Latin Textbook (Based on Wheelock’s Latin)
STUDY GUIDE TO WHEELOCK LATIN
by
Dale A Grote
UNC Charlotte
[This copy FTP’d from milton.u.washington.edu, 19-Jan-93]
From FFL00DAG@UNCCVM.UNCC.EDU Tue Jan 19 18:15:19 1993
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 93 21:08:32 EST
From: FFL00DAG@UNCCVM.UNCC.EDU
Subject: Re: Latin Textbook
To: Thomas Dell
Thomas,
I call the guides “Study Guide to Wheelock,” and have made them
available for free use to anyone who’d like use them. I think
the answer to your question, therefore, is “Yes.” I sent them
up so they could get some good beta-testing. So far as I’m
conncerned they can be copied and sent anywhere.
Dale A. Grote
FFL00DAG@UNCCVM.BITNET
Department of Foreign Languages
UNC Charlotte
Charlotte, NC 28223
704-547-4242
—
12/30/92
PREFACE TO MY COLLEAGUES
Wheelock’s Latin is now, and probably will be for sometime in the future, the
most widely used introductory Latin book used in American colleges and
universities. And with good reason. His exclusive emphasis on the details
of Latin grammar squares with the general expectation that students
acquire a rudimentary, independent reading ability in real Latin after only
two semesters of study. Surely Wheelock has its drawbacks and limitations,
but it is still the best text around.
A growing difficulty with the book has become apparent in recent
years, a problem that is entirely external to the text itself: students are
less and less able to understand his explanations of Latin grammar because
their grasp of English grammar is becoming more tenuous. This
obsolescence hardly comes as a surprise, since the main outlines of
Wheelock’s grammar were set down in the forties and fifties, when it was
safe to assume that college students were well versed in at least the
basics of English grammar. We may lament this change, write heated letters
to school boards and state legislatures, but all this is of little help when
confronted as we are with classrooms filled with beginning Latin students
who have never learned the difference between a participle and a pronoun,
or who have never heard the word “case” in their lives.
As the years went by, I found that I was required to dedicate
unacceptable amounts of class time to discussions of elementary
grammatical concepts and to redrafting Wheelock’s explanations into forms
my students could understand, leaving less time for actually confronting
Latin in the classroom. The results were predictable: it became nearly
impossible to complete the forty chapters of grammatical material in two
semesters. The third semester had to be called into the service of the
basic grammar of the language, thus reducing the reading we could do and
delaying the feeling of mastery and independence that drives students on
to read more.
Slowly, I began to compile a rather extensive body of notes and
exercises designed to teach the basic grammatical concepts to students of
Latin, as they needed them, while learning Latin from Wheelock, and to slow
down and recast Wheelock’s treatment of the grammar into language which
they could understand on their own. My intention for these notes was to
get the repetitive transfer of basic information out of the classroom, so
that we could spend more class time reviewing, translating, and drilling.
These notes, therefore, represent nothing more than what I found myself
repeating year after year in front of a class. By setting them into a
written text, however, and removing it from the daily classroom agenda,
there is no doubt that I have greatly increased the productivity of class
time. Whereas I previously struggled to finish twenty chapters in a
semester, my first semester class now easily finishes twenty-seven
chapters in the first semester, with time left over for some connected
readings. In the second semester, we have time to do considerable amounts
of extended reading after the forty chapters of grammar have been
covered.
There is really nothing miraculous about this increased productivity.
In fact, it was to be expected. Previously, students, who could make
neither heads nor tails of Wheelock, relied on my in-class presentations to
explain Latin grammar to them. After the grammar was explained, they would
review their classroom notes, and begin the chapter exercises, without
ever having read Wheelock, which had been replaced by my lectures. In
essence, then, I was doing their homework for them, but I was doing it in
class, not outside of class. By removing basic grammar from the class by
putting it into a workbook, I only transferred the time spent on learning
Latin grammar outside the class, and freed up time in class for drilling and
taking specific questions.
An unexpected, and admittedly self-interested, advantage I reaped
from these printed notes was that students who tend to fall behind, or to
miss class (and fall behind), had a body of notes which they could use on
their own to catch up, and — perhaps more importantly — to which I could
refer them when they came knocking at my door to find out “if they’d missed
anything important in class.” Previously this presented a real moral bind.
Either I spent hours reteaching the class (or classes) for them, in the
(usually vain) hope that they would reform once they had been set up on a
sure foundation, or I sent them away uninformed, knowing that things would
only get worse for them because they couldn’t possibly draw the
information they needed from Wheelock by themselves. Now, I refer them to
my notes, express my willingness to answer their specific questions after
they’ve worked through them, and send them on their way, hoping for the
best.
Here’s how I’ve incorporated these notes into my syllabus and
classroom routine. In the first place, going through my notes for each
chapter is entirely optional. I make no assignments from them, nor do we
use class time to go over any of the exercises they contain. Instead, I
merely assign the Practice and Review sentences of, say, Chapter 5, for the
next class period. How the students learn the material in Chapter 5 is
entirely their affair, though I do recommend they read my notes. If,
however, a student can understand Wheelock perfectly, then s/he is under
no obligation to read my presentation of the chapter. Most students do
read my notes instead of Wheelock. After reading my notes, I recommend
that they read Wheelock’s chapter, which provides a compressed “review” of
what I leisurely set out in my chapter notes. For an added review and
translation exercises, I also recommend that students work through
Wheelock’s Self-Help Tutorials before turning to the specified assignment.
After so much preparation, students regularly find the sentences quite
straight-forward. In class, then, after a verbal review of the important
concepts in the chapter, we work quickly through the sentences, then, in the
time remaining, we sight read either from the Sententiae Antiquae, or from
the book 38 Latin Stories designed to go along with Wheelock. My class
covers three chapters per week — one chapter per day, since we meet MWF
for an hour and half. Classes meeting five times per week, of course, would
divide the material differently.
I would like to stress again that I don’t claim to have created
anything new, revolutionary, or destined to reshape the way Latin is
taught for the next 25 years. Perhaps I do have one claim to originality,
insofar as my book combines a grammar text and workbook, but I hardly think
that’s worthy of much note. I merely believe that I have put together a
study guide which will help teach Latin from Wheelock more efficiently by
making more classroom time available for direct contact with the language
itself. The text is not meant to intrude directly on classroom work. It is
for students use at night, by themselves, to prepare for classes and exams.
I myself designate the book as an optional purchase and make it available
at a nearby copy store, and at first a substantial fraction of my class
doesn’t buy it. After three weeks, however, nearly all of them have a copy.
My students, at least, find the book very helpful, and frequently make
remarks about it on their course evaluations. For what it’s worth, here
are their remarks from last semester.
“The book the instructor made that goes along with Wheelock’s book
provided a much better understanding of Latin.”
“His notebook that went along with the Wheelock book was also
immensely helpful. The explanations were thorough and easy to
understand.”
“The workbook that he created to go along with the text helped a lot
in the understanding of the work.”
“Dr. Grote’s handbook for the class is a great teaching tool and
helped students be prepared for class.”
“Grote’s handbook — especially helpful.”
“He supplies a handbook written by him that helps a great deal in
learning Latin.”
“Dr. Grote’s book was very helpful! His explanations are elaborate
and very clear. I’d vote for publication!!” [Emphases in the original]
I’m providing you draft of my book for the usual reasons. I would
appreciate your making the text available to your students — as I do — at
a copy shop and calling their attention to it. Would you please take note of
their reactions, positive and negative, and send them along to me during or
at the end of the semester. I would greatly value, of course, any remarks
you would care to make about my presentations. Since I’m preparing the copy
myself, any corrigenda you spot would save me a lot of embarrassment. If
you have any questions I’ve left unanswered, please don’t hesitate to
contact me.
Dale A. Grote
UNC Charlotte
Department of Foreign Languages
Charlotte, NC 28223
(704) 547-4242
FFL00DAG@UNCCVM.BITNET
12/30/92
CHAPTER 1
“First and Second Conjugation Verbs: Indicative,
Imperative, and Infinitive”
VERBS: THE BASICS OF CONJUGATION
Let’s start simply: a verb is a word which indicates action or state of
being. Everyone ought to know that. Look at some of the different forms of
a simple verb in English, the verb “to see”:
GROUP I GROUP II GROUP III
I see. I saw. I am seen.
I do see. I was seen.
I am seeing. I will be seen.
I will see. I should have been seen.
I should be seeing.
I would see.
See.
I want to see.
And so on; there are several left out. Look at the first group for now. You
can detect something interesting going on here. You have a basic form of
the verb — “see” — and it’s undergoing changes. One kind of change is that
different words are put before it, another is the “-ing” suffix attached to
the end, and another is the addition of a suffix “-s” when you want to say
“he/she/it sees”.
You can see that the verb “to see” has a basic form, which is being
modified slightly to show that the verb is being used in a different way.
This modification of a verb to show different aspects or conditions of the
action is called “conjugation” (kahn juh GAY chion), and a verb is said to
“conjugate” (KAHN juh gate) when it’s modified to exhibit these different
conditions. A verb, therefore, has a basic form or set of forms, which then
conjugate in order to change the way its meaning is to be understood in a
particular context. These basic forms contain the core meaning of the
verb, but the way the action is being applied and the circumstances under
which the action is changing.
Now look at the second group — it’s really a group of one. Here you
have an entirely different form: “saw”. How do you know that it’s a part of
the verb “to see?” From your experience with English, of course. This form
of the verb is an entirely different stem, yet it’s still just a variation of
the basic verb “to see”. So a verb can change its form entirely and still be
a part of the same family of meaning. So also with the third group. “Seen”
is another stem of the basic verb “to see”, and your native English sense
tells you it’s merely a variation of a verb you already know: “to see”.
Again, we can put all kinds of words in front to conjugate it, but with this
stem, no changes actually affect the stem itself. There’s no such form as
“seening”, for example.
Now let’s try an experiment. Suppose you’re not an English speaker
and you come across the word “saw” while you’re reading something. You
don’t know what it is, so you try to look it up in the dictionary just as it
is: “saw”. Unless you have a very unusual dictionary you won’t find it. Why
not? Because “saw” is a variation of a more basic form. In the same way,
would you expect to find an entry in a dictionary for the word “stones?” Of
course not, because “stones” is just the plural form of “stone”, a form you
can easily deduce from the basic form “stone”, if you know the rules of
English grammar. So before you can use a dictionary, you already have to
know something about the language. And that’s entirely understandable.
How big would a dictionary have to be to list all the possible varieties of
every word in the language? Consequently, before you look up a word in a
dictionary, you must first reduce it to a form under which the dictionary
will list it, and that often takes patience and some mental effort.
Let’s go back to the verb “to see”. It has three different stems in its
conjugation — “see, saw, seen” — and to use the verb intelligently you
must know them all and you must know the rules governing their use. We call
these forms, the “principal parts” of the verb. You’ll notice in English the
way these principal parts are conjugated is by piling up all kinds of words
in front of them. These words change the aspect of the action. To sum up,
to use any verb fully, you must know two things: (1) all the principal parts
of the verb, and (2) the rules governing the conjugation of English verbs.
This is also true of Latin verbs.
LATIN VERBS: THE BASICS
As you may have guessed, Latin verbs have different rules governing the
way they conjugate. For the most part — almost exclusively — Latin
verbs conjugate by attaching endings to the stems themselves, without all
the separate helping words put in front of the stem as in English to tell
you how to understand the action. So for a Latin verb, you must learn two
things: (1) the stems, and (2) how the stems are modified at their ends to
show different conditions under which the action is occurring. Let’s look
at English again. Here is the conjugation of the verb “to see” in the
present tense.
SINGULAR PLURAL
I see we see
you see you see
he, she, it, sees they see
With the exception of the form “sees”, the differences among these forms is
made by the preceding word. In this instance, the change is in the person
who is performing the action. Now look at the Latin translation for the
verb English verb “to see” with these modifications.
LATIN ENGLISH
1st video I see
2nd vides you see
3rd videt he/she/it sees
1st videmus we see
2nd videtis you see
3rd vident they see
As I told you before, Latin conjugates its verbs by attaching endings to
the root of the verb itself, and here you can see it happening. The common
feature of the verb “to see” in Latin is the stem “vide-” and to show
changes in person and number, Latin adds a suffix. These suffixes are
called the “personal endings”, because they indicate the person and the
number of the conjugated form of the verb. Let’s set these personal
endings out:
1st person -o = I
2nd person -s = you (singular)
3rd person -t = he, she, it
1st person -mus = we
2nd person -tis = you (plural)
3rd person -nt = they
Now try your hand at conjugating some other Latin verbs. The verb
meaning “to warn, advise” in Latin has the stem “mone-“; the verb meaning
“to be strong” in Latin has the stem “vale-“; and the verb meaning “to owe,
ought” in Latin has the stem “debe-“. Translate the following into Latin.
we owe, ought debemus
they see ____________________
she advises ____________________
you (pl.) are strong ____________________
they warn ____________________
you (sg.) are strong ____________________
I owe, ought ____________________
we see ____________________
CONJUGATIONS OF LATIN VERBS
You now know the single most important characteristic of Latin nouns: they
conjugate by adding suffixes to a stem. You also now know the most common
kind of suffix: the personal endings. Next you need to know something more
about the stems. There are four groups of Latin verbs, called
“conjugations”, determined by the final vowel attached to the end of the
stem. The verbs you’ve been working with have stems which end in “-e”.
Verbs whose stems end in “-e” are called “2nd conjugation” verbs. If,
however, the stem of the verb ends in “-a” then it’s called a “1st
conjugation” verb. Verbs whose stem ends in short “-e” are called “3rd
conjugation”. And verbs whose stem ends in “-i” are called “4th
conjugation”. Like this:
1st 2nd 3rd 4th
lauda- vale- duc- veni-
ama- vide- ag- senti-
cogita- mone- carp- audi-
The first several chapters of Wheelock are concerned only with the first
and second conjugations, so for now we’ll postpone any further discussion
of the third and fourth conjugation. But for now, you need to recognize
that the principal difference between the four conjugations of Latin verbs
is in the vowel that comes between the stem and the personal endings. All
four conjugations follow the same rules for conjugating: stem (which
includes the characteristic stem vowel) + personal endings.
You have already worked with second conjugation verbs. Now let’s
have a look at an example of a first conjugation verb. We’ll use the verb
“to love” as the example, which has the stem “ama-“. So “ama-” means “love”
but to use it in a sentence, we have to add the personal endings. The
stem of the verb is “ama-“, so to conjugate it, we just add the personal
endings to it, following the same rules that apply to second conjugation
verbs. Fill in the stem and personal endings in the blanks on the following
chart but hold off filling in the conjugated forms for now.
STEM + PERSONAL ENDING = CONJUGATED FORM
1st ________ + __________ = _______________
2nd ________ + __________ = _______________
3rd ________ + __________ = _______________
1st ________ + __________ = _______________
2nd ________ + __________ = _______________
3rd ________ + __________ = _______________
Now for the conjugated forms. If you follow the rules of conjugation that
apply for second conjugation verbs, you should write the form “amao” for
the first person singular. But listen to how easily the two vowels “a” and
“o” can be simplified into a single “o” sound. Say “ao” several times quickly
and you’ll see that the two sounds are made in the same place in the mouth.
Over time, Latin simplified the sound “ao” to just “o”. The final written
form is “amo”, not “amao”. So write “amo” for “I love”. Aside from this small
irregularity, however, the personal endings are attached directly to the
stem without any alteration or loss of the stem vowel. Fill in the rest of
the conjugated forms. (If you’re unsure of yourself, check your work
against the paradigm on page 3 of Wheelock.)
Now conjugate another paradigm of a second conjugation verbs: “mone-”
STEM + PERSONAL ENDING = CONJUGATED FORM
1st ________ + __________ = _______________
2nd ________ + __________ = _______________
3rd ________ + __________ = _______________
1st ________ + __________ = _______________
2nd ________ + __________ = _______________
3rd ________ + __________ = _______________
THE ENGLISH PRESENT TENSES
Look at the following conjugated forms of the English verb “to see”.
I see.
I am seeing.
I do see.
Each of these forms refers to present time — and are therefore present
tenses — but each is different. We’re so accustomed to these different
present tenses in English that we can hardly explain what the different
meanings are, even though we’re instantly aware that there is a distinction
being made. Try to explain the differences among “I see”, “I am seeing” and “I
do see”. It’s difficult, but these different present tenses are essential to
the way we speak. In reality English is one of the few languages which has
these three present tenses, and it’s very hard to foreign students of
English to learn how and when to use them. “I see” is called the Simple
Present tense; “I am seeing” is called the Present Progressive; and “I do
see” is called the Present Emphatic. Now try to come up with the
differences. The point of this is that Latin has only one present tense. So,
when we see “laudas”, for example, it can be translated into English as “you
praise”, “you do praise”, or “you are praising”. We have to let our native
sense of the simple present, the present progressive, and the present
emphatic tell us which to use.
