How Greek Present Participles Work

Smyth's Grammar: 1872. Participle (not in indirect discourse).—The participle, as a verbal adjective, is timeless. The tenses of the participle express only continuance, simple occurrence, and completion with permanent result. Whether the action expressed by the participle is antecedent, coincident, or subsequent to that of the leading verb (in any tense) depends on the context. The future participle has a temporal force only because its voluntative force points to the future.

a. Present (continuative). The action set forth by the present participle is generally coincident (rarely antecedent or subsequent) to that of the leading verb: ““ἐργαζόμεναι μὲν ἠρίστων, ἐργασάμεναι δὲ ἐδείπνουν” the women took their noonday meal while they continued their work, but took their supper when they had stopped work” X. M. 2.7.12.

Margaret Sim (Thesis): "It is widely recognised in the traditional grammars that participles in Greek (classical or koine) are not morphologically marked to indicate their logical relation to the main verb of a sentence.42 Only the context can determine what such a logical relationship might be, that is whether or not it is concessive,43 conditional,44 causal45 etc., or even combinations of these. Temporal and causal relations in particular frequently cooccur. Further the temporal relation of such participles to the main verb is regularly derived by inference rather than the tense of the participle. Certainly present participles are usually contemporaneous with the main verb, although examples where this is not strictly chronological may be found."


Basil L. Gildersleeve (Syntax of Classical Greek): 329. Participle as a verbal adjective

"The participle as a verbal adjective is chiefly used in the present, aorist, and perfect tenses. The temporal relation is that of the kind of time.¹ The sphere of time depends on the context."

Ken Schenck:

https://kenschenck.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-greek-participles-work.html