Parsing

[Alex Stophel]

I've been going through BBG by Bill Mounce. I'm understanding a lot of stuff and I've been very encouraged by the book, but I'm confused on something...

When I parse a noun and there is the same case ending for different declensions of the same type, how do I tell the difference? For example, the singular accusative case has the case ending omicron nu for both masculine and neuter.

Thanks!

 

[fredtgreco]

When an ending (or more properly, the whole form) is the same, you parse it to allow both options:

neuter nominative singular OR neuter accusative singular

 

[Alex Stophel]

When an ending (or more properly, the whole form) is the same, you parse it to allow both options:

neuter nominative singular OR neuter accusative singular

Would this be the same if the same case endings were of the same type (accusative, say) but had multiple possibilities of gender? For example, the singular accusative case has the case ending omicron nu for both masculine and neuter.

In the workbook it doesn't show that in the answers and I'm not sure how to tell if it's masculine or neuter. It may just be an error in the book.

Thanks for your quick response!

 

[fredtgreco]

The short answer is you can't tell by the form alone. Context gives the answer, but at such a beginning level of the language, you don't have the context. So you would parse the ending ον as:

masculine accusative singular/ neuter nominative singular / neuter accusative singular

Just the knowing word would help, i.e. if it was a masculine noun, you would know the ending had to be acc sing. If it was a neuter noun, similarly you could limit the possibilities.

 

[Alex Stophel]

Aha. I guess it didn't hit me that nouns had an inherit gender, I thought the gender was determined by the case ending. I guess the gender, then, determines what case ending is used. I wonder why Mounce doesn't say which gender a word is in his book?

That makes a whole lot more sense. Thanks a lot!