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After a present tense main verb, the present subjunctive is usual, for example in the following indirect command: nūntium mittit ut veniant (Livy) [316] 'she sends a messenger (to say) that they should come' When a question is made indirect, the verb is always changed into the subjunctive mood, as in the following example:
Thus all those Latin verbs which in the present tense have 1st singular -ō, 2nd singular -ās, and infinitive -āre are said to belong to the 1st conjugation, those with 1st singular -eō, 2nd singular -ēs and infinitive -ēre belong to the 2nd conjugation, and so on. The number of conjugations of regular verbs is usually said to be four.
In Latin, most verbs have four principal parts.For example, the verb for "to carry" is given as portō – portāre – portāvī – portātum, where portō is the first-person singular present active indicative ("I carry"), portāre is the present active infinitive ("to carry"), portāvī is the first-person singular perfect active indicative ("I carried"), and portātum is the neuter supine.
Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, case, and gender; and verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, voice, and mood.
Latin word order is relatively free. The verb may be found at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a sentence; an adjective may precede or follow its noun (vir bonus or bonus vir both mean 'a good man'); [5] and a genitive may precede or follow its noun ('the enemies' camp' can be both hostium castra and castra hostium; the latter is more common). [6]
Just as a 'perfect indicative' verb can represent either a past event or the present result (e.g. 'he has died' = 'he is dead'), so the perfect periphrasis with the 'perfect infinitive' auxiliary fuisse often represent either a past-in-past event or present-in-past result at the time of the reported statement.
In the verb sum 'I am', the imperfect tense eram and the perfect fuī both mean 'I was', but in Latin there is usually a difference. As with other verbs, the perfect is usually used when the length of time is mentioned: diū ... silentium fuit (Livy) [57] 'for a long time there was silence' caecus multōs annōs fuit (Cicero) [58] 'for many ...
In later Latin, nē plus the present subjunctive became more common, for example in the Vulgate Bible. In the following example the first three verbs use the present subjunctive, and the third the perfect subjunctive: nē adulterēs, nē occīdās, nē fūrēris, nē falsum testimōnium dīxerīs [10]