Now, the human mind is a wonderful thing. It reasons and perceives dozens of different kinds relationships between events, things, and ideas. It arranges events and facts logically and temporally, and in levels of priority. That is to say, it takes two or more things, things which are separate ideas, separate visions, and weaves them together conceptually and linguistically into what we "reasoning". The way this reasoning is expressed in language is called "syntax", which literally means "arranging together"; putting together events and things and facts. For example, the two separate ideas or visions -- "the road is blocked" and "the tree fell down" -- might have a causal relationship, which the mind instantly recognizes and expresses linguistically with an appropriate conjunction: "The road is blocked because the tree fell down". The conjunction "because" in this example is spelling out the relationship the speaker perceives between the two ideas. It's arranging them into a cause and effect relationship: that the tree fell down is a fact, and because of that fact, the road is now blocked.
Each thought, idea, or event, when it is expressed in language, is a called a clause. Hence the sentence "the road is blocked because the tree fell" contains two "clauses": the fact that the tree fell is expressed in one clause, and the fact that the road is blocked forms another "clause". It's possible for a sentence to contain only one clause, as in "Roses are red". It's also possible for a sentence to contain an ungodly number of clauses. See whether you can spot all the clauses -- that is separate thoughts -- in this sentence:
"Since we are looking for the ideal orator, we must use our powers of oratory to portray a speaker free from all possible faults and endowed with every possible merit; for though it is undeniable that the large number of lawsuits, the great variety or public questions, the illiterate masses who make the audience of our public speakers, offer a field to ever the most defective orators, we will not for that reason despair of finding what we want" (Cicero, On the Orator, 26).Let's back up and take a look at a string of unsubordinated clauses. (The speaker's name is George.)
"The dog is mean. The dog lives next door. One day the dog bit George. George kicked the dog. George's neighbor came out of the house. George's neighbor owns the dog. George's neighbor screamed at George. George's neighbor called the police. The police came. The dog bit the police. The police shot the dog. George is happy. The dog is dead".We don't talk like this because our language has developed a whole system of conjunctions and pronouns which allows us (1) to avoid all the unneeded repetition of nouns and (2) to make the logical and temporal relationships between thoughts explicit. There are a hundred ways to cast this string of events and facts which make full use of range of linguistic apparatus English makes available to us. Here's only one:
"The dog that lives next door is mean, and one day he bit me. So I kicked him. My neighbor, who owns the dog, came out of the house and screamed at me. Then he called the police. When they came, the dog bit them too, so they shot it. I am happy the dog is dead".You can see here all kinds of linkage between these thoughts, and all kinds of different linguistic apparatus that makes it possible. The kind of linkage we're interested in now is the "relative clause". Let's look at how it's done.
CLAUSE 1: "The five o'clock train is never on time". CLAUSE 2: "Hundreds of people take the five o'clock train".The two clauses have something in common: the five o'clock train. Two separate facts have been identified about this train: it's never on time and hundreds of people take it. A speaker may arrange these two clauses however he wishes, subject only to the idea he wished to convey to his listener. If, for example, the most important thing he wants his listener to know about the train is that it is late all the time, clause 1 will have to be logically and syntactically "superior" to the fact contained in clause 2. That is to say, the fact in clause 2 -- that hundreds of people take the five o'clock train -- will be added simply as additional information about the train. In grammatical circles we call the most important element in the sentence the "main" or "ordinate" or "independent clause"; we call any other clause a "subordinate" or "dependent clause", because it is, in a real sense, a subordinate, a worker in the employment of the main clause.
So let's assume that the most important fact the speaker wants to get across is contained in clause 1, and that clause 2 is going to be worked in only as subordinate material. How is this going to happen.
STEP 1: Substitute "the five o'clock train" in clause 2 with the appropriate pronoun. The pronoun will refer the listener to the noun stated in clause 1. CLAUSE 1: "The five o'clock train is never on time". CLAUSE 2: "Hundreds of people take it".Now hold on. Why did we chose "it" as the appropriate pronoun to reproduce "the five o'clock train" in clause 2? Well, the noun which the pronoun has to reproduce is singular in number and inanimate, so "it" is the correct choice. Next, what case is "it" in? Look, it's acting as the object of the verb "take" in its clause, so "it" is in the objective (or accusative) case. (This was just a review. You already know that pronouns get their number and gender from their antecedents, but get their case from the way they're being used in their own clause.)
