Verb Readme Page

The remarks here apply to all verbs in the lists and tables on this site.

Voice, Aspect, and Tense

I assume you have read what a textbook and a reference grammar (see Books ) have to say about these three characteristics of Greek verbs.

I will not use the disastrous terminology for aspect employed by linguistic technocrats.

Voice is active or passive.

Aspect is running or simple.

Tense is present or past.

Some synonyms to help you connect to the techno-gibberish in textbooks:

• running (aspect) = "imperfective", "continuous", "durative"

• simple (aspect) = "perfective", "punctual", "aorist"

• present (tense) = "non-past"

• running present = "imperfective non-past", "continuous present"

• simple present = "perfective non-past", "punctual present", "the dependent"

• running past = "imperfect", "imperfective past", "continuous past"

• simple past = "aorist past", "perfective past", "punctual past"

Incidentally, on Harry Foundalis's excellent web site (see Links ), he refers to running aspect as "vanilla" and simple aspect as "strawberry", also in reaction to the standard awkward terms "imperfective" and "perfective".

There are some restrictions on the use of the simple present: it can occur only after the conjunctions  άμα, αν, αφού, εάν, είτε...είτε..., έτσι και, μόλις, να, όταν, πριν  or after the adverb  ίσως  or after the relative pronouns/adverbs  όποιος, όποτε, όπου, όπως.

As a side remark, modern Greek has no subjunctive mood; it has constructions that would have to be translated into subjunctive verb forms in French or Spanish, but the verbs in the Greek language as it exists in the third millenium have no subjunctive forms whatsoever. The word  να  is a conjunction; you just have to learn where to use it.

Principal Parts of Verbs

The three principal parts of all verbs in the lists and tables on this site are given in present-tense forms:

Active running present        Active simple present        Passive simple present

For example, the root verb meaning "give" has the principal parts

-δίδω     -δώσω     -δοθώ

As you can verify in a reference grammar (see Books ), the principal parts yield the remaining tenses —

Active running present	yields	Active running past, Passive running present, Passive running past
Active simple present	yields	Active simple past
Passive simple present	yields	Passive simple past

The only real hitch is that in forming the past tenses (except for the passive running past), you have to move the accent one syllable to the left on the root verb itself. But it can happen (in the active voice for some verbs) that no such syllable exists, and then you have to add an "augment" (-έ-) to take up the accent. For example, for προδίδω —

Active running present:	προδίδω
Active running past:	προέδιδα

and

Active simple present:	προδώσω
Active simple past:	προέδωσα

and

Passive simple present:	προδοθώ
Passive simple past:	προδόθηκα

If that were the whole story it would be bad enough, but the insertion of an augment in the two active past tenses can in fact result in some strange spellings. As examples, it suffices to look at the formation of some active simple past forms —

The augment -έ- may or may not replace the last vowel of a prefix; consider three different verbs:

Active simple present:	προδώσω
Active simple past:	προέδωσα

Active simple present:	διαθέσω
Active simple past:	διέθεσα

Active simple present:	διαλέξω
Active simple past:	διάλεξα

The augment -έ- may or may not be replaced by the last vowel of  ξανα-  (and sometimes this occurs for  παρα-):

Active simple present:	ξαναγράψω
Active simple past:	ξαναέγραψα  or  ξανάγραψα

For a multi-syllable root, an -ά- or -έ- might or might not be changed into an -ή- ("internal vocalic augment"):

Active simple present:	παραγγείλω
Active simple past:	παράγγειλα  or  παρήγγειλα

The introduction of an -έ- augment can cause a prefix to change to one of its other forms:

Active simple present:	εγγράψω
Active simple past:	ενέγραψα

I hope you are suitably depressed by all this. However, the reality is that you can get used to the above phenomena if all you're doing is reading the language.

Passive-voice-only Verbs

So-called "deponent" verbs have only passive-voice forms (but their meaning is nonetheless active). Since such verbs have no active-voice forms, they require only two principal parts:

Passive running present        Passive simple present

For example, the verb meaning "imagine" has these two principal parts —

φαντάζομαι     φανταστώ

Extended Principal Parts

The three principal parts are all present-tense forms (as given on this site); the past-tense forms can be derived from these.

But there are irregular verbs for which one or more of the past tenses cannot be derived from the corresponding present-tense form. For such verbs, the irregular past forms are included in parentheses (after the present form) as follows:

Active running present	(	Active running past	)		Active simple present	(	Active simple past	)		Passive simple present	(	Passive simple past	)

For example, the verb meaning "find"

βρίσκω     βρω (βρήκα)     βρεθώ

has an active simple past (βρήκα) which cannot be derived from its active simple present (if it were regular, it would be "βρα", but that's not the case). The other past forms are derived regularly, so they are not given in parentheses.

Some verbs are "defective", meaning that they lack certain tenses or aspects. For example, the verb meaning "know"

ξέρω (ήξερα)     [—]     [—]

has only running-aspect forms, lacking all the simple-aspect forms, as indicated by the "[—]".  (And incidentally it has an irregular active running past ήξερα  because of the irregular augment ή-.)

