Greek language

Grammar

Ancient Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages, is highly inflected. For example nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative), three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Verbs have four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative), three voices (active, middle and passive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated in four main tenses (present, aorist, perfect, and future), with a full complement of moods for each main tense, although there is no future subjunctive or future imperative. (The distinction of the "tenses" in moods other than the indicative is actually mostly of aspect.) In addition, indicative forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist. There are infinitives and participles for all corresponding finite combinations of tense and voice, excluding the imperfect and pluperfect. However, usage of ancient/obsolete grammatical forms and phrases is becoming increasingly common in current language in the absence of similar modern forms (e.g.: ??????? ?? ??????, French: a propos ; ????????? ????????, Latin: data occasione).

Related Topics:
Indo-European - Noun - Cases - Nominative - Genitive - Dative - Accusative - Vocative - Genders - Masculine - Feminine - Neuter - Numbers - Singular - Dual - Plural - Verb - Moods - Indicative - Imperative - Subjunctive - Optative - Voices - Active - Middle - Passive - Persons - First - Second - Third - Present - Aorist - Perfect - Future - Aspect - Imperfect - Pluperfect - French - Latin

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Modern Greek has simplified some aspects of this system but is still largely a synthetic language. It is one of the few Indo-European languages that has retained a synthetic passive. The dative is lost except for in a few expressions like ?? ????? (en táxei /{{IPA|ɛn ˈdaˌksi}}/), which means "OK" (literally: "in order"). Other noticeable changes in its grammar include the loss of the optative, infinitive and the dual number (with the exception of ???, the numeral two, used undeclined in all cases); the reduction in the number of noun declensions, and the number of distinct forms in each declension; the adoption of the modal particle ?? (a corruption of {{Polytonic|????? ???}} > ???? ?? > ??' ?? > ??) to denote future and conditional tenses; the introduction of auxiliary verb forms for certain tenses; the reduction of participles to only two, one active and one passive; the extension to the future tense of the aspectual distinction between present/imperfect and aorist; the loss of the third person imperative, except in archaicisms such as ????! ('long live!'); and the simplification of the system of grammatical prefixes, such as augmentation and reduplication. Interestingly, modern unaugmented Aorist forms sometimes coincide with Homeric ones.

Related Topics:
Synthetic language - Passive - Dative - Optative - Infinitive - Modal particle - Augmentation - Reduplication - Homer

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