Re: Grammatical tones

On 23 Aug 02, at 16:10, Karapcik, Mike wrote:

>         From what I remember of Demotic (common) Greek, the subjunctive is
> formed by changing a vowel in the indicative inflectional ending, and moving
> the stress accent one vowel towards the front of the word. The stress is
> usually on the second to the last vowel, but is on the third to the last
> vowel for subjunctive verbs. However, there is also a change in the
> inflection.
Sounds like imperfect vs present to me -- e.g. dhiavázo "I read
[present]", dhiávaza "I read, I was reading [imperfect]".

If there is not third vowel from the end, Greek adds a stressed é-, as
in péfto "I fall" vs épefta "I fell, I was fallng".

The aorist subjunctive would be "dhiaváso", "péso", respectively; the
present subjunctive "dhiavázo", "péfto" (that is, indistinguishable in
the I.sg from the indicative). In general, the present subjunctive
looks exactly like the present indicative in Demotic Greek;
Katharevousa (a form which tries to be closer to Attic Greek) indicates
a spelling difference in II.sg III.sg I.pl II.pl, but the pronunciation
is still (usually) the same.

Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>