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A genitive absolute is a Greek grammatical construction used in a participle to indicate that the subject of the participle is not the same as the subject of the main clause. It is needed in Greek because verbs are automatically matched to the subject of the main clause. The construction shows ownership of the verb by the subject. The difference in the subject of the participle and the main clause can also be caused by a mix of plural and singular pronouns.
Usually present at the beginning or end of a sentence, a genitive absolute is a grammatical construction used in the Greek language. Included in a participle, a genitive absolute indicates that the subject of the participle is not the same as the subject of the main clause. This construction is needed in Greek because Greek verbs are otherwise automatically matched to the subject of the main clause. Genitive absolutes are indicated by a change in the spelling of both the verb and the noun in the participle.
The verb in a participle usually functions as a descriptor or adjective, rather than denoting an action. Participles can be a word or a phrase and, in English, usually end in “-ing” or “-ed” for present and past tense respectively. For example, in the sentence “As she ran, the girl tripped and fell,” the sentence “as she ran” is the participle. Running describes what he was doing when the action in the main sentence occurred.
Words that are in the genitive case usually have endings that show ownership of one thing for another. In English, it is often expressed by an apostrophe and the letter s, for example “the king’s crown”. The construction of a genitive absolute is so called because it links a particular verb to a particular subject, in a sense showing ownership of the verb by the subject.
In Greek, a genitive absolute occurs only when the subject in the participle differs from the subject of the sentence. For example, in the sentence “When Victor reached the airport, Sasha had already boarded the plane,” Victor is the subject of the participle, but Sasha is the subject of the main sentence. While English verbs don’t change to indicate gender, in Greek they do.
Without the absolute genitive, both the words “reached” and “had boarded” would have a feminine ending, referring to Sasha. The genitive absolute changes the ending of “reached” to reflect that the action of reaching belongs to “Victor”. It also changes the ending of “Victor” to indicate that it is the noun that “reach” is attached to.
The difference in the subject of the participle and the main clause can also be caused by a mix of plural and singular pronouns. In this case, a singular noun can be included in a plural noun, but singular and plural are still considered different subjects. For example, in the sentence “After they went shopping, he put the groceries away.” The pronoun “they” in the participle includes the “she” in the main clause, but since one pronoun is singular and one is plural, the absolute genitive would be used.
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