Greek nouns
“Noun” is a part of speech. The ancient Greek word for noun is ὄνομα, which means “name.” Nouns name a person, animal, place, or thing (whether that “thing” is concrete or abstract).
In a clause or sentence, nouns can fulfill various functions. A noun might be the subject of the verb: the person, place, or thing doing the action the verb represents. A noun might be the object of the the verb, the recipient of the verb’s action, or the indirect (or secondary) object of that action. A noun might further describe another noun, or be paired with a preposition to act adjectivally or adverbially. It may decribe the means by which the action of the verb happens. Or it might name the addressee of the sentence.
In ancient Greek, the function of the noun is represented by its case, and the case is indicated by the ending attached to the noun’s stem. We have already seen that endings provide a great deal of information in a verb form, and the same is true for nouns. Identifying the case of a noun is key to understanding how it is functioning in that particular sentence.
Overview of nouns
All ancient Greek nouns have three properties: gender, case, and number.
- Every noun belongs to one of three grammatical genders. Although the grammatical genders are named masculine, feminine, and neuter, these are arbitrary linguistic categories, not biological gender. (We will see how ancient Greek grammarians thought about biological and grammatical gender in this module’s section on “Ancient Greek in Action.”) There is no particular reason that the noun for “law”, νόμος, is masculine, but the noun for “lawsuit”, δίκη, is feminine.
- Case indicates the function of a noun in a sentence. Cases are expressed and identified by endings. There are five cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative. In this module we will look at some of the most important functions indicated by the nominative, genitive, dative and accusative cases.
- Noun forms have the same three numbers as verb forms: singular, plural, and dual. Dual is a less common number used for two nouns considered a pair, such as eyes, hands, oxen yoked together, twin brothers. In our readings this year, we will see only one instance of the dual, and so we will not include the dual in the forms we will be learning.
Dictionary entry of nouns
The dictionary entry of a noun concisely encodes all the information you need to know in order to produce all of its cases and numbers. The first part tells you its nominative singular form, the second part is its genitive singular form, and the third part indirectly tells you its gender(s) by giving you the nominative singular form of the article. We’ll learn all the forms of the article in the course of this module, but the nominative singular forms are ὁ for masculine, ἡ for feminine and τό for neuter.
Examples of dictionary entries
The following vocabulary entries are included in the required vocabulary list for this module. Let’s unpack their information more fully:
- δίκη, δίκης, ἡ “order, right, judgment, lawsuit”
- νόμος, νόμου, ὁ “law, custom”
The first noun has the meaning “order, right, judgment, lawsuit.” Its nominative singular form is δίκη; the genitive singular form is δίκης; all of its forms are feminine.
The second noun has the meaning “law, custom.” Its nominative singular form is νόμος; the genitive singular form is νόμου; all of its forms are masculine.
You’ll also see this entry in the Module 2 vocabulary list:
- ἄνθρωπος, ἀνθρώπου, ὁ or ἡ “person, human being”
Listing the article as “ὁ or ἡ” means that the noun can be either grammatically mascuine or grammatically feminine.
Declension
We use the term declension to refer to a group of nouns that share the same set of endings. In ancient Greek, there are three declensions of nouns which scholars of ancient Greek creatively refer to as the first, second and third declension. You can recognize the declension of a noun by looking at the gender and endings of its dictionary forms, the nominative and genitive singular.
The first declension
First declension nouns may be either masculine or feminine.
Feminine nouns that have genitive singular forms ending in -ης or -ας belong to the first declension. Examples:
- δίκη, δίκης, ἡ “order, right, judgment, lawsuit”
- θύρα, θύρας, ἡ “door”
Masculine nouns that have genitive singular forms ending in -ου and nominative singular ending in -ης or -ας belong to the first declension. Example:
- πολίτης, πολίτου, ὁ “citizen”
The second declension
Second declension nouns may be masculine, feminine or neuter.
Masculine or feminine nouns that have genitive singular forms ending in -ου and nominative singular ending in -ος belong to the second declension. Example:
- θάνατος, θανάτου, ὁ “death”
- ὁδός, ὁδοῦ, ἡ “way, road”
Neuter nouns that have genitive singular forms ending in -ου and nominative singular ending in -ον belong to the second declension. Example:
- παιδίον, παιδίου, τό “young child” or “young enslaved person”
The third declension
Third declension nouns may be either masculine, feminine or neuter. The hallmark of the third declension is a genitive singular ending in -ος. Example:
- πράγμα, πράγματος, τό “deed, act, matter, thing”