Just to give one example of an idiomatic construction from English, consider this. We form the present progressive tense in the active voice by using the verb "to be" as an auxiliary verb and the present participial stem of the verb. Like this: "The ants are crawling along the ground". Obviously the ants are the active subject of the verb "are crawling" -- they are the agents performing the action. Now look at this very idiomatic use of the present progressive tense in the active voice. "The tables are crawling with ants". Just like the "ants" in the first sentence, "tables" is the subject of the verb "is crawling", but this time the subject cannot be the active subject of the verb. The tables are not crawling, but the ants are crawling all over the tables. Even though the verb form is the same in both sentence -- "are crawling" -- the grammatical function of the subjects are entirely different. The "ants" are the active agent; the "tables" are passive recipients of the action performed by the ants, expressed in the prepositional phrase beginning with "with". The second construction is an example of an idiom, since the active form of the verb -- "are crawling" -- is over-ridden. The final meaning of the construction cannot be deduced simply by adding up the meaning of its parts. That's an idiom.
FUTURE ACTIVE PARTICIPLE ____________________________________________________________ FUTURE PASSIVE PARTICIPLE (GERUNDIVE) ____________________________________________________________ PRESENT ACTIVE PARTICIPLE ____________________________________________________________ PERFECT PASSIVE PARTICIPLE ____________________________________________________________As you can see, all the participles except the present active use the "-us, -a, -um" adjectival endings, and so present no problem in their declensions. The present active participle, however, declines in the third declension, and behaves like a third declension adjective of one termination of the "-ns, -ntis" type, with the exception of the short "-e-" in place of the "-i-" in the ablative singular . Decline a couple of present active participles just to refresh your memory.
laudo (1) moneo (2) Masc/Fem. Neuter Masc/Fem. Neuter ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ duco (3) capio (3-i) Masc/Fem. Neuter Masc/Fem. Neuter ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________
We call a subordinate clause "absolute" when it stands entirely outside of the grammar of the main clause and contains no finite verb. We have a common "absolute" construction in English, which we call the "nominative absolute". Watch:
In the original sentence, the speaker may or may not have been the one who lost the key. It may have been lost by someone else. But in the rewritten version, the guilty party is fingered: "I" lost the key. An absolute construction doesn't do that.
So here are two things to remember about clauses which are absolute: the verb is a participle, and it agrees with something in the absolute clause, not in the main clause of the sentence.
Now for the "ablative" part of the construction called the "Ablative Absolute". Just as the word "ablative" tells you, in Latin the participle and the noun it agrees with are both in the ablative case. For example:
"Hac fama narrata, dux urbem sine mora reliquit".In this sentence, the main clause is "dux...reliquit". The Ablative Absolute clause is "hac fama narrata". The verb of the clause is the participle "narrata", which in turn agrees with the ablative "hac fama". So how do we translate the Ablative Absolute clause it into English? As always, let's start with the roughest, but most accurate, way. The quickest way to translate an Ablative Absolute clause is to use the preposition "with", followed by the noun, and then the participle in it correct tense and voice: "with this story having been told". So this sentence would come out:
"With this story having been told, the leader left the city without delay".
One last item about the Ablative Absolute clause is that when the participle is in the active voice, it can be followed by objects of its own which are not in the ablative case. That is to say, not every word in the Ablative Absolute clause has to be in the ablative case. Only the noun and the participle agreeing with it are necessarily ablative; the rest of the Ablative Absolute clause will follow the normal rules of Latin grammar. For example:
"Rege haec dicente, omnes cives terrebantur".The Ablative Absolute clause in this sentence is "rege haec dicente", as you can see by looking at the case of "rege" and "dicente" and by recognizing that the verb of the clause is in the participial mood. These are the two parts of an Ablative Absolute clause: noun and participle in the ablative case. But what about "haec"? Why is it in the accusative case if it's in an Ablative Absolute clause? The answer is that "haec" is the direct object of the action of the participle "dicente", and direct objects are always in the accusative case, regardless of the mood or construction of the verb. Remember, once you have a noun -- "rege" -- and a participle -- "dicente" -- in the ablative case, you have an Ablative Absolute construction. Everything else in the clause is simply additional material which follows the predictable rules of Latin grammar. Let's look at a few more examples.
(With the king saying these things, all the citizens were terrified.)
