Thank you Chuck. I always considered hUPARCEIN and ECEIN as synonyms, and
the alternation between them just for stylistic variation, rather than for
any fine-tuned difference in meaning. Not in Koiné anyway.
"It is raining"? HDËT DOZhDb? Hmmm.
> The absence of the *present* tense of "to be" in this construction is a
> separate feature of the language unrelated to the idiom of possession
> expressed by the preposition. That may be be confirmed by "Y MENyA BILA
> KNHGA", for example.
I don't know if there is an accepted transliteration convention for Cyrillic
into Latin. Your mention of "Y MyENyA BILA KNHGA" (past) reminds me of the
word "yESTb", "there is/are": a sort of impersonal present tense of perfective
BITb. The imperfective BIVATb is something else. The Russian verb, like the
Hebrew verb, is more into Aspects than Tenses, don't you think? We had a long
thread recently on Aspects of the Greek verb, did we not. Just a thought.
-- Revd Ben Crick, BA Bristol, 1963 (hons in Theology) <ben.crick@argonet.co.uk> 232 Canterbury Road, Birchington, Kent, CT7 9TD (UK)