Genitive After Learned Prepositions

Almost every preposition in spoken Greek takes the accusative: σε, από, με, για, χωρίς, προς, μέχρι. Learn that one rule and you have covered the great bulk of prepositional phrases in the language. But there is a second, closed set — perhaps fifteen items in active use — that takes the genitive instead. This page is about that set: what belongs to it, why it exists, and, just as importantly, when a native speaker would use something else entirely.

Why there are two sets at all

The split is not random and it is not phonetic. It is historical and stylistic. The accusative prepositions are the ones that survived continuously in the spoken language from antiquity to today. The genitive ones are, almost without exception, imports from the written register — Ancient Greek prepositions and adverbs kept alive through the church, the law courts and the administration, and re-injected into the modern language during the Katharevousa period. They carry that origin with them: they belong to (formal), (academic), (journalistic) and (legal) Greek, and several of them are ungrammatical or comic in casual conversation.

This means the practical question is never only "which case does it take?" — it is also "would anyone say this over coffee?" Both answers are on this page.

The working set

Two mechanical points before the register discussion. First, these prepositions cannot contract with the article at all: there is no ×λόγωτου or ×εναντίοντης the way σε + τον gives στον. You simply write λόγω του, εναντίον της, μεταξύ των. (σε itself does contract with the genitive article — στου Γιάννη "at Yannis's place", στης γιαγιάς "at grandma's" — but that is σε doing its own thing, not a property of this set.) Second, several of them happily take a bare genitive with no article in set collocations: λόγω καιρού, λόγω δουλειάς, εκτός έδρας, εντός ολίγου. When the phrase is generic rather than pointing at a specific thing, the article drops.

The everyday alternatives

For almost every genitive preposition there is a plainer construction with σε + accusative or a subordinate clause. This is the table that will actually change how you speak.

Look at what εκτός and αντί do: adding a second little word (από, για) converts them into ordinary accusative prepositions. That is the language quietly repairing an inherited irregularity — and it tells you which form is alive. Εκτός από εσένα is what people say; ×εκτός σου is not Greek at all.

Bare εκτός + genitive survives mainly inside fixed expressions, which you should learn whole rather than analyse: εκτός λειτουργίας (out of order), εκτός ελέγχου (out of control), εκτός θέματος (off topic), εκτός εαυτού (beside oneself), εκτός έδρας (away, in sport).

κατά: one preposition, two cases, two meanings

κατά is the one item on the list you cannot treat as purely formal, because it is also a common accusative preposition — and the case you choose changes the meaning completely.

So κατά της απόφασης is "against the decision", while κατά την απόφαση would be read as "according to the decision" or "during the decision". Same word, one letter of difference in the article, opposite senses. There is no shortcut here beyond noticing the article.

The one place a preposition takes a weak pronoun

Here is a genuinely useful asymmetry. Greek clitics can never follow an ordinary preposition — ×σε μου is impossible, you must say σ' εμένα. But the genitive prepositions can take a weak genitive clitic directly, because a clitic is exactly the thing a genitive slot wants.

One warning before the table, because it trips people up in both directions. The strong pronouns have shortened (aphaeretic) forms that drop the initial ε- — μένα, σένα, μας, σας alongside εμένα, εσένα, εμάς, εσάς — and these are perfectly standard after any preposition: σε μένα, για σένα, από μας, με σένα. They are not clitics, they only look like them, and μας/σας happen to be spelled identically to the weak forms. What is genuinely impossible is an unambiguous weak form after an accusative preposition: ×σε μου, ×για μου, ×με του.

Μεταξύ μας is the proof that this set is not purely bookish: it is completely ordinary conversational Greek, as is εναντίον μου in an argument. The same mechanism powers the everyday locational adverbs — μπροστά μου, πίσω σου, δίπλα της, γύρω μας, ανάμεσά τους — which take a genitive clitic but σε + accusative with a full noun (μπροστά στο σπίτι). Note the second accent on ανάμεσά τους: ανάμεσα is stressed on its third-from-last syllable, so the clitic forces an extra accent.

Frozen datives that govern the genitive

A small group of "prepositions" in legal and academic Greek are not prepositions at all historically — they are Ancient Greek dative forms of nouns, frozen solid: βάσει (on the basis of), ελλείψει (in the absence of), δυνάμει (by virtue of), παρουσία / απουσία (in the presence/absence of). They now take a genitive complement.

Be clear about the status of these forms: Modern Greek has no dative and you cannot form one. Βάσει is a memorised word, not a case ending you can apply to another noun. The same holds for the fossils you meet elsewhere — εν τω μεταξύ, δόξα τω Θεώ, τοις εκατό. They are (archaic) vocabulary items preserved whole; see The lost dative.

Common Mistakes

1. Putting the accusative after a genitive preposition. These prepositions are the exception to the accusative default, and the article gives you away.

2. Keeping the genitive after εκτός από or αντί για. The added από/για takes over, and it takes the accusative.

3. Attaching a weak clitic to σε, από, με or για. Only the genitive prepositions take clitics; the accusative ones need a strong pronoun — full (εμένα) or shortened (μένα), either is fine.

4. Using κατά + genitive for "during" or "according to". With the genitive it can only mean "against".

5. Reaching for πλην, διά or ένεκα in conversation. These are correct Greek, but wildly out of register at a dinner table — the effect is roughly that of saying heretofore to a flatmate. Use εκτός από, με, λόγω.

Key Takeaways

• The default is preposition → accusative. Only a closed, learned set takes the genitive, and every member of it comes from the written language.
• The set you actually need: εναντίον, υπέρ, κατά (in the sense "against"), λόγω, εξαιτίας, μέσω, μεταξύ, εντός, εκτός, αντί. Marginal and formal: πλην, διά, χάριν, ένεκα.
• Most have an everyday counterpart with σε + accusative: ενάντια σε, ανάμεσα σε, μέσα σε, εκτός από, αντί για — or simply a clause with επειδή.
• These prepositions never contract with the article (λόγω του, not ×λόγωτου) and often take a bare genitive in set phrases (λόγω καιρού).
• κατά takes both cases with different meanings: genitive = against, accusative = during / according to / around.
• They are the only prepositional items that take a weak genitive clitic: εναντίον μου, μεταξύ μας, εξαιτίας σου — as do the locational adverbs μπροστά μου, δίπλα της, ανάμεσά τους. The accusative prepositions take a strong pronoun instead, in either its full or its shortened form: σ' εμένα / σε μένα, για σένα, από μας.
• βάσει, ελλείψει, δυνάμει are frozen Ancient datives, not a living case. Modern Greek cannot form a dative at all.