How Greek forms and uses words

Lexical vs. functional word formation

Morphemes are meaningful units in language. The meanings expressed by morphemes are not random – they can be categorized based on certain features. One commonly made distinction is between inflectional morphemes (introduced in 10.1.3) and derivational morphemes. A word like ἑτοιμάζω can be inflected with person and number endings to refer to different people who engage in the event of preparing something, e.g. ἑτοιμάζω ‘I prepare’ vs. ἑτοιμάζεις ‘you prepare’. The morphemes -ω and -εις are inflectional morphemes. They do not change what kind of event the subject is engaging in, but they affect who the subject refers to. These morphemes are systematic and predictable across the entire paradigm.

A derivational morpheme, on the other hand, attaches to another morpheme and changes the meaning or category of the word, i.e. the lexical information. Essentially, a new word is formed from another word. To illustrate, we can compare the adjective ἕτοιμος ‘ready,’ the verb ἑτοιμάζω ‘make ready’, and the noun ἑτοιμασία ‘preparation.’ We can see the same element ἑτοιμ- in all three words, and this seems to be contributing the idea of ‘ready/prepare.’ To form the adjective, we attach the morpheme -ο to the root √ἑτοιμ, and then the ending (the inflectional morpheme) marks the case, gender, and number on the stem ἑτοιμο-. The verb is formed in a similar way. The root √ἑτοιμ combines with -αζ to make a verb ἑτοιμαζ-. Verbs in Greek are inflected for person and number, so the final morpheme indicates these elements, such as -ω in ἑτοιμάζω.

The noun ἑτοιμασία, on the other hand, is not formed from the root √ἑτοιμ but is created from the verb ἑτοιμαζ-. The ending -ια turns verbs into nouns, and it attaches to ἑτοιμαζ- to form ἑτοιμασία. This new noun is then inflected for case, gender, and number as nouns are in Greek. This noun, then, is a noun that is derived from a verb (see further Morphology B). This is where the name derivational morpheme comes from – one word is derived from another. The vast majority of languages, including English, use derivational morphemes to create new words. The word derivational is itself an adjective that is derived from a noun (derivation) that is derived from a verb (derive) that was at one point two separate morphemes (de - and rive). Derived words like derivational normally have at least some word meanings that can be predicted based on the meanings of the root/stem and the derivational morphemes that attach to it.

Although we have introduced the terms root (13.1.3) and stem (10.1.3), it may help to clarify their meaning here in light of the above discussion and to introduce a new term lexeme. The three words ἕτοιμος, ἑτοιμάζω, and ἑτοιμασία share the same root, but they do not share the same stem. In each case, the root is √ἑτοιμ. In the adjective ἕτοιμος, the stem is ἑτοιμο-; in the verb ἑτοιμάζω, the stem is ἑτοιμαζ-; and in the noun ἑτοιμασία, the stem is ἑτοιμασι-. Having defined inflectional and derivational morphemes, we can now distinguish root and stem based on this distinction: the stem of the word is what is left after the inflectional morphemes have been stripped away, and the root of the word is the morpheme that contributes the word’s primary lexical information, thus excluding derivational morphemes. The term lexeme (which we use interchangeably with lexical item) refers to the same form as a stem, but it connects that form to a meaning. Thus, we can speak of the meaning or form of a lexeme, but we would normally speak only of the form of a stem.

Inflectional morphemes contribute grammatical information, but they do not change the meaning of a lexeme (on the distinction between grammatical and lexical information, see Semantics A). Derivational morphemes, on the other hand, affect the meaning of the lexeme. The field of morphology itself can be divided based on these two kinds of meanings. Lexical morphology forms lexical items, and grammatical morphology contributes grammatical and logical information. The remainder of this section is devoted to both the form and meaning of lexical and functional morphology in Greek.

Lexical morphology: Greek’s strategies for forming lexemes

In Rochelle Lieber’s (2021) “Introduction to Morphology,” she lists numerous ways that languages form new words, most of which are various affixation strategies. An affix is any morpheme that combines with a word/stem (a prefix combines with the beginning of a word, and a suffix combines with the end). While derivational morphology can be phonologically realized in different ways (Lieber 2021:36–50, 91–95), the strategies for forming lexemes can be broken down into two basic categories: a morpheme may combine with a root or with an existing word. We saw this above with ἑτοιμάζω and ἑτοιμασία. While the verb ἑτοιμάζω has the derivational morpheme -αζ- attached directly to the root, the morpheme -ια in ἑτοιμασία combines with a stem, namely the verb ἑτοιμαζ. Because these derivational morphemes create new words with new grammatical categories, they are called categorizers. For each of the categories, there is a set of affixes that attaches to a root or another word to create new words in that category. Thus, we can speak of verbalizers, nominalizers, and adjectivizers which turn roots or stems into verbs, nouns, and adjectives.

