21sr Century Classical Greek -- impersonal gerundives

 So here we are back with the text of our first subsection, and I have bolded the material for this post.

Θουκυδίδης Ἀθηναῖος ξυνέγραψε τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων, ὡς ἐπολέμησαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἀρξάμενος εὐθὺς καθισταμένου καὶ ἐλπίσας μέγαν τε ἔσεσθαι καὶ ἀξιολογώτατον τῶν προγεγενημένων, τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι ἀκμάζοντές τε ᾖσαν ἐς αὐτὸν ἀμφότεροι παρασκευῇ τῇ πάσῃ καὶ τὸ ἄλλο Ἑλληνικὸν ὁρῶν ξυνιστάμενον πρὸς ἑκατέρους, τὸ μὲν εὐθύς, τὸ δὲ καὶ διανοούμενον.

If you really did memorize eimi, you know what esesthai is.

It lets me bust a couple of grammatical points and bring up one that none of the grammars talk about.

First, what does “future infinitive” mean? Seriously. An infinitive, by definition, has no time. How can it possibly be “future”?

Well, it isn’t. It’s labeled future strictly because of that -sigma- before the ending, along with the absence of augment.

In aspectual terms, it’s an imperfective conceptual. That destroys the cognitive dissonance of labeling something with no time as belonging to a tense, when tenses are all about time. So that’s an advantage we get from changing to aspectual labels. No matter what the aspect, calling something an infinitive would not create cognitive dissonance.

I’m also going to change the label away from “infinitive” to get rid of the idea that verb morphology incorporates timing. I’m going to label it a gerundive because of three things.

1.         It’s a verbal derivative, like the gerundive with personal endings.

2.         It can be a substantive like the gerundive with personal endings.

3.         It can take the place of a conjugated verb in some situations, like the gerundive with personal endings.

Although this new gerundive takes more than one form, it doesn’t decline like an adjective. Since it doesn’t take person/number endings, I’m going to call it an impersonal gerundive.

All imperfective conceptuals are for things that haven’t happened yet to those involved in the context about which Thucydides is writing. Esesthai refers to the non-existence of – something – at the time Thucydides decided to start his writing program.

Part of what went into his decision to write was this elpisas megan te esesthai.

Next point: all the grammars will tell you that the subject of an infinitive is always in the accusative. That’s not what is happening here and I will tell you why next week.