Latin Adjectives, part 1

Latin adjectives aren't all that difficult if you've got the nouns under control. After all, they have the same three features that nouns have: case, number and gender. And those are the features to focus on. Pay no attention to that declension behind the curtain—to steal a line. The reason some students like to fix on declension matching as well as case, number and gender is that 1st and 2nd declension nouns and adjectives are taught first. They see this:

casae rubrae

Excellent! The adjective has the same ending as the noun. All is good. Well, of course they have the same ending. Case, number and gender are all the same. Since the declension also matches—first declension in the example—the endings are identical. That's the real explanation.

Naturally enough, when a noun and adjective happen to be in the same declension, this will rightly be the situation. Whenever vir (2nd declension) is modified by magnus, -a, -um (1st/2nd declension), we will see identical endings.

viro magno  
viris magnis

Again, all is right with the world. I know what your thinking: what if declension is different? No problem. We still agree in case, number and gender.

manui dextrae

Dative, singular and feminine. The endings are different because manui is 4th declension and dextrae is 1st declension. If you want to say

manui dextrui

you need to remember that only case, number and gender count. Pay no attention to that declension behind the curtain. Next time: 3rd declension adjectives.

Telling apart Dative and Ablative plural, part 4

Here it is: the quiz. Can you tell them apart in context? Let's see. Review here, here and here if you need it.

Viris togatis, negotia aguntur.

1. Viris togatis: dative or ablative?

Quibus hi viri tempus suum dant?

2 Quibus: dative or ablative? (extra point: answer the question)

Pretium negotiis est carum.

3. Negotiis: dative or ablative?

Hi viri vias et theatra negotiis suis faciunt.

4. Negotiis suis: dative or ablative?

Cur theatra ab viris fient?

5. Viris: dative or ablative?

Ut alii cives spectaculis frui possint.

6. Spectaculis: dative or ablative?

Highlight from here to 1. Ablative 2. Dative (extra point: negotiis) 2. Dative 4. Ablative 5. Ablative 6. Ablative See how much more common ablative uses are? here for the answers.

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Telling apart Dative and Ablative plural, part 3

I got long winded last time. This should be shorter. The reason is that Ablative case is much more common than Dative case. In fact, it will show up about six times for every use of the Dative. It is almost safe to guess that an ambiguous form is Ablative unless it meets one of the conditions outlined in the previous entry. That said, I will help clarify situations where you are most certainly seeing the Ablative case. There will of course be other uses of the Ablative, but always let context be your guide in sorting Dative from Ablative. On to the obvious culprits.

1. Prepositions

Let's get this out of the way first. It's easy and a dead give away.

Karthago a Romanis deleta est.

The sentence, save “a Romanis” means “Carthage was destroyed.” The preposition “a” is a dead giveaway for what's coming next. Even the most beginning student of Latin should be thinking that an Ablative object will be coming after the preposition. “By the Romans.” There's our answer.

2. PUFFV verbs

The name sounds funny, but the verbs in this group take an Ablative compliment—fancy talk for it's-a-direct-object-in-English-but-not-Latin. These verbs are: potior, utor, fruor, fungor and vescor. Most beginning students won't see these, but they're common enough to merit high placement.

Romani provinciis potiebantur.

Again, pretty straightforward. “The Romans were taking possession…” But of what? The question screams out at us. Once we see the verb “potiebantur,” we are tipped off that the ambiguous form of “provinciis” is indeed Ablative. So we have “The Romans were taking possession of the provinces.”

3. Ablative Absolute

Everybody's favorite use of the Ablative. What? You don't have one? Oh. I thought everyone did. What makes this so easy to recognize is that it is usually a noun plus a participle in the Ablative case. There are a few other uses that don't include a participle that are easy to recgonize—“duce” and “consule” come to mind. Which leads to our example:

Cicerone et Hybrida consulibus, Catalina respublicam Romanam capere voluit.

Ok, so the “Cicerone et Hybrida” followed by “consulibus” is huge help in telling what's going on here. We have one unambiguously Ablative name joined to another not-so-unambiguously Ablative name followed by an ambiguous Dative/Ablative. The “et” sets the two consuls on equal footing case-wise and the “consulibus” must thus agree with that. So that part might translate, “When Cicero and Hybrida were consuls…” Let's try another.

Conuriationibus ruptis, Catalina ex urbe fugere temptavit.

