User:J. Finkelstein/Sandbox/Latin grammar

Latin, unlike English, has a very flexible word order because the language is highly inflected.

Cases
On the noun tables there are usually 5 (sometimes 7) cases:
 * Nominative: indicates the subject of the sentence, or a predicate nominative: Cornelia is a girl.
 * Vocative: case of direct address: Cornelia, go outside. This generally looks exactly like Nominative, except in second declension masculine nouns ending in "us" where the "us" is turned to an "e", and second declension masculine nouns ending in "ius", where the "ius" is turned into "ī". E.g., "servus" becomes "serve", and "filius" becomes "filī". The only nouns with a distinct vocative case ending are those in the second declension and those third declension nouns borrowed from Ancient Greek (where the final syllable is often shortened).
 * Genitive: The genitive is always dependent on other elements in the sentence. It usually can be translated by the English prepositon of. Its uses can be broken down into three major categories:
 * Genitives dependent on nouns.
 * Genitives dependent on adjectives.
 * Genitives dependent on verbs.
 * Genitives dependent on nouns:
 * The genitive allows one noun to limit or define another noun which does not denote the same thing. [In English, we can say dog house or clam shell using one noun to define or limit another which does not denote the same thing. That's not done in Latin. In Latin, the limiting noun must be turned into a adjective (dog house => canine house) or be put in the genitive (clam shell => shell of a clam).] Common uses include:
 * possessive genitive: The hair of Cornelia is long.
 * objective genitive: The construction of the building. Here the genitive is the object of a verbal action implied by the noun it modifies.
 * genitive of description: A man of great courage
 * partitive genitive: Many of my friends went to the city.
 * Genitives dependent on adjectives:
 * If an adjective implies a verbal notion, it may take a genitive to indicate the object of that action: desirous of money. (Compare the objective genitive above).
 * Sometimes genitives are added to adjectives to denote in reference to what an adjective is true: tired of war.
 * Genitives dependent on verbs:
 * Some Latin verbs can take the genitive, including verbs of remembering, forgetting, accusing, condemning, acquitting, and some verbs that indicate emotional reactions.
 * Dative: indicates an indirect object: He gave the cookie to the boy.
 * Dative of agent: Expresses agent when used with the future passive periphrastic, also known as the gerundive: The boy must do the work. (translated literally as "The work must be done by the boy")
 * Dative of Reference often used with Dative of Purpose (named collectively as the Double Dative): The general sent troops as aid (for the purpose of aid) for the general (with reference to the general).
 * Dative of Possession: Mihi pecunia est. I have money. Literally: "The money is to me."
 * Accusative: indicates a direct object: Cornelia killed Marcus. Also can be used with a preposition: We went into the bedroom.  The accusative may also indicate the extent of time or space.
 * Ablative: many uses, including conditions where English would use a preposition instead. Often used when someone or something is being passive, rather than active, like "He was at the tree," rather than "He climbed the tree."
 * the object of a preposition: He is inside the palace.
 * time: At the tenth hour he died.
 * means: He beat me with a stick. OR He yelled with a great voice.
 * agent of a passive verb: The cookie was thrown by Cornelia across the room.
 * Locative: used to describe the location or movement of a person or thing. The locative only applies to cities, towns, and small islands, and is not used for countries or continents. Also, a few nouns survived (such as domus, meaning house, and rus, ruris, meaning countryside).

Declensions
There are 5 declensions (Latin: declinationes, singular declinatio). Most nouns in the 1st are feminine, most in the 2nd are masculine and neuter (usually distinguished by the m. -us and n. -um endings), 3rd can either be masculine, feminine, or neuter, 4th is either masculine or neuter, and 5th is usually feminine with a couple masculine. It is necessary to learn the gender of each noun for it is often impossible to discern the gender from the word itself. 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).

First declension
Note: The words dea, goddess, and fīlia, daughter, take the ending ābus instead of īs in the dative and ablative plural; otherwise they would look exactly the same as god, deīs and son, fīliīs.

Second declension - neuter nouns
Note: Nominative and accusative cases of neuter nouns always end the same.

Third declension - neuter nouns
Note: Nominative and accusative cases of neuter nouns always end the same.

