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Excuse me for not stating this in the edit summary when I created this article: but the text has been cut out from the main article, Ancient Greek. Please see the history page of that article if you want to contact its original author(s). Caesarion 10:24, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with User:Jriddy about the terminology with respect to "Perfect"/"Perfective"/"Aorist". See Perfective aspect, which explains the ambiguity, and also compare the new article on (modern) Greek grammar, which uses "Perfective" in the same sense. In modern linguistic terminology (e.g. B. Comrie, Aspect), "Perfective" is typically distinguished from "Perfect" and used to describe categories like the Aorist. Lukas (T.| @) 06:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Could people interested in this article please have a look at a discussion I instigated at Talk:Greek language, regarding a proposed restructuring of the whole series of Greek-related language articles. Thanks! Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
The order of cases is nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative. Latin adds the ablative after the accusative. Some ancient languages such as Old English and some others generally have the same accusative as nominative and so they are put together: nom. - acc. That is only true in Greek of the neuter gender, so they are not generally put together, unless you are mentioning only the neuter. The current arrangement as of this date in this article is an innovation of presentation, an original work. So, unless given some excellent reasons, when I get to this article I am going to change it to the standard to avoid confusion. Dave 18:22, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Doesn't the normal/Greek grammar play any role in this? Shouldn't the grammar that is actually used by Greece be referenced as well, so that people know that the American system is in fact the Greek one -- LightningLighting ( talk) 21:50, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Where do you get that stuff? What happened to the third declension? Well, what about mater and pater and daimon and geron and polis and all the other material you find in the back summary of Chase and Phillips and most other beginning texts in the states? Are you in the states? Is this your work? Well, what I am really trying to say is, should we not stick to the basic concepts, an a declension, an o declension and a consonant declension or consonant declensions, using first, second and third to connect with Latin and all those texts that use first, second and third? I guess the bottom line is, it is not good to jump right into the more technical stuff without a sentence or two defining or pointing to the definitions of your terms. I would, for example, place links on terms such as labial. That way we can make this set of articles more of interest to the general reader, so he won't think he is so stupid he cannot learn Greek. As an example, I point to Buck, Greek Dialects. He starts out talking about consonant stems in general. Then he goes to s, i consonental, u consonental, missing digamma, irregulars. More of a flow there. More complete. Still, Buck is not very explanatory and elemental. Dave 18:42, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
I too found this treatment of the third declension very lame. Moreover, I'd like to see someone more knowledgeable tackling with all the crazy divergence in phonetic nomenclature circling round the consonants, which will drive to tears any student dealing with the third declension in different grammars, particularly grammars in different languages. For instance, Georg Curtius puts daimon with the dentals; with Goodwin a whole other matter etc. Has any grammarian made something out of this mess?
201.19.179.56 00:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
This article is on the whole inaccurate, incomplete, disorganized. I've pointed out a few things before. The order of cases is not the standard. The consonant declension is rendered as the labial and the velar declensions as though they had something to do with labio-velars. Take a look at Smyth's grammar, will you? Then there is that absurd discussion about the perfect and perfective aspects. And, some of the Greek is in Greek letters and some in English. The article keeps getting longer and longer without any apparent plan.
We can't write a grammar here. There is not enough space! It seems to me what we want is one of those thumbnail sketches, which tell you what the language has and then gives a few examples. All of Smyth is on the Internet and also Goodwin. We need a good summarizer, someone who can pick out the essentials and compare it to other languages, such as Latin. This is not the place to rewrite Greek grammar. We want to summarize the standard concepts, not innovate a new grammar. Dave 01:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Where the hell are the rest of the consonantic third declensions? What's up with this mad treatment of the morphology? Have the people who worked here even been educated in Greek? This article is bad to the very commas. 201.19.212.228 21:28, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
These are some problems I've found:
And surely there's more. -- Neigel von Teighen 18:20, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be much here in the way of syntax—in other words, the way the language works. My (admittedly rather hasty first) impression is that too much emphasis has been placed on morphology.
