Elementary New Testament Greek, 2014a

The Forms of the Imperfect (Active and Middle/Passive) of
Study the forms of as given below, along with the translations provided:
Imperfect Active Indicative
Imperfect Passive Indicative
“I was destroying…” μ “I was being destroyed…”
ßß “you were destroying…” ßß “you were being destroyed…”
() “he/she/it was destroying” “he/she/it was being destroyed”
μ “we were destroying…” μ “we were being destroyed…”
“y’all were destroying” “y’all were being destroyed”
“they were destroying…” “they were being destroyed…”
The Augment
Perhaps the most immediate feature of the Imperfect you notice is a smooth-breathing
epsilon () prexed to every form. This is called a syllabic augment (because it
adds a whole syllable to the verb), and will be found on all verbs (beginning with a
consonant) in past-time Tenses of the Indicative Mood. [Remember from your earlier
work that there are three past-time tenses in the Indicative Mood: the Imperfect, the
Aorist, and the Pluperfect.]
The augment is simple enough in verbs beginning with a consonant: it is simply a
prexed epsilon (). But if a verb begins with a vowel or diphthong, this initial vowel
or diphthong is lengthened, and is called a temporal augment. [In the pronunciation
of Ancient Greek, it seems that long vowels were held for a longer time than short
vowels. To lengthen a vowel would involve lengthening the time or duration of its
pronunciation. Such an augment, therefore, could naturally be called a temporal
augment.]
With the temporal augments, the pattern of lengthening follows (almost exactly) the
pattern of relationships between short and long vowels you learned in Chapter One.
We have supplied an arrow to show the pathway followed (for temporal augments in
verbs) when short vowels are lengthened into long vowels:
10: Imperfect Tense
Short
Long
“a” type alpha [] alpha []
“e” type epsilon [] eta []
“o” type omicron [] omega []
“i” type iota [] iota []
“u” type upsilon [] upsilon []
You should notice two features about the pathways of vowel lengthening in this chart:
1) The short alpha () does not lengthen into long alpha () as one might
expect, but rather into eta ().
2) There is no visual difference between short and long iotas (), or between
short and long upsilons (). [Though not visible, the distinction is
important in Classical Greek poetry (e.g.), where the lengths of the vowels
must t into precise patterns as each line of poetry is constructed.]
122