Ancient Greek grammar
Ancient Greek grammar is morphologically complex and preserves several features of Proto-Indo-European morphology. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, articles, numerals and especially verbs are all highly inflected.
A complication of Greek grammar is that different Greek authors wrote in different dialects, all of which have slightly different grammatical forms. For example, the history of Herodotus and medical works of Hippocrates are written in Ionic, the poems of Sappho in Aeolic, and the odes of Pindar in Doric; the poems of Homer are written in a mixed dialect, mostly Ionic, with many archaic and poetic forms. The grammar of Koine Greek also differs slightly from classical Greek. This article primarily discusses the morphology and syntax of Attic Greek, that is the Greek spoken at Athens in the century from 430 BC to 330 BC, as exemplified in the historical works of Thucydides and Xenophon, the comedies of Aristophanes, the philosophical dialogues of Plato, and the speeches of Lysias and Demosthenes.
Writing system
Alphabet
Ancient Greek is written in its own alphabet, which is derived from the Phoenician alphabet. There are 24 letters, namely:Inscriptions show that in the classical period Greek was written entirely in capital letters, with no spaces between the words. The use of the lower-case cursive letters developed gradually.
Two punctuation marks are used in Greek texts which are not found in English: the colon, which consists of a dot raised above the line and the Greek question mark, which looks like the English semicolon.
Another feature of Greek writing in books printed today is that when there is a long diphthong ending in, as in ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ , the iota is written under the long vowel, as in τύχῃ "by chance". This is known as iota subscript. When the main letter is capitalized, the iota can be written alongside instead, as in "Hades"; this is known as iota adscript.
It is a convention in Ancient Greek texts that a capital letter is not written at the beginning of a sentence. However, capital letters are used for the initial letter of names. Where a name starts with a rough breathing, as in "Hermes", it is the initial vowel, not the breathing, which is made capital.
Another convention of writing Greek is that the sound ng in the consonant clusters, and is written with a gamma: γγ, γκ, γχ, as in "messenger", "necessity", "it happens ".
The lower-case letter Σ is written ς at the end of a word, otherwise σ, e.g. "wise", "we are".
Diacritics
Breathings
- The rough breathing or , written over a vowel letter, marks the sound at the beginning of a word, before the vowel. Written over the letter ρ, it indicates that the sound is voiceless:. At the beginning of a word, the letters υ and ρ always have the rough breathing.
- The smooth breathing or marks the absence of the sound. It is used on any word which starts with a vowel, e.g. ἐγώ "I".
A sign similar to a smooth breathing, called a coronis, is used to show when two words have joined together by a process called crasis, e.g. κᾱ̓γώ "I too", contracted from καὶ ἐγώ.
Accents
Written accents, marking the tonic syllables of Greek words, appear to have been invented in the 3rd century BC, but only became commonly used in the 2nd century AD.- The acute accent is used on long or short vowels on any of the last three syllables of a word. However, if the last vowel of the word is long, the acute cannot go further from the end than the penultimate syllable. Compare ἄνθρωπος "man" vs. ἀνθρώπου "of a man". It is usually accepted that in classical Greek the accent was a pitch accent, that is, the accented syllable was pronounced on a higher pitch than the other syllables of the word. The accent is believed to have changed to a stress accent by about the 2nd century AD.
- The grave accent is used on long or short vowels and usually replaces an acute accent on the final syllable of a word when the word is used non-finally in a sentence. So the word "beautiful" changes to καλὸς in the phrase καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός "beautiful and good". However, the acute remains when a punctuation mark follows, e.g. αὐτῷ εἰπέ, ὦ Νῑκίᾱ "tell him, Nicias", or before an enclitic word such as μοι "to me", e.g. εἰπέ μοι, ὦ Σώκρατες "tell me, Socrates". The exact pronunciation of the grave accent is disputed, but it is quite likely that it often represented absence of high pitch, i.e. normal pitch. However, there is some evidence from Greek music that in some circumstances the grave was pronounced with a degree of high pitch, for example when a pronoun with a grave such as κἀμὲ "me too" was emphasised.
