Will God see them, or will they see God? medical terms with oto-. Ammonius Hermiae on the Rationality of Grammatical Gender: Ammonius Hermiae, a commentator on Aristotle from the fifth century CE, articulates the most extreme version of the perspective that grammatical gender springs from the nature of things themselves. Greek feminine refers to female qualities attributed specifically to women and girls or things considered feminine. This patternapplies to both the neuter noun and itsdefinite article. That complicates things a bit, doesnt it? In making the case, Ammonius tries to rationalize the gender of all words, and in doing so he puts forward a pervasive heteronormativity as an explanatory tool. If a Greek word ended in any other consonant, that consonant would be dropped (S 133).

county, city, road, field, justice, peace, language, concept, man, woman, god, The following tenses exist in both Modern and Ancient Greek , , (male or female) divinity. Review the persistent accent rules for nouns. The NOMINATIVEandACCUSATIVE PLURALalso must be IDENTICAL, and end in a short . We have already defined nouns in a previous lesson, but let's repeat Some nouns of thefirst declension, however, areMASCULINE, particularly those referringto a specifically male person. Declension in Ancient Greek is complex because not all nouns use the same set of endings. Yet in rendering figura and materia as gender expression and gender identity, I dont think were imposing modern ideas on ancient Rome. Thegod of light is giving back breath to thebodies. Grammatical gender is actually complex and shifting, a fact that Greek and Roman grammarians were highly conscious of. A handful of first declension nouns end in in the NOMINATIVEand ACCUSATIVESINGULAR, yet still retain in the genitive and dative singular (S 216, 221; cf. Now we add nouns that are FEMININE. Furthermore, the grammatical gender in Greek is not always linked with actual gender. A word like canis (dog) is common gender because you can say good dog as canis bonus or canis bona, whereas a word like aquila (eagle) is communal because you can only say aquila bona, even if the eagle happens to be male. S 216; GPH p. 2). ambiguous. With nouns expressing time or dimension, the accusative case indicates a length of time or space (as in Odysseus sailed for ten years); the genitive indicates time within which (as in We'll arrive within the next hour), and the dative indicates when something happened (as in There will be a test tomorrow). There are two accent rules, however, that apply to nouns of the FIRST DECLENSION, but not to thoseof the third declension. and "a" is the indefinite article. We will learn how the article One of the most commonstem endings for NEUTER nouns of the THIRDDECLENSION is .

Memorizing this table will also help you add very useful and important words to your Greek vocabulary. Let's look at Tom Hendrickson teaches Latin and English at Stanford Online High School. Note that there is no ending (!) Thethird and final grammatical gender, NEUTER, has similar endings, though with a few changes. The link is just Latin; Im not aware of an English translation. common phrase structures, this page for a list of fossilized dative forms, See the possibilities! ; Ancient Dual: . First Declension: Nominative and Accusative Singular in . A Fragment of Varro on Gender and Genus. Greek casesfunction with pronouns before Even nouns belonging to the same category do not necessarily use the same set of endings, although there are conspicuous similarities. Varros (principally) two-gender paradigm also allows for variability within the masculine and feminine genders.

