objet petit a wrote:Are conjugations of verbs not similar to pre- and suf- fixes? This in the sense that it changes the meaning by adding something?
Not really...well...that depends who's resource you are looking at.
Some people will list conjugations and declensions as suffixes, but I disagree with doing that as that just creates confusion.
But it's also technically accurate.
For instance, we can find an entry fro "-ing" in the English dictionary; something like "an instance of an action", but it's not something we can then say:
Bat; stick.
So...Bat-ing
Bating, tada!
Wait...no, that would be bating (to bate) and not batTing; and that's because we didn't bother with English grammar which dictates the augmentation of the A; requiring a double consonant when conjugating.
Oh grammar!
This is child's play by comparison to some of the conjugations in the Greek.
I'm just glad they hadn't invented time travel back then yet. Then the past future perfect would have really messed with your head:
To be
past future perfect
it will have has been
It boggles the mind!
btw: Do you mean that the conjugations are like the Latin in the sense that all conjugations are made up of one word?
Quite similarly, yes.
You'll see as you start looking at those grammar sections about them, but it's similar to Latin; different though I think (I'm not as versed on Latin tbh; mostly self-taught Greek).
And yeah...if you ever get something like future past perfect "will have had written"...usually, I try an excercise of writing the concept out one step at a time:
"One day, Roger will tell John that Mark once had written in Roger's journal."
One day/Roger will = will
once had = past (technically 2nd aorist)
written = perfect (completed in finality)
The fun part is when you get what we would call a "perfect", like "written" that is in the imperfect, or the mood is of the subjunctive mood but still renders into what we think of as completed.
So we'll see "written", but we'll have to add words like, "may have had written".
Or, "may become written".
Or the all hellish Optative mood which would render that (even if in the Pluperfect Tense) to mean "hopefully".
Your brains starts craning...how do you "hopefully" have something that is done in the past??
You have to start thinking about the way the authors write their contexts.
An interesting study is the use of the word, "slander" in all forms in the New Testament.
It's interesting to watch how the authors use this term to describe things people do and say, but at the same time as they assert such finality, place the context of such in conditions where there is open debate taking place (like between say...Jesus and Pharisees) about whether there is slander in the comment.
So even though the "jury is still out" inside of the context of the accounted story, because the end result will ultimately end up with the comment being declared as "slander", it is therefore accounted as "slander" even before the story unfolds.
They kind of sucked at retaining suspense. lol
Okay, tell you what, I'll just start to examine the whole shebang and ring at your door at the sight of trouble...
Okiedokie
Here's another idea also...
I could give you a line to translate from Greek into English and we can go through it piece at a time to see how it works out?
That's pretty much what I did, and I can show you how to take it slow and build up from the base on up doing so.
Keep in mind...I'm not advanced enough to write in Greek yet; only read...kind of slowly...through Greek.
