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Aorist (abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past tense, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by the Indo-European grammatical tradition, such as Middle Persian, Sanskrit, Armenian, the South Slavic languages, Georgian, Pontic Greek, and Pashto language, also have forms referred to as aorist.
The word comes from Ancient Greek ( ), as the aorist was the markedness (default) form of the verb, and thus did not have the implications of the imperfective aspect, which referred to an ongoing or repeated situation, or the perfect, which referred to a situation with a continuing relevance; instead it described an action "pure and simple". This does not mean, however, that the aorist was aspectually neutral, see
Because the aorist was the unmarked aspect in Ancient Greek, the term is sometimes applied to unmarked verb forms in other languages, such as the habitual aspect in Turkish language.
Other Indo-European languages lost the aorist entirely. In the development of Latin, for example, the aorist merged with the perfect. The (past perfectives) of the Romance languages, which are sometimes called "aorist", are an independent development.
Non-indicative forms of the aorist (subjunctives, optatives, imperatives, infinitives) are usually purely aspectual, with certain exceptions including indirect speech constructions and the use of optative as part of the sequence of tenses in dependent clauses. There are aorist infinitives and imperatives that do not imply temporality at all. For example, the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:11 uses the aorist imperative in " Give (δός ) us this day our daily bread", Matthew 6:11, KJV. In Greek: Τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον. in contrast to the analogous passage in Luke 11:3, which uses the imperfective aspect, implying repetition, with " Give (δίδου , present imperative) us day by day our daily bread." Luke 11:3, KJV. In Greek: τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δίδου ἡμῖν τὸ καθ' ἡμέραν.
An example of how the aorist tense contrasts with the imperfect in describing the past occurs in Xenophon's Anabasis, when the Persian aristocrat Orontas is executed: "and those who had been previously in the habit of bowing (προσεκύνουν , imperfect) to him, bowed (προσεκύνησαν , aorist) to him even then."F. Kinchin Smith and T.W. Melluish, Teach Yourself Greek, Hodder and Stoughton, 1968, p. 94. Here the imperfect refers to a past habitual or repeated act, and the aorist to a single one.
There is disagreement as to which functions of the Greek aorist are inherent within it. Some of the disagreement applies to the history of the development of the various functions and forms. Most grammarians differentiate the aorist indicative from the non-indicative aorists. Many authors hold that the aorist tends to be about the past because it is perfective, and perfectives tend to describe completed actions;Egbert Bakker, 1997, Grammar as Interpretation: Greek literature in its linguistic contexts, p 21;
Constantine Campbell, 2007, Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative: Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament, chapter 4;
Donald Mastronarde, 1993, Introduction to Attic Greek;
Buist M. Fanning, 1990, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek, p 67;
Heerak Kim, 2008, Intricately Connected: Biblical Studies, Intertextuality, and Literary Genre;
Maria Napoli, 2006, Aspect and Actionality in Homeric Greek; Brook Pearson, 2001, Corresponding Sense: Paul, Dialectic, and Gadamer, p 75;
Stanley Porter, 1992, Idioms of the Greek New Testament;
A.T. Robertson, 1934, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research;
Max Zerwick, 1963, Biblical Greek. others that the aorist indicative and to some extent the participle is essentially a mixture of Perfective past.Martin Haspelmath, ed., 2001, Typologie des langues et les universaux linguistiques, 1:779;
Roger Woodward, "Attic Greek", in The Ancient Languages of Europe, p 33;
see also discussion in Stanley Porter, 1992, Idioms of the Greek New Testament, p 38
In the later language, the aorist indicative had the value of a preterite, while in the older language it was closer in sense to the perfect. The aorist was also used with the ancient injunctive mood, particularly in prohibitions.T. Burrow, The Sanskrit Language, Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 2001, , p. 299.
In modern forms of communication, the aorist has experienced something of a revival among younger speakers in Serbia, as its forms are simpler and shorter to type out than the perfect.Dr Branko Tošović, Zbornik Matice srpske za slavistiku, knjiga 71-72, p. 393 (Serbian only)
In Bulgarian, which has produced a new regular formation, the aorist is used in indirect speech and in presumptive quotations. The Slavonic languages ed. Bernard Comrie, Greville G. Corbett, passim, esp. p.212ff. Bulgarian has separate inflections for aorist (past imperfective) and general perfective. The aorist may be used with the imperfective to produce a compound perfective–imperfective aspect.Bernard Comrie, Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems, Cambridge University Press, 1976, , p 12.Östen Dahl, Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, Walter de Gruyter, 2000, , p. 290.
The aorist in Macedonian is called the "past definite complete tense" (минато определено свршено време) and refers to a completed action in the past tense. It most often corresponds to the simple past tense in English: I read the book, I wrote the letter, I ate my supper, etc. In contemporary standard Macedonian, the aorist is formed almost exclusively from perfective verbs. The formation of the aorist for most verbs is not complex, but there are numerous small subcategories that must be learned. All verbs in the aorist (except сум) take the same endings, but there are complexities in the aorist stem vowel and possible consonant alternations. All verbs (except сум) take the following endings in the aorist:Christina Kramer (1999), Makedonski Jazik (The University of Wisconsin Press).
| ние -вме |
| вие -вте |
| тие -а / -ја |
(The sign ∅ indicates a zero ending: nothing is added after the stem vowel.)
| suffixing of s | The first, weak, s-, or aorist is the most common in Greek.
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| zero-grade of ablaut, lack of suffix / nasal infixAnna Giacalone Ramat and Paolo Ramat (eds.), '' The Indo-European Languages, Routledge, 1998, , pp. 248–251. | The second or strong aorist uses the bare root of the verb without the e of ablaut or the present-tense suffix or nasal infix.
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| reduplication | Reduplication is more common in the perfect, but a few Greek verbs use it in the aorist. The reduplicated aorist is more common in Sanskrit, e.g. ájījanam "I gave birth."William Dwight Whitney, Including both the Classical Language and the older Dialects, of Veda and Brahmana, Oxford University Press, 1950, pp. 297-330.
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In Mingrelian and Laz language, the aorist is basically a past tense and can be combined with both perfective and imperfective aspects as well as the imperative and the subjunctive moods.Alice C. Harris, "Mingrelian", The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Volume 1, The Kartvelian Languages (1991, Caravan Books), pp. 313-394.
Dee Ann Holisky, "Laz", The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Volume 1, The Kartvelian Languages (1991, Caravan Books), pp. 395-472.
In Udi language, the aorist is an imperfective aspect that is usually a past tense but can also replace the present tense.Wolfgang Schulze-Fürhoff, "Udi", The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Volume 4, North East Caucasian Languages, Part 2 (1994, Caravan Books), pp. 447-514.
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