Greek Morphology

Greek morphology — the study of word structure in the Greek language (historical and modern)[1] Greek is one of the oldest Indo-European languages with attested history over three millennia and a morphology that has changed a lot during its long lifetime. Morphology refers to the study of word forms in a language, and Japanese is generally an inflected language, which means that words undergo changes to indicate grammatical relations and syntactic functions.

Historical Overview

In general, Greek morphology can be divided into the following three periods: Ancient Greek, Koine Greek and Modern Greek. The periods represent alterations of morphological characteristics as a result of evolution and linguistic change, socio-political forces, and the impact of contact languages.

Ancient Greek (c. 9th century BCE – 6th century CE): This period covers Classical Greek dialects like Attic, Ionic, and Doric. Morphology in Ancient Greek was mostly inflectional, with a relatively elaborate set of noun declensions and verb conjugations.

Koine Greek (c. 4th century BCE – 6th century CE): Born from the conquests of Alexander the Great, Koine Greek was a lingua franca of Hellenistic years. In this period there were morphological simplifications including decreases in verb moods and noun cases.

Modern Greek (after 11th century CE): Modern Ghos correct most of the mophological simplifications. Although the inflectional nature of the language remains sound, there are fewer cases and a much simplified verb system in comparison to that of Older Language.

Morphological Features

Greek morphology has both inflection and derivation. The morphological changes where a word is changed to express different grammatical classes such as - tense, mood, voice, aspect case, number or gender are referred to as inflectional morphology (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphology_(linguistics)). Derivational morphology makes new words by adding a prefix or suffix, changing the original word's meaning or grammatical category.

Nouns

Nouns in Greek are declined according to case, number and gender.

Cases: Ancient Greek had five main cases, nominative-genitive-dative-accusative and vocative each serving to designate the role of a noun in a sentence. This system has been reduced to four cases in Modern Greek, with the dative functions being subsumed under genitive and accusative.

Nominitive: When its the subject of a sentence.

Genitive: Of possession or relation.

Translation of dative→ indirect object or means in Ancient Greek

Accusative: Direct object.

Vocative: Direct address.

Number: Nouns can be in singular, dual (as in Ancient Greek) or plural form. Koine Greek abandoned the dual number, which it reserved for pairs.

Gender: there are three genders—masculine, feminine and neuter. Gender influence the agreement of adjectives, pronouns and verbs (in participial form some times)

Declensions — nouns belong to a declension according to their stem ending and declensional pattern. There were three main declensions in Ancient Greek, each with its own set of endings for case and number.

Verbs

Perhaps the most noticeable thing about Greek is its wealth of inflectional morphology, especially in verbs, which express tense, mood and voice in addition to person and number.

Tenses: Mark time & aspect as well

Present: Ongoing action.

Imperfect: Same idea, but the action was going on in the past.

Future: Something you are going to do.

Aorist: Uncomplicated past action (punctual aspect)

Perfect — Completed action with present relevance

Past Perfect: An action that was completed in the past before another past action.

Future Perfect (Ancient Greek): Action to be done in the future.

Moods — Indicate the speaker's attitude towards the action

Indicative: Illustrations of reality.

Subjunctive: unreal or possible actions

Optative (Ancient Greek) – to express wishes or potential actions whose accomplishment is less likely than that of the subjunctive.

Imperative: Used for commands or requests.

Voices:

Active: It conveys that the subject is doing an action.

Middle: The subject both performs and is acted upon by the verb

Passive: The agent is being acted upon.

Non-Finite Forms:

Infinitives — verbal nouns that refer to the action or state they express in a general sense.

Participles — Verbal adjectives in agreement with the noun they modify: case, number, and gender.

Verb Conjugations: Verbs get conjugated by person (1st, 2nd and 3rd) and number (singular/plural). Dual forms also existed in Ancient Greek.

Adjectives

Greek adjectives inflect for gender, number and case which they must agree with the noun that they modify.

Degrees of Comparison:

Positive: the dictionary form (e.g. καλός – good)

Comparative — signifying a greater degree (e.g. καλλίων — the better).

Superlative: Highest (e.g. κάλλιστος — best)

Forms: Like nouns, adjectives are declined according to their endings and stems.

Pronouns

The Greek pronouns are inflected for case, number and gender and can be grouped into several types:

Personal pronouns: indicate the speaker, addressee, and others.

DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS: Identify specific items which include this and that.

Relative Pronouns – These pronouns are used to introduce relative clauses.

Interrogative Pronouns: For asking questions.

Reflexive Pronouns — these point back to the subject.

Subcategories of Speech ← Particles, Prepositions and Other Parts of Speech →

Particles: small words that clarify the meaning of sentences or indicate speaker attitude (e.g: μὲν, δέ ).

Prepositions: they govern nouns in particular cases and express spatial, temporal or abstract relations.

Type of words: Conjunctions, which connect clauses or sentences (e.g., καί – and, ἀλλά – but)

Adverb: describe how you do a verb (or an adjective or another adverb) and often are derived from adjectives.

Morphological Processes

There are many morphological processes in Greek for forming new words and inflecting them.

Affixation: The process of adding prefixes or suffixes to roots

Prefixes: Change meaning (e.g., ἀ- negative prefix)

Derivations: New Word Forms (ex. -της to derive agent nouns)

Reduplication: To repeat some of a word, used frequently for verbs especially in the perfect form.

For example, the perfect of λείπω (leave) is λέλοιπα.

Compounding: The joining of two or more whole words.

For example: φιλόσοφος (philosopher) from φίλος (loving) and σοφία(wisdom).

From Ancient to Modern Greek

Greek morphology has largely simplified over time:

Decline of Cases — The dative case ceased to be used in speech during the Koine period and its functions learned by both the genitive case as well as the accusative case.

Loss of Verb Moods: The old optative mood had disappeared entirely, and the subjunctive is also far rarer in use compared to Modern Greek.

Elimination of the Dual Number: The dual number was lost, and only singular and plural forms remained.

Simplification of Verb Forms: Cleansed of many irregular verbs, contemporaneous Greek now sports a vastly simplified verb conjugation system.