It’s Time to Talk About Nouns - Ch. 4 - Nouns and 1st Declension Feminine Nouns - “From Alpha to Omega” by Anne Groton

Stephen Alexander Beach

Content from this lesson is taken from the book "From Alpha to Omega" by Anne Groton and put into my own words. (I just want to say from the outset, that I may have misunderstood or written down wrong content from the book, so please realize these are my own notes and not any official or trustworthy copy of her book.)

It’s time to talk about nouns …

Nouns - A noun refers to a person, place, or thing. Depending on the role that they play in a sentence they change their ending. This is called “declining” a noun. It can be declined to indicate a different gender, number, and case. This being said, there are three grouping of nouns in Greek: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd declension nouns. 

Gender -  A noun may be one of three genders in Greek. There are masculine, feminine, and neuter ones. For men and women, it obviously defers to their sex, but for objects it could be neuter, or it could also be masculine or feminine. 

Number - One can speak of nouns in the singular, plural, or the dual (two things in mind), though the dual is not used much in Attic Greek. 

Case - The case refers to how a noun is used in a sentence. For example, as the subject or predicate, direct object or indirect object. In English we show this by word order in a sentence, but in Greek they express this by the declined ending of the noun. Therefore, word order in Greek is not strict, but rather can express emphasis or style. There are five cases or functions of nouns in sentences. These are the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and vocative. 

Nominative Case - The nominative case expresses the subject and any predicates of the subject in the sentence. This subject is the noun that does the action, and a predicate is a noun that is copulated to that noun as part of it. 

Genitive Case - “The genitive case designates a noun that is modifying another noun in the sentence; this relationship can usually be conveyed in English with of…”. This usually is expressing the possession of a noun by the subject. In Greek, the genitive case also includes the ablative case, and so is used to express the origin of a subject. “In this role it serves as the case for nouns denoting a source or point of origin (‘away from,’ ‘out of,’ etc.).” 

Dative Case - The dative functions as a the indirect object in a sentence, and so usually is translated as “to” or “for”. “The dative case also has the functions of Indo-European’s instrumental and locative cases … Thus it is the case appropriate for nouns denoting means, accompaniment, location, or time (‘by,’ ‘with,’ ‘in,’ ‘at,’ etc.).” 

Accusative Case - The accusative case represents the direct object of a sentence, i.e. the noun that the subject and verb are acting upon. “It is also used for nouns that denote a destination or goal or an extent of time or space (‘into,’ ‘to,’ ‘toward,’ ‘for,’ etc.).” 

Vocative Case - This refers to when a person or thing is addressed directly. 

Chapter Four - 1st declension feminine nouns - This particular chapter goes over 1st declension feminine nouns. There are two basic stem endings for these are based around α and η. The rule which determines whether a noun will fall to one or the other is the letter preceding it. “The singular endings are -α, ας, α, αν, α only if the preceding letter is ε, ι, or ρ; otherwise they are - η, -ης, -η, -ην, η.” 

Accenting - When it comes to accenting nouns, they are called “persistent”. This means that they will follow where they are accented in the nominative singular. 

There is more here that I need to go back to and study***

Definite Articles - Greek uses definite articles to mark nouns as being known, as opposed to being indefinite or unsure, and so these articles will match their nouns in gender, number, and case. 

For the feminine 1st declension nouns, they look like this (there is no article used for the vocative): 

Nom - η

Gen - της

Dat - τη

Acc - την

———

Nom - αι

Gen - των

Dat - ταις

Acc - τας

When it comes to translating words into English, it is not quite exactly the same. For example, with abstract nouns, to include the definite article means to include the whole of the noun, and to not include it, refers to only a part. “Send leisure [all of it]!” Versus “send [some/any] leisure!”. Or if it is included then it might be included to emphasis the idea of the speaker. So, “send the leisure [i.e., the particular sort of leisure the speaker has in mind]!”. Also, definite articles are used in Greek for proper names and places, which is not done in English. All this to say, that Greek has nuances where definite articles may be included or not to express style. 

More About the Dative Case - With verbs of “sending writing, or saying” the dative can be substituted for a prepositional phrase and the noun in the accusative. Again, there is a nuance by using these different options. “The indirect object usually has a more personal flavor; the recipient is viewed as the beneficiary of the subject’s action. As the object of the preposition, the recipient is viewed as the point toward which the action is directed (its destination or goal).” 

Vocabulary - “Greek lexica always give a noun’s nominative and genitive singular and the appropriate definite article (in the nominative singular). the noun’s declension is shown by he first two forms, its gender by the article…”.

-πεμπω - to send 

-αγορά, ας, η - marketplace, market 

-επιστολή, ης, η - letter, message 

-ησυχία, ας, η - leisure, quiet, tranquility 

- θεα, ας, η - goddess

-σκηνή, ης, η - tent

-χώρα, ας, η - land, country, countryside, space, position

-εις - preposition + object in accusative case - into, to 

-εκ (εξ) - preposition + object in genitive case - out of (the latter is used before words starting with a vowel) - is one of the three words that violates the Greek rule that words must end in vowels. 

-εν - preposition + object in dative case - in 

-ω - particle used with a noun in the vocative - O!