INFLECTION. Nouns.—Of the eight original In do-European cases, the Greek has preserved five: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and voc ative. The locative, instrumental, and ablative cases are preserved only in a few adverbial forms, their functions being performed by the genitive and the dative. There are three declensions of nouns, according as the stem ends in a (first declension), o (second declension), or a consonant, a diph thong, or a close vowel (third declension). For the a and o stems the oldest endings are—sing. nom.
(but feminines in a have no ending), gen. (o) to, dat. at, ace. v ; plu. nom. t, gen. we, dat. sat, ace. us. For consonant and close vowel stems, the endings are—sing. nom. s, gen. or, dat. L, ace.
? or a; plu. nom. es, gen. we, dat. et, aat, or toot, ace. vs or as. Vocatives proper have no ending. The dual, which is preserved in Greek (although it shows a constant tendency to fall into disuse) has the endings a and ate for the first declension, w and cav for the second, e and oft' for the third. The origin of these forms is uncertain. Neuters from o stems form the nom. ace. and voc. sing. by adding v; in stems of the third declension, these cases are without ending. The nom., ace., and voc. plu. of neuters ends in a. Many of the pho netic changes noted above are the result of the com bination of stems with endings. pronouns that distinguish gender (demonstrative, relative, and interrogative pronouns) are inflected like nouns, with some slight variations. The in flection of the personal pronouris which do not distinguish gender differs from that of nouns in many ways, which cannot be discussed here. The stems of the personal pronouns are—singular, first person /at (cf. Lat. me), second person cc (te), third person Ls (se) ; dual, first person MO (nos), second person Ow, third person wanting; plural, first person .1.4e, second person 15/2E, third person ave. The nominative singular forms, atf of the first and second persons are from sep arate stems (cf. Lat. ego, tu). The definite ar ticle 0, in r6, corresponds to the Sanskrit sas, tat. Greek verb is one of the most highly developed parts of the language. Not only has the Greek preserved more completely than any other of the Indo-European languages the verb system of the parent language (its only rivals in this respect being the Indo-Iranian and the Slavic groups), but it has added to that system a number of forms of its own. Be
sides the active and the passive, the Greek finite verb has a third voice, the middle, which represents the subject as acting on or for itself. It has seven tenses, present., imperfect, future, aorist, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect. It is thus enabled to express by distinct forms mo mentary, continued, and completed past action (by the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect tenses respectively). It has forms for the dual, as well as for the singular and the plural. Besides the indicative and imperative, the Greek verb has two oblique moods, the subjunctive and the optative, with separate forms for continued, momentary, and completed action. There is also a future opta tive, used to represent only the future indicative in indirect discourse. Characteristic of past tenses is the augment (prefixing of E to the verb stem or lengthening of the initial vowel). The perfect and the pluperfect are distinguished by reduplication—primarily a repetition of the in itial syllable. The present and imperfect are often formed by a strengthening of the verb stem. All tenses, except the future and the so-called first ao rist, exist in two forms, called respectively the matic and non-thematic (or to conjugation and at conjugation), according as the tense stem and the personal endings are or are not connected by the `thematic vowel' appended to the stem. There are two sets of personal endings for both active and middle. These vary somewhat in different dia lects, and in the active singular have often been affected by analogy, but in general the distinction in use is observed with considerable strictness, as follows: For pres., perf., fut., and subj.,—active sing. ALL, OL, 71, dual TOY, plu. pep, TE, YTt ; middle sing. /.tat, ear, Tat, dual e0ov, plu. !Ida, age, Prat. For imperf., aor., plup., and opt.,—active sing. v, r, dual rov, rep, plu. /LEV, TE, vro ; middle sing./Anv, 0'0, TO, dual olov, sew, pin. /Atha, tree, PTO. Except in the aorist and the future, the passive forms coincide with those of the middle. The addition of these endings to the verb stein, whether with or without intervention of the thematic vowel, often causes phonetic changes under one or an other of the phonetic laws stated above.