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Ancient Greek verbs can be divided into two groups, the thematic (in which a thematic vowel /e/ or /o/ is added before the ending, e.g. λύ-ο-μεν (lú-o-men) "we free"), and the athematic (in which the endings are attached directly to the stem, e.g. ἐσ-μέν (es-mén) "we are". [20] Thematic verbs are much more numerous.
Ancient Greek grammar is morphologically complex and preserves several features of Proto-Indo-European morphology. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, articles, numerals and especially verbs are all highly inflected.
In Ancient Greek, for example, the perfect carried the meaning of a state resulting from a past action, but the PIE stative referred to the state alone. Likewise, the aorist, though having a tense-like meaning in Ancient Greek, had none in PIE. Perfective and stative verbs were effectively tenseless, or indifferent to time.
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. [2] [3] It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, [4] and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as well as consonants. [5]
In Latin, most verbs have four principal parts.For example, the verb for "to carry" is given as portō – portāre – portāvī – portātum, where portō is the first-person singular present active indicative ("I carry"), portāre is the present active infinitive ("to carry"), portāvī is the first-person singular perfect active indicative ("I carried"), and portātum is the neuter supine.
A common idiom in Ancient Greek is for the protasis of a conditional clause to be replaced by a relative clause. (For example, "whoever saw it would be amazed" = "if anyone saw it, they would be amazed.") Such sentences are known as "conditional relative clauses", and they follow the same grammar as ordinary conditionals. [77]
The grammar of Old English differs greatly from Modern English, predominantly being much more inflected.As a Germanic language, Old English has a morphological system similar to that of the Proto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections thought to have been common in Proto-Indo-European and also including constructions characteristic of the Germanic daughter languages such as ...
The Ancient Greek genitive can often be translated with the preposition "of" or the English possessive case: ἡ τοῦ Καίσαρος γυνή. [4] hē toû Kaísaros gunḗ. "The wife of Caesar." It is also used after prepositions, especially those which mean "from": ἀπῆλθεν ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς. [5] apêlthen ek tês agorâs.