The point of this topic is to find examples of "strong aorists" in English. I hope that as you wend your way through this long post, you will come up with examples of your own.
Strong Aorists in Greek
Strong aorists, in classic and koiné Greek are verbs whose past tense is quite different than their present tense. My favourite example is (to transliterate) the horao/ eidon pair, which mean "I see" and "I saw" respectively.
An English illustration - I go/ I went
The strong aorist arises when people begin use one verb in the present tense only, and a second verb in the past tense. In English (although I am not sure the term strong aorist is correct in our language) a great example is the verb "to go" which in current use has a present tense of "go" and a past tense of "went."
Apparently people were once quite comfortable using the past tense "goéd" - "Yesterday I goéd to a coed college." After a time, though, they prefered to use the past tense of "wend." Eventually "goed" fell out of use entirely, just as the present tense of "wend" has almost entirely disappeared. Rivers still wend they way through verdant pastures occasionally.
The case of the incomplete alphabet
If I may return to horao/eidon for a moment, its a favourite because it solved a great mystery - "the case of the lost letter."
"eidon" is odd, not only because it is a strange form for the past tense of "horao" ("eoron" would be more like it) but also because whereever it occurs in Homeric poetry the line in which it occurs does not scan - it is short a syllable. The most plausible solution to this problem is that eid-on once had three syllables e-id-on.
The postulation is that homeric greek (which was preliterate) had a consonant sound that is not represented in the classic greek alphabet.
Question is - what was that sound? I guess that latin scholars must have twigged pretty quickly that the missing letter was a "v"- "eidon", then would have been "evidon", and in the present - "video" - "I see" (said the carpenter, who picked up the hammer and saw). "Q.E.D." said the Latin scholars. "Neat," says I.
It is presumed that the "v" sound fell out of use between the homeric era, and the rise of greek writing, or, that the limits of the alphabet could not record the full expression of greek speech, eventually forcing the "v" sound out of sight, out of mind, out of tongue. Or perhaps native greek speakers always knew to supply the "v" sound, and it is only we xenoi who developed a pidgin greek.
Thanks to Bruce Metzger, whose "lexical aids to new testament greek" introduced me to strong aorists and the indo-european relationships which yDc spells out so well. Sorry for the length of this post, and the limits of transliteration.
I believe your ‘strong aorist’ tense is the same as the perfect tense, as with the example of go and went, go is an incomplete action and went is complete.
What would you say distinguishes strong aorist from perfect, as I have not yet found a distinction?
No, it’s not the tense itself, if I’m reading Bradol correctly; it’s when the tenses of what is considered one verb are phonetically very different from one another, perhaps due from stemming originally from different verbs.
No, it’s not the tense itself, if I’m reading Bradol correctly
That would be my understanding, too. The go/wend, goed/went example is clear. I suppose the other obvious example in English is the copula
‘am/was’. I’m stumped as to other examples, though.
a·o·rist n. 1. A form of a verb in some languages, such as Classical Greek, that expresses action without indicating its completion or continuation.
2. A form of a verb in some languages, such as Classical Greek or Sanskrit, that in the indicative mood expresses past action.
[From Greek aoristos, indefinite, aorist tense : a-, not ; see a-1 + horistos, definable (from horizein, to define; see horizon).]
Bardol, I believe, is asking for more "strong aorist" verbs like ‘go/went’, not just for strong verbs of English.
I’ll think about it!
I don’t know for sure if ‘am/was’ shows this trait.
I can think in Spanish that the verb "to go" is ir, and the perfect tense, from 1st through third person plural is: Fui, Fuiste, Fue, Fuimos, Fuisteis, Fueron. This verb is irregular in all its tenses, not just the perfect, however. Consider the present tense: Voy, Vas, Va, Vamos, Vais, Van.
But if you went somehwere, it’s a complete action. So would it not be strong aorist?
