Adjectives

Adjectives (τὸ ἐπίθετον)

“Adjective” is a part of speech that serves to describe or delineate nouns or pronoun. Like nouns, adjectives have gender, case, and number; adjectives will have the same gender, case and number as the noun they describe. We previously used the term agreement to refer to subjects and verbs matching in person and number; we also say that adjectives agree with the noun they modify when adjective and noun have the same gender, case and number. As when you identify a noun form, to identify the form of an adjective, you must indicate its gender, case and number.

Dictionary entry

The dictionary entry for an adjective lists all the nominative singular forms. The order of the nominative singular forms that dictionaries use is: masculine nominative singular, feminine nominative singular, and neuter nominative singular. For example, the vocabulary list for this unit includes this adjective entry:

ἀγαθός, ἀγαθή, ἀγαθόν “good”

Reading dictionary definitions. Like “good” in English, there is a range of ways people or things can be ἀγαθός, ἀγαθή, ἀγαθόν. As you encounter this adjective in your readings, don’t stop by identifying it as “good”: ask yourself what nuances of meaning the context gives to this adjective.

First- and second-declension (or 2-1-2) adjectives

As with nouns, we group adjectives using the same patterns of endings into declensions, and as with nouns, we can determine the declension by looking at the dictionary entry. The endings for the three nominative singular forms ἀγαθός, ἀγαθή, ἀγαθόν should look familiar to you. Adjectives that follow this pattern use the same endings for the masculine forms as for second-declension nouns; the endings for the feminine forms are the same as for first-declension nouns; and the neuter forms use the forms of second-declension neuter nouns. This declension is therefore called the first and second adjective declension, since it uses the same endings as nouns of the first and second declensions, or the 2-1-2 adjective declension since for the dictionary order of masculine-feminine-neuter, it uses 2nd declension / 1st declension / 2nd declension endings, respectively.

Let’s apply your knowledge of noun endings to analyze these examples of noun phrases in the nominative plural:

τὰ ἀγαθὰ παιδία
οἱ ἀγαθοὶ ἄνθρωποι
αἱ ἀγαθαὶ ἄνθρωποι

In the first example , the noun παιδία is neuter nominative plural, so we use the neuter nominative plural ending -α for the adjective.

The next two examples use the noun ἄνθρωπος, which can be masculine or feminine, but the distinct forms of the article make it clear that number two is masculine and number three feminine. We therefore use the masculine nominative plural ending -οι for the adjective in the noun phrase οἱ ἀγαθοὶ ἄνθρωποι, and the feminine nominative plural ending -αι for the adjective in the phrase αἱ ἀγαθαὶ ἄνθρωποι, since, like the article, the adjective must agree with the noun in gender, case and number.

As the latter two examples clearly show, the agreement of noun and adjective does not mean that the case endings of the noun and verb will be the same! Adjectives of any declension pattern can describe nouns of any declension. Let’s use the same 2-1-2 adjective to describe the genitive singular of the third declension noun τοῦ πράγματος (“deed, act, matter, thing”). Since the noun πράγμα is neuter, we’ll need to use the neuter genitive singular ending for the adjective. Check the agreement of this noun phrase:

τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ πράγματος

πράγματος has the correct genitive singular ending for a neuter noun of the third declension; τοῦ is the correct form of the article for a neuter genitive singular; the ending -οῦ is the neuter genitive singular for second declension nouns and adjectives so the adjective form ἀγαθοῦ also agrees.

Two-ending adjectives of the second declension

Another common adjective declension uses the same endings for both masculine and feminine adjectives. Dictionary entries for this declension list only two forms: the first is masculine or feminine, and the second neuter, as in this example from your module 2 vocabulary list.

ἔξαρνος, ἔξαρνον, “denying”

In this declension, all the endings are the same as second declension nouns. Again, let’s apply your familiarity with noun endings to create noun phrases in the nominative plural:

τὰ ἔξαρνα παιδία (neuter nominative plural)
οἱ ἕξαρνοι πολίται (masculine nominative plural)
αἱ ἕξαρνοι θεράπαιναι (feminine nominative plural)

A note on English adjectives: Because English does not have endings for gender and case of nouns and even uses the same form of adjectives for both singular and plural, English lacks explicit rules about noun-adjective agreement. The adjective does not change form between one green shoe and two green shoes, an old woman or a group of old men. But note that English has interesting “ingrained” rules about the order of adjectives when there is more than one. Most native speakers of English know these rules as just what “sounds right” or “sounds wrong.” “Old green shoes” obeys these rules while “green old shoes” does not. See more in the discussion this blog post for language rules English speakers know but don’t know we know.

English language learners are sometimes asked to learn these rules about adjective order explicitly. That is a good reminder of the way in which language rules are sometimes defined for non-native-speakers (as we all are for ancient Greek) in a way that complicates the sense of a language meant to communicate.

Adjective placement: attributive and predicate positions

In these examples of adjective-noun agreement, we have looked at adjectives in the attributive position. From your introduction to the article, remember that in the attributive position the adjective is connected to its noun by an article, and forms part of a noun phrase. The article can be repeated to create this position. Both of these sentences mean “The tall woman went to the market.”

ἡ μεγάλη γυνὴ εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἦλθον.
ἡ γυνὴ ἡ μεγάλη εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἦλθον.

Aside: describing indefinite nouns. How can we attach an attributive adjective to a noun if the noun is indefinite, and does not have an article? How could we indicate that “a woman” (γυνὴ by itself, no article) was tall? One possibility is γυνὴ ἡ μεγάλη “the tall woman.”

Adjectives can also be used in the predicate position, when the adjective is not joined to the article. Recall that the predicate position creates a sentence with a linking verb like “to be.” In the sentence

ἡ γυνὴ μεγάλη ἐστίν.

the adjective is in the predicate position, and means The woman is tall. It is especially important to pay attention to this, since Greek can omit third person forms of the verb “to be.” Another way to express the same idea is simply

ἡ γυνὴ μεγάλη.

This may look too short to be sentence – there’s no verb! But once you recognize that the adjective is in attributive position, you can understand the verb “to be,” and the sentence is straightforward. μεγάλη is feminine nominative singular, and agrees with the subject ἡ γυνὴ, but since μεγάλη is in attributive position, we have a complete clause, not a noun phrase.

Adjectives used as nouns, substantive adjectives

Adjectives, and indeed any kind of modifier, can be used with the article to function as nouns. A term for this use is substantive adjectives. English does this, too. In a sentence such as “Only the good die young,” we understand “the good” to refer to “good persons,” a group that is abstract in nature. In the sentence “That’s all for the good,” we understand “the good” to refer to an abstract quality.

Ancient Greek tends to use substantive adjectives much more often than English does, though, and takes advantage of the gender and number of adjectives to express a wider variety of ideas about the understood noun. Because ancient Greek has that flexibility, to understand and translate it properly, you must supply a noun that reflects that gender and number:

ὁ ἀγαθός, masculine singular, “the good man”; οἱ ἀγαθοί masculine plural “good men,” “the good men” or “the good people” (ancient Greek defaults to the masculine when describing a group of persons of mixed gender, whether possible or actual)
ἡ ἀγαθή feminine singular, “the good woman”; αἱ ἀγαθαί feminine plural “the good women,” “good women”
τὸ ἀγαθόν neuter singular, “the good thing” or “the good” as an abstract quality; τὰ ἀγαθά “good things,” “the good things,” “goods” or “the good”. Neuter plural substantives are especially flexible in meaning and thus can be used in a variety of contexts.