1198: Defective Verbs pt. 4 (Classic Greek) Mar 21, 2018

This is the fourth and final post in the short series about defective verbs. While just about any language will have defective verbs, due to random change over long periods of time, Classical Greek only has defective verbs, which is to say that no verb can be used for all nine persons (in addition to singular and plural, Greek has a dual number for pairs of objects). This is not to say that it is impossible to express certain things because certain verbs only happen to conjugate for certain persons—anything can be communicated in any language, even if the means are different. Either verbs will not have a form for certain numbers like duals or not exist in certain tenses for semantic reasons, or otherwise, one verb will be used in certain contexts, and another will be used in others to communicate the same meaning.

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