Because the Ablative Absolute is essentially a participial construction, the same rules that applied to translating participles will apply to the translating the Ablative Absolute. That is,
The relationship of tenses should present you little difficulty -- your natural instincts will serve you well. But one item should be mentioned. As you know, a perfect participle shows time prior to the time of the verb in the main clause. If therefore, the participle in the Ablative Absolute is perfect, and if the tense of the main verb is one of the past tenses -- imperfect, perfect, or pluperfect -- then how should you translate the participle when you promote it to a finite verb? Think about it a moment. If the perfect participle is showing time prior to another past event, then what finite tense should you use? The tense which shows time prior to another past event is the pluperfect tense, so you should choose the pluperfect tense to represent the perfect participle of the Ablative Absolute clause. Like this: "Omnibus bonis civibus ex urbe expulsis, tryannus imperium accepit". (When all the good citizens had been expelled from the city, the tyrant took power.)
Take a moment now do these sentences from Wheelock's Self-Help Tutorial. First analyze the sentence literally, then smooth it over into English you'd expect to hear in civil conversation.
8. _________________________________________________________ 9. _________________________________________________________ 10. _________________________________________________________ 12. _________________________________________________________ 14. _________________________________________________________ 15. _________________________________________________________ 16. _________________________________________________________ 17. _________________________________________________________ 22. _________________________________________________________ 25. _________________________________________________________
"This button is not to be pushed".In each of these the subject of the sentence is linked to an infinitive in the predicate by a form of the verb "to be", and they show a sense of duty, necessity, or obligation. This is an idiomatic construction in English. A conjugated form of the verb "to be" plus an infinitive -- either passive or active -- show obligation or necessity. Each of these sentence could have been written in several different ways. We could just as easily say
"You are to remain right here until we get back".
"This door is to be left open".
"You are to do all your homwework".
"This lesson is to be done by tomorrow".
"This button should be pushed". must ought to has toAs I warned you in the last chapter, Latin has an idiomatic use of the future passive participle. If the future passive participle is linked to the subject with a form of the verb "sum", it takes on a sense of obligation or necessity. When it is used this way, we call the future active participle a "gerundive". Do you remember the future passive participle? Let's review its formation for a moment. You for the future passive participle this way:
1st principal part + nd + -us, -a, -umSince there is no way to translate this construction directly over into English -- that is, you can't simply translate each word and come up with a true representation of the original intention -- you have to periphrase it. You have to "talk around" (peri) it to translate it. For this reason, the construction "sum + gerundive" is called a "periphrastic" construction, because you must periphrase it to translate it. Let's note three more things about this construction before we look at some examples.
Written English tries to be parsimonious of the passive voice, so a final translation of the passive periphrastic might be a conversion to the active voice: "We are to (must, ought to, should, have to) destroy Carthage".
- "Carthago delenda est".
- "Carthago" (Carthago, -inis (f) "Carthage") is the subject and is feminine; so the gerundive, "delenda" (from "deleo" "to destroy") agrees with it. A literal translation, therefore, would be "Carthage is to be destroyed". Some acceptable variations may be: "Carthage ought to be destroyed", "Carthage should be destroyed", "Carthage has to be destroyed", "Carthage must be destroyed". Each of these translations has a different flavor in English, but they are all legitimate renderings of the Latin "Carthago delenda est".
- "Carthago nobis delenda est".
- What about the "nobis"? It is in the dative case, so it is expressing the agent of the passive construction. So we should add to our translation "by us". "Carthage is to be (should be, ought to be, has to be, must be) destroyed by us".
Finally, the conjugated form of "sum" can be in any of the tenses -- naturally -- so the translation has to reflect the different tenses. Watch:
- "Haec puella meo filio amanda est".
- "This girl is to be (ought to be, should be, must be, has to be) loved by my son". Or, in the active voice "My son is to (must, ought to, should, has to) love this girl".
- "Haec omnibus agenda sunt".
- "These things are to be (must be, ought to be, should be, have to be) done by everyone". Or "Everyone is to (must, ought to, should, has to) do these things".
"Haec omnibus agenda erunt". (Everyone will have to do these things.) "Haec omnibus agenda erant". (Everyone had to do these things.)
quisque, quidque The inflected part of the word come before the suffix "-que". This is the interrogative "quis, quid" + the suffix, so you already know how it is declined. It means "each one", so obviously should have no plural forms -- and it doesn't until after Classical Latin. And that's not your concern for now.01/08/93