One feature in particular that I was looking for was the extensive use of participles, since this is very characteristic of Ancient Greek & more or less absent in the modern language. Simple examples would be:
Whole volumes, I know, could be written on the use of particles; but some mention of them, at least, should be made here. The commonest include good old μέν and δέ of course; but there are also γάρ, οὖν, γε, δή, τοι, κτλ.
I think that some discussion of these topics might breathe some life into what would otherwise remain a dead language! -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 09:49, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm asking this purely out of curiosity, not to put anyone down. But where did people get this? Of course the third declension is not composed simply of labial and velar stems. Is this crazy division being taught anywhere, or reproduced in grammars? Did this come from some New Testament Greek primer? 201.19.135.117 00:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
The English on this page is poor enough to leave one wondering what is intended.
"When the subject of the infinitive is the same with (as) the subject of the verb(,) then the subject of the infinitive is formed with (in) the nominative (case),. (kill this run-on sentence!!) while (W)hen the subjects are different, the subject of the infinitive is formed with (in) the accusative case. When the subject of the infinitive is at (in the) nominative (case), most times it is (usually) omitted."
Perhaps the author doesn't realize that a verb can be in an infinitive form? What is the second verb to which he refers? When is the subject of a helping verb different from the infinitive? Perhaps I'm just confused and under-educated. If so, comments would be appreciated.
I'm going to do some very basic editing of the English grammar. I appreciate that this was written by someone whose mother-tongue is not English, but the English should be comprehensible.
-Heather Ceana
It is the rule in Greek (unlike in English) for the first letter of a sentence to be lowercase (except, of course, when the first word is a name), and for only the first letter of a full paragraph to be capitalized. I have changed all the Greek sentences accordingly.
If other people think it would be more useful for the Greek in an English article to follow English capitalization, they may revert the change back. Erutuon ( talk) 21:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure this is untrue. I've never seen it in my Greek textbooks, or any Greek book I've ever read for that matter. Not even in the Ancient Greek textbook.
LightningLighting ( talk) 21:54, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
I'd say that calling case-endings "suffixes" is a bad idea. While in English there is littler to no difference between a suffix and a case-ending (because most of the inflection has been lost altogether), in other languages there is a very clear distinction between 'a suffix' and a 'case-ending' (or 'an inflection').
In fusional/inflecting languages, a suffix is a stable element that is either or not added to, e. g., nouns. A case-ending is always there (in IDE, at least). So maybe we should have some second thoughts about that.
Cheers, Rokas -- RokasT ( talk) 20:49, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Article reads: 'The specific infinitive is applied in every tense and is translated in English as a dependent clause, optionally introduced by "that...".' How it is translated into English is a quirk of English grammar, unrelated to Greek grammar. For example, English allows "They consider Socrates to be wise", but not *"They say Socrates to be wise". -- macrakis ( talk) 20:49, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
In the 8th. century B.C., Greek had ablative, locative and instrumental endings, not merely meanings, in a few words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.34.29 ( talk) 08:10, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Spiritus asper only before υ and ρ? What then about hepta, holos, hippos and other vowels? Did the über-old Greex forget asper before ε, ο and ι? ... said: Rursus ( mbork³) 22:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
This has been left in my talkpage:
I guess a lot of work has gone into the article, and I'd sincerely like to applaud and thank everyone for the effort, but still there are some things to consider:
-- BjKa ( talk) 14:44, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
Moved from the "cleanup" section at the top of the page ( added by User:84.161.62.213:
Sounds like a good idea, although the article lead says it's about morphology, not syntax (like many traditional grammars). -- Macrakis ( talk) 23:07, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
I have deleted the overly-detailed notes on the infinitive. Though everything in them may be correct, they have no business here in a general article on Ancient Greek Grammar. I suggest that if the author wishes, he should put them in a separate article on the Ancient Greek infinitive. Even as it is, this article goes into far too much detail about, for example, exactly which verbs can govern an infinitive; but with the addition of all this extra highly technical material, it becomes absurd. Kanjuzi ( talk) 01:17, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
I have similarly deleted the overly-technical notes on various rare uses of the participle. I suggest these should go in a separate article if required. I note also that the material seems to come from the author's own observations, without being referenced to any standard textbook. Kanjuzi ( talk) 01:25, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
