Notes On Koine Greek: Part 18

www.MichaelHalcomb.com

1) The Greek Article: As mentioned in installation 17 of these “Notes”, this

section is going to look at the Greek article. We will look at both the definite
article and the indefinite article. At this point, only a few cursory remarks about
the article will be made. A large part of the focus at this point is memorization. I
have provided a number of ways below, to easily memorize the Case-Number
Suffix Morphemes for the definite article.
2) Arthrous & Anarthrous: In Greek, the term arthrous refers to a noun that
has a definite article (e.g. the word “the”) before it. While English has only one
definite article, Greek has many different forms of the term “the”. It is called
arthrous or definite because as Gary Long notes, it works several ways (the most
general included here): a) It points to something specific or particular, b) It
points to something categorically, c) It points to some particular function, or d) It
is used for clarification. The point should also be made that the article often acts
as a modifier, that is, it acts like an adjective as it draws attention to the noun. In
addition, we should remember that the article in Greek declines, this means, of
course, that it changes to match the Case, Number and Gender of the noun it is
modifying. Here are a few examples:

Noun | Noun with matching article | Case/ Number/ Gender

anqrwpoj o` anqrwpoj Nom/ Sg/ Masc.
erhmoj h` erhmoj Nom/ Sg/ Fem.
ergon to, ergon Nom/ Sg/ Neut.

3) To hear a song that might help you remember the suffix morphemes of the
definite article in the 1st and 2nd Declensions, go here:
http://michaelhalcomb.blogspot.com/2009/12/notes-on-koine-greek-pt-18.html
4) To see the sheet music of my “Koine Greek Definite Article Song,” along with
lyrical & pictoral aids, scroll to the next page below: