Elementary New Testament Greek, 2014a

11: The Future Tense
Suppletive (“Salvage Yard”) Verbs
149
Imagine that you’re 16 years old, desperately want a car, but have no money. Imagine that your Uncle Ned, who owns a Salvage Yard (we used to call them “junk yards”) graciously
allows you to take any of his wrecked cars you want. But as you examine them, you discover that not one of them is complete: this one has no engine, that one has no front end, the
other one has no rear half, and so on. So, with your Uncle Ned’s permission (!) and acetylene torch, you cut a good front end from a Chevy Malibu, a good cabin area from a Dodge
Charger, and a good rear end from a Ford Pinto. Then with Uncle Ned’s welder you connect them together and…presto…(via some mechanical magic)…you’ve got your “car.” You
call it the “Chev-odg-ord.” Whether you realize it or not, you have yourself a “Suppletive” car: a single vehicle made from completely diverse genetic stock.
How does this work with verbs? You know that a “normal” verb has one Root which ows genetically into the formation of six Principal Parts. But imagine that a given verb Root
was Defective, only sprouting into two or three Principal Parts, and therefore not able to “express itself” in the full range of verb Tenses (etc.). Imagine that a different Root (but one
with a similar meaning!) likewise has failed to sprout into all of its Principal Parts. Now imagine that you could “marry” these two roots to create a “whole” verb with a fuller range
of Principal Parts! Now you have “one” verb made out of several Defective Roots.
Though there are fewer than 10 “Chev-odg-ord” verbs in the GNT, several of them have common meanings and are frequently encountered. We’ve already met ve (5) of them (in
their Present and Imperfect Tenses) without knowing it. Now when we move to the Future, we discover that a “marriage” must have taken place with a completely different root to
create a “hybrid verb,” a Suppletive. Examine below:
1st PrinPart
(Dictionary Entry)
Translation Verb Root 1
2nd PrinPart
(Fut/Act/Ind/1s)
Translation Verb Root 2
I am saying I will say
I am seeing μ I will see
I am eating μ I will eat
μ I am coming μ I will come
I am carrying I will carry
As you might realize, these Futures need to be learned as if they were new vocabulary words. From now on, you will need to fuse together in your mind these forms: and
; and μ; and μ; μ and μ; and . We may not appreciate these marriages, but they’re doing just ne! [By the way,
you might notice that nothing is done to the root to generate the 2nd Prinicipal part. It has traveled down Assembly Line D.]