Let’s start with a root for a verb that takes 1st Aorist morphology (we’ll call them “Verb Class 1” or V1):

*λύ
destroy.imperfective

V1 verbs have roots that default to imperfective aspect (the “.” marks multiple semantic meanings on a single morpheme; a dash marks morpheme breaks, as seen below). That is to say there is no morphological realization of an imperfective morpheme. Now let’s add the non-past, subject agreement morpheme:

λύ-εις
destroy.imperfective-nonpast.2sg.active.indicative

Now, I should note here, that what I’ve marked above technically misses the fact that the connecting vowel is morpho-phonological phenomena and is technically the true marker of Indicative mood. Also, once a label has been used it will be abbreviated hence forth. Here is the past tense imperfective:

ἐ-λύ-ες
past-destroy.imperfv-past.2sg.act.ind

Note here that now we have past on two different morphemes. Now there are two options, we can either call this a circumfix (perhaps) or we can accept that Greek has what is called “extended exponence,” where a single morphological category is realized on multiple inflectional morphemes, known as exponents (cf. this article). Choosing between those two options with only this word is difficult. But two points direct us toward the latter analysis: 1) the circumfix analysis wouldn’t apply to nonpast verbs, which only have a suffix and 2) extended exponence is seen explicitly elsewhere. We’ll look at that elsewhere in just a moment, but first, let’s move to add the perfective morpheme to our V1 Class:

*λύ-σ
destroy.imperfective-perfective

Adding the perfective suffix -σ overrides our imperfective root. From now on, when the perfective morpheme appears, I won’t include “imperfective” in the root’s annotation.

λύ-σ-εις
destroy-perfv-npst.2sg.act.ind

This is the traditional Future form. By my interpretation, perfective nonpast verbs are automatically future in meaning (similar to Russian perfectives). Now this form had already existed for centuries and is now grammaticalized as a true Future Tense, but for the sake of simplicity in my own parser, I’ve adopted the analysis you see here, recognizing the rare imperfective future does indeed appear in Hellenistic Greek. And this is where extended exponence comes in explicitly:

ἐ-λύ-σ-ας
past-destroy-perfv-pst.2sg.act.ind

Note that previously, the exponent for “past.1sg.active.indicative” had been ον with the prefix “ἐ-.” But the perfective -σ selects a different morpheme for the agreement inflection. Thus we actually have:

λύ-εις
destroy.imperfv-npst.2sg.act.ind

ἐ-λύ-ες
pst-destroy.imperfv-imperfv.pst.2sg.act.ind

ἐ-λύ-σ-ας
pst-destroy.perfv-perfv.pst.2sg.act.ind

Imperfective aspect appear both as default for the root, but is also realized in the subject agreement along with voice & mood. Likewise, Perfective aspect is realized both in its distinct suffix: -σ and also it’s own perfective subject agreement again with voice & mood.

Now is where we come to the point of this post: why the current terminology isn’t helpful. Thus far we have Past marked on the prefix ἐ- and on the Subject Agreement suffix and Nonpast marked only on the Subject Agreement suffix. Things change in the Non-indicative Moods & Non-finite verbal forms. Consider the two Subjunctive forms below:

λύ-ῃς
destroy.imperfv-imperfv.2sg.act.subjunctive

λύ-σ-ῃς
destroy-perfv-perfv.2sg.act.subj

The main issue to observer here is that Tense is gone as an inflectional form. This is true in a few of ways. For one, we’ve lost the ἐ- prefix, but also, we’ve lost the distinction between what has been traditionally called the primary endings and the secondary endings, which I have claimed above are the other central Tense marker. Just as importantly, the Future  does not exist in the indicative subjunctive mood.* These two facts make it explicitly clear to us that the category of Tense does not appear outside the Indicative and working through the usages of the non-indicative forms will confirm this. Yet, the first of the forms just above is traditionally labeled Present Subjunctive, when there is nothing “Present” about it.

* Other historical periods of the language, e.g. Byzantine Greek, do indeed have a Future Subjunctive, but that is not relevant to the Hellenistic period. This assumes, of course, that the LXX, Philo, Josephus, the Apostolic Fathers, & the New Testament are representative (Note also, the Future Indicative historically developed from the Aorist Subjunctive).

You might be surprised to hear this, but there actually is very little debate about Greek aspect. There is a debate about this morpheme: ἐ- and whether it marks Tense or Spacial Remoteness. And there is a debate about these two morphemes: [C]ε– & -κ, which mark what is traditionally called the Perfect, but the so-called Aspect/Aktionsart debate is very little of a debate. There’s actually a consistent consensus for the majority of verb forms. Aktionsart is a lexical category marking verbs as States, Achievements, Activities, Accomplishments, & Semelfactives. All languages have these. Aspect is a grammatical category marking verbs with Perfective or Imperfective Aspect. What makes languages unique, aspectually, is how Aktionsart Categories interact with Aspect categories. But all of that will have to wait for another post, another time –- or perhaps a thesis.

But back to morphology. It gets complicated here. Let me explain why. When you look at the interlinear annotations above, you might be wondering something like this:

If imperfective aspect is marked by the subject agreement, why in the world does it need to be marked on the root?

The answer is simple: we have another verbal inflection class. Actually we have four or five, but that’s another story. For now, we’ll call this second class Verb Class 2 (V2), what is traditionally called the 2nd Aorist forms. This is an unproductive inflectional system and during the Hellenistic period is disappearing. Thus a number of historically V2 verbs are receiving V1 inflection in at least part of the inflectional system. Consider the following examples, beginning with the root:

*λαβ
take.perfective

*λαμβαν
take.imperfective

The basic root for the verb we traditionally give the lexical entry λαμβάνω this time doesn’t have a default imperfective basis. Rather it’s default is perfective then with an imperfective stem derived from it. Some of the verbs in this unproductive class maintain their perfective root in the Future and/or Perfect verb forms, but many of them have simply taken over the basic V1 inflection system for everything else.

And then there’s voice, but we’ll leave that for another post.