The vocative is rare in the New Testament, as Duff points out on p38. In the noun paradigms we have looked at so far, only λόγος has a separate form for the vocative case, which is used for addressing someone directly or getting their attention. Therefore words in the vocative are generally names or titles. The first words in these three sentences would be in the vocative case in Greek:

Peter, feed my sheep.

Teacher, I don’t understand.

Lord, heal my child.

Where a noun does not have a separate form for the vocative, the nominative is used, and the context shows that ‘address’ is intended.

This is the complete pattern for λόγος :

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The 3rd person pronoun αὐτός (he), αὐτή (she), αὐτό (it), covered on p39 of Duff is extremely common, as you might imagine. The good news is that there is only one anomaly in the endings – otherwise you have already encountered them.

You will find these patterns we have encountered throughout these units cropping up like this again and again as you go on in Greek – it really is worth the effort of learning them thoroughly now.

Here is the whole paradigm:

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