21st Century Classical Greek -- Summary 4, gerundives

Greek does not use a conjugated verb in every phrase or clause.

• --  Equational sentences can leave out the copula, a feature Greek has in common with other aspectual languages like Russian, Chinese, and the Semitic languages.
• ---When an author chooses not to be definite about an action, he uses a gerundive. The lack of definition may involve persons, places, and timing, but gerundives either describe or substantivize the action.

Every vector that applies to verbs applies to gerundives, except certainty; all gerundives are indicative modality.

Personal gerundives indicate person, number, and gender and agree with some antecedent. They act as adjectives, describing actions, or as substantives, usually with a definite article.

Personal gerundives have standard indications of voice:

1.                  -antes, -ontes, -untes for executive voice

2.                  -entes for passive voice

3.                  -men- for base voice

Impersonal gerundives have all the vectors of a verb except certainty or person/gender/number agreement. All impersonal gerundives are indicative modality.

There are four sets of endings for impersonal gerundives:

1.                  -sthai for all base voice i.g.s

2.                  -ein is the progressive conceptual i.g in executive voice. There is no progressive eventive i.g..

3.                  -sai is the imperfective conceptual in executive voice.

4.                  ­-ein is the imperfective eventive for executive voice.

5.                  -nai is the ending for the perfective conceptual executive voice. There seems to be no perfective eventive i.g..

Impersonal gerundives are used

1.                  To substitute for conjugated verbs as the name of an action.

2.                  Complement of:

a.                   Dunamai – able

b.                  Dei – possible

c.                   Khri – necessary

d.                  Dei or khri -- obligatory

3.                  Instead of an imperative when an action is due and owing based on specified considerations. Avoids issuing an ultimatum or giving a nuance of immediacy.

4.                  Reported speech and question in the same aspect as in the original question, sometimes using the imperfective conceptual for a promise.

5.                  In a result clause starting with hos[te].

6.                  In purpose clauses. The i.g. will be the complement of another verb. It may have what Hurrian calls an instrumental/ablative, which is an -on case expression, and be negated using mi to express “so that X does not happen”.

7.                  As the complement of a conjugated verb or personal gerundive in an anti-passive. There may be a subject for the impersonal gerundive; it will be in whatever case is needed either for verbal nuance or to connect the anti-passive to an antecedent.

In Book II.80 of Thucydides I came across the following structure:

βουλόμενοι [object] καταστρέψασθαι

It’s obvious why you have a base voice for the personal gerundive; the planning wasn’t undertaken just to do planning. It was undertaken for the sake of something else. But that is also in base voice, not executive voice, and it has a lower level of definiteness, an impersonal gerundive. So while the people involved might have deliberately performed the action of the complement, they weren’t there yet, they were only in the planning stages, and that’s also why it’s an i.g. not a p.g. In fact the planned action did not succeed. This may look like a place where Thucydides should have used an epistemic, but that is for not signing up to the truth of something which later does turn out to be false.

In this case, Thucydides is completely certain about the planning and its intended goal, and he knows with complete certainty that it did not pan out. So does his audience. He doesn’t have to mince words with them by using the epistemic.