Re: Imperfect outside the Indicative

From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Date: Tue Jul 14 1998 - 08:12:18 EDT


At 05:16 PM 7/13/98 -0400, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
 
>BUT--the imperfect (indicative) retains one function in Koine that it had
>in Classical Attic: it is used in both protasis and apodosis of present
>counterfactual conditions. I've never been able to figure out a good reason
>why the indicative should function in Greek for a counterfactual
>condition--but of course the aorist indicative does so in past
>counterfactual conditions also.
 
English is weird in a similar way: "If I was going downtown, I would tell
you.", c.f. "If I go downtown, I will tell you".

Jonathan
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Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com

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