Cases

Polycarp66 at aol.com Polycarp66 at aol.com
Sun Dec 26 01:48:41 EST 1999


In a message dated 12/25/99 3:34:32 PM Central Daylight Time, BGREEKNW at cs.com 
writes:

<< Thanks for the help on my last question. My next question concerns "cases" 
in 
 Greek grammar. On page 46 number 201 of Herbert Weir Smyths' Greek Grammar 
he 
 says that there are "five cases: nomative, genetive, dative, accusative, and 
 vocative. The genitive denotes "from" as well as "of", the dative denotes 
 "to" or "for" and also "by", "with","on","at", ect. 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? >>

First,  unless you are speaking of a participle or an infinitive (which 
doesn't have a case in any event), you are confusing nouns and verbs.  A 
participle is a sort of noun in any event.  Nouns have cases; verbs have 
tenses.

The genitive became the most widely used of the cases.  It designates 
possession, origin, composition, agency, and many other functions  Learn it 
thoroughly.  

The dative is roughly equivalent to our indirect object.

The accusative generally represents what we call the direct object in English 
(there is no one-to-one correspondence though).  

The vocative is a form of address.  If I were to say, "John, please bring me 
a pen", "John" would be a vocative.

This is greatly oversimplified, but you need to learn the basics first.

george



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