THE IMPERATIVE
Another conjugated form of Latin verbs is the “imperative” mood, or the
direct command. Its name is its definition. It’s how you turn a verb into a
direct command: “Look here”, “Watch out”, “Stop that”, etc. To form the
imperative mood of any Latin verb, follow these rules:
Second Person Singular stem
Second Person Plural stem + te
Form the imperative mood of the following Latin verbs:
lauda-
singular ____________________
plural ____________________
mone-
singular ____________________
plural ____________________
THE INFINITIVE
Verb forms which specify no person — 1st, 2nd, or 3rd — we call “infinite”
or “infinitive”, which means, literally, “without boundary”. That is to say,
the form is not bounded by or limited to a certain person. Theoretically,
there are many verb forms which are “infinite”, but in common usage the
word “infinitive” is generally limited to forms which are translated into
English as “to x” (where “x” is the meaning of the verb). To form the
infinitive, a “-re” suffix is added to the stem.
lauda + re = laudare (to praise)
mone + re = monere (to warn)
DICTIONARY CONVENTIONS FOR VERBS
As you can see, each verb has at least six different forms (there are many,
many more which you’ll learn later), and, for obvious reasons, it would be
impossible for a dictionary to list all six of these possibilities under
separate entries. That is, you can’t look up “laudant” just as it’s here,
anymore than you could look up “they are saying” under “they” in an English
dictionary. You have to strip the conjugated form of the verb down to the
form under which the dictionary will give it to you. For the English “they
are saying”, obviously, you would look up “say”, because you know the
conventions an English dictionary uses for listing an English verb. What
are the conventions for a Latin dictionary? If you see a form like
“laudant” in a text you’re reading and want to look it up, how do you do it?
What is its “dictionary” form?
The dictionary form for a Latin verb is not the stem, but the first
person singular. This means that when you want to look up “laudant” you
have to look it up under the conjugated form “laudo”, not under its raw stem
“lauda-“. What you have to do to look up a Latin verb, therefore, is to
imagine what the verb looks like in the first person singular and look it up
under that. There is no reason it has to be like this; Latin dictionaries
could have adopted any other of a number of different conventions for
listing verbs, but this just happens to be the way it is. A consequence of
this is that the first personal singular of a verb is considered to be the
basic form of the verb. So, I’ll say, for example, “The Latin verb for “to
see” is “video”, which is really saying “The Latin verb for “to see” is ‘I
see.'” Again, this is just conventional, but it’s how it’s done. To repeat, in
order to look a verb up in the dictionary, you first have to reduce it to its
first person singular form. In the case of the conjugated form “laudant”
you would follow this process.
(1) The “-nt” suffix is the third person plural personal ending, so
you take it off; that leaves you with “lauda-“.
(2) You remember that verbs conjugate by adding personal endings
to the stem, so “lauda-” is the stem. But you can’t look it up
under the stem alone, because a dictionary lists verbs under
the first person singular. You must reconstruct the first
person singular to look this verb up.
(3) Next ask yourself what the conjugation of a verb like “lauda-”
is going to be, first or second conjugation? Since the final
vowel of the stem is “-a-“, the verb you’re looking at is a first
conjugation verb. And what does the first person singular or a
first conjugation verb look like? It’s “lauda + o = laudo” (since
the “a” and the “o” contract to just “o”). So we say that
“laudant” is from “laudo”, just as we might say in English “seen”
is from “to see”.
(4) Now you’ve simplified the verb to something you can look it up
under — “laudo” — and the translation is “to praise”.
(5) The second entry for a verb in the Latin dictionary is its
infinitive form. After “laudo”, therefore, you see “laudare”.
Since you know that an infinitive is the stem plus the ending
“-re”, you can easily see the true stem of the verb simply by
dropping off the final “-re” infinitive ending. This confirms the
fact that the verb you’re looking up is a first conjugation
verb.
(6) Now translate “laudant”. With the personal ending brought back
in the translation is “they praise” (or “they are praising”, or
“they do praise”).
I know this may seem tedious at first, but concentrate on
internalizing each one of these steps. You’ll benefit immensely when the
grammar becomes more complicated. The moral of all this is that you should
never go browsing around in the dictionary hoping to find something that
might match the word you’re looking up. You must think carefully about what
you’re looking for before you turn the first page of the dictionary. (You’ll
hear me say this repeatedly.)
VOCABULARY PUZZLES
debeo, debere This verb has an apparently odd combinations of
meanings — “to owe; should, must, ought” — until we
remember that our English verb “ought” is really an
archaic past tense of the verb “to owe”. As with the
English verb “ought”, the Latin verb “debeo” is often
followed by an infinitive to complete its meaning: “I ought
to see” = “Debeo videre”. An infinitive which completes
the meaning of another verb is called a “complementary
infinitive”.
servo, servare Despite its appearance, this verb doesn’t mean “to serve”.
Be careful with this one.
12/31/92
CHAPTER 2
“Cases; First Declension; Agreement of Adjectives”
CASES AND INFLECTION
Consider the following sentence: “The girl saw the dog”. How can
you tell that this sentence does not mean that the dog is seeing
the girl? The answer is obvious to an English speaker. “Girl”
comes before the verb, and “dog” comes after it, and this
arrangement tells us that the “girl” is performing the action of
verb, and the “dog” is receiving the action. We say that the one
who is performing the action of the verb is the “subject” of the
verb. So “girl” is the “subject” of “saw”. The dog, however, is
the “object” of the verb, since it’s the object of the action.
And in English, we generally show these functions — subject and
object — by position relative to the verb. The subject of the
verb tends to come before the verb, the object tends to come
after it.
But position isn’t the only way we show which word is the
subject and object of a verb. Now consider this sentence: “Him I
like, them I despise”. Obviously this sentence has an usual
arrangement for rhetorical purposes, but how can you tell who is
doing what to whom? Even though English grammar shows
grammatical relationship between words in a sentence mainly by
position, in many instances a change in the word itself provides
you additional help. The word “him”, although it comes first in
the sentence, is not the subject because its form — “him”
instead of “he” — is not the one used to indicate that it’s the
subject of the verb. We use the form “he” to show that.
Furthermore, the word “I” is the form we use when the first
person is subject of the verb. Hence, the words “he” and “I”
change their forms as their grammatical function in the sentence
changes. The change in form of a word to show grammatical
functions is called “inflection”.
The English personal pronouns change quite a lot to show you how
they’re being used in the sentence. Watch.
FORM FUNCTION
I subject
my possessor (it owns
something
me object (something is
being done to it)
First Person Pronoun
we subject
our possessor
us object
you subject
your possessor
you object
Second Person Pronoun
you subject
your possessor
you object
he,she,it subject
his,her,its possessor
him,her,it object
Third Person Pronoun
they subject
their possessor
them object
This inflection (change of form to show grammatical
function) in the pronouns is very useful for helping us to
understand each other — although, as you can see, the second
person pronoun “you, etc” doesn’t inflect nearly so much as the
first and third. The plural forms are even identical to the
singular forms. We can still get by.
In English, inflection is rather limited, and we rely on
position mainly to tell us what the words in the sentence are
doing to each other. The only grammatical functions that involve
a change in form for all nouns is the possessive case and the
plural forms, where we attach an “-s” to the end of the word.
(In written English we even include an apostrophe “‘” mark to
help us see the difference between a pluralized noun and a noun
that’s in the possessive case.) For example
SINGULAR PLURAL
apple subject apples subject
apple’s possessor apples’ possessor
apple object apples object
Watch how we combine position with inflection in English to make
sense to one another. As you can see, position is the principal
guide.
“These apples’ [plural, possessor] cores are hard, but
apples [plural, subject] are usually soft. When you
[singular, subject] buy apples [plural, object], you
[singular, subject] should first pick up each apple
[object, singular] and bounce it [singular, object] off
the floor several times. Then check its [singular,
possessor] skin. If it [singular, subject] is bruised,
discretely put it [singular, object] back with the
other apples [plural, object], making certain that no
one [singular, subject] is watching you [singular,
object]”.
Unlike English, languages which rely primarily on inflection of
words to show grammatical relationship are called “inflected”
languages. English, though it has some inflection, is not an
inflected language. Latin, however, is an inflected language,
because it relies almost entirely on changes in the words
themselves to indicate their grammatical function in a sentence.
The different grammatical functions a word can have in a
sentence is called “case”. In English there are three
recognizable different cases, that is grammatical functions, a
word can have: the subjective case, the possessive case, and the
objective case. So we say there are three cases in English. In
Latin there are six difference cases. Here are the Latin cases.
(Don’t try to memorize them all at once here. Just read through
the list; there will be plenty of time to firm up your
familiarity of them.)
LATIN APPROXIMATE ENGLISH EQUIVALENT
Nominative (Subjective)
Genitive (Possessive Case)
Dative (Object of words like “to” or “for”)
Accusative (Objective Case)
Ablative (Adverbial Usages: “by”, “with”)
Vocative (Direct Address)
We’ll look at the way these cases are used in Latin in the next
part of these notes, although some of them won’t be difficult at
all: the nominative, genitive, and accusative cases are almost
the same as their English counterparts. The ablative, dative and
vocative will need some explanation. Before then, however, let’s
look at how a Latin noun inflects to show all these different
cases.
Let’s look at some English pronouns which inflect to show
the three different cases. Do you remember “they, their, them?”
The pronoun is inflecting through its different cases, but we can
definitely spot a pattern of similarity among the three forms.
There is a definite root of the word. The root (that is, the
part of the word that contains the meaning of the word) is “the-”
to which then the endings “-y”, “-ir” and “-m”. So we could say
that the word is inflecting by adding certain case endings to a
stem. The stem contains the core of the meaning of the word, and
the endings merely inflect or alter its grammar.
This is precisely how Latin nouns show their different
cases: they add additional letters to the end of the basic form
of the word. This basic form that does not change throughout its
inflection is called the “stem”. There are, consequently, two
parts of a Latin word that you must note: the stem and the case
ending. The stem contains the meaning of the word and its gender
(masculine, feminine, or neuter). The case ending will tell you
(1) how the noun is being used in its sentence, and (2) whether
the noun is singular or plural. Let’s watch a the Latin noun
“puella” (girl) as it inflects through its different cases:
SINGULAR APPROXIMATE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
NOMINATIVE puella girl
GENITIVE puellae of the girl
DATIVE puellae to/for the girl
ACCUSATIVE puellam girl
ABLATIVE puella by/with the girl
VOCATIVE puella girl
PLURAL
NOMINATIVE puellae girls
GENITIVE puellarum of the girls
DATIVE puellis to/for the girls
ACCUSATIVE puellas girls
ABLATIVE puellis by/with the girls
VOCATIVE puellae girls
The stem of the Latin word is clearly visible. It’s
“puell-” to which different endings are being attached. The
endings are:
SINGULAR PLURAL
NOMINATIVE -a -ae
GENITIVE -ae -arum
DATIVE -ae -is
ACCUSATIVE -am -as
ABLATIVE -a -is
VOCATIVE -a -ae
There are many other nouns in Latin which follow this same
pattern of case endings when they inflect. This pattern of
endings is called the “first declension” (deh CLEN shion) and you
can see the strong presence of an “-a-“. There are four other
declensional patterns in Latin, but a noun will belong to only
one of them. Hence we can say that “puella” is a first
declension noun. The other declensions are called, not
surprisingly, the second, third, fourth and fifth declension, and
are distinguished form one another in part by the thematic, or
characteristic, vowel that appears in its endings.
REVIEW
This is a lot of information to absorb in one sitting. Stop now
for a while, then read through this review statement before
starting on the next section of this chapter.
A language whose nouns show their grammatical function in the
sentence by changes in the noun itself, and not by position, is
called an inflected language. The different grammatical
functions a language recognizes are called cases. In English,
there are three cases. They are the subjective, the possessive,
and the objective. In Latin there are six cases. They are the
nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative and vocative
cases. A Latin noun has two parts which you must note: it has a
stem, which contains the noun’s basic meaning and its gender; and
it also has a case ending which tells you the noun’s case and its
number. A pattern of endings which are added to the end of a
noun to show its grammatical function is called a declension.
Each noun in Latin belongs to one declension. The declensions
are called the first, second, third, fourth and fifth
declensions.
THE FIRST DECLENSION
Let’s have a look at another first declension noun: “pecuni-”
(money).
SINGULAR
STEM + CASE ENDING = INFLECTED FORM
N/V. pecuni + -a = _______________
GEN. pecuni + -ae = _______________
DAT. pecuni + -ae = _______________
ACC. pecuni + -am = _______________
ABL. pecuni + -a = _______________
PLURAL
STEM + CASE ENDING = INFLECTED FORM
N/V. pecuni + -ae = _______________
GEN. pecuni + -arum = _______________
DAT. pecuni + -is = _______________
ACC. pecuni + -as = _______________
ABL. pecuni + -is = _______________
Let’s try a few more paradigms. Decline the noun “patri-”
(fatherland) and vit-” (life).
SINGULAR
patri- vit-
N/V. _______________ _______________
GEN. _______________ _______________
DAT. _______________ _______________
ACC. _______________ _______________
ABL. _______________ _______________
PLURAL
N/V. _______________ _______________
GEN. _______________ _______________
DAT. _______________ _______________
ACC. _______________ _______________
ABL. _______________ _______________
GENDER
All Latin nouns possess what is called “gender”. That is, a noun
will be masculine, feminine, or neuter. Don’t confuse this kind of
grammatical gender with biological gender. There is nothing
biologically feminine about nouns which are grammatically feminine,
nothing biologically masculine about nouns which are grammatically
masculine, and nothing biologically neuter about nouns which are
grammatically neuter. It’s just that nouns have a feature which we
call gender by convention. And this is a feature which cannot
change in a noun. A noun may change its case or number, but a noun
will never change its gender. This is a fixed feature, and you
must be told what gender a noun is when you look it up in the
dictionary. This is important to remember, because although the
vast majority of first declensions nouns are feminine, not all of
them are. You must memorize the gender of each noun as you would
learn its meaning.
DICTIONARY CONVENTIONS FOR GENDER AND DECLENSION
The dictionary therefore must tell you many things about a noun
you’re looking up — and you must know how the dictionary tells you
what you need to know. Latin dictionaries follow the following
conventions for listing nouns.
(1) The first entry in the dictionary is the noun in the
nominative case.
(2) The second entry is the genitive singular ending. This
is essential, because many of the declensions have
identical nominative singular endings. There is no way
to be certain, therefore, to which declension a noun
belongs simply by looking at the nominative singular.
But in all declensions, the genitive singular endings are
different. The genitive singular ending of the first
declension is “-ae”, that of the second declension is
“-i”, that of the third is “-is”, that of the fourth is
“-us”, and that of the fifth is “-ei” If you know the
genitive singular of a noun you know what declension the
noun follows. Another reason you must have the genitive
singular form given to you is that the stem of the noun
is often not visible in the nominative singular.
Sometimes the stem changes slightly from the nominative
to the other forms. Again, you cannot predict what kind
of stem change will occur simply by looking at the
nominative. But you will be able to see it in the
genitive singular. (This kind of stem change never occurs
in the first declension, but it does in the second and
the third.)
(3) The last entry is the gender of the noun, which cannot be
deduced even if you know everything else about the noun.
You must be given it.
Put all this together, and typical dictionary entries for first
declension noun will look like this:
patria, -ae (f)
pecunia, -ae (f)
poeta, -ae (m)
agricola, -ae (m)
Now look up the following nouns in your dictionary and write out
the grammatical information you are given.
ENGLISH FULL ENTRY DECLENSION STEM
band _________________________ _____ __________
brother _________________________ _____ __________
care _________________________ _____ __________
city _________________________ _____ __________
day _________________________ _____ __________
dread _________________________ _____ __________
TRANSLATION OF THE CASES
What I’m going to give you now is just the bare outline of how
these cases can be translated into English. There will be plenty
of time for further refinement in the future — and we’ll have to
do some refinement — but for the time being, these guide lines
will get you well on your way.
NOMINATIVE CASE
A noun in the nominative case is often the subject of a verb. For
example, in the English sentence “The tree fell on my car”, the
“tree” is in the nominative case because it’s the subject of the
verb “fell”. If this were a Latin sentence, the word tree would be
in the nominative case form. The rule of thumb for now is that if
you see a noun in the nominative case, try to translate it as the
subject of the verb in its sentence.
GENITIVE CASE
This case shows that one noun belongs to another noun. The noun
which is the owner is put into the genitive case. Like this in
English: “The car’s door is open”. “Door” is the nominative case
because it’s the thing which is open — it’s the subject of the
verb “is” — and the door belongs to the car, so “car’s” is put
into the genitive case. So for now, every time you see the
genitive case, translate the noun with the English preposition “of”
or use the genitive marker “‘s”. For example, if “portae” is in
the genitive case, translate it either as “the door’s” or “of the
door”.
DATIVE CASE
The dative case shows that a noun is indirectly affected by the
action of the sentence. Take for example, in the English sentence
“George gave the ball to the girl”. George is the subject of “give”
and the thing George is giving is the “ball”. So the thing most
directly affected by George’s action is the ball. It’s the direct
recipient of the action. But George then gave the ball to the
girl, so the girl is also being affected, but only indirectly.
Therefore, the girl is the “indirect object” of the action of the
sentence. English can also indicate the indirect object simply by
position: by putting the indirect object before the direct object.
Like this: George gave the girl the ball. In Latin, the word for
“girl” would be in the dative case, and so would have the dative
case ending of the declension to which the word “girl” belongs. So
the form would be “puellae”. Again, a rough rule of thumb: when
you see the dative case, try to translate it with the prepositions
“to” or “for” and see which of the two makes the most sense.
ACCUSATIVE CASE
The noun which is directly affected by the action of a verb is put
into the accusative case. In English we call this case the “direct
object” which is a little more descriptive of its function. It’s
the direct object of some action. In the example above, the “ball”
is in the accusative case because it’s the direct object of
George’s action of giving. In Latin, therefore, the word for ball
would have the characteristic accusative case ending attached to
its stem. The accusative case is also used after some
prepositions, but we’ll look at that later.
ABLATIVE CASE
The ablative case is rather complicated. Let’s just say for now
that when you see a noun in the ablative case, translate it by
using the prepositions “with” or “by”. We’ll study the various
meanings of the ablative case separately in later chapters.
