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Lesson 1 index printable pages

1.4: Summary of Lesson 1

The purpose of this lesson was to present an introduction to nouns and verbs.  I added adjectives only to give minimal variety to the examples, but we will study adjectives in greater detail later on.

NOUNS

You learned about nouns  that:

· they not only change their endings to show whether they are singular or plural (i.e., they vary with respect to number)

· they also change their endings to mark their function in the sentence (i.e., they vary with respecto to case)

The ending of a noun indicates both its number and its case. In other words, we cannot obtain the plural of a noun by adding always the same ending, as we do in English when we add "s" or "es." Take, for example, the word λόγος. You need to learn in this lesson four endings:

		NUMBER
		singular	plural
CASE	nominative	λόγ-ος	λόγ-οι
	accusative	λόγ-ον	λόγ-ους

If we wish to say in Greek, e.g., The speech is long,

S V PN

we need to use the nominative λόγ-ος for the SUBJECT “speech”

and a nominative for the PREDICATE NOMINATIVE “long”: μακρ-ός.

ὁ λόγ-ος ἐστὶ μακρ-ός.

But if we mean, e.g., I hate long speeches,

S + V ....... D O.......

we need to use the accusative plural λόγ-ους for the DIRECT OBJECT “long speeches,”

ἐχθαίρω μακρ-οὺς λόγ-ους.

Observation

· I have just smuggled in an adjective, μακρ-ός. Adjectives have more endings than nouns because they need to accomodate the nouns they modify not only in number and case, but also in gender. For now, however, let us pretend that "long" only has the masculine form μακρ-ός. The accusative plural will have the same ending as λόγ-ος.

VERBS

You learned in this lesson how to conjugate the Present Indicative of a verb such as πέμπ-ω = to send. You also encountered the Present Infinitive.

The form πέμπ-ω, with which the verb is listed in the vocabulary, means "I send," but because it is used to cite the verb, the English equivalent given is our infinitive = to send. The actual infinitive of πέμπ-ω is πέμπ-ειν.

Observations

· The Present tense shows an action as happening now or an event or status as permanent.

· The Indicative mood makes a statement rather than expressing a command or a wish.

· The Infinitive is, as it were, the noun of the verb. It does not relate to a person but denotes the abstract concept of, in this example, the action of the verb. We may translate it as "to send" or "sending." Sending is, as we will see later, the English gerund.

Personal pronouns are not necessary (they may be expressed for emphasis) because each ending is exclusive of a person and a number. Here is a new chart of the Present Indicative, using this time the verb πέμπ-ω.

PRESENT INDICATIVE PRESENT INFINITIVE: πέμπ-ειν

πέμπ-ω

πέμπ-εις

πέμπ-ει

πέμπ-ο-μεν

πέμπ-ε-τε

πέμπ-ουσι(ν)