Ok here is where I get confused.

Sam,

it would probably help if you cite the video and time like this:

(example)

Greek

Nominative-video 8

Time: 4:22

that would help so we could look to see what you are seeing and get a better idea of what you are asking....

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144439#Comment_144439

Nominative-video 7

Time: 3:24

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144441#Comment_144441

Good idea Robert. never thought about referring you to the video with my questions

Greg Perry

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144442#Comment_144442

Sam, I am IGNORANT of Greek (but I want to learn, got the Logos videos, and bought all of Mounce's books and have started) but I am okay with English having written about 85 books.

I am going to make an educated guess as to where you are getting confused. I sure hope I don't confuse you more.

The definition of "nominative" you stated seems to be the same confusion I had when I first saw Greek nominatives. It is my GUESS that your definition is for the nominative case in ENGLISH and that has little to do with the Greek nominatives I think. At least this is now I appeased my own confusion and I am either going to say things VERY wrong here or help... I pray for the latter!

In English, we often confuse HE with HIM (SHE with HER, etc.). For example, when someone calls you and asks, "Is Sam there?" and you say "This is him," you just violated English grammar. You should have used the nominative pronoun, "This is HE." HE is the nominative form that should always follow the verb TO BE. The objective case, HIM, would be used in places such as the object of a preposition, "I threw the ball to HIM."

So ENGLISH uses the nominative case or the objective case in that way.

To me that is te definition you read above. I think you were reading the definition of nominative case for general English.

in my extremely tiny into so far to Greek, I was trying to apply that to the Greek nominatives and from what LITTLE I know and can tell, the Greek nominatives are different and are not used the same way as that object-of-the-TO-BE verb in English. In other words, nominative in Greek is THE SUBJECT.

So in the sentence in Greek, "He threw the ball to HIM" HE would be the nominative case.

Different altogether.

Or I just confused us both by getting it REALLY wrong.

But since I had the very same confusion I think you are having, I was unsure if others would realize where you were coming from. (Or, more accurately stated, "From where you were coming")!

Greg Perry

davidphillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144446#Comment_144446

Sam,

One of the fun things about Greek is that almost every part of speech changes depending on how it is being used [:S]. So you're learning about case and how nouns can be found in different cases depending on how they function in the sentance. Well, just like nouns come in different cases, so do articles and pronouns (and more!). So you can have a noun in the nominative case and you can have an article in the nominative case (In Greek, the article is a little word that can help make a noun "definite." It is similar to "the" in English). Same with pronouns. Does that help?

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144446#Comment_144446

The definition of "nominative" you stated seems to be the same confusion I had when I first saw Greek nominatives. It is my GUESS that your definition is for the nominative case in ENGLISH and that has little to do with the Greek nominatives I think.

Throughout Indo-European languages (and many others) nominative has the same meaning and function with minor variants. What you find as the differences between languages such as Sanskrit-Greek-Latin-Spanish-English is primarily the collapsing of some of the less common cases into fewer cases. English is an "abnormal" case because it underwent pidginization after the Norman conquest.

http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsNominativeCase.htm is a good source of information on linguistics terms such as case, nominative, accusative etc.

Nominative is used for the subject of a sentence or clause. In some languages when the verb is (the English) to be, there may be no visible verb but the subject is still in the nominative. In addition a predicate noun will be in the nominative e.g. Jesus is Lord

I think that this latter case is what was trying to be expressed.

Just be glad Greek doesn't have all of the 25 or so cases linguists have identified. [:D] And be sure to trust people who know Greek more than you trust me.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144451#Comment_144451

Sam,

I'm not quite sure what you are asking but all Johnny was pointing out was the nominative case and how it normally signals the subject of the sentence.

This would include adjectives, pronouns and articles also. It just means that they all are denoting the subject of the sentence because they are in the nominative case.

Then he goes on to say that sometimes having a nominative noun, pronoun,or adjective isn't indicating the subject, but indicating some "additional description" of the subject. This is called the "predicate nominative" function.

For example:

Jesus IS the Christ

Jesus would be in the nominative; it's the subject, the "IS" is the "state of being verb" and the "the Christ" is the article "the" followed by "Christ" in the nominative case indicating some additional information about Jesus...the fact that he's "the Christ."

Like I said....I'm a newbie, so anyone who wants to clarify and correct is welcome to.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144455#Comment_144455

This would include adjectives, pronouns and articles also. It just means that they all are denoting the subject of the sentence because they are in the nominative case.

Close but ... only the noun or pronoun denotes the subject; adjectives and articles agree in case with the noun / pronoun that they modify so that you know what they are modifying. But that doesn't mean they denote the subject; rather they modify the subject.

Mind you, my linguistics is verging on ancient but it sounds as if the terminology is classic rather than linguistic so I have a fair amount of confidence in my answer.

However, I try to miss this forum and am not doing a very good job of screening it out.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144457#Comment_144457

Martha..

Whoops..you are right....thanks for correcting my slip up...

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144465#Comment_144465

Help will be greatly appreciated but please keep it simple for me

Think of it this way:

the foundation of a sentence is a subject and a verb: Millie barfed.
sometimes the subject is a noun; sometimes a pronoun. Millie barfed. She barfed.
sometimes a sentence is simply stating something about the subject Millie is a cat.
sometimes a sentence adds lots of additional information: Short-haired, tortoise-shell Millie barfed.
in some languages (e.g. Greek, Spanish) the way you tell what all that additional stuff goes with is by matching the adjectives/articles with the nouns/pronouns. You match by: gender, case and number. Unfortunately, English is not one of these languages; we use word order to sort out that additional stuff.

