Re: What's the aorist tense?

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 07:02:16 +0100, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>
>   There is still only one present indicative, but two past indicatives: the
> imperfective known as the 'imperfect tense' and the perfective known for
> historical reasons as the 'aorist tense'.
Hm? Modern Greek does have something I'd call the "perfective", though
it's constructed synthetically (using the present indiciative of the
auxiliary verb exw (to have) + a form which looks like 3rd person
singular aorist subjunctive but could be called an infinitive or a
participle).

So if you include synthetic tenses, you have e.g.:

8a desw - future
8a denw - future imperfective?
denw - present indicative
edena - imperfect
edesa - aorist
exw desei - perfect
eixa desei - pluperfect

plus the subjunctives na denw (pres.subj.) / na desw (aor.subj.) which
indicate aspect rather than tense.

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

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