Third declension - i-stem neuter nouns
Note: Nominative and accusative cases of neuter nouns always end the same.

Fourth declension - neuter nouns
Note: Nominative and accusative cases of neuter nouns always end the same. The dative singular of 4th declension neuter nouns ends in -&#363;,

while for masculine and feminine 4th declension nouns it ends in -u&#299;.

Adjectives
All adjectives must agree with the noun they describe in number, case and gender. All nouns are either feminine, masculine, or neuter. Genders are grammatical, and do not necessarily correspond to the sex of the object. Adjectives are either 1/2nd declension or 3rd declension. In 1/2nd declensions, -a endings are treated as feminine and are declined like 1st declension nouns, and -us endings are treated as masculine, and -um endings are treated as neuter and both are declined like second declension nouns. For example:
 * Cornelia bona (feminine) (good Cornelia)
 * Cornelius bonus (masculine) (good Cornelius)

In 3rd declension adjectives, for masculine and feminine, most of the time there are no changes which are needed to be made to match gender as both masculine and feminine decline the same (make note that in the ablative usually you use an -i instead of -e as most 3rd declension adjectives are -i stemmed.). Neuter has one important difference, as nominative and accusative in all declensions are the same (-um for 2nd etc.) and for plural nominative and accusative have -a (all neuters in all declensions do this as well).

Adjectives can also have comparative forms and superlative forms. Fortior is 'braver' (comparative). Fortissimus is 'bravest' (superlative). If you drop the ending (-a, -us, -um) and place -ior to get the comparative ('braver', 'quite brave', 'rather brave', 'too brave') for the masculine and feminine genders. For the neuter, you drop the ending (-a, -us, -um) and add -ius. Adding -issimus, -issima or -issimum, depending on the gender of noun being modified, to make 'most brave', 'very brave', or 'exceedingly brave' (if applicable).
 * Cornelia est fortior quam Cornelius.

Cornelia is braver than Cornelius. (quam after a comparative is 'than', otherwise it usually is feminine singular relative pronoun).
 * Cornelia est fortissima. (Cornelia is the bravest.)

Also, there are irregular adjectives in Latin, just as there are irregular verbs and nouns. For example, the adjective meaning 'difficult' in Latin is difficilis in the positive form. In the comparative, the adjective changes into difficilior for the masculine and feminine genders, and into difficilius for the neuter. However, in the superlative, the adjective becomes difficillimus. In this case, the irregular adjective does not have the typical superlative ending. Other adjectives like bonus; melior, melius; optimus, meaning good, better, best, will not only have a different superlative form, but change their bases throughout the different levels of adjectives.

Pronouns
In Latin there is no indefinite article or definite article- 'a' or 'the'. They can be replaced by other adjectivals such as ille (forms of ille gradually changed into simply le or la as in the modern Romance languages today), haec, ea, id, is etc.

Verbs
There are four conjugations in Latin. A verb either falls into one of these conjugations or is considered irregular. In Latin, a verb is defined by its person, number, tense, mood and voice. This gives rise to a large number of forms of each verb - 120, in fact, not counting infinitives, imperatives, or participles, or verbs that lack some forms, such as intransitive verbs that lack passive forms. They are generally learnt in groups of 6, corresponding to a particular mood, tense, and voice. Each verb has three stems - a present stem, a perfect stem, and a supine stem, to which various endings are added to make individual forms of verbs.

Uses of the tenses
There are six tenses (Latin: tempus) in Latin. They are: There are three moods (Latin: modus): There are two voices (Latin: genus): With this information, we can sort the verbs into their groups of six, starting with the first conjugation, portare, to carry, as follows:
 * Present, (Latin: praesens) describes actions happening at the time of speaking: The slave carries the wine jar.
 * Imperfect, (Latin: imperfectum) describes actions continuing in the past: The slave was carrying the wine jar.
 * Future, (Latin: futurum simplex) describes actions taking place in the future: The slave will carry the wine jar.
 * Perfect, (Latin: perfectum) describes actions completed by the present: He has taught (or taught) the boy.
 * Pluperfect, (Latin: plusquamperfectum) describes actions occurring before another past action: He had taught the boy. Notice the difference, it's important.
 * Future Perfect, (Latin: futurum exactum) describes actions that will be completed some time in the future: By tomorrow, he will have sent the letter.
 * Indicative, (Latin: indicativus) which states facts: That slave is carrying a wine jar.
 * Subjunctive, (Latin: coniunctivus) which is used for possibilities, intentions, necessities etc: It is necessary that the centurion defeat the barbarians.
 * Imperative, (Latin: imperativus) used for commands: "Carry this wine jar!"
 * Active, (Latin: activum) where the verb is done by the subject: The slave carried the wine jar
 * Passive, (Latin: passivum) where the verb is done to the subject: The wine jar was carried by the slave

