Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jim West <jwest AT highland.net>]

At 08:50 PM 12/15/99 -0500, you wrote:
>As I understand it, the aorist participle in NT Greek and the 
>perfective participle and gerund in Russian encode sequentiality, i.e. 
>an action which is completed before the action of the main verb. 

dont know about russian- but this is not precisely correct regarding greek.
in greek the participle takes on the "time reference" of the main verb of
the clause.  the aorist ptc in particular may OR MAY NOT refer to an action
before the time of the main verb, depending on the tense of that main verb.

They 
>stand opposed to their present and imperfective counterparts which 
>encode simultaneity. A Greek aorist participle with an aorist main 
>verb encode not just the perfective aspect of two completed actions 
>but also the sequence of those actions. 

in a sense this is true- but it is not absolute.

>And sometimes you can get 
>quite a string of aorist participles with one main verb, which are 
>presumed to be in sequential order. Is that right?

In part that is right.  the relationship between participles and main verbs
depends on a number of factors.  tense, voice, mood, and the dozens of
variations therein possible make it a bit morecomplex then you here suggest.

Jim

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Jim West, ThD
jwest AT highland.net
http://web.infoave.net/~jwest

"This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."  Winston 
Churchill