7.1 You have learned the basics of Greek verbs: how to form them, and how to translate them. Next, we add another important part of speech: NOUNS.
A NOUN indicates a person, place, or thing. An English noun form normally indicates whether the person/place/thing is singular or plural. An INFLECTED Greek noun form, however, regularly represents THREE pieces of information:
- Gender
- Number
- Case
7.2 GENDER indicates the class or category of nouns to which a given noun belongs.
Most Greek nouns are assigned one of three GRAMMATICAL GENDERS:
- Masculine
- Feminine
- Neuter
In some cases, the grammatical gender of a particular noun reflects the actual gender of a person or animal. In other cases, the gender of a noun is simply grammatical. This is perhaps clearest with the gender of nouns that are inanimate objects, but there are also nouns that possess an unanticipated grammatical gender. For example, ἀνδρεία, “manliness,” is a grammatically FEMININE noun. Learning the gender of each noun is therefore essential and must be memorized as part of the vocabulary entry.
7.3 NUMBER indicates whether a noun is singular or plural.
As with English, Greek nouns change their endings to reflect a noun’s number. Also, like English, Greek has two numbers:
- Singular
- Plural
Unlike English, Greek also has a third number: DUAL (!), which indicates a pair of something. More often, however, Greek simply uses the plural to indicate a pair of something: οἱ ὀφθαλμοί the eyes (S 195, G 57). As a result, the dual number is rare in Greek. For this lesson, we concentrate on the far more common singular and plural.
7.4 CASE indicates the noun’s function in a particular sentence.
Greek most often uses the following four cases:
- Nominative
- Genitive
- Dative
- Accusative
Each of these cases represents a wide range of possible information about how the noun is to be understood within the context of a given sentence. What follows are some of the most common functions for each case.
Nouns in this case most often function as the subject of a verb, or as a predicate nominative.
- Mary sends the child of Joseph to the rulers. (Subject of verb).
- She is Mary. (Predicate nominative).
Nouns in this case often communicate the same function expressed by the English word of. It is used, for example, to denote possession.
- Mary sends the child of Joseph to the rulers.
Nouns in this case often communicate the same function expressed by the English words to or for. It is used, for example, to denote an indirect object.
- Mary sends the child of Joseph to the rulers.
Nouns in this case often function as the direct object of transitive verbs.
- Mary sends the child of Joseph to the rulers.
To parse a Greek noun means to identify the three qualities – gender, number, and case – of any given noun form. For example, a specific noun form could be:
- Masculine
- Singular
- Nominative
Once you know these three qualities and the noun’s meaning, you have the tools to understand how to translate a noun in each sentence.