VOCATIVE CASE
If you want to call someone or something by name to get some
attention, then you use the vocative case. “Dog, get out of the
house!” “Dog” is in the vocative case. The form of the vocative
case — that is, the ending you attach to the stem to form the case
— is almost always identical to the nominative form of the word.
For that reason, the nominative and vocative forms are often listed
together in a declensional pattern, instead of being given separate
listings. The vocative case is very easily distinguished from the
nominative case, though, because a noun in the vocative is always
set off from the rest of the sentence with commas and is often
preceded by in the interjection “O” — the Latin equivalent of our
“hey”: “O puellae, date poetae rosas” (Hey girls, give roses to
the poet.)
So let’s put all this together into a chart you can use when you’re
translating a Latin sentence. The sooner you’ve memorized this
guidelines, the easier it’ll be for you to work through Latin
sentences:
THE CASES
Nominative the subject of a verb
Genitive use “of” or “-‘s” (“-s'”) for the plural
Dative use “to” or “for”, or put the noun before the
direct object
Accusative the direct object of a verb or object of a
preposition
Ablative use the prepositions “with” or “for”
Vocative use the English “hey” or “Oh”
AGREEMENT OF ADJECTIVES AND NOUNS
An adjective is a word which modifies or qualifies a noun. “A red
leaf:” “leaf” is the noun and “red” is telling you something more
about it. That’s pretty simple. To indicate which noun an
adjective is modify we use position in English: i.e., we put the
adjective right next to the noun.
“A red leaf with a brown stem fell off the tall tree onto the
flat ground”.
There is no question about which adjectives are modifying which
nouns. No one, except perhaps a deconstructionist, would think the
author is trying to say that the ground is red or that the stem is
flat. Position makes this clear. In Latin, however, where
position is not so important, adjectives have to be put together
with their nouns differently. Instead of using position, Latin
adjectives take on some of the characteristics of the nouns they’re
modifying: i.e., they undergo changes to match the noun they’re
modifying.
So what properties do nouns have in a Latin sentence. Well,
they have case — they have to have case to work in the sentence —
and they have number (singular or plural) and they have gender
(masculine, feminine, or neuter). Remember this about gender: a
noun can change its number and case, but it can only have one
gender; it cannot change its gender. So each noun has number,
gender, and case. An adjective has to be able to acquire the
number, gender, and case of the noun it’s modifying. So how does
it do that? It does it by declining. And in this respect it
resembles a noun: nouns decline to get different numbers and cases;
so do adjectives. But there is an important difference. Latin
nouns are either masculine, feminine or neuter, and they can never
change their gender. The noun “porta, -ae (f)” is forever
feminine. The noun “poeta, -ae (m)” is forever masculine, etc.
But for adjectives to be useful, they have to be able to become any
one of the three genders; i.e., adjectives have to be able to be
masculine, feminine or neuter to match the gender of the noun
they’re modifying. And how do they do that? They accomplish this
by using endings from different declensions (and you’ll learn these
other declension in the next couple of chapters). So here are two
critical differences between adjectives and nouns: (1) each
adjective can have any of the three genders, but each noun can have
only one gender; (2) each noun will belong only to one declension,
but adjectives can span declensions. You’ll see much more of this
later, but for now you need to know that adjectives use endings of
the first declension to become feminine, and, therefore, to modify
nouns which are feminine in gender. So try this. Decline the
expression “big rose”:
magna rosa
N/V. _______________ _______________
GEN. _______________ _______________
DAT. _______________ _______________
ACC. _______________ _______________
ABL. _______________ _______________
N/V. _______________ _______________
GEN. _______________ _______________
DAT. _______________ _______________
ACC. _______________ _______________
ABL. _______________ _______________
Now look at these endings for the adjective and the noun.
They look alike, don’t they. But this is dangerously deceptive.
Get this in your head: agreement means same number, gender, and
case, not look-alike endings, even though in this limited example
and in all the examples in this chapter they do look alike.
Consider this problem. The noun for poet is a masculine noun in
the first declension: “poeta, -ae (m)”. Now, for an adjective to
agree with it, it must have the same number, gender and case.
Right? But adjectives with first declension endings are masculine.
So, will the endings of an adjective modifying the noun “poeta” be
the same as those as “poeta”. I.e., will the pattern for “great
poet” look like this?
SINGULAR
magna poeta
N/V. magna poeta
GEN. magnae poetae
DAT. magnae poetae
ACC. magnam poetam
ABL. magna poeta
PLURAL
N/V. magnae poetae
GEN. magnarum poetarum
DAT. magnis poetis
ACC. magnas poetas
ABL. magnis poetis
The answer is “no”, because the forms “magna, magnae” etc. are
feminine in gender because adjectives use first declension endings
to become feminine in gender but the noun “poeta” is masculine.
Therefore the adjective will have to use endings from another
declension and the forms will not look alike. You’ll see all this
in the next two chapters. But remember: agreement means having the
same number, gender, and case, not having the same endings. Okay?
VOCABULARY PUZZLES
tua, mea The words “tua”, which means “your” and “mea”, which
means “my” are the first and second person singular
possessive adjectives, and they consequently must “agree”
in number, gender and case with whatever is being
possessed. “tu-” and “me-” are the stems of the word,
and the “-a” is the adjectival suffix. What causes
students concern is that they can’t quite bring
themselves to make the adjectival suffix of the singular
possessive adjectives plural. For example, they balk at
“meae rosae” (my roses), because they assume somehow that
the entire word “me-” must become plural. This isn’t
necessary. Think of it this way: the “me-” or “tu-” part
of these words refer you to the person doing the
possessing, the adjectival suffix refers to whatever is
being possessed.
12/31/92
CHAPTER 3
“Second Declension; Masculine Nouns and Adjectives;
Word Order”
THE SECOND DECLENSION
A declension is a pattern of endings for the different cases and
numbers which a noun falls through. Latin has five declension,
though the great majority of nouns fall into the first three. In
this chapter, you’ll learn one part of the second declension.
(You’ll get the other part of the second declension in Chapter 4.)
Let’s look again at a paradigm for the first declension endings and
compare them to endings of the second declension. Decline the noun
“puella, -ae (f)”.
puella, -ae (f) amicus, -i (m)
Nom. _______________ amicus
Gen. _______________ amici
Dat. _______________ amico
Acc. _______________ amicum
Abl. _______________ amico
Voc. _______________ amice
N/V. _______________ amici
Gen. _______________ amicorum
Dat. _______________ amicis
Acc. _______________ amicos
Abl. _______________ amicis
As you can plainly see, “-a-” is the dominant vowel of the first
declension. With the exception of the dative and ablative plural,
all the case endings have an “-a-” in them. Now let’s compare the
first declension with the second. Although it’s a little more
difficult to see in places, the dominant vowel of the second
declension is “-o-“. Once you see this difference between the
first and second declension, you can detect some of the
similarities.
(1) the accusative singular of both declensions adds “-m” to
the thematic vowel: “-am” and “-um” (originally “-om”).
(2) the ablative singular is just the long thematic vowel:
“-a-” and “-o-“.
(3) the genitive plural is the ending “-rum” added to the
thematic vowel: “-arum” and “-orum”.
(5) the dative and ablative plural are formed alike:
First Declension: “a-” + “-is” = “-ais” = “-is”
Second Declension: “o-” + “-is” = “-ois” = “-is”
(6) the accusative plural in both declensions is the thematic
vowel + “-s:” “-as” and “-os”.
So let’s set out the cases endings for the second declension:
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nom. ____________________ ____________________
Gen. ____________________ ____________________
Dat. ____________________ ____________________
Acc. ____________________ ____________________
Abl. ____________________ ____________________
Voc. ____________________ ____________________
2ND DECLENSION NOUNS IN -ER AND -IR; STEM CHANGES
As I said, this is the basic pattern of endings for nouns of the
second declension, and all second declension nouns will basically
use these endings. There are second declension nouns, however,
which do not follow this pattern precisely, but which use slight
variations of it. To begin with, not all second declension nouns
end in “-us” in the nominative singular. Some end in “-er” and one
common noun ends in “-ir”. So go back to the blank for the
nominative singular and add the variant nominative endings “-er”
and “-ir”.
Let’s have a look at a second declension noun that ends in “-er” in
the nominative singular: “puer, -i (m)” (boy). Just to review, how
do you know that this noun belongs to the second declension? The
answer is the genitive singular ending listed as the second entry.
It’s “-i”, the genitive singular ending of the second declension.
So what will the form of “puer” be in the genitive singular?
That’s easy too. It’ll be “pueri”, (stem + “-i). Now let’s decline
“puer” through all its cases in both numbers.
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nom. ____________________ ____________________
Gen. ____________________ ____________________
Dat. ____________________ ____________________
Acc. ____________________ ____________________
Abl. ____________________ ____________________
Voc. ____________________ ____________________
Let’s try another second declension noun which ends in “-er”
in the nominative singular: “ager, agri (m)” (field). The
nominative is the “-er” type you saw in “puer”, but look at the
genitive singular. Instead of just giving you an abbreviation for
the genitive singular ending — “-i” — the dictionary is telling
you something more. Here you have a full form, “agri”, for the
genitive entry of the noun. The case ending obviously is “-i”, so
the noun belongs to second declension. If you take off the
genitive singular ending “-i” you’re left with “agr-“, and what’s
that?
We need to pause here and refine what we mean by a “stem” of
a noun. As you probably recall, the stem of a noun is the basic
form of the noun to which you then add the case endings. But
despite the attractive notion that the “stem” of a noun is the
nominative singular minus the case ending, a stem of a noun is
really the form which is the root of all cases except the
nominative singular. This is not to say that the nominative
singular will never be the true stem of the word. In some
declensions it is. But not always. Look at “ager” again. The
stem of the word is found not by looking at the nominative entry,
but by dropping the genitive singular ending from “agri”, leaving
“agr-“. So the true stem of this word is “agr-“, not “ager-“.
Hence we say that “ager” is a stem changing noun, or that it has a
stem change. This is because the stem is not apparent in the
nominative entry. Let’s decline “ager, agri (m)”. Remember, the
stem is “agr-“:
SINGULAR PLURAL
N/V. ____________________ ____________________
Gen. ____________________ ____________________
Dat. ____________________ ____________________
Acc. ____________________ ____________________
Abl. ____________________ ____________________
Can you see now why it’s important that a dictionary begin to
decline the noun for you by giving you the genitive singular? If
you weren’t given “agri”, after “ager”, you wouldn’t know the
declension of the noun, nor would you know that “ager-” is not the
true stem. If a noun is not a stem-changing noun, then the
dictionary will simply put the genitive ending in the second entry.
But if it’s a stem changing noun, the dictionary must indicate
that. Examine the following nouns and see how the dictionary
conveys the necessary information.
ENTRY STEM MEANING
gener, -i (m) gener- son-in-law
magister, -tri (m) magistr- teacher
socer, -i (m) socer- father-in-law
liber, -bri (m) libr- book
vesper, -i (m) vesper- evening
signifer, -i (m) signifer- standard bearer
The noun “vir, -i (m)” represents another class of second
declension nominative singular endings. Is there a stem change
indicated in the genitive singular? No, there isn’t, so it behaves
just like “puer”. Decline it.
SINGULAR PLURAL
N/V. ____________________ ____________________
Gen. ____________________ ____________________
Dat. ____________________ ____________________
Acc. ____________________ ____________________
Abl. ____________________ ____________________
NOUNS ENDING IN -IUS
Nouns whose stem ends in an “-i-” need a closer look. “Filius, -ii
(m)” is a second declension noun and the stem is “fili-” (“filius”
minus the “-i” of the genitive singular). But the second entry has
an extra “-i”. What’s that all about? Don’t be disturbed. Often
when a stem ends in an “-i-” the dictionary likes to reassure you
that despite its odd appearance, the genitive singular form really
ends with two “i’s”: “filii”. Similarly, the dative and ablative
plurals: “filiis”. It may look odd, but there was a noticeable
difference in the way the two “i’s” would have been pronounced.
The first is short, the second is long, so “filii”, would have be
pronounced “FEE leh ee”. But in fact even the Romans weren’t very
comfortable with this arrangement, and often the “i’s” were
simplified to one long “-i-” to “fili” or “filis”. To be
consistent, Wheelock always uses the double “i”.
In the vocative singular, however, the “i” at the end of the
stem does cause a change. “Filius” is an “-us” ending second
declension noun so the vocative singular should be “filie”. But
short “i” and short “e” are so similar in sound that some
simplification was inevitable. The final form is not “filie” but
“fili”. So also in the name “Virgilius”: not “Virgilie”, but
“Virgili”. Decline “filius, -ii (m)”.
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nom. ____________________ ____________________
Gen. ____________________ ____________________
Dat. ____________________ ____________________
Acc. ____________________ ____________________
Abl. ____________________ ____________________
Voc. ____________________
ADJECTIVES
Let’s review for a moment. You remember that adjectives are words
which qualify nouns, and that an adjective will “agree” with the
noun it modifies. By “agreeing” we mean that it will have the same
number, gender, and case as the noun it’s modifying. You also know
that an adjective must be able to modify nouns of all three
genders, and that to modify a feminine noun an adjective uses the
case endings from the first declension. For example, translate and
decline “great wisdom”. “Wisdom” in Latin is “sapientia, -ae (f)”,
a feminine noun of the first declension, as you can tell from the
entry. “Great” is the adjective modifying “wisdom” so it must
agree in number, gender and case with “sapientia”. The stem of the
adjective is “magn-“, and the case endings you must use are those
of the first declension, since “sapientia” is feminine.
SINGULAR
great wisdom
N/V. _______________ _______________
Gen. _______________ _______________
Dat. _______________ _______________
Acc. _______________ _______________
Abl. _______________ _______________
PLURAL
N/V. _______________ _______________
Gen. _______________ _______________
Dat. _______________ _______________
Acc. _______________ _______________
Abl. _______________ _______________
What happens when an adjective needs to modify a masculine
noun? To modify a masculine noun an adjective uses the case
endings from the second declension. That’s fine and good, but we
have a problem. Which of the three singular nominative forms of
the second declension do they use: “-us”, “-er”, or “-ir?” The
answer is that some adjectives will us “-us” and some will use
“-er”. (None use “-ir”.) All the adjectives we’ll be looking at
for the next two chapters use the “-us” ending and decline after
that pattern. In chapter five you’ll get the “-er” type, so I’ll
postpone discussion of that kind until then (although there’s
nothing really very complicated about it). Let’s suppose you want
to modify the noun “poeta, -ae (m) with adjective for “great?”
Look up “great” in the dictionary and write down what you see.
(Make sure you look it up! I’ll wait right here.)
great ______________________________
Now what kind of an entry is this? The convention for listing an
adjective is different from that for a noun. The first entry tells
you how an adjective modifies a masculine noun, the second tells
you how it modifies a feminine noun, and the third how it modifies
a neuter noun (and we’ll learn about that in the next chapter). So
let’s look at the first entry: “magnus” tells you that the
adjective uses the “-us” type endings from the second declension to
modify a masculine noun; the “-a”, which stands for the nominative
singular of the first declension, tells you that it uses first
declension endings to modify feminine nouns; the “-um” tells you
which endings to use for neuter nouns. Now, how did you find the
stem of “-us” type nouns of the second declension? Do you
remember? You simply drop off the “-us” ending, and that’s the
stem. What’s the stem of the adjective “magnus, -a, -um?” I hope
you guessed “magn-“. So an entry like this is a short-hand way of
saying this:
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER
-us -a -um
-i -ae
-o -ae
-um -am
-o -a
-e -a
magn- +
-i -ae
-orum -arum
-is -is
-os -as
-is -is
So decline “great poet”. (WARNING: Remember that agreement means
same number, gender, and case; not form which look alike!)
SINGULAR PLURAL
great poet great poets
Nom. ____________ ____________ ____________
____________
Gen. ____________ ____________ ____________
____________
Dat. ____________ ____________ ____________
____________
Acc. ____________ ____________ ____________
____________
Abl. ____________ ____________ ____________
____________
Voc. ____________ ____________ ____________
____________
APPOSITION
Consider this English sentence: “Daniel, my brother, you were older
than me [sic]”. You can easily see that “brother” is giving you
more information about “Daniel”; that is, “brother” is modifying or
qualifying “Daniel”. In this sense, at least, “brother” is acting
like an adjective. But since “brother” is a noun, not an
adjective, it cannot qualify another noun in quite the same way an
adjective does. We call this modifying relationship between nouns
“apposition”. We would say “brother” is in “apposition” to
“Daniel”.
In Latin also, nouns can be set in apposition to each other
for modification. So one noun is modifying another noun —
something like an adjective modifying a noun. But, obviously a
noun cannot agree with the noun it’s modifying the same way an
adjective does. And why not? Nouns all have gender inherent in
them, so a noun can never change its gender to a agree in gender
with a noun it’s modifying. But it can agree with the noun it’s
modifying in case, and it will. In Latin, when a noun is in
apposition to another noun, the noun doing the modifying will agree
with the modified noun in case. “Gaium, meum filium, in agris
video”. (I see Gaius, my son, in the fields.) “Gaium” is
accusative because it’s the direct object of the verb “video”.
Therefore the word for “son” must also be in the accusative case,
since it’s telling us more about Gaius, and Gaius, as the object of
the verb “to see”, is in the accusative case.
