Koine Greek/9

9. The Noun

Nouns in Greek are inflected. Inflection means that a suffix which is appended to the stem is modified. In Greek the suffix is modified according to gender, case, and number.

There are three genders: Three Genders: Masculine (m.), Feminine (f.) and Neuter (n.). Substantives have grammatical gender, where gender is an inalienable property and often not correlated to physical sex. Pronouns and Adjectives modify their gender to match the gender of the substantive described.

In Greek, there are three numbers: singular, denoting a quantity of one; dual, denoting a pair; plural, denoting more than two.

In Greek there are five cases; the cases and their primary uses are tabulated below:

The Use of the Cases (all words underlined are in the case specified in the first column)
CASE	Answers the Question	Example (English)
NOMINATIVE	Who or what?	Who gave? A man.
VOCATIVE	Person called or addressed	Oh, Cornelius!
ACCUSATIVE	Whom or what?	Whom I see? A boy.
GENITIVE	Whose or whereof?	Whose gift? A man's.
DATIVE	To or for whom or what	To whom given? To a man.

The Nominative Case singular is the form given in all vocabularies and dictionaries. The method of its formation from the Stem is therefore a matter of prime importance.