When you don't know a
word, you should look it up, right? But in Greek,
there is a difficulty: The conjugated form of a verb
you encounter in some passage may not look very
similar to the lexical form you would find in a
lexicon. For this reason, and others, it is necessary
to learn to think backwards, to recognize the various
parts (morphemes) of a word and mentally
strip them away until you arrive at the stem of a
principal part.
Consider the word
προσηύξαντο. At first glance, it may not
look familiar at all. But let's begin identifying the
various parts and strip them away until we arrive at
something we can find in a lexicon.
We might first notice
the last 3 letters in προσηύξαντο.
That combination is one
of the secondary tense endings we just
learned in this lesson. Specifically, it's the 3rd
person plural ending for middle or passive forms in
the secondary tenses.
Remembering that the
secondary tenses include the Imperfect, Aorist, and
Pluperfect, we might look for indications as to which
tense we have here. Reduplication would suggest
Pluperfect. But we don't see reduplication. The
letters σα would suggest 1st Aorist.
Examining προσηύξα
+ ντο, we don't see σα, but we do see
ξα. What if that
ξα is the result of a combination
of a stem's final consonant and
σα? Three possibilities come to
mind:
προσηύγ +
σα + ντο
προσηύκ +
σα + ντο
προσηύχ +
σα + ντο
Before we start
searching through the lexicon, there is one more
important clue to consider. If this is an indicative
mood verb (and we have no reason to assume otherwise)
and if it is a secondary tense verb, we would expect
to see an augment. This is especially true if it is
aorist or imperfect, and we are suspecting that it is
aorist.
There doesn't appear
to be an augment at the beginning of the word, but as
we search for the augment we notice that the first
four letters look like a familiar preposition,
προσηύξαντο
Then we remember that
an augment typically comes between a preposition and
a verb stem in compound verbs. Could that
η be an augment? If so, it most
likely would have been lengthened from
ε or α. So now we have 6 possibilities:
προσ + αύγ +
σα + ντο
προσ + αύκ + σα +
ντο
προσ + αύχ + σα +
ντο
προσ + εύγ + σα +
ντο
προσ + εύκ + σα +
ντο
προσ + εύχ + σα +
ντο
Now we consult a
lexicon in search of a compound verb that looks like
one of the following:
προσαύγ-
προσαύκ-
προσαύχ-
προσεύγ-
προσεύκ-
προσεύχ-
Only one of these is
found, that being in the form of
προσεύχομαι. (Wouldn't you know it would
be the last one!) And looking at the entry for
προσεύχομαι, we see the lexicon confirms
that it has first aorist
προσηυξάμην. (If you don't yet have a
lexicon, see the vocabulary list on pages 81-82 in
your text book.)
Besides being able to
find the word in a lexicon, there is another reason
for developing this skill. Being aware of the
significance of each part of a word will help you to
reliably distinguish between indicative and
subjunctive, aorist and future, passive and active.
You will find that you will often recognize the verb
in terms of its lexical form, but may have trouble
identifying the form in front of you. And if you
can't identify the form, you don't know whether to
translate, "we should..." or "we have
been..." Therefore, learn to think about the
individual parts of a verb that make it what it is.