Indicative
The stem of a verb is the infinitive (second principle part) with the -re removed, in general. The perfect stem is the third principle part with the -i removed, in general.

(With the verb porto, portare, portavi, portatum): Present stem + personal endings

Present stem + -ba- + personal endings

Present stem + -bi- + personal endings (note that the -bi- changes to -bu- in 3rd person plural and that the construction of future tense verbs is quite different for verbs of the third, fourth, and third IO principle parts)

Perfect stem + perfect endings

Perfect stem + imperfect of sum, esse

Perfect stem + future of sum, esse (except -erint because -erunt is used in perfect tense 3rd person plural)

Subjunctive
Note that there is no Future or Future Perfect in the Subjunctive Mood.

Subjunctive
Notice that the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect tenses passive are compound tenses, composed of the past participle and a form of esse, to be. Notice also that the participle is plural in the plural forms. There are six additional forms of a verb, the six infinitives. These are used in the indirect statement, a very common construction in Latin. The infinitives are:

There are three other conjugations in Latin. Some guidelines on how to apply the rules for the first conjugation onto the others are given below. First conjugation, portāre, to carry Present stem: porta- (porte- in subjunctive)

Perfect stem: portāv-

Past participle: portātus

Second conjugation, docēre, to teach Present stem: docē- (doceā- in subjunctive)

Perfect stem: docu-

Past participle: doctus

Third conjugation, trahere, to drag Present stem: trah- (trahā- in subjunctive)

Perfect stem: trax-

Past participle: tractus

Fourth conjugation, audīre, to hear Present stem: audī- (audiā- in subjunctive)

Perfect stem: audīv- or audi-

Past participle: audītus

The third and fourth conjugations form their Future tense differently from the first and second:

audīre follows the same pattern in the Future as trahere

Latin sentence construction and rules of subordination
The Latin language has a rigid tense and subordination system and whereas many modern languages are analytic, with the grammatical role of a word is expressed by position, in Latin the syntactic role of a word is expressed by declension generating a sentence that does not depend on word order; for example, Tulliam Marcus amat, amat Marcus Tulliam, Marcus Tulliam amat, and Marcus amat Tulliam all mean "Marcus loves Tullia." Another typical feature of Latin grammar is the predominance of concrete words and expression. This in striking opposition to ancient Greek, which is a more ductile language. A sentence such as "I believe a god exists" in Latin is "credo deum esse," which literally means "I believe that there is a god" or "I believe a god to exist." But the most rigid and specific rule in Latin is the consecutio temporum, the same rule inherited by Italian but much more complex and rigid. This rule gives order to the tense relationship in subordinate sentences in order to express anteriority, contemporaneity, and posteriority. The rule orders that in the presence of a principal verb in the regent sentence, the subordinate has to use the subjunctive: When the regent sentence has a past tense verb, the rule orders that the subordinate sentence uses the subjunctive: Some examples:
 * Present for contemporaneity.
 * Perfect for anteriority.
 * Future participle of the verb plus present subjunctive of sum to express posteriority (because there is no subjunctive future)
 * Past for contemporarity.
 * Pluperfect for anteriority.
 * Future participle of the verb plus imperfect subjunctive of the verb sum.
 * Ignoro quid agas (I don't know what you are doing)
 * Ignoro quid egeris (I don't know what you have done)
 * Ignoro quid acturus sis (I don't know what you will do)
 * Ignoravi quid ageres (I didn't know what you were doing)
 * Ignoravi quid egisses (I didn't know what you had done)
 * Ignoravi quid acturus esses (I didn't know what you would do)