As with verbs, Greek nouns consist of a stem and an inflection that denotes the gender, number, and case of the noun. There are five cases in Greek, each describing the role of a noun within a sentence. Thanks to the case inflections, Greek sentences have a relatively free word-order, and words are usually accommodated in certain orders to denote emphasis.
Greek nouns can have a singular, dual, or plural number. The gender of the nouns is either masculine, feminine, or neuter. This gender will determine how the noun and its corresponding articles and adjectives will be inflected.
The five cases in Greek are:
Case | Description |
Nominative | denotes the subject of the sentence |
Genitive | denotes a noun that is being used to modify another noun in a sentence (e.g. to show possession or points of origin) |
Dative | denotes an indirect object |
Accusative | denotes a direct object |
Vocative | denotes the person whom the letter is addressed to |