Observethe following (cf. Verbs appear in a simple 3rd-person form, in "heaven". "The word" is the subject of this sentence. Use the accusative case for , water (stem -);cf. Whereas Protagorass terms, in particular the neuter as things, suggested that the category was based on the nature of the object in question, Aristotle saw it rather as a linguistic convention. phosphorescent and photo in English. There are 5 cases in Greek. It is just a difference in pronunciation. It is not necessary to learn the dual number right now, as it gradually faded from the language, and in the Classical era it was already rare. A Fragment of Protagoras, Earliest Reference to the Three Genders: The names for the genders go back at least to Protagoras, the 5th century BCE philosopher. There is only one monosyllabic first declension noun in our vocabulary list: . Except for four forms, the article is The sole attempted definition of grammatical gender is Varros etymological reasoning genus a generando (gender from generating fragment 245 Funaioli). As an example, Varro writes that the word dove (columba) was once communal, but that after doves were domesticated the males and females began to take on new roles, and the words gender then changed to reflect that differentiation (columba and columbus). With these sound changes in mind, note howand decline: Note that the vocabulary entry for our two nouns begins with . Ive also included links to open-access or public domain versions of the texts, just in case you dont happen to have your copy of Ammonius Hermiae with you at the moment. added in the NOMINATIVEand ACCUSATIVESINGULAR. (The only exceptions to this rule are and !). _______ ______ ______ _______ . The situation with moods has been largely simplified in Modern object is placed first in a Greek sentence, it places emphasis on the object, Learning the Greek Feminine displayed below is vital to the language. "even" if it appears in the right position, so it is important to What verb does "the lord" agree with? As with the masculine and feminine forms of the definite article, the neuterneeds eight forms to cover the two numbers (singular and plural) and four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative): Threerules apply to ALL NEUTERnouns in Greek, regardless of declension. Still, things could Greek text available here and English translation here. Pay careful attention to the breathing marks for the forms of Want to adapt books like this? )results in a sigma: + = . Interestingly, itis also a general rule that, unlike English, only a limited number of SOUNDSmay END A WORD OF GREEK ORIGIN: a vowel sound, or the consonants /-/- (, ). Latin obsessively genders its speakers. Nouns may be masculine, feminine, or neuter, and if you do not know the gender you understand about subjects, direct In such instances, two changes occur: Otherwise, masculine nouns follow the basic rules for all other first declension nouns. ________ ________ ________ . Neuter nouns of the THIRD DECLENSIONadd the following case endingsto their stem to indicate number and case. This discussion is in his Ars Grammatica 12; Greek text is here and English translation here. The complement to feminine is masculine. Dionysius also writes that some people add two more genders to the traditional three: a common gender (, later taken into Latin as commune) and a communal gender (, Latinized as promiscuum but sometimes just transliterated as epicoenum). Aristotle expands on his disagreement with Protagoras in Sophistical Refutations 14 and 32. , ear (stem -); cf. ________ ________ . Priscian sees each category not as a monolith but as a group of genders, since nouns can be uncertain or fluid in more than one way. decline in the chapter on pronouns. section if you have not mastered the concepts in that chapter. Why are there so few protests outside gender clinics? without making "the son" the subject. article and the noun tells whether it is used as a subject, direct object, or The link here is the same as above, but start on the bottom of page 492. The first group comprises nouns whose gender isnt quite certain, like finis (limit) and margo (edge). After all, he writes, if grammatical gender corresponded to something in the nature of things themselves, then we should expect the words for each thing to be the same gender in each language, when in fact the gender of words can vary even among the different Greek dialects. Varro on Gender Identity and Gender Expression. (Though we shouldnt expect any ancient concept to line up perfectly with modern equivalents.) or things. Add the Greek words for "the Lord" to this Another thing that will The names of men and male gods are always masculine, whereas those of women and goddesses are always feminine. In the English translation, the pronoun is "he"

singular forms: . Memorize the feminine and neuter definitive articles and the lesson vocabulary, and practicedeclining each. For the following noun forms, 1). A full understanding of Greek nouns requires us to know some Greek The links above are only a small sample of our lessons, please open the left side menu to see all links. The common gender is for words like horse (), which can take modifiers of either gender. Varro believed that grammatical gender was a matter of social convention and experience rather than nature, which means that gender can also change as our conventions and experiences change. Givethe case(s) and number(s) for each inflected form, and provide the vocabulary entry (definite article, nominative singular, genitive singular). In favor of the first interpretation, Sergius adds that only humans and animals have a gender by nature (a natura), while inanimate objects have a gender rather by tradition (ab auctoritate). 3536). way to distinguish "brother" used as a subject from article from other common words. Theseendings remainall long with the exception of the nominative plural (cf. The distinction between materia and figura are discussed in De Lingua Latina 10.11 (Latin and English available here); the examples of a man in feminine dress and a woman in masculine dress are in De Lingua Latina 10.27 (Latin and English available here). Give the proper form of its article(s), and 2). the following. Still, its clear that Greeks and Romans saw grammatical gender as an amorphous conglomeration of characteristics and tendencies related to, but not wholly defined by, biological sex. This patternapplies to both the neuter noun and itsdefinite article. Note the following inflections: Most nouns of the first declension are feminine. For a download of all the accent rules for nouns, click here: Greek Accents Nouns. Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open practices. 5. subject. twn, the answer will show "gpm, gpf, gpn". Recall that the definite article in Greek must match its noun in gender, number, and case. In favor of the second, he concludes that there are really only two genders: masculine and feminine. Grammatical gender, at its most basic, is a system of noun classes whose forms agree with other inflected words, like adjectives. Remember Black Queer and Trans Women: HIV in the South, Texas Is Now Abusing Kids In The Name Of Protecting Them. In fact, this seems to be a case where English terminology has only recently caught up with Roman notions. Yet grammatical gender is actually complex and shifting, a fact that Greek and Roman grammarians were highly conscious of. with respect to the article and a noun. Try to concentrate on the lesson and notice the pattern that occurs each time the word changes its place. From Wikibooks, open books for an open world, https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Ancient_Greek/Basic_Nouns&oldid=3693725. In the following verse, "the man" stands for This is known as declension. . there are 24 forms for it, they couldn't afford a second one. which we have translated "he" in our earlier chapters, can also mean

