Latin grammar - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The grammar of Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, like that of other ancient Indo-European languages

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

, is highly inflected

Inflection

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

; consequently, it allows for a large degree of flexibility in choosing word order. For example, femina togam texuit, "the woman wove a toga," which is the preferred word order, could be expressed as texuit togam femina or togam texuit femina. In each word the suffix: -a, -am and -uit, and not the position in the sentence, marks the word's grammatical function. Word order, however, is generally subject–object–verb, although variations on this are especially common in poetry and express subtle nuances in prose.

In Latin, there are five declensions of nouns and four conjugations

Grammatical conjugation

In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...

of verbs (although some words are inflected according to irregular patterns). Latin does not have articles

Article (grammar)

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...

and so does not generally differentiate between, for example, "a girl" and "the girl": puella amat means both "a girl loves" and "the girl loves". Latin uses prepositions, and usually places adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s after noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s. The language can also omit pronouns

Pro-drop language

A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically inferable...

in certain situations, meaning that the form of the verb alone is generally sufficient to identify the agent

Agent (grammar)

In linguistics, a grammatical agent is the cause or initiator of an event. Agent is the name of the thematic role...

; pronouns are most often reserved for situations where meaning is not entirely clear. Latin exhibits verb-framing

Verb framing

In linguistics, verb-framing and satellite-framing are typological descriptions of how verb phrases in different languages describe the path of motion or the manner of motion, respectively....

, in which the path of motion is encoded into the verb; e.g., "exit" (a compound of "ex-" and "it") means "he/she/it goes out."

Verbs

Detailed information and conjugation tables can be found at Latin conjugation
Latin conjugation
Latin verbs have four main patterns of conjugation. As in a number of other languages, Latin verbs have an active voice and a passive voice. Furthermore, there exist deponent and semi-deponent Latin verbs , as well as defective verbs...

.

Latin verbs have numerous conjugated forms. Verbs have three moods (indicative, imperative, and subjunctive), two voices (active and passive), two numbers (singular and plural), three persons (first, second and third); are conjugated in six main tenses (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect); have the subjunctive mood for the present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect. Infinitives and participles occur in the present, perfect, and future tenses; and have the imperative mood for present and future.

Conjugation is the process of inflecting verbs; a set of conjugated forms for a single word is called a conjugation. Latin verbs are divided into four different conjugations by their infinitives, distinguished by the endings -āre, -ēre, -ere, and -īre.

Tenses

There are six tenses

Grammatical tense

A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...

(Latin: tempus) in Latin. They are:

Present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...

(Latin: praesens): describes actions happening at the time of speaking:

The slave carries (or is carrying) the wine home.

servus vinum ad villam portat.

Building the tense: [present basis of the verb]+[personal endings]
Example: the verb 'amo' (to love), teneo (to hold), dico (to say), audio (to listen)

Person	Singular	Plural	Sing.	Pl.	Sing.	Pl.	Sing.	Pl.
1st	amo	amamus	teneo	tenemus	dico	dicimus	audio	audimus
2nd	amas	amatis	tenes	tenetis	dicis	dicitus	audis	auditis
3rd	amat	amant	tenet	tenent	dicet	dicunt	audit	audiunt

Imperfect (Latin: imperfectum): describes actions continuing in the past:

The slave used to carry (or was carrying) the wine home.

servus vinum ad villam portabat.

Building the tense: [present basis of the verb]+[temporal modal morpheme]+[personal endings]

Person	Singular	Plural	Sing.	Pl.	Sing.	Pl.	Sing.	Pl.
1st	amabam	amabamus	tenebam	tenebamus	dicebam	dicebamus	audiebam	audiebamus
2nd	amabas	amabatis	tenebas	tenebatis	dicebas	dicebatis	audiebas	audiebatis
3rd	amabat	amabant	tenebat	tenebant	dicebat	dicebant	audiebat	audiebant

Future
Future tense
In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...

(Latin: futuri primi): describes actions taking place in the future:

The slave will carry the wine home.

servus vinum ad villam portabit.

Perfect (Latin: perfectum): describes actions completed by the present:

The slave carried (or has carried) the wine home.

servus vinum ad villam portavit.

Pluperfect (Latin: plusquamperfectum): describes actions occurring before another past action:

The slave had carried the wine home.

servus vinum ad villam portaverat.

Future Perfect
Future Perfect
-Album Credits:*Produced by T-Bone Burnett*All Songs Written by Autolux*Engineered by Mike Piersante*Mixed by Dave Sardy*Mastered by Stephen Marcussen *Artwork by Carla Azar-Vinyl releases:...

