🗣️ The article

Greek has a definite article, ὁ ἡ τό, and no indefinite one (the indefinite pronoun τις, "a certain", does that work when it is needed). The article is a late development: in Homer it is still the demonstrative it came from, and by the fifth century Attic prose has made it a marker of definiteness, a nominaliser of any phrase it governs, and a device for the position of adjectives. This chapter gives the forms, the uses, the omission, and the position of the attributive and predicate adjective. It also records the way the three UD Ancient Greek treebanks tag it, which differ.

Contents

1. Forms
2. From demonstrative to article
3. The definite article in Attic
4. The article with other parts of speech
5. Omission of the article
6. Position: attributive and predicate
7. The article with pronouns and pronominal adjectives
8. ὁ μέν … ὁ δέ and ὁ δέ
9. Examples from the corpora
10. How Mova handles it
11. Sources

1. Forms

The nominative singular and plural masculine and feminine (ὁ, ἡ, οἱ, αἱ) have the rough breathing and no τ; the other forms begin with τ. The four forms without τ are proclitics: they have no accent and lean on the next word (chapter 2, section 6). The article has no vocative: a vocative is the noun alone, often with ὦ.

Pronominal forms. In Homer and Herodotus the forms in τ- of the article are also used as a relative pronoun and as a demonstrative (chapter 16); in Attic the same forms survive as demonstrative in set phrases (καὶ τόν "and him", πρὸ τοῦ "before this", τὸ καὶ τό "this and that"). The relative pronoun ὅς, ἥ, ὅ is a distinct word (chapter 6).

2. From demonstrative to article

In Homer ὁ ἡ τό is still a demonstrative pronoun meaning "this, that, he, she" (ὁ δέ "and he"; τὸν δὲ ἰδών "and seeing him"), sometimes with the force of the definite article (ὁ γέρων, ἡ γυνή) and occasionally as a relative (τῷ … ὅς ἔσκε). In Attic poetry the article is far less used than in prose: tragedy often omits it where prose would have it. In Attic prose the demonstrative uses are left in a few fixed turns: ὁ μέν … ὁ δέ, ὁ δέ "but he", τὸ μέν … τὸ δέ "partly … partly", πρὸ τοῦ "before this", τοῦ λόγου πέρι (smyth-1920 §§1099–1117). The development is the same as in the Romance languages from the Latin demonstrative ille.

3. The definite article in Attic

The article marks that the speaker treats the noun as identified for the hearer (smyth-1920 §§1118–1152):

• The particular article marks a person or thing already mentioned, or unique, or known from the circumstances: ὁ βασιλεύς "the king", with a bare βασιλεύς being the Persian Great King (hence no article in the Anabasis for Artaxerxes' title); ἡ πόλις "the city (of Athens)", ἡ ἀγορά "the market".
• The generic article marks a whole class: ὁ ἄνθρωπος "man", οἱ ἄνθρωποι "men", ὁ φιλόσοφος "the philosopher (as a type)", τὸ ἀγαθόν "the good".
• With abstract nouns, and with the names of materials, art and virtues: ἡ ἀρετή, ἡ δικαιοσύνη; with the name of a person already known or in a series: ὁ Σωκράτης (in Plato the article marks the Socrates of the conversation), with the names of countries and rivers: ἡ Ἑλλάς, ὁ Εὐφράτης.
• As a possessive. With nouns for kin, parts of the body and belongings, the article alone suffices when the owner is clear (ὁ πατήρ "his father", ἡ μήτηρ "his mother"), and the genitive of the reflexive pronoun is placed inside the article phrase to make the owner explicit (τὸν ἑαυτοῦ πατέρα "his own father").
• With numerals it gives "the whole of" or "the two": οἱ δέκα "the ten", τὰ δύο μέρη "the two thirds".
• With the superlative, a particular one: ὁ ἄριστος.

4. The article with other parts of speech

The article makes any phrase it governs into a noun phrase (smyth-1920 §1153). It governs:

• Adjectives (substantive use): οἱ σοφοί "the wise", τὰ καλά "beautiful things", τὸ ἀληθές "the truth", οἱ πολλοί "the majority, the many", τὸ πλῆθος.
• Participles: οἱ λέγοντες "those who say, the speakers"; ὁ ἀδικῶν "the wrongdoer"; τὰ γενόμενα "what has happened". A participle with the article is the Greek equivalent of a relative clause (chapter 10).
• Adverbs and prepositional phrases: οἱ νῦν "the men of today", τὰ ἐν τῇ πόλει "the affairs in the city", οἱ ἐν Σπάρτῃ "those in Sparta", οἱ παρὰ βασιλέως "the king's men" (Xen. An. 1.1.5), τὰ περὶ τοῦ πολέμου "matters concerning the war".
• The neuter article with a genitive denotes the affairs, interests or possessions: τὰ τῆς πόλεως "the affairs of the city", τὸ τῶν θεῶν "the will of the gods", τὰ ἡμέτερα "our things, our situation".
• The infinitive: τὸ λέγειν "speaking, the act of speaking". The articular infinitive can be governed in any case (τοῦ λέγειν, τῷ λέγειν, ἐν τῷ λέγειν) and is a main device of the Attic clause (chapter 10).
• A quotation or a word as a noun: τὸ "γνῶθι σαυτόν" "the saying 'know yourself'".

