Ads
related to: pluperfect tense latin endings
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
An English pluperfect tense is sometimes appropriate for translating this Latin tense: Atreī fīliī, quī Pelope nātus fuit (Cicero) [217] 'sons of Atreus, who (himself) was born (had been born) from Pelops' In the following examples, the double perfect refers to a situation which existed a long time earlier, before Ovid was exiled:
The pluperfect is traditionally described as a tense; in modern linguistic terminology it may be said to combine tense with grammatical aspect; namely past tense (reference to past time) and perfect aspect. It is used to refer to an occurrence that at a past time had already been started (but not necessarily completed), (e.g.
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 Example Meaning Comment 'indicative future perfect' dūcere coeperō: present in future 'I will be leading' 'indicative perfect' dūcere coepī: present in present 'I am leading' 'indicative pluperfect' dūcere coeperam: present in past 'I was leading' 'subjunctive perfect' dūcere coeperim-- 'whether I am leading' 'subjunctive pluperfect'
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.
The pluperfect subjunctive, ending in -(i)ssem, represents an event contrary to fact in the past. The same tense is usually used both in the protasis and the apodosis: sī Rōmae fuissem, tē vīdissem cōramque grātiās ēgissem (Cicero) [104] 'if I had been in Rome, I would have seen you and thanked you in person'
The normal prose practice is to use either a past tense of dēbeō 'I have a duty to' or oportet 'it is proper' with the infinitive, or else a gerundive with a past tense of sum. The jussive pluperfect is also fairly uncommon. The following examples are from Cicero, again using the negative nē: [41] nē popōscissēs (Cicero) [42]
The usual tense used with postquam is the perfect indicative, when the length of time is given the tense is usually pluperfect: [121] (Hamilcar) nōnō annō postquam in Hispāniam vēnerat occīsus est (Nepos) [122] "Hamilcar was killed in the ninth year after he came to Spain."