Talk:Ancient Greek nouns

Order of cases

I know this is a bit of a hoary old chestnut, and obviously a great deal of effort has gone into the writing of this page, but is it a candidate to have the case-order shuffled to the other order (NVAGD)? The number of examples where NV and A are all the same means that V and A are hopping about, between different paradigms, from the top of the table to the bottom. As it's written we have three possible orders. They are NVGDA (first declension α etc.), NGDAV (first declension ᾱς), and NVAGD or NAVGD (second declension neuter ο). If it were regularised to a constant NVAGD then it would be a lot easier to read. It would be a lot of work though. Are there reasons not to make that change? Knole Jonathan (talk) 17:34, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

And something else, where are all the dual number endings? They are only mentioned once in the whole article! All the other tables just give the declension for the singular and plural. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.166.150.53 (talk) 22:23, 21 November 2012 (CUT)

Yeah, Chestnuts roasting on the open fire. Isn't the traditional order NGDAV & Combine N & V when they are the same? Other orders like NVGDA would annoy my mind, simply because I was not raised on it! (EnochBethany (talk) 06:14, 27 February 2014 (UTC))

NVAGD is the 'traditional' order of declensions in the UK (and elsewhere in the English speaking world other than the US). And as a British-trained reader, I find that the NGDAV order annoys my mind. Quite simply I think the best policy would be for Wikipedia to provide both options, either on one page or on linked pages. The difficulty of finding online declension tables in any order other than NGDAV - which I find really counter-intuitive and just weird - is a real obstacle to learners of Greek from outside the US. Like the metric system, Americans will one day accept that NVAGD just makes sense, but until then I think it's best to provide both. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.62.219.109 (talk) 22:43, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

NGDAV has the advantage of being traditional (at any rate for describing Latin) and familiar to Americans (and Germans). But putting NA and GD together as the British do makes much better sense, especially for Ancient Greek. For example in this way similar accentuation is put together: θεός, θεόν—θεοῦ, θεῷ "god"; πόδες, πόδας—ποδῶν, ποσί "feet". Also in the dual and in the neuter similar forms go together: τώ, τώ—τοῖν, τοῖν "the (two)"; σῶμα, σῶμα—σώματος, σώματι "body". The very logic of the language seems to demand the British order. Kanjuzi (talk) 00:48, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

I have an idea for how to do this. I have set up an example using the first declension in my sandbox. If feedback here is positive, I can implement in general on the main page. Another option would be to just do a whole separate page with nothing but the US version, but personally I think it would be nice to just keep them together. Miconian (talk) 21:57, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

I have seen the table and it is neat (except that in fact in American grammars, the vocative is not placed after the nominative, but at the end after the accusative (or in Latin after the ablative). But I think it would be possible to combine the two tables into one using a sortable table. I will put one on your sandbox page to show you. Kanjuzi (talk) 18:02, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

A Grave Error

I looked in vain for a reference to the grave accent. Why was it left out? (EnochBethany (talk) 06:16, 27 February 2014 (UTC))

Grave accents, in Classical Greek, are essentially acute accents. These transform into grave accents (under most circumstances) when found at the end of the word.Fatcat2 (talk) 11:11, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Transliteration

Please, could somebody transliterate everything written in the Greek script? Note that the vast majority of Wikipedia users are not able to read it. I can only read the texts with difficulties. Thanks in advance! Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 13:21, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Adding transliterations for everything will make the page much more cluttered. Is it worth it? How many readers will read this who don't know the Greek alphabet? — Eru·tuon 21:45, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I believe it is worth it. Imagine someone would like to have a cursory look at, say, the Japanese noun, Chinese noun, Korean noun and Sanskrit noun to get a general idea about their differences and/or similarities, maybe just out of curiosity? They wouldn't be able to, unless they've learnt katakana/hiragana/kanji/Chinese script/Devanagari/Korean script. What's the purpose of presenting information only a minority of readers are able to access? If you look at the other articles, you'll see their authors have often decided to use romanization/transliteration as the primary system, using the particular language's own writing system in brackets only. Ater all, this is the English Wikipedia and its readers should not be required to be able to read other writing systems to obtain the information they're looking for, should they? To be fair, I've just discovered the article on Russian grammar doesn't transliterate at all either. So, perhaps, this should be part of a more general discussion whether to transliterate, what languages, and to what extent, if at all - to see if mine is just an odd minority voice. :-) Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 17:17, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I would second that this would increase accessibility. Personally I'd vote for IPA in all articles, but any sort of Latin script transliteration would be helpful. Especially considering where the Ancient Greek pronunciation might differ from the Modern. As someone trying to get a general idea of the phonemes in Ancient Greek case suffixes the lack of transliteration is really jarring to me. It looks like the comparable Modern Greek article section adds the IPA for just the suffixes and not the roots--maybe this article could be updated to match? 2001:18E8:2:100A:F000:0:0:D78 (talk) 16:57, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Reconstructed forms

