Nominative, Genitive, and the Article
Table of contents
- Case Uses: Nominative and Genitive
- Declining Nouns
- Nominative and Genitive Endings
- The Definite Article: ὁ, ἡ, τό
Case Uses: Nominative and Genitive
As indicated in the nouns overview, the case of a noun indicates its function within a sentence, and the case is indicated by the ending on the noun. The function of the specific case is called a use, so we can speak about, e.g., the “uses” of the nominative or the “uses” of the accusative.
The noun’s dictionary entry gives you two forms of the noun (nominative singular and genitive singular), so let’s explore what each case can do. First up: the nominative.
(Note that the following discussion of case uses will use Greek that you won’t necessarily understand until making it through the endings and article sections of the chapter; make sure to return to these Greek examples after reading through the rest of the unit to ensure that you understand how these nouns are being used.)
Nominative
The nominative is named after the Latin noun nomen, or “name.” Thus, the nominative is the “naming” case of a noun and gives us the first part of the dictionary entry, which we use to alphabetize our dictionaries.
There are two uses of the nominative, but we’ll focus on one for this unit (and learn the second in a later unit):
- subject. The nominative case of the noun can make it function as the subject of a verb, either the actor of an active/middle verb (e.g., “The army marches to the sea”) or the receiver of the action of a passive verb (e.g., “The army is seen by the citizens”).
One important note about nominative subjects. According to the principle of subject-verb agreement, the subject of a verb must agree with the verb in number. That means that if your verb is singular, its subject must be singular. If your verb is plural, its subject must be plural. This is the same as in English; note the following examples:
- The boy kicks the ball.
- The boys kick the ball.
In the first sentence, there is one boy that serves as the subject; hence, the verb that the boy performs, “kicks”, is singular in number. In the second sentence, multiple boys form a plural subject, which means that the verb “kick” is plural in number. The sentence sounds incorrect if we have something like:
- The boy kick the ball.
Thus, we need to ensure that if we have a nominative subject in the sentence, its number (singular or plural) should be the same as that of the verb. For example:
- ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἦλθεν. The person came. (nominative singular subject; singular verb ending -εν)
- οἱ ἄνθρωποι ἦλθον. The people came. (nominative plural subject; singular verb ending -ον)
There is one exception: neuter plural subjects will take a singular verb due to an idiosyncracy of the Greek language. So note the following:
- οἱ ἄνθρωποι ἤχθησαν. The people were led.
- Both the subject (οἱ ἄνθρωποι, masculine) and the verb (ἤχθησαν) are plural.
- τὰ ἔργα ἐδείχθη. The deeds were shown.
- Though the subject (τὰ ἔργα, neuter) is plural, it takes a singular verb (ἐδείχθη).
Genitive
There are quite a few uses of the genitive, but we’ll focus on only one for now:
- possession. The genitive case is used to indicate who possesses or owns another noun. Often, the genitive in this instance can be translated with the preposition “of” (e.g., “the home of the man”) or with an apostrophe, as in English possession. Note the following Greek to English renderings:
- ἡ γνώμη τοῦ ἀνδρός, “The opinion of the man” or “the man’s opinion”
- τὰ ἔργα τῆς γυναικός, “The deeds of the woman” or “the woman’s deeds”
Note that we can also sandwich the genitive phrase between an article (on which see below) and a noun without any change in meaning:
- ἡ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς γνώμη
- τὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ἔργα
We can also place the genitive phrase after a repetition of the original noun’s article:
- ἡ γνώμη ἡ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς
- τὰ ἔργα τὰ τῆς γυναικὸς
Either of these options places the genitive phrase in what is called the attributive position, which we’ll learn about in a later unit. The translation of the phrase in all three versions is the same: “the opinion of the man” or “the deeds of the woman.”
Declining Nouns
As indicated in the nouns overview, we determine the case and number of a noun by identifying its declension and then the ending of the noun. (A noun’s gender remains constant, indicated by the dictionary entry.) The declension of a noun is determined by its genitive singular ending, sometimes in coordination with its nominative singular ending, and we must be able to identify to what declension a noun belongs in order to understand what endings we can apply to indicate different cases and numbers.
To decline a noun, we follow the same general set of rules regardless of what declension it belongs to:
- Get the noun stem by chopping off the genitive singular ending from the second part of the dictionary entry.
- Apply the appropriate ending for case and number, based on its declension.
The different endings below reflect the same core aspects of a noun (gender, case, and number), and the differences can be analogized to the differences between first aorist and second aorist endings on verbs – different endings indicate the same aspects. Because of this, there can be a lot of endings (perhaps even too many) to keep in mind, let alone memorize. We will discuss strategies for determining the case and number of a noun without too much stress, including one primary strategy at the end of this chapter (by using the noun’s article).
Nominative and Genitive Endings
There are three declensions, and within each declension, there are a variety of endings that indicate that a noun’s case and number.
