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Elementary New Testament Greek, 2014a

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5: Adjectives, The Verb “to Be” and Nouns of the 1st Declension<br />

5: Adjectives, The Verb “to Be” and<br />

Nouns of the 1st Declension<br />

59<br />

Not Just Any Apostle!<br />

In our own speech we often describe the things we’re talking about: the holy apostle,<br />

or the good apostle, or the rst apostle, or the last apostle, or the other apostle, or the<br />

dead apostle, and so on.<br />

Words that do the work of modifying or describing nouns are known as Adjectives,<br />

another of the ten parts of speech (types of words) we are encountering in <strong>Greek</strong>.<br />

[We’ve already learned of verbs, nouns, articles, conjunctions, and adverbs.] In<br />

Mounce’s Interlinear code, an adjective is signaled by an “a.”<br />

The Agreement of Adjectives with Their<br />

Governing Nouns<br />

Since an adjective modies (and so serves) a noun, it only seems reasonable that an<br />

adjective must agree with the noun it is modifying in case, number, and in gender.<br />

In other words, all three components of parsing information (case, number, gender)<br />

must match. Carefully note that this does not mean that the endings of an adjective<br />

must match its partnered noun in spelling; only that they match in information!<br />

Because an adjective (like the article) must be able to agree with a noun of any gender<br />

as it is found in any case or number, the adjective must have endings enabling it to<br />

cover the full range of cases, numbers and genders. Below is the adjective <br />

( good, noble, ne, excellent) shown in its full range of possible<br />

forms.<br />

Singular<br />

Plural<br />

Masculine Feminine Neuter<br />

nominative <br />

genitive <br />

dative <br />

accusative <br />

nominative <br />

genitive <br />

dative <br />

accusative <br />

The Positions of the Adjective<br />

We have made it clear that <strong>Greek</strong> word order is highly exible, open to many<br />

variations without essential change in sentence meaning. But <strong>Greek</strong> is not totally<br />

indifferent to word order. In the matter of how an adjective stands in relation to the<br />

noun it modies, <strong>Greek</strong> has specic preferences. Consider the following sentence<br />

involving articular nouns without adjectives:<br />

<br />

(The angel is giving the book to the children.)

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