(Latin: futuri secundi): describes actions that will be completed some time in the future:

The slave will have carried the wine home.

servus vinum ad villam portaverit.

Moods

There are three moods

Grammatical mood

In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...

(Latin: modus):

Indicative (Latin: indicativus), which states facts:

The slave is carrying wine.

servus vinum portat.
Subjunctive
Subjunctive mood
In grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....

or Conjunctive (Latin: coniunctivus), which is used for possibilities, intentions, necessities, and statements contrary to fact:

May the slave carry the wine.

servus vinum portet.

The subjunctive is also used with the formation of subordinate clauses:

We hoped the slave would carry the wine.

sperabamus ut servus vinum portaret.

Imperative
Imperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...

(Latin: imperativus): used for commands:

"Carry the wine home, slave!"

"porta vinum ad villam, serve!"
Undefinite (Latin: infinitivus) : it could be translated as a 'to' form: to have, to carry(habere, portare), or it could be translated as a verbal noun(gerund): having, carrying.

Voices

There are two voices:

Active
Active voice
Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages....

(Latin: activum), where the verb is done by the subject:

The slave carried the wine home.

servus vinum ad villam portavit.
Passive
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...

(Latin: passivum), where the verb is done to the subject:

The wine is carried home by the slave.

vinum ad villam a servo portatur.

The wine was carried home by the slave.

vinum ad villam a servo portatum est.

Nouns

six cases
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...

(Latin: casus): nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and vocative (special nouns have a seventh "locative" case)

three genders
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

(Latin: genus): masculine, feminine and neuter, which serve a grammatical function, and not necessarily to distinguish the sex of the object

two numbers
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

(Latin: numerus): singular and plural.

Declining is the process of inflecting nouns; a set of declined forms of the same word is called a declension. Most adjectives, pronouns, and participles indicate the gender of the noun they refer to or modify.

Most nouns in the 1st declension are feminine; most in the 2nd are either masculine or neuter; Nouns in the 3rd can be masculine, feminine and neuter(3rd consonant decl.), feminine and neuter(3rd vocal decl.) and masculine and feminine(3rd mixed(?) decl.); nouns in the 4th are usually masculine; and in the 5th they are all feminine except two.

It is necessary to learn the gender of each noun because it is impossible to discern the gender from the word itself sometimes. One must also memorize to which declension each noun belongs in order to be able to decline it. Therefore, Latin nouns are often memorized with their genitive (rex, regis) as this gives a good indication for the declension to use and reveals the stem of the word (reg, not rex).

The nominative case, which is used to express the subject of a statement or following the verb 'to be':

servus ad villam ambulat.

The slave walks to the house.
The genitive case, which expresses possession, measurement, or source. In English, the preposition of is used to denote this case, or, in the case of possession, the English possessive construction:

servus laborat in villa domini.

The slave works in the house of the master. or The slave works in the master's house.
The dative case
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....

, which expresses the recipient of an action, the indirect object of a verb. It also is used to represent agency in a construction with a passive periphrastic. In English, the prepositions to and for most commonly denote this case:

servi tradiderunt pecuniam dominis.

The slaves handed over the money to the masters.

N.B. The dative is never the object of a Latin preposition.

The accusative case
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...

, which expresses the direct object of a verb or direction or extent of motion and may be the object of a preposition:

dominus servos vituperabat quod non laborabant.

The master cursed the slaves because they were not working.
The ablative case, (may or may not be preceded by a preposition) which expresses separation, indirection, or the means by which an action is performed. In English, the prepositions by, with, and from most commonly denote this case:

dominus in cubiculo dormiebat.

The master was sleeping in his bedroom
The vocative case, which is used to address someone or something in direct speech.

festina, serve!

Hurry, slave!
The locative case, which is used to express the place in or on which, or the time at which, an action is performed. The locative case is extremely marginal in Latin, applying only to the names of cities and small islands and to a few other isolated words. All other nouns use the ablative with a preposition to serve the same purpose. In form, it is identical to the genitive case in the singular of the first and second declension, and the ablative case otherwise, with the exception of the noun "domus" (home), which has the locative "domi".

servus Romae erat.

The slave was in Rome.

Articles, determiners and personal pronouns

Definite Article

Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...

