Greek 201H Pre-course Preps and Tips

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The Case of Nouns

Greek nouns have gender, number, and case.

THE DUAL: In addition to the singular and the plural, Greek has another number, the dual, for things thought of as pairs. (The dual is relatively rare and will not be examined until course Gk201H begins.)

CASE: The case of a Greek noun indicates its grammatical relation to the rest of the sentence, e.g. subject, direct object, and so on.

Number and case are shown by an inflected (special and significant) ending attached to a word's stem.

In memorizing the vocabulary, the gender of each word MUST BE LEARNED SEPARATELY; it cannot be guessed from the word itself.

Important To Note

In Indo-European, the language from which both Greek and English developed, there were eight cases, each noun appearing with one of eight posible endings in the singular or plural to show its relation to the rest of the sentence.

The Greek nouns lost three of the eight original Indo-European cases and REDISTRIBUTED THE FUNCTIONS of the three lost cases among the remaining five. Thus, some of the Greek cases have more than one basic function.

Summary of Greek Cases

NOMINATIVE: subject, predicate nominative, naming things

GENITIVE: of; away from/out of

DATIVE: to/for; by/with; in/at

ACCUSATIVE: direct objest, motion towards, or length of space or time

VOCATIVE: shows that a noun is being addressed directly

Nouns Are Declined Within Tables or Paradigms

To decline any noun, take the GENETIVE SINGULAR [which will always be given in the vocabulary after each nominative singular entry and before the article ("the" in English; but in Greek, each noun's specific definite article also indicates the gender)]; then first: remove the genetive singular ending to get the stem; and then add the proper set of endings to the stem to review or inculcate the declension of any Greek noun you are learning or using; as needed.

In Gk201H We will be looking at Greek declensions (and verb conjugations) in comparison to Latin and Sanskrit (transliterated, at first only) patterns.

Course books will be sent to all scholarship honors students at the end of summer.

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