Elementary New Testament Greek, 2014a

3: Nouns and Their Cases
3: Nouns and Their Cases
Building a Simple Sentence in Greek
In the last chapter we devoted ourselves to verbs in general (the ideas of tense, voice,
mood, person, number), and to mastering the Present Active Indicative forms for all
types of verbs. You also remember that a verb is the heartbeat of a sentence, the
engine putting things in motion, the organizational hub around which everything is
organized.
Let’s take one of the verbs we studied last chapter (μ) and randomly choose
the 3rd plural ( = “They are giving…”) to illustrate how we can attach
various items to a verb to build a fuller sentence in English:
We might want to specify who the
givers are:
We might want to identify just what
they give:
We might want to clarify the quality or
nature of what they give:
Angels are giving…
Angels are giving crowns…
Angels are giving crowns of gold…
These sentences have exactly the same words, but word order alone tells us that
different roles are played by Tom and Jane. In the rst sentence we know that Tom
will exert energy, and that in the second sentence Jane will exert energy. In simple
English sentences like these, the “Doer” must precede the verb, while the “Patient”
must follow the verb. That’s just the “rule” we all follow, whether or not we think
about it.
Let’s Imagine
But imagine a language that found a way around depending on word order for making
sense. What if we could “tag” our words to show the roles being played? For this
imaginary game, let “L” stand for “Listener,” “D” for “Doer,” “P” for Patient, “R”
for “Receiver,” and “Q” for “Quality.” We will double underline our verb, just keep
an eye on the hub of the sentence. Now let’s take the English sentence we created
earlier, and tag the various roles within it:
O Teacher L , angels D are giving crowns P of gold Q to apostles R !
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We might want to identify those to
whom these things are being given:
We might want to address someone
directly when declaring the whole
sentence:
Angels are giving crowns of gold to
children.
Oh Teacher, angels are giving crowns
of gold to children!
If we and our audience understood the game, we could abandon our dependence
on word order, and offer sentences with many different word sequences without
sacricing clarity! In the examples below, the superscripts alone identify the roles
being played, no matter where these words might actually occur in the sentence.
In our native languages, each of us adds these elements without wondering how to
do so. Without realizing it, we have absorbed the “rules” our language uses for
organizing verbal trafc so we can understand each other.
In English, one “rule” for how to add these items and build sentences is that word
order is crucial for distinguishing the Do-er from the Patient (the one to whom
something happens). Consider these two sentences:
Tom carried Jane.
Jane carried Tom.