Pronoun – Nominative, accusative (1p)

VocabularyVocabulary

Greek	Gloss	Part of speech	Paradigm
ὁ καιρός, -οῦ	the occasion	noun	B.a.β.i
ἡ ζωή, -ῆς	the life	noun	B.a.α.i
διώκω σε	(I) chase you (acc)	verb	C.a.ζ
ὁ στέφανος, -ου	the crown	noun	B.a.β.i
αἴρω τήν	(I) lift the (acc)	verb	C.a.ι
ὑπάγω	(I) go away	verb	C.a.ζ

NoteVerbs with initial prepositions

The verb ὑπάγω ‘go away’ looks very similar to ἄγω ‘lead.’ In fact, ὑπάγω is a combination of the preposition ὑπό (introduced in 20.4.3) and the verb ἄγω. Greek regularly attaches prepositions to the beginning of verbs to create a new verb with a new meaning. Sometimes the verb has a meaning that seems to be predictable from its parts. It is essentially the meaning of the preposition plus the meaning of the verb. The verb προσάγω ‘bring to’ would fall into this category. However, it is harder to see how a verb like ὑπάγω is a combination of the meaning of ὑπό (meaning ‘by’ or ‘under’) and ἄγω ‘lead’, since it means ‘go away.’ Both of these two patterns are common for verbs with an initial preposition: the meaning of the new verb may be predictable from the meaning of the verb and the preposition together, or the meaning of the new verb formed may not be predictable from its parts.

NoteGeneral Greek: Bare singular nouns (anarthrous)

In previous lessons, you learned the definite article, which is similar to the in English and other definite articles in other languages. In later lessons, you will learn Greek’s closest equivalent to an indefinite article (a in English), but the system in Greek is different than what you find in English and probably what you find in your own language as well if it is not English. Greek makes much more extensive use of the bare singular than English, and this has often wrongly been taken to mean the same thing as a in English. A bare singular is a noun without an article of any kind. In Greek grammar, this is normally called anarthrous (and a noun with the article is called articular). To illustrate the uniqueness of the bare singular, we can look at some environments in English where it is used. For example, English speakers say Elisha went home and not Elisha went a home. The word home in this case is a bare singular, since it does not have any article with it, whether definite (the) or indefinite (a). Other nouns in English don’t like the bare singular, like Elisha went house, which an English speaker would never say. What is important to understand about the bare singular in Greek is that it has a much broader distribution than the bare singular in a language like English, as the following example demonstrates:

Example 47Bare sg with unique noun

But ἡλίου [sun] having risen … (Matt 13:6)

As given in the overly wooden translation, the word for sun, ἥλιος, is a bare singular. This, of course, is impossible in a language like English where sun requires the definite article. In this case, the Greek bare singular is interpreted as equivalent to the English definite article. Because the Greek bare singular may be equivalent to the, a, or nothing in English, its interpretation must be determined on a case-by-case basis by looking to the nature of the noun and how it interacts with the context (see Semantics B for further discussion).1

1 As a teaching aid in Biblingo, a is sometimes considered to be equivalent to the Greek bare singular. In the glosses, we often make this connection, not to suggest that it accurately reflects the Greek, but to distinguish it from nouns marked with the definite article.

MorphologyMorphology: Pronoun – Nominative, accusative (1p)

The initial η marks the 1p form in each of the cases.
Both forms have a circumflex accent.
The ending on the acc form is the same as the fp acc nouns already seen (e.g. ἀδελφ-άς).

pro 1p nom ἡμεῖς (‘we’) acc ἡμᾶς (‘us’)

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