- The circumflex, displayed as either a tilde or an inverted breve is used only on long vowels. It is typically found where a long-vowel penultimate syllable which has the accent is followed by a short-vowel final syllable ; where a contraction of an accented vowel plus an unaccented vowel has taken place: e.g.: > φιλεῖ "he" or "she loves"; in the genitive plural of all 1st declension nouns and all 3rd declension nouns of the type e.g. ναυτῶν "of sailors", τειχῶν "of walls"; in the genitive and the dative case of the article and of all nouns and adjectives whose final syllable is accented, e.g. nominative "a sound", but genitive φωνῆς, dative φωνῇ. The circumflex appears to have indicated a fall from a high pitch to a low pitch on the same vowel, and quite often in Greek musical fragments it is represented by two notes, the first higher than the second.
General outline
Nouns
Gender
In Ancient Greek, all nouns, including proper nouns, are classified according to grammatical gender as masculine, feminine, or neuter. The gender of a noun is shown by the definite article which goes with it, or by any adjective which describes it:Words referring to males are usually masculine, females are usually feminine, but there are some exceptions, such as τὸ τέκνον "the child". Inanimate objects can be of any gender, for example ὁ ποταμός "the river" is masculine, ἡ πόλις "the city" is feminine, and τὸ δένδρον "the tree" is neuter.
A peculiarity of neuter words in Ancient Greek is that when a plural neuter noun or pronoun is used as the subject of a verb, the verb is singular, for example:
Number
Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns also vary as to number. They can be singular, dual, or plural :As can be seen from the above examples, the difference between singular, dual, and plural is generally shown in Greek by changing the ending of the noun, and the article also changes for different numbers.
The dual number is used for a pair of things, for example τὼ χεῖρε "two hands", τοῖν δυοῖν τειχοῖν "of the two walls". It is, however, not very common; for example, the dual article τώ is found no more than 90 times in the comedies of Aristophanes, and only 3 times in the historian Thucydides. There are special verb endings for the dual as well.
Cases
Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and the article in Ancient Greek also change according to their function in the sentence. For example:These different forms are called different cases of the noun. The four principal cases are called the nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative.
In addition, some nouns also have a separate vocative case, used for addressing a person:
Frequently a vocative is preceded by the word ὦ "o": ὦ γύναι "madam!". Where there is no separate vocative case, the nominative is used instead.
The order in which the cases are given differs in American and British textbooks. In American grammars, such as H. W. Smyth's Greek Grammar, the order is Nom. – Gen. – Dat. – Acc. – Voc.; in grammars produced in Britain and countries formerly under British influence the order is Nom. – Voc. – Acc. – Gen. – Dat.
Prepositions
The accusative, genitive, and dative cases are also used after prepositions, for example:Usually prepositions which mean "towards" such as πρός are followed by a noun or pronoun in the accusative case, while those that mean "away from" are followed by one in the genitive. Some prepositions can be followed by more than one case depending on the meaning. For example, μετά means "with" when followed by a noun in the genitive, but "after" if followed by an accusative.
Declensions
Nouns differ as to their endings. For example, the nominative plurals of regular masculine and feminine nouns can end in -αι, -οι or -ες. They are divided into three different groups, called declensions, according to these endings and the endings of the other cases:1st declension nouns tend to be feminine, 2nd declension nouns tend to be masculine.
Neuter nouns
Neuter nouns and adjectives differ from masculine and feminine ones in that they do not have a separate ending for the accusative case, but the nominative, vocative, and accusative are always identical, both in the singular and plural. They are divided into the 2nd and 3rd declensions according to the endings of their genitive and dative cases, which are the same as those of masculine nouns and adjectives.Neuter words in the nominative and accusative plural have the endings -α or -η :
Personal pronouns
The independent personal pronouns are as follows. For substitutes for the third-person, see the note below.The oblique cases have enclitic forms in the singular, when the pronoun is not emphatic; these lack stress and in the first person drop the initial vowel: -με, -μου, -μοι; -σε, -σου, -σοι; -ἑ, -οὑ, -οἱ. More emphatic 1sg ἔγωγε, ἔμεγε, ἐμοῦγε, ἔμοιγε and 2sg σύγε also occur.
The initial ὑ vowel in the 2nd-person plural forms is long.
The independent forms in the third-person are uncommon, apart from the dative used as an indirect reflexive. Usually ἐκεῖνος, οὗτος, etc. are used instead for the nominative, and αὐτός for the oblique.