The view expressed in the article that there are 'four' tenses in Greek (that is, lumping the Present and Imperfect into one, and the Perfect and Pluperfect into another) is unorthodox. Goodwin (1894, p. 91); Smyth (1920, p. 107); Coderch (2012, pp. 101-2) all say there are 'seven' tenses; and Abbott & Mansfield (1977 [1893], p. 102) give six tenses (not including the Future Perfect). I suggest that the formulation given in the present article is confusing for people wishing to know about the basics of Greek and should be rewritten. Kanjuzi ( talk) 19:07, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
An anonymous editor insists that "corn" is not a correct translation of σῖτος, but that it should be "wheat". However, it is only in America that "corn" means "maize". In the rest of the world it means grain of various sorts. LSJ [3] in fact do not give "wheat" as a translation of σῖτος (which could include barley as well as wheat). So I think "corn" should stand. Kanjuzi ( talk) 05:27, 5 November 2016 (UTC) – No, σῖτος doesn't really mean "wheat or barley". There are perfectly good words for "wheat and barley", namely πυροὶ καὶ κριθαί. It's like saying that "fruit" means "apples" or "bananas". Apples and bananas are kinds of fruit, but the word "fruit" does not mean "apples". There is nothing wrong with the word "corn", which has been used in English for centuries to mean grains of different kinds. When you read of "corn" in the Bible (e.g. Psalm 4:7), do you suppose it is referring to maize? Kanjuzi ( talk) 19:00, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
Why is there no section about Ancient Greek Pronouns? There is a pretty big part of the grammar missing this way. Merijn2 ( talk) 20:58, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Our article Accusative and infinitive mentions Greek but gives no information. It should probably have a Greek section before the Latin section. Are there any Greek scholars here who would feel up to doing that? Doric Loon ( talk) 14:39, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
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![]() | Text and/or other creative content from this version of Ancient Greek grammar was copied or moved into Participle (Ancient Greek) with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
![]() | Text and/or other creative content from this version of Ancient Greek grammar was copied or moved into Infinitive (Ancient Greek) with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
Excuse me for not stating this in the edit summary when I created this article: but the text has been cut out from the main article, Ancient Greek. Please see the history page of that article if you want to contact its original author(s). Caesarion 10:24, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with User:Jriddy about the terminology with respect to "Perfect"/"Perfective"/"Aorist". See Perfective aspect, which explains the ambiguity, and also compare the new article on (modern) Greek grammar, which uses "Perfective" in the same sense. In modern linguistic terminology (e.g. B. Comrie, Aspect), "Perfective" is typically distinguished from "Perfect" and used to describe categories like the Aorist. Lukas (T.| @) 06:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Could people interested in this article please have a look at a discussion I instigated at Talk:Greek language, regarding a proposed restructuring of the whole series of Greek-related language articles. Thanks! Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
The order of cases is nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative. Latin adds the ablative after the accusative. Some ancient languages such as Old English and some others generally have the same accusative as nominative and so they are put together: nom. - acc. That is only true in Greek of the neuter gender, so they are not generally put together, unless you are mentioning only the neuter. The current arrangement as of this date in this article is an innovation of presentation, an original work. So, unless given some excellent reasons, when I get to this article I am going to change it to the standard to avoid confusion. Dave 18:22, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Doesn't the normal/Greek grammar play any role in this? Shouldn't the grammar that is actually used by Greece be referenced as well, so that people know that the American system is in fact the Greek one -- LightningLighting ( talk) 21:50, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Where do you get that stuff? What happened to the third declension? Well, what about mater and pater and daimon and geron and polis and all the other material you find in the back summary of Chase and Phillips and most other beginning texts in the states? Are you in the states? Is this your work? Well, what I am really trying to say is, should we not stick to the basic concepts, an a declension, an o declension and a consonant declension or consonant declensions, using first, second and third to connect with Latin and all those texts that use first, second and third? I guess the bottom line is, it is not good to jump right into the more technical stuff without a sentence or two defining or pointing to the definitions of your terms. I would, for example, place links on terms such as labial. That way we can make this set of articles more of interest to the general reader, so he won't think he is so stupid he cannot learn Greek. As an example, I point to Buck, Greek Dialects. He starts out talking about consonant stems in general. Then he goes to s, i consonental, u consonental, missing digamma, irregulars. More of a flow there. More complete. Still, Buck is not very explanatory and elemental. Dave 18:42, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
I too found this treatment of the third declension very lame. Moreover, I'd like to see someone more knowledgeable tackling with all the crazy divergence in phonetic nomenclature circling round the consonants, which will drive to tears any student dealing with the third declension in different grammars, particularly grammars in different languages. For instance, Georg Curtius puts daimon with the dentals; with Goodwin a whole other matter etc. Has any grammarian made something out of this mess?