Here the form is more ambiguous, but the noun/participle pairing should clue us in that we have an Ablative absolute on our hands. “With the conspiracies broken, Cataline tried to flee from the city.”

4. Comparatives

This is the last major tip off that you've got Ablative rather than Dative.

Maior natu fratribus sum.

This is actually pretty easy. As soon as you see the comparative form of “maior” you need to immediately start looking for either “quam” + another nominative or an Ablative noun to show what is “minor.” So, “Maior natu sum,” is pretty easy to deal with. “I am older by birth.” Again, notice that we want to know the answer to “older than whom?” So often the way we think pulls us along to find obvious answers. In this case—pun intended—“fratribus” is the only word that's an obvious answer, but it also falls into the correct case to be grammatically correct. “I am older (by birth) than my brothers.”

Next week: a short quiz to see how well you get it.

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Telling apart Dative and Ablative plural, part 2

In the last entry, we talked about how the neuter can be tricky to distinguish between its Nominative and Accusative forms. I brought this up because it is an easier entry point into distinguishing cases. In this post, which is nearly book length, I'll tell you some of the things that should tip you off to the Dative case.

1. Indirect object

Several verbs tip off this use of the Dative case. Dare, mittere, and habere are a few. Let's try an example.

Flumen urbibus aquam dabat

Let's ditch urbibus from the sentence for now, because it has a tricky signal: it could be Dative or Ablative. As you're working, you need to keep both possibilities in mind. Otherwise, it's pretty easily classified as a straight up garden-variety sentence. First subject (flumen), then direct object (aquam) and the verb last (dabat). The river was giving water. Ok. Now back to urbibus. As soon as we get to the verb, it makes us ask "To whom is the river giving water?" You immediately want an indirect object, so the choice between Dative and Ablative should be pretty clear cut. So, the sentence translates as "The river gives the cities water."

2. Compound verbs

These should tip you off right away. The reason is that when a verb compounds, there is no longer any need for the preposition which is now part of the verb. The object of the preposition can't hang out as it is, so it moves to dative. Let's look at a phrasal verb in English to see how we don't repeat prepositions either.

We moved out of the house yesterday.

It is as if out is doing double duty as part of the verb and as a preposition. You would never say

We moved out yesterday out of the house.

See how the preposition out is repeated in the second sentence? It sounds gross. Well, the same thing is typical for Latin. Here's an example.

Cicero senatoribus decessit.

Again, we'll strip the sentence of senatoribus while we deal with the rest. Nothing fancy. It means "Cicero left." Again, it makes us ask, "What did Cicero leave?" But first a detour into the verb. Decessit has two parts. The first is the preposition de (meaning down from), and the second is the verb form of cessit (meaning he left). Put the two together and you get your compound verb. Now, I could have just as easily have said

Cicero de senatoribus decessit.

Here it is pretty obvious senatoribus is Ablative. But now I've got de repeated in the sentence, and I don't really need that. So, here's what I can do: I ditch the preposition in favor of the compound verb. Since I still need to have the senators in a case, I use Dative to indicate that it belongs to the de in the compound verb. Ecce! That's our answer. Senatoribus is Dative, because it compliments the de in our compound verb. The sentence means "Cicero left the senators."

Bottom line: be on the look out for Dative when you see a compound verb.

3. Intransitive verbs

Yet another tip off. There is a fleet of verbs that when translated in to English seem to have their direct object in the Dative. So let's call it a Dative "direct object." Nocere, dolere, and parcere all come to mind. Let's see it in action.

Iudex latronibus non parsit.

Again, let's dispose with the ambiguous latronibus for now. The rest of the sentence is very simple. Iudex is our subject. Non negates the verb. And parsit is our verb from parco, parcere, parsi, parsus. So we get "The judge did not spare." Again, whom did he not spare? In English we expect a direct object, but in this case Latin doesn't allow for that. Why? It doesn't. Our verb is intransitive, so no direct object in the Accusative case. Just a Dative "direct object."

In this case, its "direct object" is Dative. Again, we have our answer. Latronibus is Dative. The sentence means "The judge did not spare the theives."

How will you know which verbs want a Dative "direct object"? Any dictionary should tell you this information, though the glossary at the back of your textbook may not. You may have to memorize these.

4. A linking verb

Whenever you see a linking verb, particularly if there is a gerundive hanging out, get on the lookout for Dative case. These uses of Dative are called Dative of Possession and Dative of Agent. Here are examples:

Militibus sunt castra.