VOCABULARY PUZZLES
de + abl.; in + abl. Like English, prepositions in Latin will
take the noun they’re governing in a case
other than the nominative. We wouldn’t
say in English “with I” or “to she:” we
say “with me” and “to her”. But in Latin,
some prepositions will have to be
followed by the accusative case; others
by the ablative case. (And some can be
followed by both, though the meaning
changes slightly.) Therefore, whenever
you learn a preposition, you must also
memorize the case it takes.
pauci, -ae This is an adjective, but unlike others
adjectives, the word for “few” has no
singular forms. (That’s logical.) So
the dictionary starts its listing in the
nominative plural. As you can see, the
“-i” and the “-ae” endings are the second
and first declension nominative plural
endings. So this adjective declines like
“magnus, -a, -um” with the exception that
it has no singular forms.
meus, -a, [-um] The adjective means “my”, and it agrees
with whatever is being owned. The stem is
“me-“. It has an irregular vocative
singular ending. Instead of “mee”, you
have “mi”. So it’s “mi amice” for “Hey,
my friend”.
Romanus, -a, [-um] This is an adjective, but it can be used
as a noun. Like “American”. It’s an
adjective — like “American Pie” — but
it can also be used for a person: “she’s
an American”, or “The Americans are
coming”. Hence, “Romani” can mean “the
Romans”, and “Romana” can mean a “Roman
woman”. On the other hand, we can also
say “Romana patria”: “the Roman
fatherland”; or “Romani libri”: “Roman
books”.
12/31/92
CHAPTER 4
“Neuters of the Second Declension; Summary of Adjectives;
Present Indicative of Sum;
Predicate Nouns and Adjectives”
Despite its lengthy title, you’ll find that much of this chapter
only adds incrementally to concepts you’ve already learned. That’s
the way it’s going to be for most of these chapters. Now that
you’ve learned the basics, the details will be much easier for you
to grasp.
NEUTERS OF THE SECOND DECLENSION
The second declension is the pattern of cases ending which has an
“-o-” for its thematic vowel. The nominative singular has three
possible forms — “-us”, “-er”, and “-ir”. Sometimes nouns which
end in “-er” in the nominative undergo a stem change from the
nominative to the genitive singular. To find the real stem of the
noun, you simply drop off the genitive ending “-i” from the second
entry in the dictionary. Finally, you may remember that the vast
majority of nouns ending in “-us”, “-er”, and “-ir” in the
nominative singular are masculine.
What you learned in the last chapter was not the whole story
on the second declension. The second declension is divided into
two parts: the part you know, and a set of endings which you’re
going to learn now. This second part contains only neuter nouns.
This is important to remember. Unlike the first declension and the
first part of the second, whose nouns could be either feminine or
masculine, all nouns which follow this second part of the second
declension are neuter. Next, the endings of this pattern are
nearly identical to those of the second declension you already
know. The differences are that (1) the nominative singular ending
is always “-um”; (2) the stem is found by dropping off nominative
“-um” ending and there is never a stem change; (3) the neuter
nominative and accusative plural endings are “-a”. You don’t have
to worry about the vocative singular; it’s the same as the
nominative singular. Remember, the only place in Latin where the
vocative differs from the nominative is in the singular of “-us”
ending second declension nouns and adjectives.
A dictionary entry for a noun of this type will look like
this: “x”um, -i (n) (where “x” is the stem). Since there is never
a stem change, the second entry only gives you the genitive
singular ending so that you can see the declension of the noun.
The “-um” of the nominative singular and then the “-i” in the
genitive tell you that the noun is a neuter noun of the second
declension, and that it therefore fits into the subcategory of the
second declension. Here are some examples for you to decline and
a second declension noun of the “us” type for comparison:
numerus, -i (m) periculum, -i (n) consilium, -ii (n)
Nom. ______________ _______________ _______________
Gen. ______________ _______________ _______________
Dat. ______________ _______________ _______________
Acc. ______________ _______________ _______________
Abl. ______________ _______________ _______________
Voc. ______________
N/V. ______________ _______________ _______________
Gen. ______________ _______________ _______________
Dat. ______________ _______________ _______________
Acc. ______________ _______________ _______________
Abl. ______________ _______________ _______________
There are a couple of hard and fast rules pertaining to the
inflection of all neuter nouns, no matter which declension they
belong to, which you may want to commit to memory: (1) the
nominative and accusative forms of neuters nouns are always like
each other, and (2) the nominative plural — and hence neuter
plural because of rule (1) — is always a short “-a”.
ADJECTIVES
You recall that adjectives are words which modify nouns, and that
in Latin an adjective must agree with the noun it’s modifying. By
“agreeing”, we mean it must have the same number, gender, and case.
An adjective acquires number and case by declining through a
declension — just like nouns — but how does an adjective change
gender? An adjective changes gender by using different
declensional patterns. If an adjective needs to modify a feminine
noun, it uses endings from the first declension; if it has to
modify a masculine noun, it uses the second declension endings
which are used by “-us” and “-er” ending nouns. So how do you
imagine will an adjective modify a neuter noun? Let’s look at a
dictionary entry for a typical adjective: “magnus, -a, -um”.
The first entry, as you recall, tells you which declension the
adjective uses to modify a masculine noun. It tells you by giving
you the nominative singular ending of the declension it uses. The
second entry is the nominative singular ending of the declension
the adjective uses to modify a feminine noun. The third entry is
the nominative singular of the declension the adjective uses to
modify a neuter noun.
So how does the adjective “magnus, -a, -um” modify a neuter
noun? It uses the “-um” neuter endings of the second declension,
so “magnus”, when it’s modifying a neuter noun, will follow the
same pattern as a noun like “periculum, -i (n). Write out all the
possible forms of the adjective “great”. (Check your work against
Wheelock, p. 18.)
“magnus, -a, -um”
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER
Nom. _______________ _______________ _______________
Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________
Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________
Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________
Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________
Voc. _______________
N/V. _______________ _______________ _______________
Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________
Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________
Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________
Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________
THE VERB “TO BE”
As in most languages, the verb “to be” in Latin is irregular
— i.e., it doesn’t follow the normal pattern of conjugation of
other verbs. Wheelock says it’s best just to memorize the forms by
sheer effort and rote. That’s a perfectly acceptable suggestion.
But the verb is actually much more regular than it may first
appear. If you wish, you may try to follow my discussion about the
verb to get a glimpse behind its seemingly bizarre appearance. If
not, just memorize the forms outright and skip over the paragraphs
in between the lines of asterisks.
****************************************
For those of you going on with me, let’s recall a couple of
things. A verb conjugates by adding personal endings to the stem
of the verb. You find the stem of the verb by dropping of the
“-re” ending of the infinitive, and what you’re left with is the
stem. The final vowel of the stem tells you the conjugation of the
verb: “-a-” for a first conjugation, “-e-” for the second
conjugation, etc. So let’s have a look at the infinitive of the
verb “to be” to find its stem. The infinitive is “esse”. What
kind of an infinitive is this?
We need to back up a little. Although you were told
otherwise, the real infinitive ending of a Latin verb is not “-re”
at all, but “-se”. Why does the “-se” become “-re”? It’s an
invariable rule of Latin pronunciation that an “-s-” which is
caught between two vowels — we call it “intervocalic” — turns
into a “-r-“. So the reason “laudare” is not “laudase” is that the
original intervocalic “-s-” became an “-r-“. So let’s look again
at the infinitive for the verb “to be”: “esse”. If we drop off
the infinitive ending “-se”, we’re left with the stem “es-” for the
verb. But the stem has no final vowel. For this reason we call
“esse” an “athematic verb”, because its stem ends in a consonant,
not a vowel, as other verbs do. To conjugate the verb, we should
therefore add the personal endings directly to the final “-s” of
the stem. This is what the formula should be (don’t fill in the
conjugated form yet).
STEM + PERSONAL ENDING = CONJUGATED FORM
1st es + m = _______________
2nd es + s = _______________
3rd es + t = _______________
1st es + mus = _______________
2nd es + tis = _______________
3rd es + nt = _______________
Try to pronounce the final form for the first person singular
“esm”. Do you hear how you’re automatically inserting a “u” sound
to make the word pronounceable? It sounds like “esum”. Try to
pronounce “esmus”. The same thing happens between the “s” and the
“m”. You almost have to insert a “u”. Now pronounce “esnt”. Same
thing, right? This is what happened to these forms. Over time, a
“u” sound became a part of the conjugation of the verb, and the
initial “e-” of the stem of all the forms with this “u” was lost.
(I can’t account for that.) Write out the resulting forms. Now
look at the remaining forms. Is there any trouble adding an “s” or
a “t” to the final “s-” of the stem? No. In fact, in the second
person singular, the “s” of the personal ending just gets swallowed
up by the “s” of the stem: “es + s = es”. Where there was no
complication in pronouncing the forms, the “e-” of the stem stayed.
Now write out the remaining forms of “to be” in Latin.
****************************************
As with other Latin verbs, the basic form of “to be” is
considered to be the first person singular, and that’s how the verb
will be listed in the dictionary, followed by the infinitive: “sum,
esse”. So when I want to refer to the Latin verb “to be”, I’ll say
the verb “sum”. You can also see why it’s going to be important to
memorize all these forms well. You can’t look up “estis” or “es”.
You must reduce these conjugated forms to a form that will appear
in the dictionary: you must know that these forms are from “sum”.
THE SENTENCE: SUBJECT AND PREDICATE
We divide sentences into two parts: the subject, which is what’s
being talked about, and the predicate, what’s being said about the
subject. Basically, the subject is the subject of the verb, and
the predicate is the verb and everything after it. For example, in
the sentence “Latin drives me crazy because it has so many forms”,
“Latin” is the subject, and everything else is the predicate. Of
course, the full story of subject and predicate is more involved
than this, but this will get us by for now.
PREDICATE NOMINATIVES, TRANSITIVE AND INTRANSITIVE VERBS
In Latin the subject of a verb is in the nominative case. You know
that. So it may seem to follow that, if the subject of the verb is
the subject of the sentence, that the nominative case should be
entirely limited to the subject of the sentence. That is, we
shouldn’t expect there ever to be a noun in the nominative case in
the predicate. Nouns in the nominative case should be the subject
of verbs, and the subject of verbs is in the subject clause of the
sentence, not in the predicate. But we do find nouns in the
nominative in the predicate. When we do, we call them, logically
enough, “predicate nominatives”. How does it happen that a
nominative case shows up in the predicate, after the verb?
We divided verbs into two broad classes: verbs which transfer
action and energy from the subject to something else (the object),
and verbs in which there is no movement of energy from one place to
another. Consider this sentence: “George kicked the ball”. Here
George expended energy — he kicked — and this energy was
immediately applied to an object — the ball — which was changed
as a result of what George did to it. We call a verb like this a
“transitive” verb and the object affected by it the direct object.
In Latin, the direct object of a transitive verb is put into the
accusative case. Now look at this sentence: “The river is wide”.
Is the river doing anything in this sentence to anything else?
Does the verb “is” imply that the subject is acting on something
else? No. There is no movement of activity from the subject to
something else. Verbs like this are called “intransitive” and
don’t take direct objects. In Latin that means they are not
followed by an accusative case. Some more examples of this: “The
dog was running away”, “We’ll all laugh”, “The clown didn’t seem
very happy”.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether a verb in English is
transitive or intransitive. A rule of thumb is this. Ask
yourself, “Can I ‘x’ something?” (where “x” is the verb you’re
investigating). If the answer is “yes” then the verb is
transitive; if “no” then it’s intransitive. “Can I see something?”
Yes; therefore the verb “to see” is transitive. “Can I fall
something?” No; therefore “to fall” is intransitive.
THE COPULATIVE VERB “SUM”
The verb “to be” is obviously an intransitive verb — there is no
movement of energy from the subject to an object — but it has an
interesting additional property. What are we actually doing when
we use the verb “to be?” We are in effect modifying the subject
with something in the predicate. In the sentence “The river is
wide”, “river” is the subject and “wide” is an adjective in the
predicate that is modifying “river”. Even though it’s on the other
side of the verb and in the predicate, it’s directly tied to the
subject. In Latin, therefore, what case would “wide” be in? Think
of it this way. “Wide” is an adjective, and it’s modifying the
“river”, even though it’s in the predicate. Adjectives in Latin
must agree in number, gender and case with the nouns they modify,
so “wide” has to be in the nominative case. It’s modifying
“river”, right? What the verb “to be” does is to tie or link the
subject directly to something in the predicate, and for that reason
we call the verb “to be” a “linking” or “copulative” verb. This
principle has a special application in Latin, which has a full case
system. When the verb “sum” links the subject with an adjective in
the predicate, the adjective agrees with the subject.
Donum est magnum. Dona sunt magna.
nominative = nominative nominative=nominative
neuter = neuter neuter = neuter
singular = singular plural = plural
When “sum” links the subject with a noun in the predicate,
however, we have a bit of a problem. Nouns have fixed gender, so
the noun in the predicate can’t agree with the subject noun in
quite the same way an adjective can. A noun in the predicate has
its own gender which it cannot change. But a noun in the predicate
which is tied to the subject by “sum”, will agree with the subject
in case. Think of the verb “sum” as an equal sign, with the same
case on both sides.
Mea vita est bellum (war).
nominative =nominative
feminine ~ neuter
singular = singular
VOCABULARY PUZZLES
Look at these two dictionary listings:
1. bellum, -i (n) “war”
2. bellus, -a, -um “beautiful”
The first is an entry for a noun, the second an entry for an
adjective. What are the differences? An entry for a noun starts
with the nominative singular form, then it gives you the genitive
singular. It actually starts to decline the noun for you so that
you can tell the noun’s declension and whether the noun has any
stem changes you should be worried about. The final entry is the
gender, since nouns have fixed gender which you must be given. For
a noun, therefore you must be given (1) the nominative form, (2)
the stem, (3) the declension, and (4) the gender.
An entry for an adjective, by contrast, has different
information to convey. For an adjective, you must know which
declension it’ll use to modify nouns of different gender, and
that’s what the “-us, -a, -um” is telling you. But there is an
important omission from the adjective listing. There is no gender
specified, and how could there be, adjectives change their gender.
As you’ll see later, this is the one sure sign that a word you’re
looking at is an adjective: if it has declension endings listed but
no gender.
You may also be concerned that, given the similar appearance
of these two words, you may mix them up in your sentences.
Certainly there will be some overlap of the two forms. For
example, “bella” is a possible form of the noun “bellum” and the
adjective “bellus, -a, -um”. But there are also many forms which
“bellus, -a, -um” can have which “bellum, -i (n)” can never have.
For example, “bellarum” can’t possibly come from a second
declension neuter noun. Neither can “bellae”, “bellas”, “bellos”,
“bella”, and some others. If you see “bell- something” in your
text, first ask yourself whether the case ending is a possible form
from the neuter noun for war. If not, then it’s from the adjective
for “pretty”. In the instances where the forms do overlap, you’ll
have to let context and your good judgment tell you which it is.
12/31/92
CHAPTER 5
“First and Second Conjugations: Future Indicative Active;
Adjectives of the First and Second Declension in -er”
FUTURE TENSE OF FIRST AND SECOND CONJUGATION VERBS
When you want to put an English verb into the future tense, you
use the stem of the verb and put “will” in front of it: “I see”
becomes “I will see”; “They have” becomes “They will have”; etc.
We call the additional word “will” a “helping verb”, or, more
learnedly, an “auxiliary verb”. No matter what you call it, the
“will” is modifying the way the listener will understand the
action of the verb “to see” and “to have”. In Latin, the future
tense is formed differently, but it still involves the addition
of something to the stem of the verb. The formula for forming
the future tense of first and second conjugation verbs in Latin
is this: “stem + be + personal endings”. The stem of the verb,
you remember, is what’s left after you’ve dropped off the “-re”
of the infinitive (the stem includes the stem vowel). The “-be-”
is the sign of the future and is attached directly to the stem.
Then you add the normal personal endings you used in the present
tense directly to the tense sign “be”. So let’s start to
conjugate the future tense of a first and second conjugation
verb. Here are the tables. (Don’t fill in the conjugated form
just yet.)
I. FUTURE OF THE FIRST CONJUGATION: laudo, laudare
STEM + TENSE SIGN + PERS. END. = CONJUGATED
FORM
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
II. FUTURE OF THE SECOND CONJUGATION: moneo, monere
STEM + TENSE SIGN + PERS. END. = CONJUGATED
FORM
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
_________ + __________ + _____________ =
_______________
All this seems quite logical and straight-forward. But
these is one glitch: the short “-e-” of the tense sign “-be-”
undergoes some radical changes when you start attaching the
personal endings.
(1) Before the “-o” of the first person singular, the short
“-e-” disappears completely, leaving “-bo”.
(2) Before the “-nt” of the third person plural, it becomes
a “-u-“, leaving the form “-bunt”.
(3) And before all the other endings, it becomes an “-i-“,
for “-bis”, “-bit”, “-bimus”, and “-bitis”.
As you can see, the short “-e-” in fact never stays what it is in
any of these forms. And you may very well be wondering to
yourself why I’m showing you all this. Why can’t you simply
memorize the future endings as “-bo”, “-bis”, “-bit”, “-bimus”,
“-bitis”, and “-bunt”, without having to look any farther back
into its history. The answer is you can certainly remember just
the final forms if you wish, but this problem of the short “-e-”
changing to other vowels occurs repeatedly in Latin, and instead
of memorizing by rote each time you come across it, it just seems
easier to learn the rule governing the changes, rather than
encountering the changes each time as unique phenomena. It’s
hard to believe now, but knowing the deeper rules will make your
lives simpler in the future. Now that you know the rules, go
back and fill in the conjugated forms of the future tense.