Nominatives are in bold.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

How am I to know what that the [article nominative], [noun nominative], and [pronoun nominative] where do I find the definition for these or how do they work in relation to nominative?

In a nutshell, context. Various grammars use terminology to describe contextual usage.

Keep Smiling [:)]

Terry Poperszky

So, this is what happens when Mike and Johnny give us third year tools, without the foundational understanding of the first two years. [:O]

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144470#Comment_144470

this is what happens when Mike and Johnny give us third year tools, without the foundational understanding of the first two years

I suspect there are several things in play:

how language arts were taught in your school - if you don't know grammatical terms in English you've got twice as much to learn at this level.
whether you've had an introduction to another language that uses cases - German, French, Spanish but no Chinese.
whether you've used what you learned at some point in the last 30 years.

In short, don't blame Mike and Johnny - blame all your preceding teachers and job supervisors [:P]

William

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144472#Comment_144472

how language arts were taught in your school--blame all your preceding teachers

Up to about 5 years ago, I would agree. Now you can just blame No Child Left Behind. Since we started playcating to the students that don't care and telling teachers "YOU" must get all students to pass.......Our educational system has gone to the outhouse. Heaven forbid if I as a math teacher expect my high school senior to know how to make change without a calculator.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144472#Comment_144472

In short, don't blame Mike and Johnny

MJ in all due respect to the DR and Johnny I was led to believe that all I had to do was to be able to read. If that’s not right then that’s fine. That means that I have lot to learn.

The way I look at all this is this is exercise for my mind and at my age I need that.

I may never learn it but as long as you guys will put up with me I going to make the effort

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144523#Comment_144523

Sam,

The issue looks like you have a problem with English grammar....brother...don't worry, many do, myself included!

I actually had to LEARN English grammar BEFORE starting Greek because I was so bad...much worse than you.

I'd recommend going to any English grammar teaching site on the web and looking through it....in short, learn English grammar first...(or at least brush up on it) it will really help.

Don't get discouraged! You will learn!

Terry Poperszky

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144472#Comment_144472

In short, don't blame Mike and Johnny - blame all your preceding teachers and job supervisors

I hope you understand MJ that my comment was tongue in cheek and it wasn't meant to blame anyone, but was an observation. In the process of learning Greek, I learned more about English structure than I ever had in High School or College. But what I am seeing is that I learned it over a period of time, as I was introduced to each concept slowly as I learned to parse the language. This allowed me to assimilate those concepts through practice and repetition. This is something that the Video's seem to try to shortcut, so we are given the ability to glean great amounts of technical information without the frame work to utilize it.

I suspect there are several things in play:

how language arts were taught in your school - if you don't know grammatical terms in English you've got twice as much to learn at this level.

whether you've had an introduction to another language that uses cases - German, French, Spanish but no Chinese.

whether you've used what you learned at some point in the last 30 years.

I agree, but I have a low opinion of our educational system (Or maybe just the students [;)]) and far as teaching language skills IMHO. I have three years of Spanish through High School and College, and I did not experience the type of technical training that I received when I took my Greek. I think for most people who bought the videos, a good primer on English would be a great help as well.

On other thought, I saw someone mention it (Mark?), but there really needs to be a series of exercises for people to work through on the completion of each concept, so that they start to build the framework of understanding. This may be something that the user community here can help with. Getting some of those have a greater facility in the language to set problems up that can be parsed with Logos tools and the videos.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144570#Comment_144570

I think for most people who bought the videos, a good primer on English would be a great help as well.

Yes....my advice is to go to a site designed for kids and go through the English grammar. I had to.. [:$]

Good things Algebra's not involved... [:S]

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144574#Comment_144574

Although it is playful, I'd suggest The
Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the
Eager and the Doomed by Karen
Elizabeth Gordon as an introduction/review of grammar. The reason is that its playfulness allows one to get past barriers to learning grammar. I know this is for English and not available in Logos but it does a very good job of having clear examples for grammatical terms.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144697#Comment_144697

I ordered thebook MJ "deluxe transitive vampire" you are right I need to learn english grammer before I tackle Greek

Damian McGrath

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144454#Comment_144454

Nominative is used for the subject of a sentence or clause. In some languages when the verb is (the English) to be, there may be no visible verb but the subject is still in the nominative. In addition a predicate noun will be in the nominative e.g. Jesus is Lord

I think that this latter case is what was trying to be expressed.

A bit late to this party but.... Jesus and Lord in this clause are both accusative.... Jesus is the object of the verb "to confess"....

Case in point that the subject of a sub-clause may be the object of a main clause and therefore in accusative rather than nominative.

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144457#Comment_144457

Close but ... only the noun or pronoun denotes the subject; adjectives and articles agree in case with the noun / pronoun that they modify so that you know what they are modifying. But that doesn't mean they denote the subject; rather they modify the subject.

Normally that might be the case, but in Greek virtually any word -- even participles and adjectives -- can be substantivized by the use of the article with it. E.g. "the one running" could be the subject of the sentence even though it is a participle. There is another use of the nominative in Greek which you haven't mentioned. I don't wish to cause confusion by introducing superfluous material, but the nominative is sometimes used in the NT in place of the vocative. Don't worry too much about it. Just file it away so that when you run across it you will probably recognize the usage.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/144872#Comment_144872

Jesus and Lord in this clause are both accusative

Duh. Thanks ... I promise to stay out of this forum.[:)]