Personally I can't see the point of including such theoretical, non-existent forms as πόδ-ς. This is just confusing for people who don't know Greek but want to learn about it. If it is desirable to write a separate article about the prehistory of Greek and its development from Indo-European, there would be no objection; but there must be some proper references to scholarly works. This article has too few such references. Kanjuzi (talk) 16:32, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Table demonstrating Kiparsky's accent rules

@Kanjuzi: In reference to this edit removing the table demonstrating Kiparsky's accent rules, the table is based on some examples on page 802 in Kiparsky's article. — Eru·tuon 08:46, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, I've downloaded the article, which is a very interesting one, but I can't find any reconstructed forms like those on the table on page 802 or anywhere else. But in any case, although Kiparsky is a good linguist, this particular theory doesn't seem a very convincing one, so I don't think it should have a lot of space in this article. It's not as if it was generally accepted by other linguists, but just one suggestion among several others. Kanjuzi (talk) 15:10, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

I have the PDF as well, and the reconstructed forms are given in Latin script, which I had transliterated into Greek (probably not a good idea), and are numbered (10) and (11), and given below the rules "Strong cases have presuffixal accent", "Weak cases have post-suffix accent". I don't know if I find the theory persuasive either. I guess at the time I thought it was an interesting idea. — Eru·tuon 18:45, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

This explanation of Kiparsky seems to me implausible. The 3rd declension accent shift obviously goes back to Proto-Indo-European, as is shown by the Sanskrit cognates, whereas the 2nd declension accent shift seems to be internal to Greek and perhaps comes from the fact that some of the endings formerly had more than one syllable (e.g. ποταμοῖο which became shortened to ποταμοῦ). No doubt that is why other scholars have not adopted it. I think it should be deleted. There is no reason why the two accent shifts should be connected. Kanjuzi (talk) 10:23, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

@Kanjuzi: The rules (9a, 9b) that Kiparsky gives are intended as a generalization of the facts in Classical Greek (synchronic), not a historical explanation (diachronic), so they don't conflict with the historical facts of how the accents of various forms actually arose (either by inheritance from Proto-Indo-European or partly by contraction). No matter how the accentual patterns arose, the rules are a correct description of the facts. They are a bit abstruse, though; not very helpful as a mnemonic. — Eru·tuon 20:47, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't think these 'rules' explain very much. In pronouns the circumflex appears in the genitive but not the dative: ἐμοῦ, ἐμοί; that's a bit awkward for Kiparsky's theory. Basically it's an unconvincing theory. There is no need to adopt it in this article, I think. Kanjuzi (talk) 21:45, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

@Kanjuzi: Well, the first-person singular pronouns, and several others, are irregular: they don't belong to the first, second or third declension. I would assume they aren't included in the generalization. — Eru·tuon 21:57, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Well, sometimes a linguist, although very able, comes up with a poor theory. Your excellent and clear summary of the theory showed clearly how apparently illogical this theory is. Kanjuzi (talk) 22:06, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

@Kanjuzi: I don't see the rules as particularly poor, but they are rather abstruse and probably not very mnemonically useful, so it would make sense to move them to a less prominent position. I suppose whether they are mentioned by other scholars also has bearing, but I don't know how to determine that myself. — Eru·tuon 23:30, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

To put it a bit more strongly, I'd say it doesn't deserve any space even in a footnote. However, if you can find other sources that support it it would be a different matter. Kanjuzi (talk) 17:58, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

missing cases?

I have this vague memory that in Homer and other really ancient texts the locative case had forms different than the dative (which eventually absorbed the locative function). I haven't been able to verify this, so could someone who knows really ancient Greek better track it down?

Additionally I know that there was an ablative form that faded away by the time of the classical period. Again, if someone knows more about this could you track it down?

Dismalscholar (talk) 21:04, 12 January 2024 (UTC)