FIRST AND SECOND DECLENSION ADJECTIVES IN -ER
Look at this adjective: “stultus, -a, -um”. Do you remember what
this entry is telling you? An adjective spans the first and
second declensions to get the endings it needs to modify nouns of
different genders. This entry is telling you that the adjective
for “stupid” (stem: “stult-“) uses second declension “-us” type
endings when it modifies masculine nouns, first declension
endings when it modifies feminine nouns, and the “-um” category
of neuter endings of the second declension to modify neuter
nouns.
Now let’s look a little more closely at the second
declension. It has two parts, you may remember: the section
reserved entirely for neuter nouns — those ending in “-um” in
the nominative singular — and the section used by masculine and
feminine nouns (the vast majority are masculine). There is a
variety of nominative singular endings in this second group:
“-us”, “-er”, and “-ir”. The nouns which followed the “-us” type
second declension presented two problems: to find the stem, you
simply dropped off the “-us” ending of the nominative case. But
for the second declension nouns which ended in “-er” in the
nominative singular, you had to be more careful. For some of
them, the stem was the form of the nominative singular, but for
others the “-e-” of the “-er” dropped out from the stem. Then
you used the reduced form for all the other cases. The
dictionary has to tell you which “-er” ending nouns had stem
changes, and it does so in the in second entry for the noun.
puer, -i (m)
liber, -bri (m)
ager, agri (m)
The stem of “puer” is “puer-“, the stem of “liber” is “libr-“,
the stem of “ager” is “agr-“. Okay, so much by way of review.
Now look at this word as it appears in the dictionary:
“liber, -a, -um”. What is this? Is it a noun or an adjective?
You can tell it’s an adjective because there is no gender listed
for it. (Remember, an adjective has to be able to change its
gender, so it has no fixed gender, as a noun does.) An entry for
an adjective has to tell you how it will acquire different
genders — which declensional pattern it will use to become
masculine, feminine and neuter — and, you may recall, the first
entry shows you the masculine nominative, the second the feminine
nominative, and the third the neuter nominative.
So have a look again at this adjective. The second entry
looks familiar — it’s the nominative singular ending of the
first declension. This tells you that the adjective “liber”
become feminine by using first declension endings. The “-um”
should look familiar, too. That’s its neuter ending, telling you
it uses the “-um” endings of the second declension to modify
neuter nouns. But what’s the first entry? You know that this is
telling you how the adjective becomes masculine, but what about
the “-er”.
You’ve probably already figured out by now that the
adjective is going to use the second declension endings to modify
masculine nouns, and that it’s going to use the “-er” ending in
the nominative singular. So for “free soul”, you would write
“liber animus”. But what is the stem of the adjective? Remember
that “-er” ending nouns of the second declension often change
their stems when they move out of the nominative singular. The
dictionary tells you about that in the second entry for the
adjective in the genitive singular. That is, the dictionary
actually starts declining it for you. But how will it tell you
whether an adjective in “-er” has a stem change?
The rule is this. An adjective in “-er” which changes its
stem (i.e., drops the “-e”) will use the changed stem in all
genders and numbers and cases except for the nominative masculine
singular. So all you need to see to know whether the adjective
is going to change its stem is the next entry — the feminine
nominative singular — to know about the stem. Look at this
entry.
M F N
pulcher, -chra, -chrum
There, do you see it? The second entry shows you not only how
the adjective becomes feminine, but also that the stem for all
other cases except the masculine nominative singular is
“pulchr-“. Look as this adjective: “noster, nostra, nostrum”.
Stem change, right? Now look at this again: “liber, -a, -um”.
There is no stem change since it is not indicated in the second
entry. So the stem is “liber-” throughout its inflection. Let’s
do a few exercises. Translate and decline the following.
beautiful fatherland our son
Nom. ______________ ______________ ______________
______________
Gen. ______________ ______________ ______________
______________
Dat. ______________ ______________ ______________
______________
Acc. ______________ ______________ ______________
______________
Abl. ______________ ______________ ______________
______________
Voc. ______________
______________
N/V. ______________ ______________ ______________
______________
Gen. ______________ ______________ ______________
______________
Dat. ______________ ______________ ______________
______________
Acc. ______________ ______________ ______________
______________
Abl. ______________ ______________ ______________
______________
VOCABULARY PUZZLES
animus, -i (m) In the singular the word means “soul,
spirit”, the vapory seat of
self-awareness. But in the plural it
often takes on another meaning. It may
mean “courage”, like our expression
“high spirits”, “spirited”, as in “The
losing team put up a spirited struggle”.
It happens often in Latin that a word
will acquire new meanings in the plural.
C.p., the meaning of the English word
“manner” in the singular with its
meaning in the plural: “manners”.
noster, -tra, -trum This is an adjective which means “our”.
That is, the adjective agrees with the
thing that is “ours”. Therefore, it has
a plural form only if the noun it’s
agreeing with is plural. Students are
often lured into thinking that “noster”
will have only plural case endings
because “our” is first person plural.
Remember, “noster” will have plural
cases endings only if it’s agreeing with
a plural noun: “noster filius” (our son)
or “nostri filii” (our sons).
igitur Wheelock tells you it’s post-positive:
it never is the first word in a Latin
sentence (and it’s usually the second
word.) Despite our tendency to put the
English “therefore” at the beginning of
the sentence, “igitur” is never first.
Remember.
-ne We form questions in English by juggling
word order around, and by using
auxiliary verbs. But Latin doesn’t have
that option since word order doesn’t
work in the same way. To ask a question
in Latin, put “-ne” at the end of the
first word of the sentence. The word to
which it is attached becomes the point
of inquiry of the question: “Amasne
me?” (Do you love me?), “Mene amas?” (Is
it me you love (and not someone else)?)
propter + acc. As you know, prepositions in Latin take
certain cases. “Propter” takes the
accusative case — always — and we
translate it, “because of”. Don’t be
thrown off by our English translation.
“Propter” does not take the genitive
case in Latin. It takes the accusative.
satis When we say “I have enough money”, we
use “enough” as an adjective modifying
“money”. In Latin the word for “enough”
is a noun, not an adjective. Latin
follows “satis” with the genitive case,
and says in effect “I have enough of
money” (Habeo satis pecuniae.) You’ll be
pleased to know that “satis” does not
decline — it is always “satis”.
12/31/92
CHAPTER 6
“Sum: Future and Imperfect Indicative; Possum: Present,
Future, and Imperfect Indicative; Complementary Infinitive”
The two verbs which are the subject of this chapter are closely
related — “possum” (“to be able”) uses the forms of the verb
“sum” (“to be”) — so you don’t have to learn two separate
irregular verbs outright. You can tie them together.
SUM, ESSE: FUTURE TENSE
You have already learned the present tense of the irregular verb
“sum”. And those of you who followed my expanded notes on these
forms know the whole truth about the present tense. Those of you
who skipped them, I recommend you go back to that section and
read them now. They will help you with this discussion.
Do you remember how you formed the future tense of the first
and second conjugation verbs? It was something like this:
stem + tense sign + personal endings = conjugated forms
The verb “sum” follows this formula exactly, but it has a tense
sign for the future you haven’t seen before. Let’s start at the
beginning.
(1) The stem of the verb “to be” is “es-“.
(2) The tense sign for the future is short “-e-“. For the
first and second conjugations, the tense sign of the
future was “be-“, and the short “-e-” of the tense sign
underwent changes when the personal endings were added
to it. Do you remember what they were? The short
“-e-” future tense sign will undergo the same changes.
(3) The personal endings are the same you’ve been using all
along: “-o” or “-m”, “-s”, “-t” etc.
So let’s set up a construction table for the future of “sum”. For
now, fill in all the information except the conjugated form.
FUTURE TENSE: “sum, esse”
STEM + TENSE SIGN + PERS. END. = CONJUGATED
FORMS
1st _____ _________ ___________
_______________
2nd _____ _________ ___________
_______________
3rd _____ _________ ___________
_______________
1st _____ _________ ___________
_______________
2nd _____ _________ ___________
_______________
3rd _____ _________ ___________
_______________
There is one more thing you need to know before you can
finish this off. It’s a rule of Latin pronunciation that
whenever an “-s-” is between two vowels (when it’s
“intervocalic”, as the professionals say), it changes from “-s-”
to “-r-“. Now look at the stem of “sum”. “Es-” plus the tense
sign “-e-” will put the “-s-” between two vowels, so the “-s-” of
the stem will become an “-r-“: “ese-” = “ere-“. That, then,
will be the base to which you add the personal endings. Now fill
out the conjugated forms — and remember the changes the short
“-e-” is going to go through. (Check Wheelock, p. 27.)
SUM, ESSE: IMPERFECT TENSE
The imperfect tense is a new tense for you, and we’re not going
to look very deeply into it here. For now, just remember that
the imperfect tense of “sum” is our “was” and “were”. At least
don’t call this the past tense; call it the imperfect tense. The
imperfect tense is formed along the same lines as the future
tense:
stem + tense sign + personal endings = conjugated forms
Obviously, since this is a different tense, the tense sign is not
going to be the same as the future tense sign. The tense sign of
the imperfect is “-a-“. One other slight difference is that the
imperfect tense uses the alternate first person singular ending:
“-m” instead of the expected “-o”. And don’t forget the rule of
“-s-“: when it’s intervocalic, it changes to “-r-“. Fill out the
following table:
IMPERFECT TENSE: “sum, esse”
STEM + TENSE SIGN + PERS. END. = CONJUGATED
FORMS
1st ______ _________ _____________
______________
2nd ______ _________ _____________
_______________
3rd ______ _________ _____________
_______________
1st ______ _________ _____________
_______________
2nd ______ _________ _____________
_______________
3rd ______ _________ _____________
_______________
POSSUM, POSSE: PRESENT, FUTURE, IMPERFECT TENSES
In Latin, the verb “to be able” is a combination of the adjective
base “pot-” (“able”) plus the forms of the verb “sum”. To say “I
am able”, Latin took the adjective “pot-” and combined it with
the present tense of “sum”. To say “I will be able”, Latin used
“pot-” plus the future of “sum”. To say “I was able”, Latin used
“pot-” plus the imperfect of “sum”. For the verb “possum”, then,
it is the verb “sum” provides the person, number, and the tense.
In the present tense, there is one glitch: wherever the verb
“sum” starts with an “s-“, the “-t-” of “pot-” becomes an “-s-”
also. So you see “possum” instead of “potsum” (from “pot +
sum”), and so on. (When a consonant turns into the consonant
which it is next to, we call this “assimilation”. So we would
say “t” assimilates to “s”.)
The one real oddity of the verb is its infinitive. We might
expect “potesse” (“pot + esse”) according to the rules, but the
form “posse” is just one of those unexpected moments in life
where things get out of control. You might want to remember it
this way: the English word “posse” is a group of citizens who
have been granted power to make arrests: that is, they have
“ableness”. Fill out the following charts for the verb “possum,
posse”.
PRESENT TENSE: possum, posse
ADJECTIVE + CONJUGATED FORM OF SUM = CONJUGATED FORM
1st pot ____________________ _______________
2nd _________ ____________________ _______________
3rd _________ ____________________ _______________
1st _________ ____________________ _______________
2nd _________ ____________________ _______________
3rd _________ ____________________ _______________
FUTURE TENSE: possum, posse
ADJECTIVE + CONJUGATED FORM OF SUM = CONJUGATED FORM
1st _________ ____________________ _______________
2nd _________ ____________________ _______________
3rd _________ ____________________ _______________
1st _________ ____________________ _______________
2nd _________ ____________________ _______________
3rd _________ ____________________ _______________
IMPERFECT TENSE: possum, posse
ADJECTIVE + CONJUGATED FORM OF SUM = CONJUGATED FORM
1st _________ ____________________ _______________
2nd _________ ____________________ _______________
3rd _________ ____________________ _______________
1st _________ ____________________ _______________
2nd _________ ____________________ _______________
3rd _________ ____________________ _______________
The only real difficulty with “possum” is the English
translations for it. If you stick with “to be able”, “will be
able”, and “was/were able”, you’ll get through just fine. But
you can also translate “possum” with the English verb “can”. But
“can”, although it is popular in English, is loaded with
oddities. For one, it has no future tense — “I will can??” —
and secondly, the imperfect tense is “could”, which is also a
conditional of some kind or another in English: “Do you think I
could have a dollar?” Try to stay with “to be able” for now, but
be aware of the possibilities of “can”.
THE COMPLEMENTARY INFINITIVE
If you were to walk up to a stranger and, out of the blue, say “I
am able”, you’d be answered by a pause. The stranger would be
expecting you to complete your thought: “Yes, you’re able to do
what?” That’s because “to be able” requires another verb to
complete its sense, and the form the completing verb will have is
the infinitive. It needs a completing infinitive (or
“complementary infinitive”). This is true in Latin as well.
“Possum” in all its forms will be followed by another verb in the
infinitive form: “Poterunt videre nostros filios”. (They will be
able to see our sons.)
VOCABULARY PUZZLES
liber, -bri (m) How are you going to keep the noun for “book”
distinct in your mind from the adjective for
“free”: “liber, -a, -um”. For one, the “-i-”
in “liber, -bri (m)” is short, but it’s long in
“liber, -a, -um”. Next, there is a stem change
in “liber, -bri (m)” but not in “liber, -a,
-um”. So if you see an inflected form “libr-
something”, then you know the word means
“book(s)”. Remember this by recalling their
English derivatives: library is from the
stem-changing “liber, -bri (m)”, and “liberty”
is from “liber” in which there is no stem
change. For the most part, derived words come
from the stem of the nouns, not the nominative
singular.
vitium, -ii (n) Please don’t confuse this with the word for
life “vita, -ae, (f)”. Keep them straight this
way: “vicious”, which comes from “vitium”, has
an “-i-” after the “-t”, but “vital”, which
comes from “vita”, does not. “Vitia” means
“vices” or “crimes”; “vita” means “life”.
Graecus, -a, -um Like “Romanus, -a, -um”, this adjective can be
used as a noun: “Graecus” can be translated as
“a Greek man”, and “Graeca” as “a Greek woman”,
or as an adjective: “Graecus liber” = “a Greek
book”.
-que As Wheelock tells you, this word (called and
enclitic because it “leans on” another word and
never stands alone in a sentence) is attached
to the end of the second word of two that are
to be linked. Think of it this way: “x yque”
= “x et y”.
ubi If “ubi” comes first in a sentence which is a
question, always translate it as “Where”. “Ubi
es?” (Where are you?) But when it is in the
middle of a sentence, it can be translated as
either “where” or “when”, and does not mean
that a question is being asked. You must try
them both out to see which of the two
possibilities makes the most sense.
insidiae, -arum (f) We translate this word, although it is always
plural in Latin, as the singular “plot”, or
“treachery”. It’s going to happen often that
ideas which are conceived of as plural in
Latin are thought of as singular in English.
12/31/92
CHAPTER 7
“Third Declension: Nouns”
The third declension is generally considered to be a “pons
asinorum” of Latin grammar. But I disagree. The third
declension, aside for presenting you a new list of case endings
to memorize, really involves no new grammatical principles you’ve
haven’t already been working with. I’ll take you through it
slowly, but most of this guide is actually going to be review.
CASE ENDINGS
The third declension has nouns of all three genders in it.
Unlike the first and second declensions, where the majority of
nouns are either feminine or masculine, the genders of the third
declension are equally divided. So you really must pay attention
to the gender markings in the dictionary entries for third
declension nouns. The case endings for masculine and feminine
nouns are identical. The case endings for neuter nouns are also
of the same type as the feminine and masculine nouns, except for
where neuter nouns follow their peculiar rules:
(1) the nominative and the accusative forms are always the
same, and
(2) the nominative and accusative plural case endings are
short “-a-“.
You may remember that the second declension neuter nouns have
forms that are almost the same as the masculine nouns — except
for these two rules. In other words, there is really only one
pattern of endings for third declension nouns, whether the nouns
are masculine, feminine, or neuter. It’s just that neuter nouns
have a peculiarity about them. So here are the third declension
case endings. Notice that the separate column for neuter nouns
is not really necessary, if you remember the rules of neuter
nouns.
Masculine/Feminine Neuter
N/V. ———- ———-
Gen. -is -is
Dat. -i -i
Acc. -em (same as nom.)
Abl. -e -e
NV. -es -a
Gen. -um -um
Dat. -ibus -ibus
Acc. -es -a
Abl. -ibus -ibus
Now let’s go over some of the “hot spots” on this list. The
nominative singular is left blank because there are so many
different possible nominative forms for third declension nouns
that it would take half a page to list them all. You needn’t
fret over this though, because the dictionary’s first entry for a
noun is the nominative singular. You’ll have to do a little more
memorization with third declension nouns because you simply can’t
assume that it’ll have a certain form in the nominative just
because it’s third declension — as you could with first
declension nouns, where they all end in “-a” in the nominative.
The same is true for neuter nouns in the nominative singular
— although the possible forms for neuter nominative singulars is
much more limited. It’s just not worth the effort to memorize
them. And remember, the accusative form of neuter nouns will be
exactly the form of the nominative, so there’s a blank in the
accusative slot for neuter nouns. It’ll be whatever the
nominative is.
STEMS OF THIRD DECLENSION NOUNS
One very distinctive characteristic of nouns of the third
declension is that nearly all of them are stem-changing nouns.
But the concept of stem-changing nouns is not new for you.
