Archive by Author
Syntax: locative Posted by leire on Sep 23, 2012
Locative The locative case, attributed to Indo-European language, expressed the ubi complement, with local and temporal meaning. It indicates where and when something happened. In Latin, only some of the old locative cases remain: in the singular of the first and second declensions. Its morpheme is -ae for the first declension, -i for the second…
Syntax: ablative Posted by leire on Sep 18, 2012
The overall value of the ablative is to indicate the external circumstances, the relationship between the process and the external thing. Latin ablative represents the mix of three primitive cases: the ablative, the instrumental-sociative and the locative. Latin unified the old values of these three cases into one, except the few remaining locative cases. This…
Syntax: dative Posted by leire on Sep 13, 2012
Dative is the case of the indirect object. It is used to designate the person or thing concerned by the verbal action. From this overall view we will explain the specific uses that we can find in Latin: dative of interest, dative of purpose and double dative. The dative does not only work as a …
Syntax: genitive Posted by leire on Aug 31, 2012
The genitive is, firstly, the complement of the noun (it means that a noun determines another noun), but it still mantains some uses in Latin as a verb complement. Possessive genitive It expresses possession of something and, rarely, the thing possessed: Ager patris A person’s name in genitive complementing another person’s name was the way…
Syntax: accusative II Posted by leire on Aug 20, 2012
To read about nominative, vocative and other kind of accusative uses read our previous post. Extension accusative Accusative case can be used to express the extension in space and time. The accusative of extension in space, always in terms of extension (passus, pes …), can indicate distance traveled, distance between two points or dimensions of…
Syntax: nominative, vocative and accusative I Posted by leire on Aug 13, 2012
Nominative Nominative is the case of subject’s personal verb forms, and therefore of everything concerning the subject. Caesar venit. Puer est laetus. Hannibal prīmus in proelium ībat. ITt serves to ‘name’ (nōmināre), the nominative is used in conjunction with de + ablative, for book titles: Bellum civīle. …
Music in Latin II Posted by leire on Aug 5, 2012
Today we finish our review of songs which lyrics are in Latin. Adeste Fideles (John Reading, 18th century) We wrote an special post about this song the last Christmas, here you can read it again and read lyrics’ translation. ADESTE, FIDELES, LAETI TRIUMPHANTES, VENITE, VENITE IN BETHLEHEM: NATUM VIDETE REGEM ANGELORUM: VENITE, ADOREMUS DOMINUM!…