Declension question

Greek Homeric Greek and Early Greek Poetry
1

Hello,

I’m on Lesson VI in Pharr’s book and it is explaining the second declension. My question is do nouns only belong to a single gender and declension (suppose first declension feminine
for a word like [size=134]βουλή[/size]) while adjectives must have a male, female, and neuter declension? And that the adjectives gender is “chosen” out of the set of available declensions, like: [size=134]καλός, καλή, καλόν[/size]–which are second declension male, first declension feminine, and second declension neuter, respectively? And different adjectives can have different declensions for the male, female, and neuter gender?

Is the description of what belongs to where set up so that if it is a noun, I will see the genitive case ending and the gender in the vocabulary, but if it is an adjective I will see the nominative male, female, and neuter endings, and I have to see which endings match which declension in any case?

Thanks.

2

Yes. Except. There’s always an except, and in this situation there are two you need to keep in mind.

First, some nouns are epicene. That is, they may be either masculine or feminine as sense requires, e.g. παῖς, ἵππος may be boy, horse/stallion or girl/mare simply by switching the gender. There will be no sign of this in the noun itself, only in the adjectives or article that goes with it, ὁ παῖς, ἡ παῖς.

These aren’t too common. Usually the noun stem has some sort of suffix attached to indicate a gender switch.

Second, some nouns switch gender when plural, such as ὁ σῖτος, food, τὰ σῖτα.

while adjectives must have a male, female, and neuter declension?

(Please avoid saying “female” for “feminine” and “male” for “masculine.” Words do not have genitals.)

Sometimes. Many primitive (that is, simple, uncompounded, underived) adjectives will have separate declensions for all three genders. There is, however, a large class of adjectives which use identical declensions for masc. and fem.

Is the description of what belongs to where set up so that if it is a noun, I will see the genitive case ending and the gender in the vocabulary, but if it is an adjective I will see the nominative male, female, and neuter endings, and I have to see which endings match which declension in any case?

Yes. Those adjectives that have single declensions for masc. and fem. will show only two endings, the first for m./f. and the second for neuter:

ἀληθής ές true.

There are a few adjectives which sometimes act like two-declension adjectives and sometimes like three-declension adjectives. In that situation the feminine ending will be indicated in parentheses. (Look up ἴφθιμος in the vocabulary at the end of your Pharr for an example of that, and follow the reference.)

In older pocket dictionaries adjectives simply had “2” or “3” written after them, but before the definition.

Dictionary Warning: the Homeric dictionary by Autenrieth does not indicate the gender of nouns or the declensions class for adjectives, which is why I don’t recommend it to people.

3

Wow, what an informative post. Thanks. That really does clear some stuff up for me.

However, what did you write here?

Thanks.

4

That’s just an example of what a 2-declension adjective dictionary entry might look like.