You’ve already worked with it in the second declension with nouns
ending in “-er” in the nominative. Look at this entry for a
second declension noun: “ager, agri (m)”. The first entry for a
noun is the nominative singular, the second is the genitive where
you learn two things: (1) the declension of the noun (by looking
at the genitive ending), and (2) whether there is a stem change
from the nominative to the other cases. In this instance we
learn that “ager” is a second declension noun — because the
genitive ending is “-i” — and that there is a stem change. The
stem of noun is “agr-“, so it’ll decline like this:
N/V. ager N/V. agri
Gen. agri Gen. agrorum
Dat. agro Dat. agris
Acc. agrum Acc. agros
Abl. agro Abl. agris
Now look at an example entry for a third declension noun: “rex,
regis (m)”. Use your experience with second declension “-er”
type masculine nouns to draw out all the important information
you need about this noun. What’s its stem? Now decline it.
N/V. rex + — = rex
Gen. __________ __________ ____________________
Dat. __________ __________ ____________________
Acc. __________ __________ ____________________
Abl. __________ __________ ____________________
N/V. __________ __________ ____________________
Gen. __________ __________ ____________________
Dat. __________ __________ ____________________
Acc. __________ __________ ____________________
Abl. __________ __________ ____________________
How did you do? Check your answers against page 31 in Wheelock.
The nominative form is just what’s listed in the dictionary —
there is no ending in the nominative singular to add. Next, the
stem of “rex” is “reg-“, which you get by dropping off the “-is”
genitive ending of the third declension from the form “regis”
which the dictionary gives. Now decline this noun: “corpus,
corporis (n)”.
N/V. __________ + __________ = ____________________
Gen. __________ __________ ____________________
Dat. __________ __________ ____________________
Acc. __________ __________ ____________________
Abl. __________ __________ ____________________
N/V. __________ __________ ____________________
Gen. __________ __________ ____________________
Dat. __________ __________ ____________________
Acc. __________ __________ ____________________
Abl. __________ __________ ____________________
Did you remember the two rules of neuter nouns? Check your
answers on page 31. How are you doing? Try to decline a couple
more for some more practice.
pax, pacis (f) virtus, virtutis (f) labor, laboris (m)
N/V. __________ _______________ _______________
Gen. __________ _______________ _______________
Dat. __________ _______________ _______________
Acc. __________ _______________ _______________
Abl. __________ _______________ _______________
N/V. __________ _______________ _______________
Gen. __________ _______________ _______________
Dat. __________ _______________ _______________
Acc. __________ _______________ _______________
Abl. __________ _______________ _______________
One of the difficulties beginning students have with third
declension nouns is that dictionaries only abbreviate the second
entry, where you’re given the stem of the noun, and it’s often
puzzling to see just what the stem is. Look over this list of
typical abbreviations. After a very short time, they’ll cause
you no problem.
ENTRY STEM ENTRY STEM
veritas, -tatis (f) veritat- oratio, -onis (f) oration-
homo, -inis (m) homin- finis, -is (f) fin-
labor, -oris (m) labor- libertas, -tatis (f)
libertat-
tempus, -oris (n) tempor- senectus, -tutis (f)
senectut-
virgo, -inis (m) virgin- amor, -oris (m) amor-
ENTRY STEM
corpus, -oris (n) ____________________
honor, -oris (m) ____________________
humanitas, -tatis (f)____________________
frater, -tris (m) ____________________
mutatio, -onis (f) ____________________
pater, -tris (m) ____________________
pestis, -is (f) ____________________
scriptor, -oris (m)____________________
valetudo, -inis (f)____________________
cupiditas, -tatis (f)____________________
MODIFYING THIRD DECLENSION NOUNS
Modifying a third declension noun is nothing to cause any alarm.
It’s done the same way you modify first and second declension
nouns: put the adjective in the same number, gender, and case as
the target noun, and away you go. What causes beginners in Latin
some discomfort is that they can’t quite bring themselves around
to modifying a third declension noun with an adjective which uses
first and second declension endings.
Let’s go through this step by step. Suppose you want to
modify the noun “virtus, -tutis (f)” with the adjective “verus,
-a, -um”. You want to say “true virtue”. You know that “virtus”
is nominative, feminine and singular, so for the adjective
“verus, -a, -um” to agree with it, it must also be feminine,
nominative and singular. So look at the adjective’s listing
closely: how does “verus, -a, -um” become feminine? From the
second entry, you see that it uses endings from the first
declension to modify a feminine noun. Since “virtus” is
feminine, verus” will use first declension endings. You now
select the nominative singular ending from the first declension
— “-a” — and add it to the stem of the adjective. The result:
“vera virtus”. Try some more. Decline the following
expressions.
evil time small city
N/V. ______________ _____________ ____________________________
Gen. ______________ _____________ ____________________________
Dat. ______________ _____________ ____________________________
Acc. ______________ _____________ ____________________________
Abl. ______________ _____________ ____________________________
N/V. ______________ _____________ ____________________________
Gen. ______________ _____________ ____________________________
Dat. ______________ _____________ ____________________________
Acc. ______________ _____________ ____________________________
Abl. ______________ _____________ ____________________________
VOCABULARY PUZZLES
mos, moris (m) In the plural, “mos” takes on a new meaning: in
the singular in means “habit”, in the plural
“character”. This isn’t hard to understand. What
a person does regularly to the point of being a
habit eventually becomes what he is: it becomes
his character.
littera, -ae (f) Like “mos, moris”, in the plural “littera”
takes on an extended meaning. In the
singular it means “a letter of the alphabet”;
in the plural it means either “a letter
(something you mail to someone)” or
“literature”. To say “letters”, — as in,
“He used to send her many letters” — Latin
used another word. “Litterae” is one letter.
post + acc. Means “after”, but it is only a preposition in
Latin, and cannot be used as a conjunction. For
the English “after” in this sentence, “post” is
not a correct translation: “After I went to the
zoo, I went to the movies”.
sub + acc./abl. This preposition, like a few others you’ll
see, can be followed by the accusative or the
ablative case. When it takes the accusative
it means motion to and under something; when
it takes the ablative it means “position
under”. “She walked under the tree” — in the
sense that she was not beneath the tree at
first but then walked there — would be “sub”
+ accusative in Latin; “She sat under the
tree” would be “sub” + ablative. Similarly,
if you say “She walked under the tree” in the
sense that she was walking around under the
tree, that would be “sub” + ablative because
no motion toward was involved.
12/31/92
CHAPTER 8
“Third Conjugation (duco): Present Infinitive, Present and
Future Indicative, Present Imperative Active”
PRESENT INFINITIVE AND PRESENT TENSE
You remember that Latin verbs are divided into groups called
“conjugations”, and the conjugations are distinguished from one
another by their thematic vowels. The thematic vowel of the
first conjugation is “-a-“; the thematic vowel of the second is
“-e-“. You can tell what the stem vowel (its thematic vowel) of
a verb is — and thereby its conjugation — by dropping the “-re”
ending from the infinitive, which is given to you in the
dictionary.
laudo laudare stem: lauda- 1st conjugation
moneo monere stem: mone- 2nd conjugation
Now look at the dictionary entry for the verb “to lead” in Latin:
“duco, ducere”. Simply by looking at the first entry, you might
think that this verb is going to be a first conjugation verb —
it looks like “laudo”. But the next entry looks something like a
second. Find the stem: it’s duce-. You have to look closely,
but the “-e-” of the stem is short. This is the characteristic
vowel of the third conjugation: short “-e-“.
Even if you’re not watching the long marks, you can still
tell a second conjugation verb in the dictionary from a third.
The first entry for a second conjugation verb will always end in
“-eo”, and then the second entry will end “-ere”. The first
dictionary entry of a third conjugation ends simply with “-o” and
then the second entry is “-ere”. So if the first entry of a verb
looks like a first conjugation verb in the first person singular
and if the infinitive looks like a second conjugation verb, then
you have a third conjugation verb. Identify the conjugations of
the following verbs:
ENTRY CONJUGATION ENTRY
CONJUGATION
doceo, docere __________ audeo, audere __________
amo, amare __________ tolero, tolerare __________
duco, ducere __________ valeo, valere __________
scribo, scribere __________ ago, agere __________
We’ll use “duco” as our example (paradigm) of third conjugation
verbs. Now let’s see about conjugating a third conjugation verb
in the present tense. You remember the formula for all verbs in
Latin in the present tense: it’s just the stem plus the personal
endings “-o”, “-s”, “-t”, etc. Fill out the following table,
except for the conjugated form.
PRESENT TENSE OF “duco, ducere”
STEM + PERSONAL ENDINGS = CONJUGATED FORM
1st _________ __________
____________________
2nd _________ __________
____________________
3rd _________ __________
____________________
1st _________ __________
____________________
2nd _________ __________
____________________
3rd _________ __________
____________________
What we need to know is what happens to the stem vowel when you
start attaching the personal endings. In the first and second
declensions this presented no problem, because the stem vowels
are long and strongly pronounced. But short vowels always cause
difficulties in languages and are subject to changes. You
already have experience with what happens to the short “-e-”
before personal endings. Do you remember how you form the future
tense of first and second conjugation verbs? You insert the
tense sign “-b-” in between the stem and the personal endings.
And then the short “-e-” changes:
laudabo – laudabo (“-e-” disappears)
laudabs – laudabis
laudabt – laudabit
laudabmus – laudabimus
laudabtis – laudabitis
laudabnt – laudabunt
This is what happens to short “-e-” before the personal endings.
In third conjugation verb, then, what is going to happen to the
short “-e-” of its stem? Right. It’s going to undergo precisely
the same changes. Now go back to the table and fill out the
conjugated forms of “duco”. (Check the answers in Wheelock, p.
35.)
FUTURE TENSE
Third conjugation verbs form the future tense in a way entirely
different from that of the first and second conjugation. First
and second conjugation verbs insert a tense sign — “-be-”
between the stem and the personal endings. Third conjugation
verbs do two things:
(1) For the first person singular, they replace the stem
vowel with an “-a-” and use the alternate personal
ending “-m” — instead of the more regular “-o”.
(2) For all the other forms, they lengthen the short “-e-”
of the stem to long “-e-“. Since the “-e-” is now
long, it no longer goes through any of the changes it
went through in the present tense. It simply stays
“-e-“. (Except of course where long vowels normally
become short: before “-t”, and “-nt”.)
Fill out the future tense of the verb “duco”.
STEM + TENSE SIGN + PERS. END. = CONJUGATED FORMS
1st duc __________ __________ _______________
2nd _____ __________ __________ _______________
3rd _____ __________ __________ _______________
1st _____ __________ __________ _______________
2nd _____ __________ __________ _______________
3rd _____ __________ __________ _______________
FUTURE OF THIRD CONJUGATION VS. PRESENT OF SECOND CONJUGATION
The way a third conjugation verb forms its future presents an
interesting problem. Write out the present tense of the second
conjugation verb “moneo, monere”, and next to it write out the
future of the third conjugation verb “mitto, mittere” (to send).
moneo mitto
PRESENT FUTURE
1st __________ __________
2nd __________ __________
3rd __________ __________
1st __________ __________
2nd __________ __________
3rd __________ __________
As you can see, except for the first person singular, the endings
of both these verbs look the same: the personal endings in both
these verbs are preceded by an “-e-“. The present tense of a
second conjugation verb almost always looks like the future tense
of a third conjugation verb, and this could cause you some
problems when you’re reading and translating. But not if you
keep your wits about you.
Suppose that you see a form like this in a text you’re
reading: “legent”. What do you do with it? First you recognize
the “-nt” as an ending that’s attached to verbs, so the word
you’re looking at is a verb. You want to look this verb up in
the dictionary, so you must simplify it to its basic form, which
is the first person singular. You remember that a verb is
conjugated by adding personal ending, so to reduce this form, you
drop of the “-nt”. This leaves you with “lege-“.
Now the next thing you have to consider is the “-e-“: is it
the stem vowel of a second conjugation verb, or is it the
lengthened “-e-” of a third conjugation verb as the tense sign
for the future? That is, is this a present tense form of a
second conjugation verb (stem + personal endings), or is it a
future of a third (stem + lengthened “-e-” + personal endings).
What do you do next to find out? You’ve gone as far as you can
with you preliminary analysis of the form. Now you have to
proceed provisionally.
Suppose that the verb is a second conjugation, what will the
dictionary entry look like? The first entry is the first person
singular, the second is the infinitive, so, if this is a second
conjugation verb, the entry will be “legeo, legere”. Right?
Because all second conjugation verbs end in “-eo” in the first
person singular. So you’ve reduced the conjugated form “legent”
to a form you can look up.
The next step is to look it up — but look for exactly what
you’ve supposed the form to be. Look for both “legeo”, and
“legere”. Look it up. You didn’t find it, did you? But if your
analysis was correct, “legeo” must be there. But it’s not. What
does that tell you? It tells you that “legent” is not a form of
a second conjugation verb. (If it were, you would have found
“legeo” in the dictionary, but you didn’t.) Go back to the other
possibility: “legent” could be the future of a third conjugation
verb, where the “-e-” is the sign of the future. So if this is
correct, what will the dictionary entry be? It’ll be “lego,
legere”. Check it out. This time you found what you were
looking for: “lego” means “to read”. So how do you translate
“legent?”
leg- -e- -nt
read will they
Or “they will read”.
The moral of this is that your lives used to be fairly
simple. An “-e-” before the personal endings always used to
indicate a present tense of a second conjugation verb. Now it
could mean a future of a third conjugation verb as well. You
have to proceed cautiously now, and make sure you have thoroughly
mastered your grammar before you start reading. You’ll also have
to use the dictionary more deliberately and intelligently than
you had to before. And that means thinking your forms through
before you turn to the dictionary.
IMPERATIVE
Do you remember the formulae you followed for forming the
imperative of first and second conjugation verbs? It was this:
Singular: stem + 0
Plural: stem + te
And so you came up with forms like this: “lauda”, “laudate”,
“mone”, “monete”, etc. Third conjugation verbs follow the same
formulae, but don’t forget that pesky short “-e-” stem vowel. If
there is something added to it, it changes to an “-i-” (or “-u-”
before the ending “-nt”); if there is nothing added to it, it
stays short “-e-“. So how are you going to form the imperative
of the verb “mitto?” Think.
Singular mitte + 0 = __________
Plural mitte + te = __________
This is how all third conjugation verbs will form their
imperatives — except for four very common verbs. The verbs
“duco”, and three other verbs you’ll get later, form their
singular imperatives by dropping the stem vowel altogether: “duc”
not “duce”. But the plural imperatives are quite regular:
“ducite”.
VOCABULARY PUZZLES
scribo, -ere One way to memorize the conjugation of verbs
is to learn them with the proper
accentuation. A second conjugation verb is
accented on the stem vowel in the infinitive,
so say “MOH neh o, moh HEH reh” for the
second conjugation verb “moneo, monere”. The
stress accent on a third conjugation falls on
the syllable before the stem vowel. So say,
“SREE boh, SCREE beh reh” for the third
conjugation verb “scribo, scribere”.
Similarly “DOO keh re” for “ducere”, “MIT teh
re” for “mittere” and so on.
copia, -ae (f) Another one of those words which have a
different meaning in the plural. In the
singular “copia” means “abundance”; in the
plural — copiae, -arum (f) — it means
“supplies, troops, forces”.
ad + acc Means “to” and “toward”, always with a sense
of “movement to. Students often “ad + acc”.
with the dative case of indirect object,
which we often translate into English with
the preposition “to”. Contrast these two
examples: “I am giving you a dollar (“you”
would be dative case) and “I am running to
you” (“you” would be in the accusative case
governed by “ad”).
ex, e + abl. Students sometimes get hung up on when to use
“ex” or “e”. Use “ex” before any word you
like, but use “e” only before words which
start with a consonant. If you wish, use
“ex” only. That way, you’ll always be right.
ago, agere An idiom with this verb which Wheelock is
going use a lot is “ago vitam”, which means
“to live” (to lead a life). Another is “ago
gratias” + dative, which means “to thank”.
The person being thanked is in the dative
case: “Populus hominibus gratias agent”.
duco, ducere Means “to lead”, but can also mean “to
think”. This extension is logical: we want
our leaders to be thinkers too, don’t we?
12/31/92
CHAPTER 9
“Demonstrative Pronouns: Hic, Ille, Iste”
ENGLISH: THIS, THESE; THAT, THOSE
Consider the following expressions:
this car that car
these cars those cars
The words “this”, “these”, “that”, and “those” are obviously
telling you a little something more about “car” or “cars”. They
are indicating the relative spacial location “car” or “cars” have
to the speaker. When we say “this car” or the plural “these
cars”, we are referring to the car or cars which are nearby:
“this car right here”; “these cars right here”. For the most
part, when we say “that car” or “those cars”, we mean cars which
are some distance from us: “that car over there”, or “those cars
over there”. It would sound odd for someone to say “that car
right here” or “these cars way over there”. So the words “this”,
“these”, “that”, and “those”, are telling us more about the words
they’re attached to; that is, they qualify or modify their nouns.
And we call words which modify other nouns “adjectives”.
As you know, in English adjectives hardly ever change their
form to “agree” with the thing they’re modifying.
“tall tree” and “tall trees”
“bad boys” and “bad girls”
This is different from Latin adjectives, which must change
endings to show the different numbers, genders, and cases of the
nouns they modify. But look again at the adjectives “this” and
“that”. When the nouns they modify become plural, the adjective
itself changes form: from “this” to “these”; from “that” to
“those”. These two are the only adjectives in English which
actually change their forms to match a grammatical feature of the
nouns they’re modifying. They have slightly different forms to
indicate a change in number of the nouns they modify.
So, these words are adjectives, since they qualify nouns,
and since their main purpose is to “point out” the nouns, we call
them “demonstrative adjectives” because they “point out” or
“point to” (Latin “demonstrare”). This is very important to
remember: these words are “demonstrative adjectives”.
