Secondary

Primary and Secondary Tenses.—There are two classes of tenses in the indicative: (1) Primary (or Principal) tenses, the present and perfect expressing present time, the future and future perfect expressing future time; (2) Secondary (or Historical) tenses, the imperfect, pluperfect, and aorist expressing past time. The secondary tenses have an augment (428) prefixed.

Primary and Secondary Tenses.—The primary tenses refer to present and future time (present, future, perfect, and future perfect), the secondary or historical tenses refer to past time (imperfect, aorist, pluperfect).

a. The gnomic aorist (1931 b) is regarded as a primary tense, as is the aorist when used for the perfect (1940), and the imperfect indicative referring to present time (1788); the historical present (1883), as a secondary tense. The subjunctive, optative, and imperative moods in their independent uses point to the future, and all their tenses therefore count as primary.

A stem is primary if only one suffix is added to the root (δῶ-ρο-ν); secondary, when more than one suffix is added to the root (γραμ-ματ-εύ-ς).

Suffixes forming primitive words are called primary suffixes; suffixes forming denominative words are called secondary suffixes.

a. The distinction between primary and secondary suffixes is not original and is often neglected. Thus, in δεινός terrible (δει- fear), νο is a primary suffix; in σκοτεινός dark (σκότος, 858. 11), it is secondary. So English -able is both primary (readable) and secondary (companionable).

b. It is often difficult to determine whether a suffix is added to a verb-stem or to a noun-stem: ἰσχῡ-ρός strong (ἰσχῡ́-ς strength, ἰσχῡ́-ω am strong).

c. A primitive word may be formed from a verb-stem which is itself denominative: τοξευ-τής bowman from τοξεύ-ω shoot with the bow, derived from τόξο-ν bow. A primitive may be formed with a suffix derived from a denominative: φλεγ-υρό-ς burning (φλέγ-ω burn) with υρο from λιγυ-ρό-ς (λιγύ-ς) shrill.

d. A denominative often has no corresponding primitive; sometimes the latter has been lost, sometimes it was presumed for the purpose of word-formation by the imitative process always at work in the making of language. Thus, δέμ-ν-ιο-ν bed, from δεμ-νο-ν (δέμ-ω build, construct).