201.19.179.56 00:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
This article is on the whole inaccurate, incomplete, disorganized. I've pointed out a few things before. The order of cases is not the standard. The consonant declension is rendered as the labial and the velar declensions as though they had something to do with labio-velars. Take a look at Smyth's grammar, will you? Then there is that absurd discussion about the perfect and perfective aspects. And, some of the Greek is in Greek letters and some in English. The article keeps getting longer and longer without any apparent plan.
We can't write a grammar here. There is not enough space! It seems to me what we want is one of those thumbnail sketches, which tell you what the language has and then gives a few examples. All of Smyth is on the Internet and also Goodwin. We need a good summarizer, someone who can pick out the essentials and compare it to other languages, such as Latin. This is not the place to rewrite Greek grammar. We want to summarize the standard concepts, not innovate a new grammar. Dave 01:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Where the hell are the rest of the consonantic third declensions? What's up with this mad treatment of the morphology? Have the people who worked here even been educated in Greek? This article is bad to the very commas. 201.19.212.228 21:28, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
These are some problems I've found:
And surely there's more. -- Neigel von Teighen 18:20, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be much here in the way of syntax—in other words, the way the language works. My (admittedly rather hasty first) impression is that too much emphasis has been placed on morphology.
One feature in particular that I was looking for was the extensive use of participles, since this is very characteristic of Ancient Greek & more or less absent in the modern language. Simple examples would be:
Whole volumes, I know, could be written on the use of particles; but some mention of them, at least, should be made here. The commonest include good old μέν and δέ of course; but there are also γάρ, οὖν, γε, δή, τοι, κτλ.
I think that some discussion of these topics might breathe some life into what would otherwise remain a dead language! -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 09:49, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm asking this purely out of curiosity, not to put anyone down. But where did people get this? Of course the third declension is not composed simply of labial and velar stems. Is this crazy division being taught anywhere, or reproduced in grammars? Did this come from some New Testament Greek primer? 201.19.135.117 00:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
The English on this page is poor enough to leave one wondering what is intended.
"When the subject of the infinitive is the same with (as) the subject of the verb(,) then the subject of the infinitive is formed with (in) the nominative (case),. (kill this run-on sentence!!) while (W)hen the subjects are different, the subject of the infinitive is formed with (in) the accusative case. When the subject of the infinitive is at (in the) nominative (case), most times it is (usually) omitted."
Perhaps the author doesn't realize that a verb can be in an infinitive form? What is the second verb to which he refers? When is the subject of a helping verb different from the infinitive? Perhaps I'm just confused and under-educated. If so, comments would be appreciated.
I'm going to do some very basic editing of the English grammar. I appreciate that this was written by someone whose mother-tongue is not English, but the English should be comprehensible.
-Heather Ceana
It is the rule in Greek (unlike in English) for the first letter of a sentence to be lowercase (except, of course, when the first word is a name), and for only the first letter of a full paragraph to be capitalized. I have changed all the Greek sentences accordingly.
If other people think it would be more useful for the Greek in an English article to follow English capitalization, they may revert the change back. Erutuon ( talk) 21:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure this is untrue. I've never seen it in my Greek textbooks, or any Greek book I've ever read for that matter. Not even in the Ancient Greek textbook.