(the, a, an) though there are demonstrative

Demonstrative

In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...

s, such as hic, haec, hoc (masculine, feminine and neuter proximal, corresponding to English this), ille, illa, illud (distal, English that), iste, ista, istud (medial, for something not very far), and is, ea, id ("weak" demonstrative, he, she, it). As in English, these can act as pronoun

Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...

s as well. There are also possessive adjective

Possessive adjective

Possessive adjectives, also known as possessive determiners, are a part of speech that modifies a noun by attributing possession to someone or something...

s and pronouns, cardinal

Cardinal number

In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number – the number of elements in the set. The transfinite cardinal numbers describe the sizes of infinite...

and ordinal number

Ordinal number

In set theory, an ordinal number, or just ordinal, is the order type of a well-ordered set. They are usually identified with hereditarily transitive sets. Ordinals are an extension of the natural numbers different from integers and from cardinals...

s, quantifiers, interrogatives

Interrogative word

In linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...

, etc.

Personal pronouns also exist, for first and second person, in both singular and plural: ego, nos (I, we) in the first, tu, vos (you, you all) in the second. Ordinarily a pronoun is not used for the subject of a verb, the function being served by the inflection of the verb.

Adjectives

Degrees of comparison

Adjectives exist, like in English, with positive, comparative and superlative forms. Superlative adjectives are declined according to the first and second declension noun paradigm, but comparative adjectives are declined according to the third declension noun paradigm. When used in sentences, the comparative adjective (better, faster, brighter) may be put in the ablative or with the addition of 'quam' (Latin: than).

Cornelia est fortis puella: Cornelia is a strong girl.
Cornelia est fortior puella quam Flavia: Cornelia is a stronger girl than Flavia. (Here quam is used.)
Cornelia est fortior puella Flaviā: Cornelia is a stronger girl than Flavia. (Here Flavia is in the ablative.)
Cornelia est fortissima puella omnium/inter omnes/ex omnibus: Cornelia is the strongest girl of all.

Regular adjectives
POSITIVE	COMPARATIVE	SUPERLATIVE
exterus, -a, -um	exterior, -ius	extrēmus, -a, -um
novus, -a, um	novior, -ius	novissimus, -a, -um
posterus, -a, -um	posterior, -ius	postrēmus, -a, -um
pulcher, -chra, -chrum	pulchrior, -ius	pulcherrimus, -a, -um
superus, -a, -um	superior, -ius	suprēmus, -a, -um

Irregular adjectives
POSITIVE	COMPARATIVE	SUPERLATIVE
bonus, -a, -um	melior, -ius	optimus, -a, -um
magnus, -a, -um	māior, -ius	maximus, -a, -um
malus, -a, -um	pēior, -ius	pessimus, -a, -um
multus, -a, -um	plus; pl. plūres, plūra	plūrimus, -a, -um
parvus, -a, -um	minor, -us	minimus, -a, -um

Adverbs

Detailed information and declension tables can be found at Latin declension
Latin declension
Latin is an inflected language, and as such has nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. There are five declensions, which are numbered and grouped by ending and...

.

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs by indicating time–place, or manner. Latin adverbs are indeclinable. Like adjectives, adverbs have positive, comparative, and superlative forms.

The positive form of an adverb can be formed from an adjective by appending an adverbial suffix to the base, typically -e, -er, -iter, -itus, more rarely -o, or -um. Contrast the adjective clarus, -a, -um, which means bright, to the adverb clare, which means brightly.

The comparative form of an adverb, formed from third declension adjectives, is extremely simple. It is the same as the neuter nominative singular form of a comparative adjective and it usually ends in -ius. Instead of the adjective clarior, which mean brighter, the adverb is clarius, which means more brightly.

The superlative form as well is extremely simple. It has exactly the same base as the superlative adjective and it always ends in a long -e. Instead of the adjective clarissimus, which mean brightest, the adverb is clarissime, which means most brightly.

Prepositions

A prepositional phrase in Latin is made up of a preposition followed by (usually, but there are a few postpositives) a noun phrase in an oblique case (ablative, accusative and rarely genitive). The preposition determines which case is used, with some prepositions allowing different cases depending on the meaning. For example, Latin in takes the accusative case when motion is involved (English into) and ablative when it indicates position (English on or inside of).

Numerals and numbers

In Latin, Roman Numerals can be used:

I - 1
II - 2
III -3
IV or IIII - 4
V - 5
VI - 6
VII - 7
VIII - 8
IX or VIIII - 9
X - 10
XX - 20
XXX - 30
XL - 40
L - 50
LX - 60
LXX - 70
LXXX - 80
XC - 90
C - 100
D - 500
M -1,000

But for spelled out words for numbers, the first three have masculine, feminine and neuter forms which are fully declined:

ūnus, ūna, ūnum;
duo, duae, duo;
trēs, trēs, tria

ūnus has mostly first- and second-declension endings, but -īus is the normal genitive singular and -ī the normal dative singular ending (all three genders) (cf. the adjectives ūllus, -a, -um; tōtus, -a, -um; etc.).

duo has an irregular declension:

duo duae duo
duōrum duārum duōrum
duōbus duābus duōbus
duo duās duo
duōbus duābus duōbus

trēs, tria is a regular third-declension adjective with the stem tr-.