THE LATIN DEMONSTRATIVE ADJECTIVES: ILLE, HIC, ISTE
Latin also has demonstrative adjectives roughly equivalent to our
“this” and “that”. Now remember, since these words are
adjectives in Latin, they must be able to agree with the nouns
they’re modifying. Therefore, these demonstrative adjectives
must be able to decline to agree with all three different
genders. For the most part, the Latin demonstrative adjectives
decline just like the adjectives you’ve see so far. That is,
they add the first and second declension endings to their stems.
But there are some unexpected irregularities which you simply
must memorize:
(1) The nominative singulars are irregular.
(2) The genitive singular for all genders is “-ius”.
(3) The dative singular for all genders is “-i”.
Keep these irregularities in mind and decline the demonstrative
adjective “that”. Its dictionary listing includes all the
nominatives — just as an adjective like “magnus, -a, -um” does
— so that you can see its declension pattern. The adjective for
“that” is “ille, illa, illud”. (You can check your work in
Wheelock, p. 39.)
STEM: ill-
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER
N/V. _______________ _______________ _______________
Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________
Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________
Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________
Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________
N/V. _______________ _______________ _______________
Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________
Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________
Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________
Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________
As you can see, the inflection of the demonstrative adjective
“ille” is quite recognizable after the nominative, genitive and
dative singulars. With some more time, however, you’ll become
well-acquainted with the irregulars forms “-ius” and “-i” of
genitive and dative singulars. All the demonstrative adjectives
and pronouns in Latin use these alternative genitive and dative
singular endings, as do some adjectives. In fact, we call this
declensional pattern the “heteroclite” declension, because it
seems to be borrowing the genitive and dative singular forms from
somewhere else.
Let’s turn now to the demonstrative adjective for “this”.
The stem is “h-“, and it follows the pattern set by “ille”:
unusual nominatives, alternative endings for the genitive and
dative singulars. But there are four additional things to note
about its declension:
(1) In the genitive and dative singulars, the stem
lengthens to “hu-” from “h-“.
(2) In all the singular cases and genders, and in the
neuter plural nominative and accusative, the particle
“-c” is added to the end of case endings for a little
extra emphasis: like “this here” in English. We call
the “-c” an “epideictic” (eh peh DAY tick) particle.
(3) When the epideictic particle “-c” is added to a case
ending which ends in an “-m”, the “-m” becomes an “-n”.
(4) The neuter nominative and accusative plural endings are
“-ae”, not “-a”, as you might expect from the second
declension.
This is quite a list of oddities, and students have some
difficulty mastering this demonstrative adjective. Keep you
finger on this list of irregularities and try to decline the
Latin demonstrative “this”: “hic, haec, hoc”.
STEM: h- (or hu-)
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER
N/V. _______________ _______________ _______________
Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________
Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________
Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________
Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________
N/V. _______________ _______________ _______________
Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________
Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________
Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________
Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________
Finally, there exists in Latin a demonstrative adjective
that has no real translation into English, though we can readily
recognize its meaning. It can only be rendered into English by
an inflection of the voice, one implying contempt, disdain, or
outrage. Read this exchange:
X: “Did you see the movie I was telling you about?”
Y: “What movie?”
X: “You know, the one about mass killing, torture, moral
outrages and general profligacy. The one you said no
one in his right mind ought to see?”
Y: “Oh, that movie”.
The final “that” in this dialogue corresponds to the Latin
demonstrative adjective “iste, ista, istud”. There is nothing
complicated about the declension of “iste”; It uses the
alternative genitive and dative singular endings “-ius” and “-i”,
and the neuter nominative and accusative singular is “-ud” (like
“illud”). Aside from that, it uses the standard first and second
declension endings.
STEM: ist-
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER
N/V. _______________ _______________ _______________
Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________
Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________
Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________
Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________
N/V. _______________ _______________ _______________
Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________
Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________
Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________
Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________
USING THE HETEROCLITE DECLENSION
As irritating as it may to have to memorize more endings, the
heteroclite declension has a nice advantage. It can often help you
establish the case of a noun. You know that the declensions have
forms which overlap. For example, the form “consilio” from the
noun “consilium, -ii (n) can be either the dative or ablative case
singular. But if it’s modified by a demonstrative adjective, you
can tell immediately which of the two it is:
huic consilio (dative)
hoc consilio (ablative)
Write out the number, gender and case the following nouns are in:
NUMBER GENDER CASE
1. illae civitates __________ __________ __________
2. illas civitates __________ __________ __________
3. isti puero __________ __________ __________
4. isto puero __________ __________ __________
5. illi amores __________ __________ __________
6. illos amores __________ __________ __________
ADJECTIVES USING THE HETEROCLITE ENDINGS: -IUS AND -I
As I mentioned, there are some adjectives in Latin which use the
alternative genitive and dative endings. Aside from that, however,
these adjectives follow the normal declensional patterns. There
are very few of them, but they are important adjectives which get
a lot of use. You’ve got to know them:
alius, -a, -ud “other”
alter, -a, -um “the other”
nullus, -a, -um “no, none”
solus, -a, -um “sole, alone”
totus, -a, -um “whole; entire”
ullus, -a, -um “any”
unus, -a, -um “one”
Judged by their dictionary entries alone, these adjective look
deceptively normal. They appear to be the standard variety
adjectives of the first and second declensions. But their genitive
and dative singulars are not the standard kind. Watch this
declension of the expression “the other man alone”:
Nom. alter vir solus
Gen. alterius viri solius
Dat. alteri viro soli
Acc. alterum virum solum
Abl. altero viro solo
ALIUS AND ALTER
“Alius, alia, aliud” is the adjective which means “other”, and it’s
one of those adjectives which follow the heteroclite declension:
“-ius” and “-i” for the genitive and dative singulars. For a
totally mysterious reason, Latin tends to replace the genitive
singular of “alius” with the genitive singular of “alter”. Hence
we find “alterius” in place of the expected “aliius” in the
declension of “alius”. After that oddity, the declension of
“alius” regains its sanity:
Masculine Feminine Neuter
N/V. alius alia aliud
Gen. alterius alterius alterius
Dat. alii alii alii
Acc. alium aliam aliud
Abl. alio alia alio
etc.
THE DEMONSTRATIVE ADJECTIVES USED AS DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS
So far, so good. The demonstrative adjectives “hic”, “ille”, and
“iste” modify nouns and point them out. Essentially this is their
nature. They are demonstrative adjectives. But they have a very
common extended use. They are frequently used as “demonstrative
pronouns”. Because these words can be used either as adjectives or
as pronouns, we often call them just “demonstratives”. We’ll say
“hic” is a demonstrative, instead of calling it a demonstrative
adjective or pronoun. So what does this mean — demonstrative
pronoun? The demonstrative part of it you understand: it means
something which points out or gives emphasis. But what is a
pronoun? Without getting overly ambitious about setting down an
eternally unassailable definition, let’s just say for now that a
pronoun is a word which takes the place of another word in a
sentence. Here are some examples of pronouns in English:
“It just missed her”.
“She has a most interesting way of speaking”.
“Does he have it”?
As you can see, the underlined words are referring you to something
or someone which has already been mentioned sometime before, so to
recall them we only have to use a sign marker or abbreviation. The
word or idea which the pronoun is replacing is called the
“antecedent” (an te CEE dent). In additional to replacing their
antecedents, pronouns also tell you a little something about the
nature of the antecedent. For example, in the first sentence, you
can tell that the antecedent of “it” is singular and inanimate; the
antecedent of “her” is singular and feminine and animate. This is
an important rule to remember about pronouns: “Pronouns get their
number and gender from their antecedents”.
Let’s look at the English third person pronouns. We divide
the third person pronoun into two groups — those which refer to
animate objects (mainly humans) and those which refer to inanimate
objects. Our third person pronoun observes the distinction
between the genders masculine and feminine of animate things in the
singular; in the plural, however, they make no distinctions among
gender or animate and inanimate.
Singular
Masculine Feminine Neuter
Nom. he she it
Pos. his her its
Obj. him her it
Plural
Nom. they
Pos. their
Obj. them
Latin pronouns are much more observant of the gender of their
antecedents — as they would likely be, because of the importance
of grammatical gender in Latin. Consequently by looking at the
forms of the demonstrative pronouns “hic”, “ille”, or “iste”, you
can tell much more about their antecedents. This makes
constructions in Latin much more flexible. Look at this sentence.
“Non poteram haec videre”. How would you translate the “haec?”
You can tell that it is neuter, accusative plural from its form and
from the way it’s being used in the sentence. (It’s the direct
object of the verb “videre”.) So its antecedent is neuter in
gender, and plural. So what’s our plural, accusative third person
pronoun? It’s “them”. So this sentence would be translated “I was
not able to see them”. In English, you see, this sentence could
mean that I am looking at men, women, or rocks, since the pronoun
only tells us that the antecedent is plural. But Latin also tells
us the gender of the antecedent, so it can be much more specific.
Now let’s look at a pronoun with a little more context.
“Civitas est magna, sed non possum hanc videre”. (The city is
large, but I can’t see it.)
Remember that a pronoun gets its number and gender from its
antecedent, but it gets its case from the way it’s being used
grammatically in the sentence. The antecedent of “hanc” is
“civitas”; they are both singular and feminine. But “hanc” is
accusative because of the way it’s being used: it’s the direct
object of the verb “videre”. We would translate this into English:
“The city is large, but I don’t see it”. Notice that even though
the pronoun in Latin is feminine in gender — “hanc” — we don’t
translate it “her”, because we use “she”, “her”, and “her” only for
things which are biologically female. Unlike Latin, our nouns
don’t have grammatical gender. Now try this: “Est bona femina, et
hanc amamus”. (She is a good woman, and we love her.) This time,
since the antecedent is biologically feminine, we would translate
“hanc” with our feminine pronoun: “She is a kind woman and we love
her”. You’ll have to take a little care when you translate the
pronouns into English: you’ll use our pronouns “he” and “she”, and
so on, only when the antecedent of the Latin pronouns are
biologically masculine or feminine. Otherwise you’ll use our
neuter “it”, “its”, “it”, and “them”.
One final thing to remember about the demonstratives “hic”,
“ille”, and “iste”. They all three show much more emphasis than
does our simple “he, she, it”, but we have no way to translate that
extra bit over into English. Latin has a weaker third person
demonstrative which is equivalent to our “he, she, it” — you’ll
learn it later — but for now you’ll be translating “hic”, “ille”,
and “iste”, as if they were equivalent to “he, she, it”. It’s just
something we can’t get over into English very easily. Try a few
short exercises. Translate into Latin.
1. Your (sing.) books are good, and we love them [use a form of
“hic”.]
____________________________________________________________
2. Your (sing.) book is good, and we love it [use “ille”.]
____________________________________________________________
3. The danger is great, and I fear [“timeo”] it [use “iste”.]
____________________________________________________________
4. The dangers are great, and I fear them [use “iste”.]
____________________________________________________________
5. She is your [pl.] daughter, and we are giving her [use “hic”]
the money.
____________________________________________________________
6. They are your [pl.] daughters, and we are giving them [use
“ille”] the money.
____________________________________________________________
VOCABULARY PUZZLES
locus, -i (m) Something a little unusual happens to “locus”
in the plural. In the singular, “locus” means
either a physical place or a place in a book
(a passage in literature). As “loci, -orum
(m)” it means only passages in literature. To
say “places” as in physical places (regions),
Latin use a neuter derivative from “locus”:
“loca, -orum (n)”. So “locus” actually has
two different forms in the plural, each with
different meanings: “loci” means “passages”;
“loca” means “regions”.
enim Like “igitur”, “enim” is postpositive.
in + acc./abl. Like “sub” + accusative or ablative, “in” will
take its noun either in the accusative or the
ablative case. When it takes the accusative
in means motion into; with the ablative it
shows only position, with no motion into
involved. You can keep these two straight by
translating “in” + accusative always as
“into”. Say “in” for “in” + ablative.
nunc It’s the temporal “now”, not the logical
“now”. “Nunc” would be a translation for “Now
it’s raining”, not for “Now it’s time to end
this chapter”.
12/31/92
CHAPTER 10
“Fourth Conjugation and -io Verbs of the Third:
Present and Future Indicative, Present Imperative
and Active Infinitive”
REVIEW OF VERBS
Despite its epic-sized title, you’ll find that there is really
not so much to learn in this chapter after all. You already know
the present and future tenses of the first three conjugations,
and you know how to form their imperatives and infinitive. Let’s
have a look at what you know so far about these verbs.
1. The Present Tense
To form the present tense of verbs of all conjugations, you
simply take the stem of the verb (which includes its stem
vowel) and add the personal endings.
2. The Future Tense
To form the future tense of all conjugations, you take the
stem of the verb, then you add on a tense sign for the
future, and then you add the personal endings. For first
and second conjugation verbs, the tense sign of the future
is “-be-“; for the third conjugation, the tense sign is
“-a-/-e-“.
3. The Imperative Mood
To form the imperative mood in the singular, you use just
the stem (without any additional ending); for the plural you
add the ending “-te” to the stem. (The exceptions to this
rule are the third conjugation verbs “duc” and three others
you haven’t seen yet which lose their stem vowel short “-e”
in the singular. Their plural imperatives, however,
resurrect the stem vowel and are entirely regular:
“ducite”.)
4. The Infinitive
The infinitive is just the stem plus the ending “-re” for
all conjugations.
I. First Conjugation: amo, -are
PRESENT FUTURE IMPERATIVE INFINITIVE
1 _____________ _____________
2 _____________ _____________ _____________
3 _____________ _____________
_____________
1 _____________ _____________
2 _____________ _____________ _____________
3 _____________ _____________
II. Second Conjugation: moneo, -ere
PRESENT FUTURE IMPERATIVE INFINITIVE
1 _____________ _____________
2 _____________ _____________ _____________
3 _____________ _____________
_____________
1 _____________ _____________
2 _____________ _____________ _____________
3 _____________ _____________
III. Third Conjugation: mitto, -ere
PRESENT FUTURE IMPERATIVE INFINITIVE
1 _____________ _____________
2 _____________ _____________ _____________
3 _____________ _____________
_____________
1 _____________ _____________
2 _____________ _____________ _____________
3 _____________ _____________
FOURTH CONJUGATION: PRESENT, FUTURE, IMPERATIVE, AND INFINITIVE
This is going to be easy. Look at the entry for the Latin verb
“to hear”: “audio, -ire”. Take a close look. What’s the stem
vowel, and what, therefore, is the stem of the verb? Remember,
you discover the stem of a verb by dropping the “-re” infinitive
ending. What’s left is the stem (including the stem vowel). So
the stem of the verb “to hear” is “audi-“. And it’s to this stem
that you add the various tense signs, personal endings, and so on
to conjugate the verb. Four conjugation verbs are verbs whose
stem ends in a long “-i-“. So how are you going to form the
present tense of this verb? The formula of the present tense —
as you know already — is: stem plus personal endings. (There is
no intervening tense sign for the present tense). In other
words, fourth conjugation verbs are verbs having an “-i-” for its
stem vowel, and it follows precisely the same rules as the other
conjugations for forming the present tense, with the one
exception that in the third person plural, an extra “-u-” is
inserted between the stem vowel “-i-” and the “-nt” personal
ending. How about the future tense? The fourth conjugation uses
the same tense sign as the third conjugation for the future
tense, inserting the letters “-a/e-” between the stem and the
personal endings. Because the “-i-” is long it “survives” the
addition of endings. How about the present imperative? It’s just
like the other conjugations: the stem alone in the singular, and
the stem plus “-te” for the plural. And finally the present
infinitive? The stem plus “-re”.
So you can see that the principal difference between the
fourth conjugation and the others you’ve seen so far is the
quality of the stem vowel. Conjugate the fourth conjugation verb
“to come”.
IV. Fourth Conjugation venio, -ire:
PRESENT FUTURE IMPERATIVE INFINITIVE
1 _____________ _____________
2 _____________ _____________ _____________
3 _____________ _____________
___________
1 _____________ _____________
2 _____________ _____________ _____________
3 _____________ _____________
THIRD CONJUGATION i-STEM: PRESENT, FUTURE, IMPERATIVE AND
INFINITIVE
The third conjugation contains a subset of verbs, called
“i-stems”, that seem to imitate the fourth conjugation. The
third conjugation, as you know, contains verbs whose stem vowel
is short “-e-“. The short “-e-” is almost entirely hidden in the
conjugation of the verbs because it changes to a short “-i-” or
short “-u-” before the personal endings in the present tense.
Still it follows all the same rules as the other verbs when
deriving its different forms. Both the i-stem and non i-stem
third conjugation verbs have the stem vowel short “-e-” — that’s
why they’re both third conjugation verbs. But the “i-stem” third
conjugation verbs insert an extra “-i-” in some places in their
conjugation. These places are really quite easy to remember, if
you know fourth conjugation verbs: a third conjugation “i-stem”
verb inserts an extra “i” everywhere a fourth conjugation verb
has an “-i-“. In fact, you might want to think of a third
conjugation “i-stem” verb as a failed fourth conjugation verb —
as a verb which “wants” to be fourth. Here’s the dictionary
entry form many 3rd conjugation i-stem verbs. Notice the extra
“-i-” in the first entry, and the short “-e-” of the infinitive
in the second:
capio, -ere
rapio, -ere
cupio, -ere
facio, -ere
fugio, -ere
Let’s have a closer look at all this. Write out the present
tense of the following verbs. Remember, a third i-stem verb has
an extra “-i-” every where there’s an “-i-” in the fourth
conjugation.
