GREEK LANGUAGE. 228 GREEK LANGUAGE. vowels becomes f, and disappears (^o6s for
- Pofos, t'lom stem /Sou-, Lat. bovis). (4) Vuii-
liiiclivii of fi iiccdisiie coiccls is frequent, and in Attic regularly takes place ( ti^w for Ti^aw). The contraction of te, to, oo, oe, produces the so-called s])urii)ns diplithongs ei and on, which were, in early times, at least, spoken and written as t.imijle sounds. (5) Vomijensatii-e Iciiytluii- inn of fowch. When one or more consonants are dropped for euphony (especially before <r), a preceding vowel is often lengthened {fi.^as for
- /neXav-s). The diphthongs « and ov which arise
from this process are also spurious, being simply lengthened forms of e and o (vovcn for * Xuoi'Ta-i). (6) .1)1 cxcliiiiifjc of quiintity sometimes takes place between a long vowel and a succeeding short one (epic raos, /SacriXiJos, Att. leiis, paaiXiwi). Inflection. 7^ owns. — Of the eight original In- do-European cases, the Greek has preserved fiver nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and voc- ative. The locative, instrumental, and ablative cases are preserved onl.v in a few adverbial forms, their functions being performed by the genitive and the dative. There arc three declensions of nouns, according as the stem ends in a ( first declension ) , o (second declension), or a consonant, a diph- thoTig. or a close vowel ( third declension ) . For the a and o stems the oldest endings are — sing. nom. s (but feminines in a have no ending), gen. (a) 10, dat. ai, ace. v ; plu. nom. t, gen. wv, dat. ici, ace. «. For consonant and clo.se vowel stems, the endings are — sing. nom. s, gen. os, dat. i, ace. >> or a ; plu. nom. «, gen. uv, dat. o-i, ffo-i, or etro-i, ace. vs or a^. Vocatives proper have no ending. The dual, which is preserved in Greek (althovigh it sliows a constant tendency to fall into disuse) has the endings a and aiv for the first declension, la and oiv for the second, e and oik for the third. The origin of these forms is uncertain. Neuters from 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. Jlany of the pho- netic changes noted above are the result of thecom- bination of stems with endings. Prnnonns. — The pronoims that distinguish gender (demonstrative, relative, and interrogative pronouns) are inflected like nouns, with some slight variations. The in- llection of the personal pronouns which do not distinguish gender differs from that of nouns in many ways, which cannot be discussed here. The stems of Ihe ]iorsonal jjrnnouns are — singular, first person iixt (cf. Lat. me), second person ue (<e), third person i (se) ; dual, fir^t person vui (nos) , second person o-0u, third person wanting; plural, first person 17/jt, second person iiixe, third person o-0e. The nominative singular forms, ^li, <ri of the first and second persons are from sep- arate stems (cf. Lat. eflo, tu) . The definite ar- ticle o, 17, T(5, corresponds to the Sanskrit sas, sS, tat. "l'Fr6.5. — The 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-Furopean languages the verb system of the parent language (its only rivals in this respect being the Indo-Iranian and tile 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 aetinc 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 lias two ol>liquc moods, the subjunctive and the optative, with separate forms for continued, momentary, . and completed action. There is also a future ojita- tive, used to represent onl}' the future indicative in indirect discourse. Characteristic of past tenses is the augment (prefixing of t 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 w conjugation and fu 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, /ju, (Tt, Ti, dual tov, plu. ij.ei>, tc, vti : middle sing, iiai, aai, rai, dual aSov, plu. /ueSa. o-Se, vrai. For iiiipcrf.. aor.. plup., and opt.. — active sing, j/, s, T, dual TOP, Tijf, plu. /ici-, Tf. vTo ; middle sing. /jt;i', 0-0, TO, dual 0-001', (Tffrip. plu. fieffa. adi. vto. Except in the aorist and the future, the passive forms coincide with tho.se of the middle. The addition of these endings to the verb stem, whether with or without intervention of the thematic vowel, often cau.ses phonetic changes under one or an- other of the phonetic laws stated above. 'oEi) Formation. The Greek possesses a great variety of terminations by which nominal stems are formed from roots, although it is often impos- sible to assign a single meaning to each of these suffixes. The most important are — , 0, a, t, u, (to, Xo, ^o, vo, pa, /TO, 10, (and corresponding forms ending in a), as, es, ei», ov, ttjp. Top. and vari- ous combinations of these forms. Besides such primary formations, secondary forms, i.e. nouns (and adjectives) derived from other nouns, are common. The commonest suffixes of such denom- inative nouns are eu, Ta, T7;t, cvva, la, to, itjKO', of denominative adjectives fo, to, t/to, ti-o, f kt. The comparative sufiixes are to and Tcpo, the superla- tive LdKO and TiiTO. Denominative verbs are free- ly formed : the commonest endings of such verbs are aw, cttj, ooj, eucj, aft*), tfoj, atvto, vvw. In compound words, two or more stems are combined, only the last being inflected. Except in compounds made for comic effect, the combination of more than two roots is unusual. Later History. The conquests of Alexander the Great (B.C. 330) and the consequent spread of the Greek language over a great part of Asia led to the gradual abandonment of the other dialects and the adoption of Attic as the language of the whole Greek world. Thus arose the 'common' dialect {koivt) SiaXfKTosI, a slightly modified Attic, tinged with the peculiarities of the penjiles by whom it was spoken. This common dialect is sometimes called Hellenistic Greek, i.e. the Greek spoken by foreisners ("EXXijwo-Taf ) , not by native Greeks ( "EXXj/i/ft). The Greek of the Septuagint (q.v.')
