Identifying the Lemma
A **lemma** is a conventional citation form representing a lexeme in a dictionary or morphological resource. Nouns are normally cited by the nominative singular, often accompanied by the genitive and article; this convention requires adjustment for lexemes without an ordinary singular. Adjectives commonly use the masculine nominative singular with the other gender endings.
Verbs are normally cited by the first-person singular present indicative **in the lexically appropriate form**, not invariably the active: compare **λύω** and **ἔρχομαι**. Defective or otherwise exceptional verbs require the convention of the particular lexicon.
A lemma is not the same thing as an inflectional stem or an English gloss. For irregular or suppletive forms, consult the resource’s cross-references and principal parts rather than mechanically removing an ending.
Parsing Nouns
To parse a noun **morphologically**, give **gender, number, case,** and **lemma**. Example: **λόγον** = accusative singular masculine of λόγος ("word"). In a particular clause it may function as a direct object, complement, or another accusative use; that **syntactic role is established from context**, not from the morphological parse alone. For third-declension nouns, the genitive is often needed to identify the stem (e.g. σαρκός → σαρκ-).
Parsing Adjectives
Parse an adjective for **lemma, gender, number and case**, adding degree where applicable. **ἀγαθόν**, from ἀγαθός, is positive degree and can be **masculine accusative singular**, or **neuter nominative, accusative or vocative singular**. The isolated form does not select just one of these analyses.
Agreement and construction help distinguish the alternatives. Whether the adjective is **attributive, predicate or substantival** is a separate syntactic question. Article position contributes evidence within a construction; article presence or absence alone is not an automatic classifier.
Parsing Pronouns
Identify the **lemma and pronoun type**, then give **case, number, gender and person where applicable**. Not every pronoun distinguishes every category: first- and second-person personal pronouns do not encode a masculine/feminine/neuter distinction.
**αὐτῷ**, from αὐτός, is **dative singular masculine or neuter**. The form alone does not determine the referent. Identifying an antecedent or discourse referent belongs to syntax and discourse analysis; the referent need not be a single preceding noun.
Parsing Articles
Parse the article for **gender, number and case**, identifying its paradigm **ὁ, ἡ, τό**. **τῷ** is **dative singular masculine or neuter**; its surface form does not resolve that gender distinction.
Article agreement and syntactic position contribute to analysis of the whole expression. Referential use and participation in substantival or attributive constructions are contextual questions (Chapters 43 and 77). Article presence does not automatically turn every following word into a noun.
Parsing Verbs
Finite verbs are parsed by **person, number, tense-form, voice, mood,** and **lemma**. Example: **ἐλύσατε** = second person plural aorist active indicative of λύω. A contextual translation such as "you (pl.) loosed" follows from morphology plus lexical meaning, but clause function and discourse force are separate analytical questions. For irregular/suppletive verbs (λέγω/εἶπον; ὁράω/εἶδον), identify the lemma carefully.
Parsing Participles
Participles combine verbal and adjectival morphology. Identify **lemma, tense-form and voice**, together with **gender, number and case**, and label the form a participle. **λύσαντι** is an **aorist active participle, dative singular masculine or neuter, of λύω**. The masculine and neuter forms coincide; the feminine dative singular is λυσάσῃ.
The stem λυσαντ- takes dative singular -ι. A participle has no person inflection and does not acquire the mood of a finite verb. Its aorist tense-form does not by itself establish absolute past time. Agreement, clause relations and context determine its function; a dative ending alone does not tell us whether the construction expresses reference, means or another relation.
Parsing Infinitives
Once a form is identified as an **infinitive**, parse **lemma, tense-form and voice**. An infinitive does not inflect for person, number, gender or case; in an articular infinitive construction, the article bears case and other nominal inflection.
**λῦσαι** can be the **aorist active infinitive of λύω**, but the same accented form is also the **second-person singular aorist middle imperative**. Therefore an isolated λῦσαι must not receive an infinitive-only answer key. Accentuation is useful evidence but does not distinguish these two forms.
If the infinitive analysis is established, its complement, purpose, indirect-discourse or other function is analyzed separately from the surrounding construction. An aorist infinitive’s perfective aspect is not a rule that it always refers to past time.