LightningLighting ( talk) 21:54, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
I'd say that calling case-endings "suffixes" is a bad idea. While in English there is littler to no difference between a suffix and a case-ending (because most of the inflection has been lost altogether), in other languages there is a very clear distinction between 'a suffix' and a 'case-ending' (or 'an inflection').
In fusional/inflecting languages, a suffix is a stable element that is either or not added to, e. g., nouns. A case-ending is always there (in IDE, at least). So maybe we should have some second thoughts about that.
Cheers, Rokas -- RokasT ( talk) 20:49, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Article reads: 'The specific infinitive is applied in every tense and is translated in English as a dependent clause, optionally introduced by "that...".' How it is translated into English is a quirk of English grammar, unrelated to Greek grammar. For example, English allows "They consider Socrates to be wise", but not *"They say Socrates to be wise". -- macrakis ( talk) 20:49, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
In the 8th. century B.C., Greek had ablative, locative and instrumental endings, not merely meanings, in a few words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.34.29 ( talk) 08:10, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Spiritus asper only before υ and ρ? What then about hepta, holos, hippos and other vowels? Did the über-old Greex forget asper before ε, ο and ι? ... said: Rursus ( mbork³) 22:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
This has been left in my talkpage:
I guess a lot of work has gone into the article, and I'd sincerely like to applaud and thank everyone for the effort, but still there are some things to consider:
-- BjKa ( talk) 14:44, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
Moved from the "cleanup" section at the top of the page ( added by User:84.161.62.213:
Sounds like a good idea, although the article lead says it's about morphology, not syntax (like many traditional grammars). -- Macrakis ( talk) 23:07, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
I have deleted the overly-detailed notes on the infinitive. Though everything in them may be correct, they have no business here in a general article on Ancient Greek Grammar. I suggest that if the author wishes, he should put them in a separate article on the Ancient Greek infinitive. Even as it is, this article goes into far too much detail about, for example, exactly which verbs can govern an infinitive; but with the addition of all this extra highly technical material, it becomes absurd. Kanjuzi ( talk) 01:17, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
I have similarly deleted the overly-technical notes on various rare uses of the participle. I suggest these should go in a separate article if required. I note also that the material seems to come from the author's own observations, without being referenced to any standard textbook. Kanjuzi ( talk) 01:25, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
The view expressed in the article that there are 'four' tenses in Greek (that is, lumping the Present and Imperfect into one, and the Perfect and Pluperfect into another) is unorthodox. Goodwin (1894, p. 91); Smyth (1920, p. 107); Coderch (2012, pp. 101-2) all say there are 'seven' tenses; and Abbott & Mansfield (1977 [1893], p. 102) give six tenses (not including the Future Perfect). I suggest that the formulation given in the present article is confusing for people wishing to know about the basics of Greek and should be rewritten. Kanjuzi ( talk) 19:07, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
An anonymous editor insists that "corn" is not a correct translation of σῖτος, but that it should be "wheat". However, it is only in America that "corn" means "maize". In the rest of the world it means grain of various sorts. LSJ [3] in fact do not give "wheat" as a translation of σῖτος (which could include barley as well as wheat). So I think "corn" should stand. Kanjuzi ( talk) 05:27, 5 November 2016 (UTC) – No, σῖτος doesn't really mean "wheat or barley". There are perfectly good words for "wheat and barley", namely πυροὶ καὶ κριθαί. It's like saying that "fruit" means "apples" or "bananas". Apples and bananas are kinds of fruit, but the word "fruit" does not mean "apples". There is nothing wrong with the word "corn", which has been used in English for centuries to mean grains of different kinds. When you read of "corn" in the Bible (e.g. Psalm 4:7), do you suppose it is referring to maize? Kanjuzi ( talk) 19:00, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
Why is there no section about Ancient Greek Pronouns? There is a pretty big part of the grammar missing this way. Merijn2 ( talk) 20:58, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Our article Accusative and infinitive mentions Greek but gives no information. It should probably have a Greek section before the Latin section. Are there any Greek scholars here who would feel up to doing that? Doric Loon ( talk) 14:39, 23 April 2024 (UTC)