Knowing how Greek words are composed can help us understand Greek words more deeply in two respects. First, these categorizers can help us predict the meaning of words where they are found because the categorizers themselves have meanings. For example, the -ις suffix regularly takes verbs and turns them into nouns, such as ἀποκαλύπτω→ἀποκάλυψις. These nouns derived from verbs have been studied extensively in linguistics and have been shown to display certain properties across languages (nominalizations are our topic in Morphology B).

Second, understanding the relationship between roots, affixes, and the meaning of words can help us to avoid some common logical errors made when comparing words that share morphemes, particularly those that share the same root. First, it is widely recognized in linguistics that words that share the same root need not have the same meaning (Harley 2014:238–42). The Greek words νόμος ‘law’, νομή ‘pasture’, and νόμισμα ‘coin’ all share the same root √νεμ, but it would be very difficult to come up with a coherent meaning of the root that would relate each of the concepts to one another. At the same time, there are indeed many words formed from the same root that do have related meanings, and this is, in fact, the norm. The words ἕτοιμος and ἑτοιμάζω are a case in point. Both words are derived from the same root, and they mean something very similar, the only difference in meaning being derived from their differing categorizers. What this suggests is that not all roots are created equal. Some roots encode broader concepts from which many words are formed with seemingly unrelated meanings. Other roots encode narrower concepts where all the words formed are closely related. The degree to which two words derived from the same root are similar semantically depends on the nature of the root. Crucially, we cannot conclude how two words are related from merely noting that two words are derived from the same root.

Related to the fact that roots may form words with different meanings, categorizers also may create new senses. While some have proposed that lexical meanings are determined at the first categorization of a root (Arad 2003; 2005), this has been shown to be mistaken (Harley & Stone 2013:256–60). The data suggests that categorization can create new meanings at any level, whether it is a root being categorized (as in √ἑτοιμ→ἑτοιμάζω) or another word being categorized (as in ἑτοιμάζ-→ἑτοιμασία). Old meanings are ordinarily retained when one word is created from another word, but new meanings may also develop.

To round out our discussion of lexical morphology, we discuss two cases where independent words combine to form a single new word, a phenomenon called compounding. A very common example of this in Greek is when a preposition combines with a verb to form a new verb, e.g. ὑπό + λαμβάνω = ὑπολαμβάνω. Importantly, the meaning of the new verb created is often not predictable from the meaning of its individual components – ὑπολαμβάνω normally means ‘answer/reply’ or ‘suppose/think’. It does not mean ‘take under’ as in a taking event that results in something being under something else. Given what we have said about new meanings being formed by categorization, this should come as no surprise. New meanings are also formed from these special compound words called particle verbs (also called phrasal verbs), and other languages, such as English, amply attest to the same pattern. For example, break in, break out, and break

1 We may also have adverbializers if they are also counted as a separate class from adjectives, but this is debated. In English, this would be the -ly morpheme that can turn an adjective like true into an adverb truly. The closest equivalent to this in Koine Greek is -ως which similarly takes an adjective like καλός and turns it into an adverb καλῶς.

2 Carson’s (1996) first fallacy in his Exegetical Fallacies is “the root fallacy.” In his discussion, there is some conflation of etymological/diachronic meaning and root meaning. Carson rightly notes that just because ὑπηρέτης ‘servant/aide’ is composed of the two words ὑπό ‘under’ and ἐρέσσω ‘row’ does not mean ὑπηρέτης means an ‘under-rower.’ However, it means ‘servant’ and not ‘under-rower’ because the word’s meaning changed over time, not because the meaning of the word is unrelated to its component parts. The word ἐρέτης ‘rower’ is used as such in Homer, but this meaning is extended to general ‘servant’ in Classical Greek when combined with ὑπό, so that it just means someone who is under someone else’s authority (of course, a ‘rower’ would be one specific example of this). What a word used to mean is not necessarily what it currently means, and in this sense, etymological/diachronic information is often misleading when it comes to synchronic usage. However, synchronic root meaning is often helpful for determining a word’s meaning, since it shows us how one component of a word combines to form other words. See below for further discussion on the relationship between root meaning and word meaning.