I think I see the confusion. Yes, ‘went’ would be the equivalent to a strong aorist, not because it is a completed act, but, rather, because it comes from an entirely different verb (word) (i.e. wend) than the verb ‘to go’.
In the pair, ‘teach/taught’, ‘taught’ would be aorist, but it is not strong, in the sense of Greek grammar, because it comes from ‘teach’, and not some other verb like ‘learn’.
well, I suggest that we broaden a little the notion of strong aorist and/or strong past (simple) tense (the latter, in fact, = the former).
as a matter of fact, in Greek grammar, and also in the grammars of Germanic languages, as far as I know, a strong tense is not only one which is formed from another root as in go/went. this is only one of many cases. some other are
vocal alteration: speak - spoke
consonant alteration: spend - spent
etc.
every verb has either a strong or a weakform for a given tense (most often a past tense). the strong form implies that some kind - any kind - of change in the verb stem has occured. the weak form implies that the stem is unchanged and the tense is indicated by some suffix(es) - -d/-ed for example
so the strong aorist is a method of producing a given tense from a verb stem, not a distinct tense in its own right. and all the so-called <irregular> English, German, Latin, Greek vebs fall into this category.
Sitran put it best - my focus was not on the aorist vs other tenses (greek has aorist, perfect [which if I remember correctly more like a pluperfect] and imperfect amond others), but on the strong irregularity of the aorist stem in certain verbs. Verbs like the english "to be" are irregular in all forms, and many verbs have internal changes as they are conjugated, but very few are formed from one verb in the present, and from an entirely different verb in the past.
In fact, apart from go/went I really don’t know if their are any other examples in english, thus my question.
If you think you have an example, see if you can discover the obsolete forms of the two verbs,as in
present past
go- goed (obsolete)
wend - went
[quote author=Bradol link=board=etymology;num=1062249286;start=0#11 date=09/01/03 at 18:45:31]apart from go/went I really don’t know if their are any other examples in english
The only other example that I know of involving an English verb is that of
be from Indo-European *bhu- am / are / is from Indo-European *es- was / were from Indo-European *wes-
There are, though, those other cases of suppletion involving the adjectives
I am confused. What is up for discussion; aorist denoting "simple occurence of an action without reference to its completeness, duration or repetition" or a strong "inflectional form a a verb"?
Does aorist really exist in English (I went to school yesterday/I went to school every day)?
As I understand it aorist is/was a form of the verb used in classic Greek and Sanskrit.
1. A form of a verb in some languages, such as Classical Greek, that expresses action without indicating its completion or continuation.
2. A form of a verb in some languages, such as Classical Greek or Sanskrit, that in the indicative mood expresses past action.
[From Greek aoristos, indefinite, aorist tense : a-, not ; see a-1 + horistos, definable (from horizein, to define; see horizon).]
YD.com:
Strong adj. #20 Linguistics
1. Of or relating to those verbs in Germanic languages that form their past tense by a change in stem vowel, and their past participles by a change in stem vowel and sometimes by adding the suffix -(e)n, as sing, sang, sung or tear, tore, torn.
2. Of or relating to the inflection of nouns or adjectives in Germanic languages with endings that historically did not contain a suffix with an n.
It’s not all Greek, German and Sanskrit to me, but I believe the question was something like this: "Can anyone else find another verb, besides ‘to go, went’ that shows the invasion of the (past) tense of one verb into the conjugation of another (i.e. Bradol:
In English (although I am not sure the term strong aorist is correct in our language) a great example is the verb "to go" which in current use has a present tense of "go" and a past tense of "went."
Bradol:
Strong aorists, in classic and koiné Greek are verbs whose past tense is quite different than their present tense. My favourite example is (to transliterate) the horao/ eidon pair, which mean "I see" and "I saw" respectively.
No, I haven’t been able to think of any other "strong" verb that have survived such a collapse.
And, yes, please don’t use the word ‘aorist’ to describe tenses in the English language.
Plainly, you can see what chaos the word ‘aorist’ caused, and I’m not sure if it is finished yet.
