Cases
Paul J. Bodin
pjbodin at sirius.com
Sat Dec 25 16:18:42 EST 1999
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
On Sat, 25 Dec 1999 13:22:56 EST, BGREEKNW at cs.com wrote:
> The other cases are used
> in Latin." Since I do not know Latin could someone clarify these for me and
> the Dative and Genetive as well.
> Do these represent past present and future cases of the word? and if so what
> then is the aorist used for?
Although my copy of Smyth is at the office and not accessible, I
suspect the text is "the other cases are used _as_ in Latin," or
something to that effect. The remaining cases are the nominative,
accusative and vocative, as Smyth has briefly discussed the genetive
and the dative.
Case is a quality ascribed to a noun; the temporal features you mention
are normally expressed through the verb. In an inflected language such
as Greek, the noun is "declined" to express different nominal ideas,
different grammatical functions in a larger grammatical unit such as a
phrase, clause or sentence.
The nominative case marks the use of the noun to express the nominative
idea--to name an object, a person, a place, etc. Thus the nominative
case is used, among other things, to mark the subject of a sentence or
clause.
The accusative case is most often used to express the direct object of
a transitive verb. It may also serve as the object of a preposition or
in an absolute construction, so you can't count on an accusative noun
being the direct object, but it is a good working assumption at the
start.
The vocative case is used in direct address. When I speak to you and
call you by name, in good classical Greek I would normally use the
vocative case. The vocative is not very frequently used in Koine
Greek, so you won't often see it in the Bible--but it is there and must
be discussed for completeness.
------
Paul J. Bodin <pjbodin at sirius.com> http://www.sirius.com/~pjbodin
For PGP public key click http://www.sirius.com/~pjbodin/mykey.txt
or check your favorite keyserver
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPsdk version 1.0 (C) 1997 Pretty Good Privacy, Inc
iQB1AwUBOGU0svgoFkdd29RxAQH62AMAlypjrj+GimayXzMS1uZ6S6V15uaRCBD6
/sKfZ2/XXPhTy17oH67cETv05TuumOMKYQBEtBDzjOtsoD3E+V5aqKrDCs7r+reL
vjCrhoOtGzPoieoF+RrooSZWYsMDvvqe
=Emmk
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list