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Consider Genesis 25:1 from the Vulgate:

Abraham vero aliam duxit uxorem nomine Cetthuram …

Which of these does it mean? Or is it ambiguous?

Abraham took another wife named Keturah.
Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah.

The latter is the King James translation, and context suggests that the former can't be right, because Abraham's first wife was named Sarah.

In English, we use the comma to distinguish between these two meanings ("restrictive" and "nonrestrictive"):

another wife named Keturah
another wife, named Keturah

and in speech, the same meanings are indicated by different intonation and rhythm.

Does Latin lack a grammatical device for this, so that the sentence above is simply ambiguous between these two meanings? Then is the only way to be clear to add a second clause or phrase, analogous to the King James sentence in English for the nonrestrictive meaning or something like this:

Ābrahām vērō aliam dūxit uxōrem eōdem nōmine Cetthūram ac prīma eius uxor.

for the restrictive meaning?

If so, I find this interesting, because I read long ago that grammatical and pragmatic meanings that English usually expresses with intonation, Latin usually expresses by word order or explicit words. And restrictive/nonrestrictive seems to me a pretty important distinction.

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    I take it to mean Abraham took another wife, Cetthura by name.
    – Figulus
    Commented Aug 5 at 19:34
  • I feel like you'd have quoque or eodem in there somewhere to get the latter meaning. I thought maybe alteram, but I'm hard-pressed for time to find real examples.
    – cmw ♦
    Commented Aug 5 at 22:39
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    @cmw I just revised the question to include an example with eodem. I'm mostly wondering if Latin simply omits the restrictive/nonrestrictive distinction in the grammar, so the only way to remove the ambiguity is to add another phrase or clause. Do you have any thoughts on that?
    – Ben Kovitz
    Commented Aug 6 at 19:57

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I don't think Latin is substantially different from English here. There is enough explanation for the benevolent reader to understand. Compare:

Abraham took another wife, named Keturah.
Abraham took another wife named Keturah.

The first option seems to correspond to your first translation and the second one to the second. In the absence of punctuation you could plausibly parse it either way.

Ambiguities like this are common in all languages I know, and it's fine. It's often better communication to leave room for a harmless of far-fetched ambiguity than bend over backwards and make the sentence more complicated than necessary. (This is also true in mathematics!)

The original Latin can be parsed either way, but, as you point out, context rules one option out.

If you want to express your first translation unambiguously in the sense that the second translation is ruled out, you can do what you did in English:

Abraham aliam duxit uxorem et nomen huic erat Cetthura.

If you want to do the same the other way around, you may have to explain more:

Abraham aliam duxit uxorem et nomen huic quoque uxori erat Cetthura.

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  • Would it be fair to say that Latin lacks a device analogous to the comma's use in English to distinguish between restrictive and non-restrictive phrases/clauses? Actually, I'm going to add this to the original question with a little more detail.
    – Ben Kovitz
    Commented Aug 6 at 19:05
  • @BenKovitz In contemporary Latin people use commas like in any other language. If there's real danger of misinterpretation, you shouldn't rely in commas alone to resolve it even in English. Many distinctions are lost on many non-native users.
    – Joonas Ilmavirta ♦
    Commented Aug 6 at 20:11
  • Hmm, that in itself is interesting. I was thinking that possibly commas can't distinguish restrictive and nonrestrictive in Latin because of the free word order.
    – Ben Kovitz
    Commented Aug 7 at 14:58
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    btw, I think "nomen huic" (dative) is more common than "nomen huius" (genitive) with the copula. Cf. Plautus: hic habitat mulier, nomen cui est Phronesium;
    – Kingshorsey
    Commented Aug 7 at 15:14
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    @BenKovitz The distinction between restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses might also be just an English thing. I haven't seen it in other languages, nor was it mentioned in the 9 years that I studied English in school. My impression is that if you want to communicate that distinction with punctuation in English, the message is lost more often than not. // I also want to reiterate a key point: most ambiguity is fine. (Fighting it too much can easily make your writing worse.)
    – Joonas Ilmavirta ♦
    Commented Aug 7 at 16:44

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