ABSTRACT
The typical example of the use of the verb-root as the third person singular of the aorist indicative is afforded by that most conservative of all families of languages, the Semitic. In Hebrew, for example, the word qatal — note the two vowels ‘a’ — signifies the third person singular masculine of the aorist (or, as it is sometimes called in Semitic grammar, the ‘perfective’) of the verb ‘kill’. This use has no necessary relation with time — it may be used to signify past, present or future, and it is often difficult to see which of the three is in fact meant. In Eastern Europe and Asia the Finno-Ugrian family provides equally striking examples. In Greek, from the aorist, by lengthening the word — either by lengthening the vowel in some way or by reduplicating a consonant — arose at some time the tenses signifying repeated, continuous, uncompleted action, the present, imperfect and perfect.
