Deponent verbs, part 3

So we looked at how to recognize a deponent verb in the dictionary and in reading. Now for a spanner in the works—as the Brits might say.

PUFFV verbs.

Last time I was very busy making the point that transitive deponent verbs will force you into the active voice because of the direct object, which is usually before the verb.

Iohannes canem veretur.       John fears the dog.

And this is really straightforward. Direct object? Yes. Passive-looking ending? Yes. Solution? Verb is active. The problem is that PUFFV verbs behave differently. They take ablative nouns as their compliments—the part we would make into the direct object in English. Here's an example:

Iohannes librō fruitur.        John enjoys the book.

Now compare it to this passive sentence, which is different only in the verb.

Iohannes librō docētur.      John is taught by the book.

See the problem? Structurally they are the same thing: Ablative noun and a -tur ending on the verb. So what's to be done? Sadly, this is a memory problem. You just need to learn that PUFFV verbs take ablative as their compliment. Which brings up the important point: which verbs are we talking about?

potior, potīrī, —, potītus sum — obtain, possess
ūtor, ūtī, —, ūsus sum — use
fruor, fruī, —, fructus sum — enjoy
fungor, fungī, —, fūnctus sum — perform, execute
vescor, vescī, —, vescus sum — eat

And there you have it. A class of deponent verbs that look like they are true passives due to sentence structure, but they aren't.

Deponent verbs, part 2

Last time we talked about how to recognize deponent verbs in the dictionary. This is not very useful if you're actually reading something.

And for the most part, they aren't hard to tell in reading. Let's look at two easy sentences.

Iohannes canem timet.John fears the dog. 

This one is easy. First is the subject, then the object, then the verb. Nothing unusual. If you want, you can get rid of Iohannes and let the -t on the verb carry the subject. That's fine. Nothing strange. Let's make the sentence passive.

Canis (ab Iohanne) timetur.The dog is feared (by John).

Two things are different here. First, the direct object is gone. Second is that we've got the -tur ending that signals passive. A slightly less ordinary sentence—passive sentences are a little out of the ordinary—but nothing impossible. Certainly within the rules we've all learned.

But then comes this.

Iohannes canem veretur.John fears the dog.

It's got the -tur of the passive AND a direct object. If you're reading the words in the order they come, you should be fine. The direct object announces itself with the accusative case: canem. If you've been paying attention, this should tell you that a transitive verb is coming. When you get to the weird veretur you may need a second to remember about deponent verbs, but you'll be fine. Direct object in accusative = transitive verb. The verb's ending is odd, but everything else says transitive active, so this must be. And you're right. You've got no choice. You are led to accepting the active nature of the deponent this way. 

The problem is when you find the subject—easy since it's usually first—followed by a verb hunt. Which isn't hard to find. It's there at the end. Veretur. See the -tur? Must be passive. So far so good. The problem is when you then go back to pick up the rest of the words. You've got your subject (Iohannes) and your verb (veretur), but now you've got what seems to be a direct object (canem). Except that passive verbs don't have direct objects. What is going on? 

What's going on is that you should be reading in the order the words come. The sentence prepares you to have an active verb. A quick spark of memory, and you remember that deponents exist and that this must be one of them. The other way—the verb hunt—leaves you with an unwanted direct object. Unless you remember that deponent verbs exist. Which requires that you remember that deponent verbs look passive and mean active. And that you remember that veretur is one of these deponent verbs. And now you've got to track down the direct object again because you've lost track of it in the scrum happening in your memory. (By the way, this is one of the reasons you should get used to reading Latin in the order it was written. It's a language, not a scavenger hunt.)

Next up: PUFFV verbs screw all of this up.

Deponent verbs, part 1

For those of you in the beginning of your study, you're in for a treat when you get to these.

Latin has a fleet of verbs that look passive but have active meanings. The usual order of presentation is passive voice well before deponent verbs. This is a shame since deponent verbs are some of the most common verbs in Latin.

The first give away is going to be in the dictionary entry. A typical transitive verb will look something like this:

faciō, facere, fēcī, factum, to make or do
putō, putāre, putāvī, putātum, to think

More or less. Deponent verbs are going to have an entry that looks more like this:

arbitror, arbitrārī, arbitrātus sum, to think
proficīscor, proficīscī, profectus sum, to set out

A few differences should come screaming out. First, the plain ol' vanilla transitive verbs have four principal parts. Four. The deponents have three. The part corresponding with fēcī is missing from the deponent entries—after all, the Latin passive system doesn't use it.

Another difference should come in the last part. The deponents have an odd final part. Profectus sum. See how it indicates the 1st person singular perfect tense? Very unusual until you get used to is.

The other thing to notice is the first principal part. Compare faciō and arbitror. Do you see it? Yeah, arbitror doesn't end with -ō. It's got an -or there. This is going to be your big tip off in the dictionary.

The problem, of course, is that Latin words only rarely hang out in dictionaries. Net up: recognizing deponents in reading.

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.

Learning endings

There's just no good substitute for context and multiple exposure, but those pesky endings have to be learned one way or another. Memorizing short readings isn't the worst place to start, because you're memorizing more than the words: your memorizing patterns in endings and how words come together to form sentences.

But even so, a bit of rote memorization can help students. It allows them to show mastery of a set of knowledge, and I can't think of a student who doesn't enjoy the feeling of secure knowledge on test day.

What not to do. It is probably not best to learn them the way I did in high school: as bare endings. We would chant "a, ae, ae, am, a, ae, arum, is, as, is". I clearly remember that. Or "O, S, T, M-U-S, T-I-S, N-T" as if it were a high-school cheer. The teacher was a fun woman and made it pretty painless, but she forgot to tell us that endings never occur on their own.

Here's something better. You should always practice endings with their word, at the very least. So instead of the first chant above, you can recite "ala, alae, alae, alam, ala, alae, alarum, alis, alas, alis" so you can learn two things at once: first declension endings and the word for wing. While this isn't the best way at to learn Latin, it does work. A 20-minute walk to school each day gave me plenty of opportunity to recite words to myself this way. There is a reason I know my case endings cold and always have.

Better yet. This is no doubt the trickiest. You'll have to find or make up sentences that feature the word in context. "Ala est pulchra. Alae forma habet aedificium. Alae pennas dedit Deus. Alam habet aedificium. In ala sunt pennae…" See how I've given each form of ala its own context? What's useful here is that students also learn how the cases work, which is a whole 'nuther problem. What's tricky is that you've got to work much harder to come up with these sentences. (You could also arrange these so that they drill one particular case instead of the one declension shown here.)

No matter how you do it, take time for it every day. Latin is a lot like math in that it needs a bit of daily attention rather than a heap of infrequent attention.

This work by Peter Sipes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.