Imperfect

6.2a: A past tense: Imperfect. 1) The concept of aspect
2) Conjugation of the Imperfect

To understand the two past tenses of the Indicative that we will study this semester it is best to begin with an example in English. When I say something like "When you called me, I was cooking" I refer to my action of cooking as developing in time, as an action in progress that was interrupted at some point by the call. Any action, of course, has duration, no matter how minimal. Your call did not really happen at a point in time, but I do not want to represent its duration. This contrast in the way that language represents actions or events is not a contrast in tense (both tenses are past) but in what grammarians call aspect. "I was cooking" is the English progressive past; "you called" is the simple past. The corresponding Greek progressive past is called Imperfect. It exists only in the Indicative, thus the title above is not "Imperfect Indicative." No other mood has an Imperfect. The Greek tense that is equivalent to the English simple past is called Aorist. Its aspect is defined as punctual or punctiliar.

So far the two languages are similar. In one important respect, however, they differ. In English we can turn any tense into its corresponding progressive counterpart, e.g. instead of "he may have written that letter" we say, with a different intention, "he may have been writing that letter all night." To effect this transformation in English we put the verb to be in the tense we are working on, no matter which one, and add the present participle (the -ing form of the verb). It would be possible to replicate the complete conjugation of an English verb in the progressive aspect, although some meanings obviously preclude that point of view ("they were plunging" and the like makes no sense).

Greek does not offer such an option. There is only one Present Indicative: we can translate φεύγει as "he flees" or "he is fleeing" on the basis of the context. There is no special progressive form for the Future Indicative either: γράψεις = "you will draw" or "you will be drawing." These are the tenses we are studying in this course"

Speaker's time	Tense	*Punctual aspect*	*Progressive aspect*
present time	Present	πέμπω = I send	(same) = I am sending
future time	Future	πέμψω = I will send	(same) = I will be sending
(past time)	(two tenses)	Aorist (will be studied later) ἔπεμψα = I sent	Imperfect ἔπεμπον = I was sending

In addition to representing a progressive action in the past, the Greek imperfect may denote a customary action in the past. Depending on the context, we may therefore translate ἔπεμπον = “I used to send” or “I kept sending.”

How to conjugate the Imperfect, you ask? Here is the formula:

augment + present stem + historical (also called "secondary") endings

AUGMENT IS, IN THE CONJUGATION OF A GREEK VERB, THE MARK OF A PAST TENSE, FOUND ONLY IN THE INDICATIVE.^[1]

PAST TENSES ARE ALSO MARKED BY THE HISTORICAL OR SECONDARY ENDINGS. The endings you will learn in this lesson are those of the new tense presented, the Imperfect. I wish I could say that they are the same in all past tenses... but it would not be true. For the moment, remember them as the endings of the Imperfect.

Let us now apply the above formula and form the imperfect of the verb μανθάν-ω = to learn.

1) We identify the stem by separating the ending ω: μανθαν-

2) We set in front the augment. If the verbal stem begins with a consonant, augment consists in the vowel ἐ. (In 6.2b you will learn how to apply augment to verbs beginning with a vowel, and where to place the augment of a compound verb.)

3) We add the "historical" or "secondary" endings of the Imperfect. Notice that these vowels are the same as those in the Present: ο, ε, ε, ο, ε, ο.

The endings are: -ον, -ες, -ε, -ομεν, -ετε, ον. (Again I am using the term "ending" inaccurately, because it includes the linking or thematic vowel.) The context will indicate to us whether -ον has the first person sg or the third pl as the subject.

EXAMPLE

Imperfect of μανθάνω. Because the verb begins with a consonant, the augment should be ἐ

ἐμάνθανον = I was learning or used to learn
ἐμάνθανες = you (sg) were learning or used to learn
ἐμάνθανε = he, she, it was learning or used to learn
ἐμανθάνομεν = we were learning or used to learn
ἐμανθάνετε = you (pl) were learning or used to learn
ἐμάνθανον = they were learning or used to learn

[1] The Imperfect exists only in the Indicative, but other past tenses (like the Aorist, to be studied in Lesson 9) may be conjugated also in the Imperative, and they have an Infinitive. The Aorist has augment only in the Indicative.