5. Omission of the article

The article is omitted (smyth-1920 §§1126–1150):

• with proper names, when the person is being first introduced, and generally in poetry;
• with a predicate noun: Κῦρος ἦν στρατηγός "Cyrus was a general"; the noun with the article would be the subject, and the order of subject and predicate does not matter for the case, only the article marks the subject: ὁ βασιλεὺς ἀγαθός but ἀγαθὸς βασιλεύς "a good king" (smyth-1920 §1150);
• with nouns of the unique class, such as θεός, βασιλεύς (Persian king), ἥλιος, γῆ, θάλαττα, ἄστυ ("the city" = Athens), and words like πόλεμος, εἰρήνη, ἄρχων: they are determinate without it;
• in prepositional phrases of fixed meaning: ἐν ἀγορᾷ, ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ, ἐκ γῆς, κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν "by land and sea" (Xen. An. 1.1.7), ἐπὶ δεξιᾷ, πρὸς ἑσπέραν;
• with vocatives and addresses (ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι);
• with indefinite and plural nouns used in a general sense: ἄνδρες ἀγαθοί "good men", πόλεις "cities";
• with the nouns of the headings, titles and the lists: Ἀθηναῖοι ἔπεισαν …

The same noun is thus often with and without the article without changing the meaning in any important respect; in the Septuagint the Hebrew construct chain demands an omitted article on the first noun, which is a mark of translation Greek (grc-x-koine, chapter 6).

6. Position: attributive and predicate

An adjective with the article of its noun is attributive, and the article stands before the adjective or before the noun (smyth-1920 §§1154–1171):

In the last two the adjective is outside the article group: it makes a statement about the noun with the copula omitted. The same rule governs participles, phrases with prepositions, and genitives. The attributive position with a genitive: ὁ τοῦ βασιλέως υἱός or ὁ υἱὸς ὁ τοῦ βασιλέως (the genitive is placed inside the article phrase) beside the predicate position υἱὸς ὁ τοῦ βασιλέως; with prepositional phrases: ἡ ἐν τῇ πόλει οἰκία, ἡ οἰκία ἡ ἐν τῇ πόλει "the house in the city".

Special positions of a few adjectives. A set of adjectives and pronouns change their meaning with the position (smyth-1920 §§1172–1189):

Demonstratives. οὗτος, ἐκεῖνος, ὅδε stand in the predicate position with the article of their noun (οὗτος ὁ ἀνήρ, ἐκεῖνος ὁ λόγος). A demonstrative without the article is a pronoun (οὗτος ἀνήρ "this is a man", rare). The possessive adjectives and the genitive of the personal pronoun in a possessive sense follow the same rule: ὁ ἐμὸς πατήρ or ὁ πατὴρ ὁ ἐμός "my father" (attributive); ἐμὸς ὁ πατήρ "the father is mine" (predicate). In the first and second person the genitive of the personal pronoun is a later alternative (ὁ πατήρ μου), which becomes the norm in the Koine (chapter 6).

7. The article with pronouns and pronominal adjectives

The interrogatives and indefinites do not take the article, but ἄλλος, πολύς and ὀλίγος do, with a change of sense (smyth-1920 §1186): οἱ πολλοί "the majority", οἱ ὀλίγοι "the oligarchs, the few", τὰ ἄλλα "the rest", τὸ πολύ "most of it". With εἷς the article is possessive, and with ἕτερος it means "the other of two": ὁ ἕτερος.

8. ὁ μέν … ὁ δέ and ὁ δέ

The old pronominal use remains in two idioms (smyth-1920 §§1106–1117):

• ὁ μέν … ὁ δέ: "the one … the other, this one … that one"; also ὁ μὲν … ἄλλος δέ, τὸ μὲν … τὸ δέ "partly … partly". Examples: ὁ μὲν ἔφη …, ὁ δὲ ἔλεγε "one said … the other said". Also in the oblique cases: τοὺς μὲν … τοὺς δέ.
• ὁ δέ, οἱ δέ "but he, but they", in narrative to mark a change of subject: ἡ μήτηρ … ὁ δέ ἔφη. Only the nominative is used in this sense in prose, and the particle is always δέ.
• A case form with a preposition: πρὸ τοῦ "before that", ἐκ τοῦ "from then", τῷ ὄντι "in fact".

