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Aorist
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Aorist (from the , aóristos, "without horizon, unbounded") is an aspect or, used more specifically, a verb tense in some Indo-European languages such as Greek. The term is also used for unrelated concepts in some other languages, such as Turkish. In contrast to the imperfective aspect, which refers to an action as continual or repeated, or to the perfect aspect, which calls attention to the consequences generated by an action, the aorist aspect has no such implications, but refers to an action "pure and simple".
In the indicative mood, the aorist refers to a past action, in a general way or as a completed event.
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Encyclopedia
Aorist (from the , aóristos, "without horizon, unbounded") is an aspect or, used more specifically, a verb tense in some Indo-European languages such as Greek. The term is also used for unrelated concepts in some other languages, such as Turkish. In contrast to the imperfective aspect, which refers to an action as continual or repeated, or to the perfect aspect, which calls attention to the consequences generated by an action, the aorist aspect has no such implications, but refers to an action "pure and simple".
In the indicative mood, the aorist refers to a past action, in a general way or as a completed event. It may also be used to express a general statement in the present (the "gnomic aorist"). Used this way, it is described as the aorist tense. In other moods (subjunctive, optative, and imperative), the infinitive, and (largely) the participle, the aorist is purely aspectual. In these forms, it has no temporal meaning, and acts purely as an alternative to the other aspects.
The aorist aspect is used, for example, in the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:11, which says "Give (d?? dòs, aorist imperative) us this day our daily bread"), whereas Luke 11:3 implies a sense of continuation with "Give (d?d?? dídou, present imperative) us day by day our daily bread."
In Proto-Indo-European, the aorist may have originated simply as an aspect of syntactic inflection, but later it probably developed into a combination of tense and aspect, a similar syntax being evident in Sanskrit. Many Indo-European languages, such as Latin, have lost the aorist as a distinct feature.
Morphology
In the Indo-European languages Greek and Sanskrit, the aorist is marked by several morphological devices, but three stand out as most common:
| Morphological device | Position | Description |
|---|
| S-aorist | 1st | The s-aorist or sigmatic aorist, so called because an 's' is inserted between the root and the personal ending. In Greek, ????? akoúo means "I hear", while ????sa ekousa means "I heard." (Grammatical note: the first letter of ????sa is an eta, and not an alpha, because of a Greek verbal augment that marks the past indicative tense.) In Greek, this is called the first aorist, or the weak aorist. | | Ablaut | 2nd | This process is a change in vowel grade. Indo-European made great use of ablaut to express semantic changes morphologically; in fact, English uses ablaut as well, creating such verb forms as: swim, swam, swum; come, came, come; and take, took, taken. English further uses ablaut in extended forms, such as: sit, seat, sat, set (etymologically, to set is to cause to sit); lie, lay, lain, laid, laid, layer; and sing, sang, sung, song. And Greek ?e?p? leípo "I leave", but ???p?? élipon "I left". In Greek, this is called the second aorist or the strong aorist. | | Reduplication | 3rd | While a reduplication is more commonly associated with the morphology of the perfect, there are sporadic verbs which use it in the aorist. The reduplicated aorist is more common in Sanskrit than in other Indo-European languages, but an example in Greek is the verb ??? ágo "I lead", which has the aorist ??a??? egagon "I led," (Grammatical note: the first letter of ??a??? is an eta, and not an alpha, because of a Greek verbal augment that marks the past indicative tense.) |
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