3 We must also allow for the possibility of homophonous roots just as there are homophonous words. It could be the case that there are two roots in Greek that sound identical, namely √νεμ ‘standard’ (from which νόμος and νόμισμα are derived) and √νεμ ‘pasture’ (from which νομή would be derived).

down have many meanings, but they are not ordinarily used for something literally breaking into something else or out of something or downwards. On the other hand, some particle verbs like εἰσέρχομαι do have a compositional meaning (i.e. a meaning that is predictable from its parts), since the meaning of εἰσέρχομαι is essentially εἰς + ἔρχομαι. What makes ὑπολαμβάνω different from εἰσέρχομαι is that the latter has two components that both have to do with direction whereas the former has a spatial preposition combine with a verb that specifies a change in possession. Although there is no strict rule for when the meaning of these particle verbs is compositional and when it is not, we can describe a general tendency: when both the preposition and verb refer to the same kind of meaning, the resulting particle verb is more likely to be compositional.

Another common type of compounding involves combining two words from the main grammatical categories – nouns, verbs, and adjectives. A compound noun like νομοθέτης ‘law-giver’ illustrates this where we have a thing given, νομο- from νόμος ‘law’, and an agent who is doing the giving, -θετης from the root θε ‘put’. Adjectives may also be formed that describe the manner in which something is made, such as χειροποίητος ‘hand/man-made’. Finally, a verb-adjective combination often describe the kind of action done, such as κακοποιέω ‘evil doing’ where the adjective κακός ‘bad’ is attached to the verb ποιέω ‘do’. There are many different combinations of words that fall into this category, though there are often semantic restrictions on what kinds of words can be formed (for discussion and semantic categorization of different compound types, see Lieber 2021:50–8).

What these data teach us is that there needs to be more nuance in discussions of word meaning. In biblical studies, there are abuses both in word decomposition and in lack of decomposition. Particle verbs are commonly decomposed erroneously with phrases like “ἀντέχομαι, literally, ‘to cling to’, 1 Thes. 5:14; Titus 1:9” (Marshall 1978:624). Many commentaries are replete with these kinds of phrases, but the commentator’s intention is often opaque. Is Marshall claiming that ἀντί is ‘to’ and ἔχομαι is ‘cling’ or that the word ἀντέχομαι refers to the physical act of clinging to something? Neither of the supporting verses given refer to the physical act of clinging, and it is not immediately obvious how we could get to the meaning of ἀντέχομαι (which is to be devoted to something, often a message) with the components ἀντί ‘instead of’ and ἔχομαι ‘be had’. In other words, this is a case where we would not want to speak of the “literal” meaning and to decompose the words – it does not help us to understand the text.

On the other hand, many words with derivational affixes could be helpfully decomposed. The word we began this section with, ἑτοιμασία ‘preparation,’ is one such example.

Grammatical morphology: Greek’s strategies for forming functional morphemes

Grammatical morphology can be divided into two main categories: agreement morphology and functional morphology. To illustrate, consider the verb λύσεις ‘you will untie’. The agreement morphology is found at the end, namely -εις, and this is a marking on the verb that tells us who the subject is. Crucially, the ending does not give us new information about how to interpret the verb; it only agrees with other indicators about who the subject is. In theory, Greek does not need agreement morphology to indicate the subject. A form like λύσω could be used for 1s, 2s, and 3s, and the subject would be indicated by the pronoun that combines with the verb. We would have ἐγὼ λύσω for 1s, *σὺ λύσω for 2s, and *αὐτὴ λύσω for 3s. Because each of the pronouns is in nominative case, we know that the subject in each case is ἐγώ, σύ, and αὐτή even without differentiating the endings for the different persons. The suffixes are, however, different. Greek marks the person of the subject on the verb itself in addition to marking it on the noun or pronoun by putting it in nominative case. This is agreement morphology. The -εις ending agrees with σύ which tells us who the subject is.

In contrast to morphemes that merely agree with other morphemes, some are functional in the sense that they contribute meaningful grammatical information. The morpheme -σ- in λύσεις falls into this category, which turns the Luo present tense form into the Luso future tense form. In each word, then, we have three different kinds of morphemes: a stem/lexeme, functional morphology, and agreement morphology.

Stem/ Functional Agreement Lexeme Morpheme Morpheme \V-G-E1C