Some verbs have alternative forms. For example, the verb meaning "write"

γράφω     γράψω     γραφτώ/γραφώ

has two different passive simple forms, either of which is equally valid. And the verb meaning "touch on", "broach"

θίγω     θίξω     θιχτώ (θίχτηκα/εθίγην)

has two different passive simple past forms. The second of these, εθίγην , is a so-called "learned" form retained from ancient Greek (but you could see it used in a newspaper article; it conjugates as εθίγην, εθίγης, εθίγη, εθίγημεν, εθίγητε, εθίγησαν). Consult a reference grammar about this (see Books).

There are a handful of so-called "contracted" verbs, like the verb meaning "hear" —

ακούω[C] (άκουγα)     ακούσω     ακούγομαι     ακουστώ

Note that 4 principal parts are given for this verb(!). For these verbs the extra present-tense form, the passive running present (ακούγομαι) is irregular because of the inserted -γ-, so it is included as an additional principal part. This is typical of "[C]" verbs. The "[C]" means that the endings are contracted in the active running present (ακούω, ακούς, ακούει, ακούμε, ακούτε, ακούν). Consult a reference grammar (see Books).

There are a few  -ώ  verbs which are almost  -άω  verbs, like the verb meaning "split" —

διασπώ[-ά-]     διασπάσω     διασπώμαι ([—])     διασπαστώ

Note that there are 4 principal parts again. The "[-ά-]" indicates that this verb's active running present (διασπώ, διασπάς, διασπά, διασπούμε, διασπάτε, διασπούν) is a cross betwen the  -ώ  and the  -άω  forms. The passive running present (διασπώμαι, διασπάσαι, διασπάται, διασπόμαστε, διασπάστε, διασπώνται) is wildly irregular, and there is no passive running past. Consult a reference grammar (see Books).

The final little horror is one of the  -ιστώ  verbs (one of the hangovers from ancient Greek — these verbs and the  -θέτω  verbs are especially inscrutable). Consider the verb meaning "recommend", "set up", "establish" (and note here that  συν-  becomes  συ-  before  σ ) —

συνιστώ[-ά-]     συστήσω

συνιστώμαι/συνίσταμαι (3s: συνίστατο)     συσταθώ (συστάθηκα/συνεστήθην)

Note the 4 principal parts. (In Prefixed Verb List 2, I put the active and passive principal parts of the  -ιστώ  verbs on two lines as I have done here; I did the same for the  -θέτω  verbs.) The fact that the passive simple past  συνεστήθην  is an ancient Greek form is something we've already seen above for the verb  θίγω . But something new here is the passive running past (3s: συνίστατο), which is marked "3s" because it's a 3^rd-person-singular form; the 1^st and 2^nd persons aren't used (the 3^rd-person-plural form is  συνίσταντο ). You could run across this passive running past form in a newspaper article. Again, consult a reference grammar (see Books ).

If you are eagle-eyed, you noticed that the principal parts for  συνιστώ  don't include all the options for  -ιστώ  verbs listed in Prefixed Verb List 2 ; that's because some of those options don't occur for  συνιστώ,  according to the Hellenic National Corpus (see Links ). The general remark to be made is this: when a root verb listed in Prefixed Verb List 2 has one or more alternate forms, any given prefixed verb derived from that root may very well not use every single one of these possible alternate forms.

Variations

For any given single verb, it often happens that there are small variations in some of its conjugated forms. We have already noted some of  these —

• In the active past tenses, there may be some choice regarding the augment:  ξαναέγραψα  or  ξανάγραψα  ("I rewrote").

• Some verbs have a choice for one of their principal parts: for  γράφω, the passive simple present is  γραφτώ  or  γραφώ.

Beyond this, there are other variations that occur:

• Verbs whose passive simple present ends in  -τώ  can always have that changed to  -θώ. For example,  διοριστώ  could appear as  διορισθώ, and  διορίστηκε  as  διορίσθηκε. The forms with  -θ-  are supposedly more formal.

• You may often see an  -άω  verb conjugated as an  -ώ  verb, or vice-versa:  ακολουθάω  ("follow") can also be  ακολουθώ.

• For  -άω  and  -ώ[-ά-]  verbs, you can easily get the impression that you never know what vowel will be used as the accented vowel in the passive running present. For example, for  πλανιέμαι  you may also see  πλανώμαι. Take a deep breath — the verb is still recognizable.

• There are many variations in conjugational endings; some of these are easy to spot, others less so. The following are just some samples:  γράφουν  ("they are writing") can be  γράφουνε;  έγραψαν  ("they wrote") can be  γράψανε;  γοητευόμασταν  ("we are beguiled") can be  γοητευόμαστε;  αγαπά  ("s/he loves") can be  αγαπάει;  αγαπούσε  ("s/he used to love") can be  αγάπαγε  in Southern Greece;  αγαπιόνταν  ("they were loved") can be, colloquially,  αγαπιόντουσαν.

Analogous variations also occur in the declensions of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. All this is very characteristic of Greek, which evolved historically as a group of related dialects.