au-from any form of autoV, you have the corresponding form of the article. They debated whether grammatical gender was inherent in the things themselves or a product of human convention. Let us take a look at the sound changes that occur when these sigmas are added to the stems for two feminine nouns: Note that the first stem, ,endsin a dental (-/-/-). French nouns have two genders, German three, Chechen six, and Ganda ten. Priscian calls this group dubia genera, which we might translate as uncertain (questioning?) From a purely morphological perspective, we could dump the very concept of grammatical gender and call these groups noun classes, which is apparently the usual term for them in Bantu languages. For example: (answer: / ). 6. The usual three persons (1st, 2nd, only in accent. Change to its opposite number (singular to plural, plural to singular). When you run into one of these, make sure that you consider all the

no way that I can think of to place "the son" first in this sentence For each verb, give the person and number. Add the Greek.

In our last lesson, we learned endings for nouns that were masculine. let's do it! For example, the sentences "Alice sees Bob" and "Bob sees Alice" use exactly the same words, but in different orders; in the former, it is understood that Alice is the subject and Bob is the object, and in the latter, vice versa. "Jesus", and "God" are all genitive: In this Sergius hazards an explanatory theory: the name for an animal will be common if you can tell its sex by looking at it (like a dog) and communal if you cant (like an eagle). one who is betraying, and adelfonis the direct John

subscripts in the endings. 9. help you remember these is that the dative forms all have iota or iota indirect object, and word order is less significant. functions and learn how to recognize 8 of the 24 forms in this lesson. Let's get out both the singular and plural. to type all the possible meanings of some of the forms given in the above I also dont mean to suggest we should be uncritically emulating the views of ancient Greeks and Romans on gender (or really on anything). For each noun, give the case and number.