The numbers four through ten are not declined:

quattor;
quīnque;
sex;
septem;
octō;
novem;
decem

The "tens" numbers are:

vīgintī (20);
trīgintā (30);
quadrāgintā (40);
quīnquāgintā (50);
sexāgintā (60);
septuāgintā (70);
octōgintā (80);
nōnāgintā (90)

Up to 200, only numbers 1 - 3, or compounds containing these numbers, decline; e.g.:

I saw 20 blackbirds = vīgintī merulās vīdī

I saw 22 blackbirds =vīgintī duās merulās vīdī (where duās changes to agree with merulās)

The numbers 11-17 are formed by adding the words for digits directly onto the beginning of the word for "ten," hence ūndecim, duodecim, tredecim, quattuordecim, quīndecim, sēdecim, septendecim. The numbers 18 and 19 are formed by subtracting 2 and 1, respectively, from 20: duodēvīgintī and ūndēvīgintī. For the numbers 21-27, the digits are not added directly to the word for "twenty," but a process of addition is nevertheless enacted: vīgintī ūnus, -a, -um (or ūnus, -a, -um et vīgintī), vīgintī duo (or duo et vīgintī), etc. The numbers 28 and 29 are written duodētrīgintā and ūndētrīgintā. Each group of ten numerals through 100 follows the patters of the twenties, although 99 is written nōnāgintā novem rather than *ūndēcentum.

The "hundreds" numbers are:

centum (indeclinable)
ducentī, -ae, -a - 200
trecentī, -ae, -a - 300
quadringentī, -ae, -a - 400
quīngentī, -ae, -a - 500
sēscentī, -ae, -a - 600
septingentī, -ae, -a - 700
octingentī, -ae, -a - 800
nōngentī, -ae, -a - 900

mīlle - 1,000 (N.B. mīlle is an indeclinable adjective)
duo mīlia - 2,000 ( mīlia is a neuter plural substantive, which is followed by a partitive genitive) e.g.:

I saw a thousand lions = mīlle leōnēs vīdī
I saw three thousand lions = tria milia leōnum vīdī

Ordinal numbers are all adjectives with regular first- and second-declension endings. Most are built off of the stems of cardinal numbers (e.g., trīcēsimus, -a, -um ("thirtieth") from trīgintā ("thirty"), sēscentēsimus, -a, -um nōnus, -a, -um ("six hundred and ninth") for sēscentī novem ("six hundred nine"). However, "first" is prīmus, -a, -um , and "second" is secundus, -a, -um (literally, "following" the first; cf. sequī "to follow").

Word order

Latin allows a very flexible word order because of its inflectional syntax. Ordinary prose tended to follow the pattern of Subject, Indirect Object, Direct Object, Adverbial Words or Phrases, Verb (SIDAV). Any extra, though subordinate verbs, are placed before the main verb; for example infinitives. Adjectives and participles usually directly followed nouns, unless they were adjectives of beauty, size, quantity, goodness, or truth, in which case they preceded the noun being modified. Relative clauses were commonly placed after the antecedent which the relative pronoun describes. While these patterns of word order were the most frequent in Classical Latin prose, they are frequently varied; and it is important to recall that there is virtually no evidence surviving that suggests the word order of colloquial Latin (see Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...

).

In poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, however, word order was often changed for the sake of the meter, for which vowel quantity (short vowels vs. long vowels and diphthongs) and consonant clusters, not rhyme and word stress, governed the patterns. It is, however, important to bear in mind that poets in the Roman world wrote primarily for the ear, not for the eye; many premiered their work in recitation for an audience. Hence, variations in word order served a rhetorical, as well as a metrical purpose; they certainly did not prevent understanding. In Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

's Eclogues, for example, he writes, Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori!: Love conquers all, let us yield to love!. The words omnia (all), amor (love) and amori (to love) are thrown into relief by their unusual position in their respective phrases. The meter here is dactylic hexameter

Dactylic hexameter

Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin, and was consequently considered to be the Grand Style of classical poetry...

, in which Virgil composed The Aeneid, Rome's national epic.