THIRD (non i-stem) FOURTH THIRD i-STEM
mitto, -ere venio, -ire capio, -ere
1st _______________ _______________ _______________
2nd _______________ _______________ _______________
3rd _______________ _______________ _______________
1st _______________ _______________ _______________
2nd _______________ _______________ _______________
3rd _______________ _______________ _______________
As you can see, the fourth and third i-stem verbs look identical.
But there is a difference. Go back and put in the long marks
over the stem vowel long “-i-” of “venio”. The “-i-” is long in
the second person singular and plural, and in the first person
plural. Now compare the forms of “venio” with those of “capio”
— you can see the differences. The “-i-” of a fourth
conjugation verb is long by nature and “wants” to stay long
wherever it can. The stem vowel of a third conjugation verb is
short “-e-” which turns into short “-i-” or “-u-“. But it will
never become long “-i-” regardless of what ending is added to it.
Now, the difference between a short and long vowel may seem
rather subtle to us, but look again. In Latin pronunciation, the
accent of a word falls on to the second to the last syllable if
the vowel in the syllable is long. If it is short, then the
accent goes back to the third to the last syllable. So, what’s
the difference in the way these forms would have been pronounced?
capmus is pronounced CAH peh muhs
audimus is pronounced owh DEE muhs
Similarly
captis is pronounced CAH peh tis
auditis is pronounced owh DEE tis
So the difference for a Roman between these verbs in some the
forms would have been quite striking.
What about the future tense of the third conjugation i-stem
verbs? They look just like the fourth conjugation verbs: stem(i)
+ “a/e” + personal endings.
THIRD (non i-stem) FOURTH THIRD i-STEM
mitto, -ere venio, -ire capio, -ere
1st _______________ _______________ _______________
2nd _______________ _______________ _______________
3rd _______________ _______________ _______________
1st _______________ _______________ _______________
2nd _______________ _______________ _______________
3rd _______________ _______________ _______________
Now let’s consider the imperative mood. In this case, there
is no difference at all between the third i-stem verbs and the
third non i-stems. And why should there be? They both have the
same stem vowel: short “-e-“.
THIRD (non i-stem) FOURTH THIRD i-STEM
mitto, -ere venio, -ire capio, -ere
SINGULAR __________ __________ __________
PLURAL __________ __________ __________
VOCABULARY PUZZLES
You must be more alert now when you’re looking in the dictionary
for a form. The third i-stem verbs and fourth conjugation verbs
look the same in the first person singular. You mustn’t decide
— even unconsciously — which conjugation a verb is before
you’ve checked with the second entry. The second entry, as you
know, tells you the stem vowel — and the stem vowel tells you
the conjugation. Pay attention.
-ficio, -cipio The short “-a-” of the verbs “facio” and
“capio” change (or “grade”) to short “-i-” in
compound forms of the verb — i.e., when a
prefix is attached. It will save you a lot
of time if you learn to recognize the root
“facio” in the verbs “perficio”, “conficio”,
“interficio”, etc. instead of having to treat
every derived form as an entirely new
vocabulary item.
01/05/93
CHAPTER 11
“Personal Pronouns Ego and Tu; Pronouns Is
and Idem”
THE ENGLISH PERSONAL PRONOUNS
You know what a pronoun is. It’s a word which takes the place of
a noun in a sentence. The word it’s replacing is called the
antecedent. So we can ask, “What is the antecedent of this
pronoun”, whenever we see a pronoun in a sentence. That is, we
are asking, “To what noun is this pronoun pointing?” Read the
following paragraph and pick out the pronouns; ask yourself what
the antecedent is for each pronoun.
“George asked Larry to go pick up the apple. He wanted
an apple so he told him to get it. But Larry couldn’t
find it, so he couldn’t give it to him. Larry told
him, ‘If I had found it, I would have given it to you,
but I couldn’t find it.’ He turned to Sue sitting
nearby and said to her, ‘He’s a failure. Can you find
it for me?’ Sue said she didn’t know where it was
either. ‘I guess you’re just out of luck”, she told
him”.
Alright, that’s enough of that. You see how useful these
pronouns are. If it weren’t for pronouns, you’d have to repeat
every noun and every name each time you wanted to refer to them,
no matter how obvious the reference was. If you don’t believe
me, try reading the paragraph again substituting the antecedent
for each of the pronouns. Pronouns are useful, and in this
paragraph you saw all kinds of pronouns in all kinds of shapes
and varieties, referring to different antecedents and performing
different grammatical task in their sentences. This variety in
form is not merely random. The differences among “he, she, it”,
among “his, her, its”, and “him, her, it” are critical; they tell
you (1) what the likely antecedent is, and (2) how the pronoun is
being used in the sentence of which it’s a part.
If the speaker is referring to him/herself, or to a group of
people of which he/she considers himself to be a part, in a
sentence, he/she uses the first person pronoun. In English, the
first person pronoun has three forms to indicate different cases
(grammatical function).
Case Singular Plural
Nominative I we
Possessive my our
Objective me us
If the speaker is referring to the person or people to whom
he/she is directly talking, he/she uses the second person
pronoun. (Notice that the cases are not so clearly visible in
the morphology of this pronoun; notice also that English makes no
distinction between second person pronoun in the singular and
plural.)
Case Singular Plural
Nominative you you
Possessive your your
Objective you you
Now take a close look at these pronouns. What don’t they tell
you about their antecedents? You can see the difference in
number in the first person pronoun, but you can’t in the second.
What else don’t you know about the antecedents? Do you know
their genders? Do you know simply by looking at the form of,
say, “me” whether the person referred to is male, female, or
neuter? No. In English (as well as in Latin), the first and
second pronouns make no distinction in the forms among the
possible genders of their antecedents. Think about this for a
moment. Why should the languages have evolved this way? Why is
it not important for a speaker to be able to indicate differences
in gender in he first and second persons? Try to figure it out.
Well, let’s take a step backwards for a moment: what is the first
person? It’s the speaker or speakers of the sentence, right?
And what is the second person? It’s the person or people whom
the speaker(s) is (are) directly addressing. So should it be
necessary for someone who’s speaking to indicate his or her own
gender to the listener(s)? Look, I surely know what gender I am,
so there’s no reason to indicate in the grammar of my sentence
what gender I am. Furthermore, the psychology of language is
such that there is an assumed (or real) audience to whom I am
directing my thoughts. There is always an implied second person
in everything written. So, if I’m standing directly in front of
you, talking to you, you should have no doubt about my gender,
because you can see me. Therefore it would be superfluous for me
to add special gender markings to my first person pronouns to
tell you what gender I am. That is plainly visible. For this
reason, then, the first person pronouns make no distinctions
among the genders of their antecedents.
Can you guess now why the second person makes no
distinctions among the genders, either? Right, because if I (the
first person) am directly addressing you (the second person),
then I should be able to tell your gender too. You know my
gender, and I know your gender, because we’re standing in front
of each other. As the first person in our conversation, I don’t
need to remind you, my audience, of your own gender, do I?
Now let’s look at the first and second pronouns in Latin.
They’ll make distinctions in number. And, to be useful in Latin,
they’ll have to decline through all the cases just like Latin
nouns. Here they are:
1st Person 2nd Person
N/V. ego tu
[Gen. mei tui]
Dat. mihi tibi
Acc. me te
Abl. me te
N/V. nos vos
[Gen. nostrum/nostri vestrum/vestri]
Dat. nobis vobis
Acc. nos vos
Abl. nobis vobis
Look at the following examples. You’ll see how useful these
pronouns are.
1. Mittam ad vos filium meum. (I will send my son to you.)
2. Ego scribo has litteras. (I write this letter.)
3. Ego vos video, atque vos me videtis. (I see you, and
you see me.)
4. Cum vobis in terram illam veniam. (I will come into
that land with you.)
5. Cum te in terram illam veniam. (I will come into that
land with you.)
THE “WEAK” DEMONSTRATIVE ADJECTIVE IS, EA, ID
So what about the third person pronouns? Here there’s a problem,
one which plagued, and continues to plague, the Romance languages
derived from Latin. First off, the third person pronoun is going
to have to tell you more about their antecedents than the first
and second person pronouns did. If I (the first person) am
talking to you (the second person) directly, I certainly know
what gender you are. But if I am talking to you about something
else (which is the third person) or if I am talking to you about
several things, it would be nice if I could refer the gender of
these topics of conversations. Look at the following passage.
“I’ve got to tell you a story. Yesterday I saw Betty and
Steve. He asked her for an apple. She told him that she
didn’t have any. When he asked her again, she told him to
go buy his own apples”.
Let’s look at this little narrative more closely. The first
“He” — how do you know that it’s referring to Steve and not to
Betty. That’s easy; it’s because “he” is masculine and not
feminine. If the antecedent had been Betty, then you would have
had “She” in place of “He”. Another thing “He” tells you about
the antecedent is that the antecedent is singular. If the
antecedent had been plural, then “He” would have been “They”.
Right? One last thing. Look at the antecedent for “He”. What
case is it in? It’s in the objective (or accusative) case
because it’s the direct object of the verb “saw”. Now look at
the pronoun “He”. What case is it in? It’s in the nominative
case. Why? Because in its sentence it’s the subject of the verb
“asked”. Now look at the pronoun “his” in the last line. What
case is it in? This time the pronoun is in the possessive (or
genitive) case, again because the grammar of the sentence it’s in
requires it to be in the genitive case. Even though all the
pronouns are pointing to the same antecedent, they are all in
different cases in their own sentences. Here is a rule you must
remember:
“A pronoun gets its number and gender from its
antecedent, but it gets its case from the way it’s
being used grammatically in its own sentence”.
Remember that; you’ll need it very soon. Now let’s get on
with the Latin third person pronoun. Here’s what the Latin third
person pronoun must do: it must be able to show the number and
gender of its antecedent, and it must be able to inflect through
the entire case system.
Let’s look once more at the English third person pronoun, so
that you can see how unbelievably flaccid and corrupted it is in
comparison to the majestic power of the Latin 3rd person pronoun.
Singular
Masculine Feminine Neuter
Nom. he she it
Gen. his her its
Acc. him her it
Plural
Masculine-Feminine-Neuter
Nom. they
Gen. their
Acc. them
As you can see the English third person pronoun is so feeble it’s
hardly worth learning. In the singular, some of the case forms
are identical, and in the plural it makes no distinction among
the genders: “They” can refer to a group of men, women, or rocks.
So it’s not very useful.
But look at the Latin third person pronoun. The third
person pronoun starts its life as a weak demonstrative adjective.
It means something like “the” and it agrees with the noun to
which it’s attached: “the book”. Then, like the other
demonstratives you’ve seen — “ille”, “hic”, and “iste” — it can
be used independently as a pronoun. Let’s see how it works.
First the morphology. The stem is “e-” and basically it’s
declined just like the other demonstratives you’ve seen before.
You remember the heteroclite declension which has the irregular
“-ius”, and “-i” for the genitive and dative singulars? The
nominative singular of the third person demonstrative is a little
odd, and the genitive and dative singular use these alternative
endings Try to fill in the declension. Don’t forget, now, the
stem of the demonstrative is “e-” to which the case endings are
going to be added. Except for the genitive and dative singular,
it will use the standard first and second declension endings
which all standard adjectives use.
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER
N/V. is ea id
Gen. _____________ _____________
_____________
Dat. _____________ _____________
_____________
Acc. _____________ _____________
_____________
Abl. _____________ _____________
_____________
N/V. ii, or ei _____________
_____________
Gen. _____________ _____________
_____________
Dat. _____________ _____________
_____________
Acc. _____________ _____________
_____________
Abl. _____________ _____________
_____________
First let’s see how the weak demonstrative “is, ea, id”
works as an adjective. Don’t forget that as with the
demonstratives “ille”, “hic”, and “iste”, “is” can be used both
as an adjective and as a pronoun. When used as a demonstrative
adjective, “is” has about the same force as our article “the”,
although as you’ll see Latin doesn’t use “is, ea, id” in some
places where we would use our “the”. Briefly, we may say this:
Latin uses “is, ea, id” as a demonstrative adjective to give a
little emphasis to something which has already been talked about.
Like this:
“I have a book”.
“Well, then, give me the book”.
“The book is on the table”.
“Okay, thanks. I’ll get the book myself”.
The underscored “the’s” are candidates for the Latin “is, ea,
id”, because the book the two are talking about has already been
identified, and the speakers are calling just a little attention
to it. Can you see also how “is, ea, id” differs from the strong
demonstrative adjectives “ille” and “hic?” Can you feel the
difference between saying “Give me the book” and “Give me that
book” or “Give me this book?” In English we have a weak “this”
that corresponds nicely to the Latin “is, ea, id” used as an
adjective. We can say for example “I like this book”, without
placing much emphasis on the “this”. That is, we’re not saying
“I like this book [and not that one over there]”.
Here are some examples of “is, ea, id” used as weak
demonstrative adjectives. Of course, without a context it may be
a little difficult to see precisely the shades of feeling, but at
least you can see the grammar involved.
1. Eos libros vobis dabimus. (We will give the [or these]
books to you.)
2. Eas litteras ad me mittet. (He will send the [or this]
letter to me.)
3. Ei libri sunt boni. (The [or these] books are good.)
4. Animi earum feminarum valent. (The courage of the [or
of these] women is strong.)
5. Nulla civitas ea bella tolerare poterat. (No city was
able to endure the [or these] wars.)
Now translate these into Latin, using “is, ea id” for “the”.
1. They will send you the [this] money.
_________________________________________________________________
2. I will give you the money of the [these] men.
_________________________________________________________________
3. The [these] boys are not thinking.
_________________________________________________________________
4. I will come with the [this] tyrant.
_________________________________________________________________
5. That man will discover the [this] plot.
_________________________________________________________________
IS, EA, ID AS PRONOUN
Now, how does a mild-mannered weak demonstrative adjective become
the redoubtable third person pronoun, the glory of the Latin
language? Let’s think back. Remember the demonstrative
adjectives “ille”, “hic”, and “iste?” You remember that they can
be used as adjectives, to add emphasis to the noun they’re
modifying.
“Ille liber est bonus.” (That book is good.)
“Hic vir est malus.” (This man is evil.)
“Cicero videt istas insidias.”
(Cicero see this plot.)
“Possum superare vitia illa.” (I can overcome those faults.)
“Habeo pecuniam illarum feminarum.” (I have the money of those
women.)
That’s all fine and good. But you also remember that the
demonstrative adjective can be used, just like all other
adjectives, without a noun explicitly stated, but only implied.
In order to supply the correct noun, you must do two things: (1)
you must examine the form of the demonstrative, and (2) you must
examine the context. Watch:
“Illae feminae sunt ibi, sed illas videre non possum”.
How do you translate the “illas?” Well, “illas” is feminine,
accusative plural, right? It’s in the accusative because it’s
the direct object of the verb “videre”. But why is it feminine
and plural? Because the noun which has been left out — that is,
the things to which “illas” is referring — is feminine and
plural. And what is that? Look at the context. “Feminae” is
feminine and plural.
“Those women are there, but I can’t see those women” (or,
more idiomatically in English, “but I can’t see them”).
When the demonstratives are used without a noun, they are taking
the place of a noun. And words which take the place of a noun
are called pronouns. Hence the metamorphosis from demonstrative
adjective to demonstrative pronoun is complete.
Now let’s take a look at the weak demonstrative adjective
“is, ea, id”. It will undergo the same process from adjective to
pronoun. Because there is only a weak demonstrative force
attached to “is, ea, id”, we can translate it into English simply
as our third person pronoun: “he”, “she”, “it”, etc.
“Videstisne meos amicos?”
“Video eos”.
“Do you see my friends?”
“I see them”.
All you have to do when you see the weak demonstrative adjective
in a sentence without a noun is to treat it just like third
person pronoun: check the antecedent and find the appropriate
English equivalent. Read these sentences (go very, very slowly
and be reasonable):
“Cicero amat Romam, et in ea beatam vitam agit. Atque ego
civitatem eius amo. Toti amici eius sunt Romani. Vitae
eorum sunt beatae. Et eas magna cum sapientia agunt. Ei
igitur sunt beati. Cicero eos amat, et ei eum amant. Olim
civitas eorum in periculis magnis erat, sed ea superare
poterat, quoniam viros multos bonorum morum invenire
poterat”.
(Cicero loves Rome, and he is leading a happy life in it. I
also love his city. All his friends are Romans. Their
lives are happy, and they are leading them [they are leading
their lives] with great wisdom. They are therefore happy.
Cicero loves them, and they love him. Formerly their city
was in great danger, but it was able to overcome them [the
dangers], since it was able to find many men of good
character.)
THE DEMONSTRATIVE idem, eadem, idem
This is simple. Latin adds an undeclinable suffix to the end of
the inflected forms of the demonstrative “is, ea, id” and comes
out with “the same”. Like the demonstrative “is, ea, id”, the
resulting form can be used either an adjective — “eadem femina”
(the same woman), or as a full-blown pronoun — “video easdem” (I
see the same (feminine) things). Remember, the syntactically
important information comes before the “dem” suffix: “eisdem”,
“eaedem”, etc.
The addition of the suffix cause some distortion of the
spelling of “is, ea, id”. First, in the nominative singular
masculine, the “s” of “is” collides with the “d” of “-dem” and
disappears, but the “i” of “is” becomes long as a result. In the
nominative singular neuter instead of “iddem” we get “idem”. No
big surprise here. Finally, and this isn’t much of a surprise
either, wherever the case ending of “is, ea, id” ends in an “m”,
the addition of “dem” changes the “m” to an “n”. Decline “idem,
eadem,
