GRAMMATICAL INTRODUCTION

In an English dictionary one will not find an entry “horses”; every user of the dictionary is supposed to know that “horses” is the plural of “horse”, or that failing to find “horses” in the dictionary, he will go to “horse” and know what the difference is between “horse” and “horses”.

In Greek there are three kinds of words which have a (sometimes large) number of different forms which will not all be found in the dictionaries, but for which the reader will be referred to one head word (also known as source word) and supposed to be able to derive the rest from this head form. The three kinds are: 1) substantives, 2) adjectives, 3) verbs.

1) Any Greek substantive noun (such as English horse, thing, goodness ) shows many more forms than the average English one; the differences occur in the endings. The divers forms are coupled to the sbs’s function in the sentence. For instance “A father knows his son.” may be expressed in Greek by “Πατὴρ τὸν υἱὸν ἔγνωκεν.”, whilst “A son knows his father.” may be translated “Υἱὸς τὸν πατέρα ἔγνωκεν.” In the first example “father” is the subject of the sentence, in the second it is the object. “A son procures a livelihood for his father.”, where “father” is indirect object, may be translated “Υἱὸς τῷ πατρὶ βίον παρέχει.”, whereas “A son takes care of his father’s livelihood.” would be translated “Υἱὸς τὸν τοῦ πατρὸς βίον κομίζει.” Finally, “Father, procure your son a livelihood.” becomes “῏Ω πάτερ, τῷ υἱῷ βίον πάρεχε.” This exhausts the singular forms of πατήρ. The names of the forms are, consecutively, Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive and Vocative. In the plural there is no separate form for the V, the N being used when addressing. Obviously it would be physically impossible for each word to have a completely individual set of endings (the declension). There are three sets of endings (with variations inside each set), one of which is assumed by every sbs; the word for son clearly follows another set of case endings than father. [Very rarely sbs's follow more than one declination.]

2) Adjective nouns (such as English big, red, good) also show a multiplicity of different forms, even more than sbs’s, but the rules which govern the taking on of endings are very different from those concerning sbs’s. To show that an adj qualifies a sbs there is the principle of congruence (or agreement): the adj must assume one particular ending;

the N of πατήρ, for instance, necessitates an adjectival ending different from the G and so forth, also for the plural. Furthermore Greek sbs’s belong to one of three genders, either Masculine,Feminine or Neuter and each of these genders may command a different form of the adj. So “A good father”, “A good mother” and “A good slave” are expressed by Πατὴρ ἀγαθός, Μήτηρ ἀγαθή and ᾿Ανδράποδον ἀγαθόν. This principle would generate 27 different forms of the adj (5 cases sg, 4 cases pl times 3 genders), but there is some overlap.