσα'' is an eta, and not an alpha, because of a Greek verbal Augment that marks the past indicative tense.) In Greek, this is called the ''first aorist''. Ablaut The aorist's second marker is a change in vowel grade, a process known as Ablaut . Indo-European made great use of ablaut to express semantic changes morphologically, in fact, English uses ablaut abundantly, creating such verb forms as: swim, swam, swum; come, came, come; and take, took, taken. English further uses ablaut in extended forms, such as: sit, seat, sat, set (etymologically, to set is to cause to sit); lie, lay, lain, laid, layer; and sing, sang, sung, song. In Latin, ablaut was a common marker of the aorist, for example: ''capiō'' "I take"; but ''cēpī'' "I took"; and Greek ''λειπω'' ''leipō'' "I leave", but ''ελιπον'' ''elipon'' "I left". In Greek, this is called the ''second aorist''. Reduplication The third marker of the aorist is reduplication. While a that marks the past indicative tense.) REFERENCES SEE ALSO |
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