9. Examples from the corpora

Xen. An. 1.1.2–3 · tlg0032.tlg006 ὁ μὲν οὖν πρεσβύτερος παρὼν ἐτύγχανε· Κῦρον δὲ μεταπέμπεται … ὁ δὲ πείθεται καὶ συλλαμβάνει Κῦρον … ἡ δὲ μήτηρ ἐξαιτησαμένη αὐτὸν ἀποπέμπει "the elder happened to be present; but Cyrus he sends for … and he believes it and arrests Cyrus … but his mother begged him off and sends him back"

ὁ μὲν … πρεσβύτερος is the attributive article with a comparative used as a noun; ὁ δὲ πείθεται is "and he (the king)", the article in its old pronominal use marking the change of subject; ἡ δὲ μήτηρ has the article as a possessive of the family relation, since "his mother" is clear from the context.

Xen. An. 1.1.5–6 · tlg0032.tlg006 ὅστις δʼ ἀφικνεῖτο τῶν παρὰ βασιλέως πρὸς αὐτὸν … ἦσαν αἱ Ἰωνικαὶ πόλεις Τισσαφέρνους τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἐκ βασιλέως δεδομέναι "whoever of the king's men came to him … the Ionian cities had been given to Tissaphernes in the old days by the king"

τῶν παρὰ βασιλέως: the article governs a prepositional phrase and makes it a noun ("those from the king"); βασιλέως is without the article because it denotes the Persian king; αἱ Ἰωνικαὶ πόλεις is the attributive position (article, adjective, noun).

Xen. An. 1.2.1 · tlg0032.tlg006 καὶ ἁθροίζει ὡς ἐπὶ τούτους τό τε βαρβαρικὸν καὶ τὸ Ἑλληνικόν "and he gathered, as against them, the barbarian force and the Greek"

The neuter article with an adjective gives "the barbarian (part) and the Greek (part)" of the army.

Pl. Ap. 17a · tlg0059.tlg002 πεπόνθατε ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμῶν κατηγόρων "you have been affected by my accusers"

The attributive possessive adjective ἐμῶν stands between the article and the noun.

Septuagint Gen. 1:1 · UD PTNK Septuagint-Genesis-1:1-grc Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν "in the beginning God made the heaven and the earth"

ἀρχῇ has no article (the Hebrew bereshit is a construct, without the article: chapter 6 of the Koine manual); ὁ θεός has it as a proper name for a unique being. τὴν γῆν repeats the article before the second conjunct, as Attic would.

10. How Mova handles it

The article in UD. All three UD Ancient Greek treebanks tag the article as DET, with det as its relation to the noun, but the details differ, and a parser that reads one cannot be tested on another without a mapping (UD 2.18, counts of 2026-10-22; PTNK all files, Perseus and PROIEL train):

In PTNK the pronominal ὁ of ὁ δέ keeps the tag DET and takes the relation of a subject, so that a DET can be a clause argument; the other two treebanks change the tag to PRON. PROIEL types the article as a demonstrative (PronType=Dem) in 24,821 forms, with Definite=Def beside it; PTNK types it PronType=Art. The demonstratives. οὗτος is PRON with the relation det in PTNK (118 times: a pronoun heading a noun phrase), ADJ in Perseus (as nmod 259 and obj 177, which shows a tag drawn from the form and not the function), and DET (det 936) or PRON in PROIEL.

What Mova does with it. The consequence for the tagger is that the one word, ὁ, belongs to a class decided by the treebank, not by the language: a model fitted on PTNK reads an article that is a subject as DET and one in PROIEL as PRON. Mova's baseline on PTNK (LAS 74.41 with its own tags, 78.29 with gold tags, train → dev, UD 2.18, 2026-10-22) is fitted to the PTNK convention; moving to PROIEL or Perseus needs a mapping of these classes, which does not yet exist. The Hebrew of the Septuagint's source explains one aspect: the Greek article regularly renders the Hebrew article (ha-) and the construct state has no article on the first noun, so that PTNK sentences have article patterns that Attic prose does not (grc-x-koine, chapter 6).

Position as a feature. The difference between ὁ ἀγαθὸς ἀνήρ and ἀγαθὸς ὁ ἀνήρ is pure word order and article position; the UD trees mark it with amod and det placement or a predicate relation. We have not measured how well Mova's parser tells the two apart. Not measured.

11. Sources

• Smyth, H. W. 1920 (smyth-1920): §§1099–1189 (the article), §§1106–1117 (ὁ as a demonstrative), paraphrased from the Perseus text (CC BY-SA).
• Goodwin, W. W. 1892 (goodwin-1892); Kühner–Blass–Gerth (kuhner-1890): the article, public domain.
• Xenophon, Plato (Perseus canonical-greekLit, CC BY-SA 4.0); UD PTNK (CC BY-SA 4.0); UD Perseus and UD PROIEL (counts only, never quoted).

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