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    Elpenor's Lessons in Ancient Greek

 In Print:
The Original Greek New Testament

LESSON 3
HADES - From Homer's Odyssey

by George Valsamis

 

ELPENOR EDITIONS IN PRINT



Page 14

Not everything is inflected. The leaning (inflected) parts of speech are the article (ἄρθρον), the noun (οὐσιαστικόν), the adjective (ἐπίθετον), the pronoun (ἀντωνυμία), the verb (ῥῆμα) and the participle (μετοχή).

Uninflected parts are the adverb (ἐπίρρημα), the preposition (πρόθεσις), the conjunction (σύνδεσμος) and the interjection (ἐπιφώνημα).

 

Εἵνεκα, a preposition, is not inflected. However you may find it also as εἵνεκεν, ἕνεκα or ἕνεκεν, according to various Greek dialects. These are not cases and they all have the same meaning and function.

Prepositions are necessary, but they signify a certain defect of a language. E.g. in the phrase "For Helen's sake we vanished", the time at which we vanished when we saw simultaneously Helen's face and our loss, it has become a line: the cause is not inside the time of the action, as it would be, let's say, in something like forhelenwevanished. However, in Ancient Greek, the very way of writting all words united, ultimately incorporated everything in everything. But a certain distinction is necessary, even if I unite all letters.

A language needs defectiveness to some degree, otherwise we would create a new word each time we opened our mouth. We need a mechanical language to some degree, where "with" will always be one and the same, although it is not the same in reality, although it is different to talk with your torturer and with your mother. Aristotle's categories are not something like moulds where our minds pour reality in order to comprehend it.

 

The main purpose of these lessons perhaps has been accomplished - to trace a way of learning Greek by stimulating thinking and by understanding how deeply language incorporates reality, at the same time depicting a past and preparing a future reality. You can use the texts and your grammar and syntax books to explore further this way. This is a course you must finish! Thanks for being here!

 

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