Ok, this is very easy. Again we'll skip over militibus for now. We don't have enough context yet. Sunt castra is easy: There is a camp. I see the linking verb. I see the ambiguous militibus. Is it Dative or Ablative? In situations like this, pick Dative. The sentence translates as "There is a camp to the soldiers." But that sounds really bad, so we turn it around to "The soldiers have a camp." It's more idiomatic in English that way. Dative of Possession is an idiomatic feature of Latin.

Karthago Romanis delenda est.

The gerundive delenda doesn't change things up much. The linking verb est still tells us to choose Dative over Ablative. The sentence still translates the same way: "Carthage is to be destroyed for the Romans." However this sounds very clunky in English and doesn't capture the necessity of destroying Carthage. So let's deal with the gerundive first. "Carthage must be destroyed for the Romans." Again, we've got that non-idiomatic "for the Romans" going on. To smooth things out in English we might say "Carthage must be destroyed by the Romans." or "The Romans must destroy Carthage." The Dative of Agent is highly idiomatic in Latin, so any translation will necessarily vary from it.

Bottom line: Esse in all of its forms—and there are too many—is a trigger for Dative.

5. Special adjectives

Some adjectives complete their meanings with Dative case. I'll use similis as my example.

Acres, similes quercibus, folia autumno amittunt.

I've set similes quercibus off with commas, because I want to focus on that. The rest of the sentence means "Maples lose their leaves in fall." Similes means "like." And I don't mean like like. I mean similar. So now the sentence means "Maples, like, lose their leaves in fall." But that hardly seems complete. The word similis wants a Dative noun to tell you what its antecedent is like. So quercibus must be Dative since it is hanging out so close to similes. Finally we have it. "Maples, like oaks, lose their leaves in fall."

Conclusion

So often context will lead you to the right resolution in the Dative/Ablative confusion. We've seen five ways that context leads us to the right answer. In several cases, particularly 1, 3 and 5, the sentence sounds incomplete without the information the Dative case supplies. In 2 we saw how compound verbs have the preposition and force the former object of preposition into the Dative case. In 4 we saw the very idiomatic Dative of Possession and Dative of Agent.

Next time: signals for the Ablative.

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Telling apart Dative and Ablative plural

This is going to be the first of three or four entries about how to tell apart the Dative and Ablative plural. I remember struggling with this discrimination as a beginning student. We're going to get there with a detour through the neuter rule.

First some practical info. Here are the forms:

Decl. Dat. Abl.
1 -is -is
2 -is -is
3 -ibus -ibus
4 -ibus -ibus
5 -ebus -ebus

Even the most cursory glance should tell you that they are the same. In fact, some textbooks even consider them to be the same thing in the plural. Run off and check that old edition of Pharr's Aeneid you've got kicking around. (Yes, I'm joking, I don't expect that you actually own that.)

The reason you want to be able to know the difference is that Dative and Ablative have very different uses and translations.

Now, before I get into a detailed discussion, I want to point out the Neuter Rule which we have all come to know and love. Nominative and Accusative share forms for all neuter forms, yet we manage to work with that. Look at the example:

Flumen per oppidum fluit.

This is pretty easy. Flumen could be a subject or direct object, and for the time being we don't have any other signals to help us out. The "per" signals in a big way: there's an object of a preposition coming, and it will be in the Accusative case. Which of course we see in oppidum. Finally we come to fluit which is looking for a singular subject and no direct object. Flumen must be the subject. So we get "the river runs through the town."

Getting more advanced, but not much:

Puella oppidum videt.

Puella is clearly the subject (let's ignore the possibility of Ablative). Then comes oppidum. Now, it is clearly not a subject. If it were, there would be a conjunction putting it on equal footing with puella, but there isn't. It must be the direct object. Here comes the trick:

Animal flumen transit. or even Flumen animal transit.

Both sentences mean the same thing. In both cases animal has a form that allows it to be either the subject or direct object. Same for flumen. Transit wants a singular object, and both nouns can fill that role. So how can we tell if it is "the animal crosses the river" or "the river crosses the animal"? Grammatically, Latin doesn't make that discrimination for us, so that's a dead end. Context to the rescue. Only one possibility makes sense, so that's what we go for. The animal crosses the river.

Next time: http://magisterpetrus.blogspot.com/2010/01/telling-apart-dative-and-ablative_27.html">Signals for Dative plural.


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