STEP 2: Embed the subordinate clause into main clause. SENTENCE: "The five o'clock train -- hundreds of people take it -- is never on time".We could almost stop here. The two sentences have been merged into one, and clause 2 has been subordinated to the idea in clause 1. That is to say, the structure of clause 1 forms the main architecture of the new sentence. But English developed a further modification to work these two clauses into one sentence. It replaces the pronoun of the subordinate clause with a pronoun which indicates without a doubt that the clause coming up is dependent, or subordinate to, the clause which has just been interrupted. We replace the pronoun with the relative pronoun "who, which" in the proper case and move it to the beginning of the clause. Now the two clauses have been completely welded into one sentence.
STEP 3: Substitute and move the pronoun. SENTENCE: "The five o'clock train, which hundreds of people take, is never on time".And there you have it. Clause 2 has been fully incorporated into the message of the first clause. As soon as you read the relative pronoun "which" in this sentence, your mind automatically understands two things:
Now let's go back to the two clauses when they were independent thoughts.
CLAUSE 1: "The five o'clock train is never on time". CLAUSE 2: "Hundreds of people take the five o'clock train".It's also possible that main idea the speaker wishes to get across is the fact contained in clause 2 and will have to subordinate clause 1 into clause 2, in which case clause 2 will provide the basic architecture for the new sentence. Like this: "Hundreds of people take the five o'clock train, which is never on time". Now what case is "which" in? Look at the relative clause. If that doesn't help, look at the sentence from which the relative clause evolved. It came from clause 1, where "the five o'clock train" was nominative. The "which" is simply standing in for it, so "which" must nominative. And it is.
ANIMATE INANIMATE Nom. who which Gen. whose whose Acc. whom which
A. "George kicked the dog. The dog lives next door". English: "George kicked the dog that (which) lives next door". Latin: nominative singular B. "The students don't like Latin. The teachers gave the students a book". English: "The girls, to whom the teacher gave a book, don't like Latin". Latin: dative plural 1. "They see the cars. The cars belong to George". English: Latin: 2. "George likes hard boiled eggs. George's brother is in jail". English: Latin: 3. "Many students are never prepared for class. The professor is writing a very difficult final exam for the students". English: Latin: 4. "The rocks fell off the cliff. The rocks were very slick". English: Latin: 5. "Betty avoids my brother. My brother's hair is dyed pea-green". English: Latin:
The Latin relative pronoun has a full declensional system. That is to say, it has 30 separate forms: five cases in three genders in both numbers. The stem is "qu-" and it follows basically the pattern set down by the pronouns "is, ea, id", "ille, illa, illud", etc. But there are some substantial variations. Here is the full pattern. Look for regularities first; then go back and collect the deviations.
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER Nom. qui quae quod Gen. cuius cuius cuius Dat. cui cui cui Acc. quem quam quod Abl. quo qua quo Nom. qui quae quae Gen. quorum quarum quorum Dat. quibus quibus quibus Acc. quos quas quae Abl. quibus quibus quibusLet's start the close up examination by running down the masculine forms first.
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER Nom. _______________ _______________ _______________ Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________ Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________ Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________ Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________ Nom. _______________ _______________ _______________ Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________ Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________ Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________ Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________Okay, now let's take apart a couple of Latin sentences with relative clauses. Translate these sentences, and tell me the number gender and case of the relative pronouns. Try following these steps:
1. "Vidi canem qui ex Asia venit". (canis, -is (m) "dog") Translation: __________________________________________________ Relative Pronoun: __________ 2. "Vidi canes quos amas". Translation: __________________________________________________ Relative Pronoun: __________ 3. "Puellae, quarum pater est parvus, sunt magnae". Translation: __________________________________________________ Relative Pronoun: __________ 4. "Vidi pueros quibus libros dedistis". Translation: __________________________________________________ Relative Pronoun: __________ 5. "Vidi pueros cum quibus venistis". Translation: __________________________________________________ Relative Pronoun: __________ 6. "Civem quem miseratis laudaverunt". Translation: __________________________________________________ Relative Pronoun: __________
1. "The tyrant destroyed the cities from which the citizens had fled". ____________________________________________________________ 2. "He came with the citizen to whom they had entrusted their lives". ____________________________________________________________ 3. "I saw the citizens with whom you had fled". ____________________________________________________________ 4. "They have the money with which the tyrant captured the city". ____________________________________________________________ 5. "The father whose sons were stupid came out of Asia". ____________________________________________________________
aut...aut It used like this: aut x aut y = either x or y. coepi, coepisse, coeptus The first entry for this verb is the perfect tense, first person singular. The second is the perfect infinitive (which you have seen yet), and the third entry is the fourth principal part. The verb is listed this way because it has no first principal part -- which mean logically that "coepi" has no present system tenses: no present, future, or imperfect. Another way to list this verb would be: "----------, ----------, coepi, coeptus". Verbs which lack one or more principal part are called "defective verbs". To say "I begin", "I will begin", or "I was beginning", Latin uses the first principal part of the verb "incipio, -ere, -cepi, -ceptus.01/08/93