Parsing Indeclinables
Many function words — prepositions, conjunctions, and particles — are **indeclinable**, so their lexical category is identified rather than a case/number paradigm: **ἐν** = preposition governing the dative; **καί** = conjunction/particle ("and/also/even," context dependent). **Ἰησοῦς is not an indeclinable noun**: it is a declinable proper noun with an irregular paradigm and syncretic forms (e.g. some cases share surface forms). Syncretism must not be confused with indeclinability.
Resolving Morphological Ambiguity
Some forms permit more than one morphological analysis. **λύετε** can be present active **indicative or imperative**, second person plural of λύω; **λύσαντι** can be masculine or neuter dative singular. List the genuine alternatives first, then test them against agreement, the governing construction, lexical information and discourse.
Do not infer ambiguity merely because an ending occurs in several paradigms. **λόγοις**, once identified as a form of the masculine noun λόγος, is masculine dative plural; the existence of neuter nouns with -οις does not make this lexeme neuter. Likewise, πίστις is nominative singular, whereas its accusative singular is πίστιν.
Context often narrows the alternatives, but a passage can remain open to more than one analysis. State the viable alternatives and the evidence for a preference rather than presenting uncertainty as a parsing failure.
Using Context to Resolve Parsing
Use context to **test** a morphological analysis:
1. Identify the lexeme and its paradigm; do not assign a noun’s gender from an ending alone.
2. Check agreement within the noun phrase, allowing for forms that share gender or case endings.
3. Relate finite-verb person and number to possible subjects. These features constrain the analysis; they do not identify the subject uniquely. A neuter plural subject can occur with a singular verb.
4. Examine the governing verb, preposition and clause construction before assigning syntactic roles. Case does not universally mean “subject” or “object”.
5. Record remaining alternatives when the evidence is insufficient.
An isolated form can have a useful partial or complete morphological parse. Context is needed to select among viable alternatives where possible and to explain the form’s role in the passage.
**John 1:1c, BYZ04/PT1904 excerpt (capitalization normalized):** θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. Both nouns are nominative singular masculine. In this clause, the articular **ὁ λόγος** functions as subject and **θεός** as predicate nominative. This syntactic analysis uses article distribution and context; it is not simply a restatement of the case endings. A qualitative interpretation of θεός is a further semantic analysis, not a morphological feature.
Paradigms
Parsing Categories by Part of Speech
Record all viable analyses of an ambiguous form. Use lexical information and context to narrow them where possible. Syntactic function, referent and contextual translation belong to a separate analytical layer.
| Part of speech | Morphological and lexical identification |
| Noun | Lemma; gender, number and case. Gender may depend on the lexeme, not a unique ending. |
|---|---|
| Adjective | Lemma; gender, number and case; degree where applicable. |
| Article | Paradigm ὁ, ἡ, τό; gender, number and case. |
| Pronoun | Lemma and type; case, number, gender and person where applicable. |
| Finite verb | Lemma; tense-form, voice, mood, person and number. |
| Participle | Lemma; participle; tense-form, voice, gender, number and case; no person. |
| Infinitive | Lemma; infinitive; tense-form and voice; no inflected person, number, gender or case. |
| Indeclinable | Lexeme and lexical category; identify constructional use separately, without inventing inflected endings. |
Chapter glossary
- — parsing
exegesis
Morphological analysis identifying a form’s lemma and applicable grammatical categories, with alternatives where the surface form is ambiguous. Lexical information and context contribute to analysis; syntactic function is recorded separately, although some pedagogies use “full parse” more broadly.- — lemma
exegesis
A conventional citation or headword form selected to represent a lexeme in a dictionary, grammar, concordance, or morphological database. Greek verbs are normally cited by the first-person singular present indicative when available, in the lexically appropriate voice/form; alternative conventions are used for defective or otherwise exceptional lexemes.- — morphological ambiguity
exegesis
The availability of more than one morphological analysis for a form: for example, λύετε can be present active indicative or imperative, second person plural. Lexical information, agreement and context can narrow alternatives without always yielding a unique result.- — agreement
syntax
Correspondence in grammatical features within a construction: articles and adjectival modifiers normally agree with their head in gender, number and case; finite verbs normally agree with subjects in person and number. The relevant features depend on the construction, and patterns such as a neuter plural subject with a singular verb prevent an absolute matching rule.