10/30/09

Verbal Moods

Mood refers to the way the speaker treats an action.

Indicative mood:        He is here.
Imperative mood:       Be here!
Subjunctive mood:     If he were here.....
Infinitive mood:          to be (an action in general without assigning any person to it.)

Verbal Tenses

Latin verb has six tenses, three for the "continuous" aspect, three for the "completed" aspect:

Present tense:                     I am going.
Imperfect tense:                  I was going.
Future tense:                      I will go.

Perfect tense:                     I went.
Pluperfect tense:                I had gone.
Future perfect tense:          I will have gone.

Latin Verbs

Verbs have five basic characteristics: person, number, tense, mood, and voice.

Person: first person, second person, and third person.
Number: singular or plural.
Tense: past, present, future, and aspect--an action in progress or a single completed act.
Mood: the way the speaker treats an action.
Voice: active, passive, and middle voice--I love myself.

Noun Dictionary Entries

For Latin nouns, there are 4 items presented in dictionary entries:

pēs,  pedis  m  foot: pēs is the nominative singular form. pedis is the genitive/possessive singular form.

m: gender of the word. f. feminine; n. neuter.

A noun is sorted into one of the five declensions based on its genitive case ending, so if we know the genitive, we know which declension it belongs to. Also from pedis, we know the stem is ped-, the part that doesn't change.

Genitive endings of all five declensions:
 Declension        Genitive Ending
1st                       -ae
2nd                       -ī
3rd                       -is
4th                       -ūs
5th                       -ēī

Grammatical Gender

A Latin noun has grammatical gender: masculine, feminine, or neuter.

English uses natural gender, which classifies nouns by physical characteristics.

Latin and her daughter modern languages, such as Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, et al., operate with both natural and grammatical genders.

Latin Nouns

Five declensions: Latin nouns are divided into five groups called declensions: first declension, second declension....

Cases: In Latin's mother language, Proto-Indo-European (PIE), nouns could interact with verbs in eight ways. Each way was called case.

Nominative/Subjective:   He walked the dog.
Genitive/Possessive:        His idea was ridiculous.
Accusative/Objective:      I smacked him.
Dative:                              It was an interesting day for him.

Ablative:                          This bookcase was built by him.
Instrumental:                   We went to Rome with him.
Locative:                          A bug was crawling on him.
Vocative:                         Dude!

In Latin, the ablative case absorbed the instrumental and locative cases.

Inflection vs. Analysis

The difference is syntax between the two types of languages. Analytical languages like English rely on word order to show relationships. Inflected languages like Latin use word endings, not order, to make sentences comprehensible.

Latin is highly inflected, especially its nouns and verbs. The heart of a Latin sentence is the verb. The job of all the other words and groups is to modify the verb in some way.

Accent

The last three syllables of a word have special names. From the last: ultima, penult, and antepenult.

Put the stress on the penult if it is long; otherwise, put it on the antepenult.

Consonant Combinations

bs           lapse
gu/cu     goo/coo
qu          quick
ch          baker
ph          uphill
th          outhouse

Diphthongs

A diohthong is a pair of vowels spoken like one vowel.

ae     aisle
au     owl
ei      freight
eu     feud
oe     boy
ui      we

Five Vowels

ā     father    
ē     prey
ī      machine
ō     over
ū     tube

a     ago
e     set
i      pin
o     on
u     put