While both the imperfect and aorist tenses refer to past actions and so are past tenses they differ in aspect.
Attic greek aorist tense.
If you remember that the meaning of the word perfect is complete then you can remember that the perfect tense has to do with completed action but the perfect tense is a primary tense because it emphasizes the present or ongoing result of a completed action the perfect tense in greek corresponds to the perfect tense in english and is illustrated in the following sentences.
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.
Greek verbs and infinitives can express all three aspects but the most common are.
Abbreviated aor verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events similar to a preterite.
είμαι eímai references.
Ancient greek grammar had the aorist form and the grammars of other indo european languages and languages influenced by the indo european grammatical tradition such as middle persian sanskrit armenian the south slavic languages and georgian also.
Greek verb tenses intermediate discussion no element of greek language is of more importance to the student of the new testament than the matter of tense a variation in meaning exhibited by the use of a particular tense will often dissolve what appears to be an embarrassing difficulty or reveal a gleam of truth which will thrill the heart with delight and inspiration.
A list of words that covers 90 of tokens in a collection of attic prose texts from the perseus corpus.
In the indicative mood there are seven tenses.
The aorist tense always conveys a single discreet action i e.
εἶμαι eîmai modern greek.
In traditional grammatical terminology the aorist is a tense a section of the verb paradigm formed with the same stem across all moods by contrast in theoretical linguistics tense refers to a form that specifies a point in time past present or future so the aorist is a tense aspect combination.
As discussed above the tenses of the subjunctive reflect aspect not time.
All three tenses of the subjunctive use the same set of thematic endings.
The tense of the subjunctive is indicated not by any additional markers or endings but only by the tense stem.
εἰμί in autenrieth georg 1891 a homeric dictionary for schools and colleges new york.
An experiment with perseus new vocabulary tool.
εἰμί in liddell scott 1940 a greek english lexicon oxford.
The literary greek of athens in the fifth and fourth centuries bc attic.
Nominative and vocative singular of some feminine first declension nouns.
Allomorphs η ᾱ feminine nominative and vocative singular of adjectives whose masculine and neuter is in the third declension such as βᾰρῠ ς βᾰρεῖᾰ.
Present and aorist.
Present imperfect future aorist the equivalent of past simple perfect pluperfect and future perfect.
This is the most common tense for referring to.
