And I just don’t understand what happened in the Singular Accusative of the paradigms given, and I can’t move on until I understand what is happening.
The second example given had an “a” added to it in declining, then contracted afterwards. But why when the first and third example is given there is no “a” to be added to it? And when I look at the lesson parts, it says nothing about adding “a” to a noun of this kind but says something about changing “e” in the last syllable of the stem.
Is this a case of that at the same time that a Consonant Declension Noun with S stem is one, it is also at the same time something else?
Κρέας and εὖρος are neuter nouns: in all neuters, the nominative, accusative, and vocative are always the same for any given noun (in the same number).
In 3rd declension masculines and feminines the commonest singular accusative ending is -α (contractions and other changes will be in work when needed), the other ending being -ν (familiar from the α- and ο-stem feminines and masculines). The ending -ν was originally for vowel stems (ι and υ) only but later analogically in some dental stems, too.
ευρος and κρεας are both neuter nouns. The neuter accusative is always identical to the neuter nominative, for all neuter nouns of each declension, both in the singular and in the plural.
The stem of the feminine paradigm, τριηρης, is τριηρεσ-. In the accusative singular, -α is added to this stem, resulting in τριηρεσα. Then -σ- between two vowels drops out, and -εα is contracted to -η, resulting in τριηρη.
Of course, an ancient Athenian didn’t go through this process in his/her mind whenever s/he wanted to say something using the accusative of τριηρης.. S/he would simply know the form τριηρη. But the process described above does reflect how the accusative of masc./fem. stems in -εσ- evolved in the history of the Greek language (at least, in the history of the Attic dialect of Greek), as reconstructed by linguists. The regular masc./fem. consonant declension ending -α was added to the stem. Then the -σ- between two vowels weakened to a simple aspiration (rough breathing or /h/ sound), and eventually completely disappeared. Finally, the regular Attic contraction of ε and α occurred (although this contraction did not occur in other dialects such as Ionic).
Hope this helps.
Edit: I cross-posted with Timothée. We’re furiously working at our keyboards at the same time on opposite sides of the globe to give you an explanation.
If the noun is neuter, the accusative is always the same as the nominative.
If the noun is masculine or feminine, the accusative ends in -η.
You’re better off just learning the endings resulting from loss of intervocalic -σ- and contraction, and not trying to run through how the forms evolved every time you want to come up with a form of these words in a case other than the nominative. That’s what the ancient Greeks did–they didn’t think about contractions when they used these words, they just knew the right endings. But understanding how the various forms evolved will help you learn the endings (and prepare you for reading dialects other than Attic).
To understand why we have neuter nominatives and accusatives in -ος rather than -ες, we would have to go much further back in the history and pre-history of Greek, and it would require a much more extensive understanding of the history – too much to type in a post here. When you’ve learned Attic Greek, you can study how Greek evolved from proto-Indo-European if you like.
It’s actually very interesting to see these evolutionary processes at work, and how what seem to be wild and inexplicable irregularities are actually the result of regular patterns that were disrupted by sound changes that occurred before Greek became Greek. Timothée has a much better grasp of these processes than I do.
For now, though, you’re better off just concentrating on mastering Attic Greek, which is the gateway to engaging with many great works of literature. Even if you’re only trying to write a few sentences in Attic Greek, you’ll have to do some reading to learn the language.
And as you can see, κρεας doesn’t follow this pattern, anyway.
I’m not trying to run through how the forms evolved through time. I thought I was supposed to…I thought that this is how you folks learn Attic!
I was thinking in terms of steps!
Step 1: Is it a noun? Verb? Pronoun?
Step 2: What kind of noun is it?
Step 3: What case? What number? What gender?
Step 4: In case of x, do x.1. In case of y, do y.2.
…all this time I was puzzled as to why I was also getting linguistic history in addition as to the rules on what declension and contraction happened. Now it turns out approaching Attic Greek in a step 1, step 2 manner is almost indistinguishable from asking for its linguistic history.
The textbook you’re working from shows how the forms evolved from contractions. You can just learn the resulting forms themselves and forget about understanding how they evolved if you like, and that may be the easiest approach at this point. But you will have to learn the rules for contractions one way or other, especially when you come to the contracted verbs.
Ok, I got another question regarding the same topic still. Why does ‘Kreas’ have no duals while the other neuter example, ‘Euros’ have one?
What does ‘Kreas’ have that made it lack one? Or is this a misprint in the original source itself?
And as to why I haven’t advanced in my lesson, I edited the chapters I have already posted in my story for misspellings and…well making the speech more reader friendly.
κρεας, “meat,” is a mass/innumerable noun in the singular. κρεα (long α) in the plural means “pieces of meat.” It’s safe to say you will never encounter the dual anywhere in ancient Greek, so why worry about it?
In fact, you really don’t need to memorize any of the dual forms at all. There are only two of them for each noun or adjective. They don’t crop up often in Greek texts, but when they do, they stand out and are easily recognizable.
Duals are typically used of things naturally occurring in pairs like eyes, hands etc., and you’re likely to encounter also things like a pair of brothers or sisters. But not "a pair of pieces of meat!
