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In Ørberg's "Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata" in capitulo XIX on p. 149 it says,

"Propter amorem nocte vix dormiebam - semper de te cogitabam..."

"Because of love I could barely sleep at night", but what follows then? I cannot make out the meaning of "de" in this particular case. Does "semper de" mean something like "ever since"?

2 Answers 2

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After having read the sentence a few more times, I realised that "de" belongs to "cogitare". Cogitabam de te - I used to think of you. / I was thinking about you.

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    With the imperfect, more like "I was always thinking about you" or "I constantly kept thinking of you".
    – MPW
    Jan 17 at 14:36
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De te is de+ablative, de is topical complement, focuses on the topic.

For example, Caesar's De Bello gallico means 'About the Gallic War', the Caesar's account of the war. Or Lucrezio's De Rerum Natura, 'About the Nature of Things'.

So, as said in the comments, the phrase, whith the imperfect, means 'I was always thinking about you'.

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