Agreement and verbs

So what does agreement have to do with verbs?

The rule is that a verb must agree with its subject in person and number.

If the subject is first person (and can you remember examples of first person?), the Greek verb must agree with it in person. If the subject is plural, the verb must agree with it in number.

How does the verb do this? It has a special form that we call the first person form of the verb.

• εἰμί is first person singular. If you are going to say "I" followed by the verb εἰμι you have to say ἐγὼ εἰμι.
• ἐσμέν is first person plural, and ἡμεῖς is the Greek word for "we." If you are going to say "we" followed by the verb εἰμι you have to say ἡμεῖς ἐσμέν.

This is a really important point. How does a verb agree with its subject in person and number? It changes its form. In our example above, εἰμί goes to ἐσμέν.