12.75 Principal Parts of Verbs

Please make sure you read Croy section 12.75 carefully. I've listed below the main points that you need to keep in mind.

Although there are six principal parts possible for any verb, two of those parts relate to the "perfect system" of the verb, which you will not be expected to learn for this course. Later on you will want to work on learning the perfect system, but they are not vital for beginning students. So there are only four parts that you will be responsible for learning in this class, as follows:

• 1. present active: this is the dictionary form of the verb that you have been learning so far (in the case of deponent verbs, you learn the present middle, since the deponent verbs do not have active forms)
• 2. future active: this is the verb form you will learn in Lesson 12 (again, as with deponent verbs, you will learn the future middle, since the deponent verbs do not have active forms)
• 3. aorist active: this is the verb form you will learn in Lessons 13 and 14 (again, as with deponent verbs, you will learn the aorist middle, since the deponent verbs do not have active forms)
• 6. aorist passive: you will learn this form in Lesson 16 (unlike the present middle and passive forms, which are identical, the aorist middle and passive forms are markedly different from one another, and the aorist passive is also used to form the future passive)

You will not be required to memorize the fourth and fifth principal parts, which give you the verbs in the perfect tense. You are also responsible for the verbs in the present, future and aorist tenses.

To some extent, learning the principal parts is memorization. There is a chart that will help you to memorize the parts of the verbs you have learned so far. You can find the verbs you have learned in Lessons 2-14 and start memorizing their parts. This week, you are responsible for learning the three principal parts: present active (or middle, for deponent verbs), future active (or middle), aorist active (or middle). You should not worry about the aorist passive now, although you will learn that next week.

In addition, there are also some patterns you can recognize, so that even if you have not memorized the specific form of a specific verb, you can recognize that form based on how it looks. For example, you will see that the future and aorist stems often contain a sigma. Being able to recognize these patterns in unfamiliar verbs will be extremely helpful to you in reading Greek.