First Declension
Within the first declension, there are three major subgroups. While there is some variation in the nominative and genitive singular endings, notice how most of them exhibit an alpha or eta (with the exception of the masculine subgroup’s genitive, which borrows from the second declension). Do notice that all nouns of the first declension share common endings in the plural: -αι for the nominative and -ῶν for the genitive.
Long Vowel Feminine
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -ᾱ, -η | -αι |
| Genitive | -ᾱς, -ης | -ῶν |
Short Vowel Feminine
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -α | -αι |
| Genitive | -ης | -ῶν |
Masculine
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -ᾱς, -ης | -αι |
| Genitive | -ου | -ῶν |
Remember that you automatically get the nominative and genitive singular forms of a noun from its dictionary entry. So, while an ending like -ης could theoretically indicate either a feminine noun’s genitive singular or a masculine noun’s nominative singular, the dictionary entry will help guide you towards parsing a noun correctly.
For example, note the differences between the entries for γνώμη and δικαστής in the unit vocabulary above. γνώμη is a feminine noun and has the -ης ending in the second part of the dictionary entry, indicating that γνώμης is feminine genitive singular (“of the opinion”). δικαστής, however, is a masculine noun and has the -ης ending in the first part of the dictionary entry, indicating that δικαστής is masculine nominative singular. (You can also use an article to disambiguate between endings that look the same; see the section on the definite article below.)
Second Declension
The second declension exhibits remarkably less variation, with only two main subgroups dependent on gender that exhibit an omicron in many endings.
Masculine/Feminine
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -ος | -οι |
| Genitive | -ου | -ων |
Neuter
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -ον | -α |
| Genitive | -ου | -ων |
Third Declension
The third declension exhibits the most variety by far in terms of what can appear in the nominative singular; there is no one catch-all ending, though some third declension nouns exhibit a sigma or a sigma sound (e.g., in the letter ψ or ξ) in the nominative singular. This is where knowing the dictionary entry of a noun comes most in handy; without it, it will be impossible to know the nominative singular form of a third declension noun.
Masculine/Feminine
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -ς, – | -ες |
| Genitive | -ος | -ων |
Neuter
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | – | -α |
| Genitive | -ος | -ων |
The Definite Article: ὁ, ἡ, τό
In Greek, the definite article is used with a noun to indicate that we’re talking about a specific noun. Its translation defaults to the English “the”, but it can also be used to indicate possession (e.g., ἡ γνώμη = “the opinion” or “my/your/their [etc.] opinion”) or stand alone as a pronoun (on which we’ll learn more in the unit on pronouns).
Unlike nouns, the article does not have different declensions or subgroups; there is only one definite article. The article does decline [i.e., we change its form] to match its noun in gender, case, and number, and its forms (including for the accusative and dative cases, which we’ll talk about in the next unit) are as follows:
| Case and Number | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nom. Sg. | ὁ | ἡ | τό |
| Gen. Sg. | τοῦ | τῆς | τοῦ |
| Dat. Sg. | τῷ | τῇ | τῷ |
| Acc. Sg. | τόν | τήν | τό |
| Nom. Pl. | οἱ | αἱ | τά |
| Gen. Pl. | τῶν | τῶν | τῶν |
| Dat. Pl. | τοῖς | ταῖς | τοῖς |
| Acc. Pl. | τούς | τάς | τά |
These forms must be memorized. The article remains a constant with nouns, regardless of what declension the noun belongs to, and the article can help you parse a noun when there are multiple possibilities for what case and number a noun can be. For example, note the following article-noun pairs:
- ὁ δικαστής - τῆς γνώμης
- τὰ ἔργα - ἡ θάλαττα
If we go by the endings of the nouns alone (and without knowledge of the noun’s genders or declensions), we might think that δικαστής and γνώμης should share the same case and number; same goes for ἔργα and θάλαττα.
However, the articles help disambiguate here. ὁ can only be used with a masculine nominative singular noun, which guides us to the same parsing for δικαστής. Similarly, τῆς can only possibly be feminine genitive singular, which guides us to the same parsing for γνώμης.
Same logic applies to ἔργα and θάλαττα. Though the endings look the same, the articles point us to the correct gender and number: τά must be neuter and plural, while ἡ must be feminine and singular.
Attributive Position
A quick repetition of the idea mentioned above: a genitive phrase that indicates possession of another noun can be put in one of three places:
- after the article-noun that is being possessed
- in between the article and the noun that is being possessed
- after a repetition of the article from the article-noun that is being possessed
Thus, the phrase “the book of the woman” can be written in one of three ways:
- τὸ βιβλίον τῆς γυναικός
- τὸ τῆς γυναικὸς βιβλίον
- το βιβλίον τὸ τῆς γυναικὸς
We’ll learn more about the different things that we can do with attributive position in a later unit.