case. Nouns do not have person, so this is not relevant. As an example, Ammonius writes that seas () and bays () are feminine while rivers () are masculine, because whereas seas and bays are penetrated () by rivers, the rivers are doing the penetrating (). Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, No matter where the persistent accent of a FIRST DECLENSION noun falls, the genitive pluralis accented with a circumflex on the ultima:, The GENITIVESINGULAR uses the masculine , FIRST DECLENSION: NOMINATIVE AND ACCUSATIVE SINGULAR IN , - excellence, goodness, valor, virtue. 2, pp. In Greek, the form of the In fact, the masculine Greek, to the extent that only the indicative and the imperative (singular and plural), one does not really have to learn much. Once you're done with Greek Feminine, you might want to check the rest of our Greek lessons here: Learn Greek. These nouns you learn nouns, always learn the form of the article that goes along with it. Since the neuter adds no ending to the nominative and accusative singular, stems ending in drop the final , in order to avoid having a word end in this letter (S 258). nominative and accusative cases for these two nouns, the sentence would be Priscian on the Seven Genders of Latin. Nouns are classified into three broad categories, known as the first declension, second declension, and third declension. two words if you look at the ending. So a swallow (), for instance, will always take feminine modifiers, even if the swallow in question is male. Most nouns of the first declension end in in the singular, which becomes in the plural (S 212). nouns, the Greek subjects all have the nominative, For these nouns, the Greek direct objects all have the accusative, case: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative. The passage is De Lingua Latina 9.56, Latin and English available here. The second stem, , ends in , a stem ending thatthe Greeks treated asessentially the same as a palatal(-/-/-). This change has no meaning. "alone", you should recognize the case that is being used for these Thereason seems to bethat neuter plurals were originally conceived to becollective nouns (S 958), much asthe wordsarmy and teamare collective nouns in English. the forms it takes for the different cases: These forms are very The Greek text can be found here in the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca (vol. English is that Greek articles and nouns take different forms depending on the morphology, i.e., endings, for each tense, person, and number. differently from the English "the". Let's practice the article and noun Note the following examples: All the nouns we have so far discussed have been either masculine or feminine in gender and have used the same endings to indicate number and case. (The first page of the Greek text is upside-down, but its the only free online version of this text that I know of.). fact, this trick works for the neuter nominatives, too. building, house,land, place). (They also changed the ending of the word in the plural, just as we often do in English by adding "s".) article also takes similar forms: Except for the From pronouns to choice of name and use of adjectives, its one thing if you identify as masculine or feminine, but Latin presents real questions for non-binary speakers. This monosyllabic noun is accented like, , , i.e., the genitive plural is . below). the word autoV, On top of that, I worry that our modern pedagogical practices implicitly present students a highly essentialized vision of gender: every noun has one gender exclusively, rigid and unchanging. One of the big differences between Greek and Rather, I put together this list together simply to bring attention to the gender diversity of the Greek and Latin languages, and to the ways that Greeks and Romans conceptualized that diversity. How did the Greeks know which noun was the subject and which was the object? going to get out the gizmoagain to help you learn ), 4. The gender diversity of the Greek and Latin languages is not something I encountered in my own training in Greek and Latin. Recall that when a sigma follows a palatal, the result is the double consonant: e.g., + = (S 241). object, the one being betrayed. objects, and indirect objects. are dative: The gloss "have read" in this verse means that understand how position functions when you translate some words! The sixth-century CE grammarian Priscian provides the most extensive discussion on grammatical gender, covering thirty pages of Keils massive Grammatici Latini (vol. I suspect that the erasure of this gender diversity is not a matter of pure chance, but thats a topic for another day. GPH p. 2). 2. (For instance, he outlines five distinct types of fluid genders, and he cites an entire work De Dubiis Generibus by Probus.) 1:29if you have forgotten about the historical present. occurs twice, once as a subject, and once as a direct object: In English, there is no In each of these three letter abbreviations, the letters stand for: So in the above ________ ________ ________ . plu. In English, we use word order to determine who is doing what to whom, and Inanimate objects are not necessarily neuter: they can be either masculine, feminine, or neuter. In the first lesson, we learned a few Greek nouns: Articlesare those little words in front of the noun. III. A group consisting of only men, or both men and women, is grammatically masculine, and a group consisting of only women is grammatically feminine. There is a similar chauvinism in the Latin pedagogical tradition: the very ordering of adjectival forms as masculine/feminine/neuter (-us/-a/-um) presents a hierarchy of being masquerading as a lexicographical convenience. "we are". Aristotle on the Third Gender as In Between, and Whether Grammatical Gender is Formal or Natural. From pronouns to choice of name and use of adjectives. As with the masculine forms of the definite article, the feminine needs eight forms to cover the two numbers (singular and plural) and four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative): Most nouns have only one grammatical gender, such as: A handful of nouns referring to people or gods, however, can be either MASCULINEor FEMININE, depending on the gender of the person/divinity. So far, we have encountered onlyTHIRD DECLENSION nouns. Note, forexample, that the must be short for the accent to be able to recede to the antepenult of sea, or to allow for a circumflex over the penult oftongue, language. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, - ten thousand; countless numbers, - thing; (pl.) This is the DEFINITE ARTICLE for all NEUTERNOUNS (S 332; GPH p. 41). The comment only survives as quoted in other authors, which leaves open the question of whether Varro is suggesting that only animate objects can have gender, or that gender is a function of heteronormative male/female procreation. nouns. declined exactly like autoV, which you learned to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. 8. different forms to show the function that they play in a sentence. circumstances, affairs, business, - circumstances, property (only occurs in the plural!). drastically change its meaning, e.g. Remember that whena definite article accompanies a noun, bothmust parse the same. Here is the number, gender, and case: When a noun is a subject, it appears in the nominative, and agrees Ancient Greek also had a dual number, which, in its earliest attestations, was used instead of the plural when there were exactly two of something. 3. 5. The article will also need to be plural: subjects, direct The rulers are not giving hope and money to the offspring. of a noun, you will not know what grammatical forms it will take. And now let's try it in the other direction: You have already encountered the Greek word people in general. Im not aware of an English translation. be worse: in Ancient Greek, there was a third voice: Back to the main Greek language page, Click here for a table listing the most The passages on this list come largely from Marcin Kilarskis book Nominal Classification, which I highly recommend. GPH p. 4): In Attic and Koine Greek, when a first declension noun has a stem ending in , or , appears instead of in all cases in the singular (e.g. In English, word order and prepositions are used to indicate the roles that nouns play in sentences. Greek nouns, like Greek pronouns, change form to 2. Below is a list of objects, can you determine whether they're feminine, masculine or plural in Greek? Important: When a noun is indicated in the dictionary or in the vocabulary of a textbook such as this, usually both its nominative singular and genitive singular forms are given. brothers" if the verse said that they have all read the letter? The NOMINATIVEandACCUSATIVESINGULAR must be IDENTICAL. ________ ________ ________ . nouns make it clear that adelfoVis the subject, the Note that some of the forms of the article are For the following sentences, provide the correct masculine, feminine, or neuterdefinite article to accompanyeach noun (i.e, match each noun in gender, number, and case). Since the window on the flashcards is too small This lesson introduces FIRST DECLENSION nouns. Ancient Greek, like many other languages, has nouns of different genders. Memorize also the lesson vocabulary, and practice declining -; , ; , ; -. Latin obsessively genders its speakers. (However, some pronouns, e.g., the personal pronouns, do have genders in the when used as a subject, but "him" when used as an object. Where is the verb that agrees with "the word"?

If you do not understand the function of the