Notes On Koine Greek: Part 55

www.MichaelHalcomb.com

1. The Imperfect Middle Indicative: Having familiarized ourselves with the

Present & Future forms of the Middle Voice, we can now move on to the
Imperfect and then the Aorist. Following that, we will fill in our Indicative Mood
chart with what we’ve covered and then move on to the Perfect and Pluperfect
paradigms before venturing into the Passive Voice.
2. Another Imperfect: At this point, we have already seen how the Imperfect
Active Indicative forms. Having this under our belts, we can now use those tools
to understand the formation of the Imperfect Middle Indicative. The
morphological breakdown of the Imperfect Middle is as follows:

Imperfective Aspect Morpheme + Lexical Morpheme + Neutral Morpheme + Person-Number Suffix Morpheme

3. Table: Here is the table for the Imperfect Middle using the word lu,w
(morphemes are separated):

Imperfect Middle Indicative

Singular
I was loosing myself
1 ev|lu|o,|mhn I was loosing for myself
I myself was loosing
You were loosing yourself
2 e|lv u|o, |u You were loosing for yourself
You yourself were loosing
He was loosing for himself
3 ev|lu|,e|to He was loosing for himself
He himself was loosing
Plural
We were loosing ourselves
ev|lu|o,|meqa We were loosing for ourselves
We ourselves were loosing
You (all) were loosing yourselves
e|lv u,|e|sqe You (all) were loosing for yourselves
You (all) yourselves were loosing
They were loosing themselves
ev|lu,|o|nto They were loosing for themselves
They themselves were loosing

4. Tips: We will notice straightaway that the similarities between the above table
and that of the Present and Future Middle paradigms occur in the 1st and 2nd
Person Plurals (meqa & sqe). The next thing we can notice is that the 2nd and 3rd
Person Singulars as well as the 3rd Person Plurals basically just replace the “ai”
endings with an omicron “o”. This leaves us with the 1st Person Singular which
we recognize starts with the same letter mu “m” but the last two letters change
(from ai
hn).
5. Note: Take note that when you are attempting to decide which translation to go
with, context will help determine the way to go! Remember: The Imperfect
reveals continued action in the past tense!