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In Cap. VII of LLPSI, Ørberg introduces Advenit with the following sentence

Ecce Iulius ad villam advenit.

It's curious to me that the verb includes the preposition; why not just use venit alone rather than advenit? Is it that advenit is meant to imply coming to a specific place, whereas venit is more general?

2 Answers 2

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In Latin, it's fairly common to stick prepositions onto the fronts of verbs to create new shades of meaning. Sometimes the new meaning is the same as the verb plus the preposition (advenīre is basically the same as venīre ad), sometimes it's just plain intensive (dēplorāre is just plorāre but stronger), and sometimes it creates a new meaning different from the sum of its parts (interficere means "kill" or "execute", not at all the same as inter or facere).

In this case, it's the first. Advenīre is basically like venīre ad—"to arrive at". Advenīre ad puts even more emphasis on the arrival.

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It is perhaps not easy to work out the relevant meaning differences if you only compare advenire and venire. In order to better understand the role of the prefix, it can be useful for you to consider the "full" picture/system, which involves comparing advenire with other prefixed verbs like pervenire, obvenire, evenire, etc. You'll then discover that each prefix adds a particular directional/path nuance.

As for the repetition of ad as a preverb and as a preposition in your example, it should be noted that this phenomenon is typical of so-called "weak satellite-framed languages". Latin and Slavic languages are classified into this typological (sub)set. Please take a look at this link for an answer to a related question on motion verbs.

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