There are two possible first or second person possessive expressions: the use of
the possessive adjective in attributive position (ὁ ἐμὸς πατήρ, ἡ ἡμετέρα πόλις) is
stylistically more formal or rhetorically more weighty, whereas the use of the possessive
genitive of the personal pronoun (ὁ πατήρ μου, ἡ πόλις ἡμῶν) is more informal
and colloquial.
I am supposed to write in Greek, “On our behalf.”
The answer book only gives the answer in an informal way, “ὐπὲρ ἠμῶν or πρὸ ἠμῶν.”
I am not understanding if I can write this in a formal way or even if a possessive adjective is declined?
I think the difficulty here has more to do with the English expression, since “our” isn’t actually used as a possessive here, not at least in a way that transfers into Greek. You could also say “on behalf of us”. With normal posessive, like “our car”, you couldn’t say “the car of us”. So the Greek translation isn’t using the genitive of the personal pronoun as a possesive, but as a genitive after ὑπέρ. If you say ὑπὲρ ἡμετέρων it would mean “on behalf of our [things, people or whatever which would have to be stated or understood]”.
You are right with that example. It still left me wondering if possessive adjectives are declined.
I think I have an answer by this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN5DpANGFBM
In the phrases ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν/πρὸ ἡμῶν, ἡμῶν is not possessive. It’s the object of the prepositions, and so doesn’t play into the possessive pronoun/adjective discussion at all.
It is clear from the list in Mastronade on p 187 that possessive adjectives are declinable. How for example would you say I give you my book? “my book” clearly has to be in the accusative. Everybody has problems with possessives when they first come up so you are not alone!
Your questions about translation from English to Greek in successive threads make it clear that you do not take enough time to think about what the English means before you to try to translate. The English sentences may seem obvious to you but the actual thought behind them is the thing you have to grasp hold of. This point has been made by many of the people who respond to you. I don’t think you have taken this on board. When faced with an English sentence the first thing to do is to say what does it mean? Once you are satisfied with your understanding you can think about how this is expressed in Greek. (when I was studying Latin at University we did an exercise translating Beatles songs into latin. Literal translation is impossible so it was necessary to think what the lyrics meant and then work out how that thought could be expressed in latin. The results were often quite surprising!)
In the current example “ἡμῶν” is the genitive plural of “ἐγώ”. See the table on page 176. If you had asked yourself what does the English sentence “On our behalf.” mean you would have realised that behalf cannot “belong” to someone so that there is no idea of possession. That should have led you to think that the sentence is “on behalf of us” and that “on behalf of” must be in Greek a preposition.
Finally again I will say you are trying to get through this material too quickly. The sentences are not intended to be tests of your knowledge but exercises in making you think about the material.
Once again I commend you for your efforts in learning Greek on your own.
Page 187 is clear to you but not to me. I was clueless whether the possessive adjectives were declined or not.
Sometimes I have to approach this board and find out what the author means.
Perhaps the way I put it was unhelpful. What I meant was that M. simply lists the adjective with masc, fem and neuter endings. Don’t you think that if the the adjective was indeclinable he would have said so. How many indeclinable adjectives have you come across so far?
There are indeclinable nouns mainly foreign words and the names of letters. But I have never come across any indeclinable adjectives. As adjectives always agree with the number and gender and case of the substantive they refer to it would be very odd if there were. (Cue for someone to dredge something up here but I have never encountered any. )
b. A few adjectives are indeclinable: as, damnās, frūgī (really a dative of service, see § 382. 1. N.2), nēquam (originally an adverb), necesse, and the pronominal forms tot, quot, aliquot, totidem. Potis is often used as an indeclinable adjective, but sometimes has pote in the neuter.
Allen, J. H., & Greenough, J. B. (1903). Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar. (J. B. Greenough, G. L. Kittredge, A. A. Howard, & B. L. D’Ooge, Eds.) (p. 54). Boston: Ginn & Co.
Thank you Barry I was rather hoping for examples of indeclinable adjectives in Greek rather than Latin which I was not thinking about when I wrote my post.
There is also macte which is a good word to conclude this post.
Questions about possessive adjectives in declined languages are not unusual for English speakers. I think I’ve seen it on Textkit before. And Google for something like “Spanish possessive adjectives” for the same question about another language. I think that part of it is that English possessive adjectives don’t quite function like our other adjectives. This is impossible English: “That ball is spherical, big, and my.” [You can say “that ball is spherical, big, and his”, but you’re using the possessive pronoun.]
If you want an example of how to say “on our behalf” that uses a possessive adjective, εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν ὠφέλειαν would work. But the point shouldn’t be to translate (or read) with word for word equivalence.
The Greek cardinals are in some ways used indistinguishably from adjectives, and they are indeclinable after πέντε.
Arrgh… Doing too much these days, and forgot where we were. Feel free to apply all sorts of (hopefully good-natured) mocking and derision at this point. Try this instead:
κυᾰνοχαίτης, ου, ὁ, dark-haired, in Hom. usu. of Poseidon, perh. in reference to the dark blue of the sea, Il.20.144, Od.9.536, cf. Hes.Th.278; Ἀρείων Thebaïs4; of a horse, dark-maned, Il.20.224, Hes.Sc.120: voc. κυανοχαῖτα h.Cer.347:—also nom. κυανοχαῖτα Il.13.563, 14.390; treated as indeclin. and joined with dat., κυανοχαῖτα Ποσειδάωνι Antim.27. [ῡ, metri gr.]
Liddell, H. G., Scott, R., Jones, H. S., & McKenzie, R. (1996). A Greek-English lexicon (p. 1004). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Of course, a student could read Greek for many years and never encounter a word like this.
Now that you’re asking, there are indeclinable adjectived in my native Finnish as well, although it’s generally what you might call a highly inflected language. For example ’aimo’, ’great”. But I think such adjectives can only work as modifiers.
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