Attic Greek Infinitives

The infinitive in ancient greek goes beyond this.

Attic greek infinitives.

Nearly a third of greek verbal forms are participles. The ancient greek infinitive is a non finite verb form sometimes called a verb mood with no endings for person or number but it is unlike in modern english inflected for tense and voice for a general introduction in the grammatical formation and the morphology of the ancient greek infinitive see here and for further information see these tables. Another complication of greek grammar is that different greek authors wrote in different dialects all of which have slightly different grammatical forms see ancient greek dialects. Greek verbs and infinitives can express all three aspects but the most common are.

βουλόμεθα ἀποχωρεῖν we wish to withdraw. Present imperfect future aorist the equivalent of past simple perfect pluperfect and future perfect. The aorist tense always conveys a single discreet action i e. Epic greek also has the infinitive forms ἐλθέμεν elthémen and ἐλθέμεναι elthémenai.

An experiment with perseus new vocabulary tool. τὸ ἄρχειν πόνον φέρει. It is used mainly to express acts. Mastronarde s book introduction to attic greek.

Ancient greek verbs have four moods indicative imperative subjunctive and optative three voices active middle and passive as well as three persons first second and third and three numbers singular dual and plural. In the indicative mood there are seven tenses. This is the most common tense for referring to. Use the greek testament are unable to approach the subject through a study of classical attic prose.

Many of the uses of the infinitive are identical in greek and english. This is no exaggeration. The infinitive takes on a different use if an article is found in front of it. Ancient greek grammar is morphologically complex and preserves several features of proto indo european morphology.

For conjugation in dialects other than attic see appendix ancient greek dialectal conjugation. List of principal parts by unit through unit 19 for mastronarde s introduction to attic greek first three only i e present future aorist. It is unfortunate that so many students of the new testament have no acquaintance with classical greek but it would be still more unfortunate if such. The situation is undoubtedly to be regretted but its existence should not be ignored.

As a result mastering greek participles is essential to reading almost any paragraph of ancient greek. While both the imperfect and aorist tenses refer to past actions and so are past tenses they differ in aspect. συνεβούλευον τοῖς στρατιώταις μὴ ταῦτα ποιῆσαι i advised. This happens quite often in patristic writings and it is good to keep this quote handy from donald j.

This table gives attic inflectional endings. The uses of the infinitive. An ancient grammarian once wrote that the greeks were φιλομέτοχοι participle loving.