The ending of the common Roman name Marcus is different in each of the following examples due to its grammatical usage in that sentence. The ordering in the following sentences would be perfectly correct in Latin and no doubt understood with clarity, despite the fact that in English they are awkward at best and senseless at worst:

Marcus ferit Corneliam: Marcus hits Cornelia. (subject–verb–object)
Marcus Corneliam ferit: Marcus Cornelia hits. (subject–object–verb)

Cornelia dedit Marco donum: Cornelia has given Marcus a gift. (subject–verb–indirect object–direct object)
Cornelia Marco donum dedit: Cornelia (to) Marcus a gift has given. (subject–indirect object–direct object–verb)

Ablative absolute

In Latin

Latin

grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

, the ablative absolute

Absolute construction

In linguistics, an absolute construction is a grammatical construction involving a non-finite clause that is subordinate in form and modifies an entire sentence, but has no syntactic link to its main clause...

(Latin: ablativus absolutus) is a noun

Noun

phrase

Phrase

In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....

cast in the ablative case

Ablative case

In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ...

. More specifically, it consists of a noun or pronoun and either a past participle, a present participle, an adjective, or an appositive noun, all in the ablative. In the case of sum "to be", a zero morpheme often has to be used as the past and present participle do not exist, only the future participle.

The ablative absolute indicates the time, condition, or attending circumstances of an action being described in the main sentence. It takes the place of, and translates, many phrases that would require a subordinate clause

Clause

In grammar, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. In some languages it may be a pair or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in other languages in certain clauses the subject may not appear explicitly as a noun phrase,...

in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. However, the noun in the ablative case cannot recur in the same sentence, hence the name absolute, derived from the Latin word absolvere, meaning to loosen from. The unfamiliarity of this construction makes it sometimes difficult for Latin students to grasp; however, mastery of this construction is needed to write Latin well, and its availability makes Latin prose quite concise. The closest English equivalent is the nominative absolute

Nominative absolute

In English grammar, a nominative absolute is a free-standing part of a sentence that describes or modifies the main subject and verb. It is usually at the beginning or end of the sentence, although it can also appear in the middle...

.

The closest translation to the Latin follows the paradigm, with the Noun Participle. This construction often sounds awkward in English, however, it is often finessed into some other, more English-like, construction. In the following examples, the first line is the direct translation from Latin, while the second has been construed to sound more at home in English. The usage of present, passive or future participles will determine the verbal idea in the ablative absolute.

urbe capta Aeneas fugit:

With the city captured, Aeneas fled.

When the city was captured, Aeneas fled.

Ovidio exule, Musae planguntur.

With Ovid exiled, the Muses weep.

The Muses weep because Ovid has been exiled.

The ablative absolute indicates the time when things happened or the circumstances when they occurred:

Caesare consule...

with Caesar as consul...

when Caesar was consul...

It also indicates the causes of things, as in:

ira calefacta, sapientia dormit.

With anger kindled, wisdom sleeps.

Wisdom sleeps because anger is kindled.

domino absente, fur fenestram penetravit.

With the master absent, a thief entered the window.

Since the master was absent, a thief entered the window.

It can be used to add descriptions:

passis palmis, pacem petiverunt.

With hands outstretched, they sued for peace.

Hands outstretched, they sued for peace.

Sometimes an infinitive

Infinitive

In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...

or clause occurs in the ablative absolute construction, especially in Livius and later authors:

audito eum fugisse...

with it having been heard of him to have fled...

with it having been heard that he had fled...

hearing that he had fled...

having heard that he had fled...

when they heard he had fled...

An English example appears in a line spoken by Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

(Act 1, Scene 1):

Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, The rest I'd give to be to you translated.

The ablative absolute construction is sometimes imitated in English in a construction called the nominative absolute

Nominative absolute

: "The Americans, (with) their independence secured, formed a government." Nevertheless, the construction is rarer and less natural in English than it is in Latin. It was introduced by early modern authors heavily influenced by Latin, for example, John Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

, whose Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...

makes frequent use of the construction.

External links

Ablative Absolute from Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar
Ablative Absolute by William Harris
Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid from Notre Dame. Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid (Notre Dame).
A Practical Grammar of the Latin Language; with Perpetual Exercises in Speaking and Writing: For the Use of Schools, Colleges, and Private Learners, by George J. Adler
Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum: complete texts and full bibliography
Lingua latina per se illustrata
Latin A multi-platform interface for Whitaker's Words dictionary (free).
A Digital Dictionary A Latin Dictionary that will work as the default dictionary on a Kindle reading device.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.