23
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Why do we say that an ablative absolute has a participle?
The ablative absolute does not require a participle. It can be a noun and an adjective, as you say, or two nouns (Caesare duce urbem cepimus), or even an adjective and an accusative with infinitive (...
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18
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Why is the passive participle in Matthew 10:1 rendered as active in English?
The translation is indeed syntactically inexact, but in a very common and justifiable way.
The point is that Latin -- unlike e.g. Greek, from which this text is translated -- lacks a perfect active ...
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14
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What is "old" in the age of a wine?
I have found three ways of referring to the age of wine, the first of which is the most common and simplest:
An adjective such as anniculus, bimus etc.
quadrimum Sabina, o Thaliarche, merum diota
...
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How To Say "-able" in Latin
As brianpck mentioned, the English suffix "-able" is borrowed from Latin. The rules for applying it in Latin are more transparent than the English alteration between "-able" and "-ible". EDIT: And are ...
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13
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Present participles of the verb esse
Good question!
In the beginning, way back in the far-flung times of Proto-Indo-European, the word for "it is" was something like *h₁ésti, and it had a fairly regular present participle, *h₁sónts. In ...
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12
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Why is nominative instead of ablative absolute used in 'Ibi egressi Trojani'?
Egressi Trojani is in the nominative because it's the subject of agerent. The structure of the sentence is a bit unusual, but it's clearer when you move the cum to its vanilla position before the ...
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When do I use the gerundive vs. participle forms of a verb in Latin?
I think that your question will become a lot clearer when you realize that the gerundive is a participle: specifically, it is the future passive participle.
This is thus not a question of choosing ...
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Is fessus a participle?
Maybe.
There is a verb fatīscō, fatīscere, —, ???, meaning to fall apart or collapse. (Sometimes it also acts like a deponent verb, fatīscor, fatīscī, with the same meaning.) But it's practically ...
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11
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How to translate the phrase "perfacile factu esse"?
Your translation "he proved to them that completing these efforts was done very easily" is good.
To express such things in Latin the supine is a good choice.
The supine ablative (like factu) is an ...
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10
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Can esse be used with a present participle?
My first instinct was that this is, at the very least, not common in classical Latin, and should only happen with participles that are basically adjectives and have lost some of their verbal semantics,...
- 1,470
10
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Which grammatical format is the double-perfect system as found in the Vulgate?
This is found even in classical Latin. The perfect passive can be formed by using either the present tense of esse or, when one wants to stress the completedness of the action, the perfect tense. ...
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10
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What would this pun mean?
δοῦσα is a feminine nom. sg. participle, but it's more likely to be taken as the aorist participle of δίδωμι 'give' than the present participle of δέω 'bind': generally, monosyllabic stems (like δε-) ...
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10
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Inveniturne participium futuri activi in ablativo absoluto?
Interesting post! See the following remark included in a related question: "as pointed out by Lavency (1985: 196) in his excellent descriptive grammar of Latin (VSVS. Grammaire latine. ...
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9
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Why does a future passive participle have a sense of necessity?
I see now that some people call this a "future passive participle", but it is conventionally called a gerundive. So I wouldn't think of "going to be read" at all if I were to ...
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9
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How to translate the phrase "perfacile factu esse"?
Perfacile factu means "easy to do." Factu is a supine, and this construction—supines coming off of certain adjectives—is pretty much where you will always see its ablative form. Other common ...
cmw♦
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9
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Is the perfect participle in deponent verbs active or passive in meaning?
190b. The perfect participle generally has an active sense, but in verbs otherwise deponent it is often passive: as, mercátus, bought; adeptus, gained (or having gained).
As I read it (with the help ...
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How productive was the participle in -menus in Latin?
Weiss cites, besides alumnus, femina (from a root meaning 'give suck'), calumnia (derived from *kalwo-mno-, from the root of calvor 'deceive'), and possibly also columna and the divine name Vortumnus (...
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9
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Do vocative forms of participles exist?
In Martial 8,75 it says
Hic mihi de multis unus, Lucane, videtur,
Cui merito dici 'mortue Galle' potest.
“Mortue Galle” was (or so commentators claim) a term from gladiatorial fights; the Murmillo ...
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8
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What is "old" in the age of a wine?
There is a direct quote for this situation in the Satyricon, where Petronius just uses annus in the genitive plural:
Statim allatae sunt amphorae vitreae diligenter gypsatae, quarum in cervicibus ...
- 1,470
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Difference between future participle and simple future
In A Grammar of the Latin Language, Karl Gottlob Zumpt says,
But by the combination of the participle future active with the tenses
of esse a really new conjugation is formed denoting an intention to
...
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8
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What is the correct vowel quantity for the participle of legō?
It's long.
The two consonants after the vowel mean that poetic meter can't tell us anything about the vowel length. However, ē and ĕ had different descendants in Romance: ē became Proto-Romance e, ...
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8
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Dictionaries always list the Neuter Participle in principal forms, why?
The ultimate answer to these sorts of things is always "convention." They do it because the what they worked with did it. Maybe some editor or another justified their particular adoption of ...
cmw♦
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8
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What is the syntax of ‘quamquam omnis secrētī capācissima’?
Omnis secreti is genitive with capax, which means 'most capable of holding' (OLD definition 2). Although capax is generally used in this sense to describe objects, it's being used to describe a person ...
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8
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How to translate this active participle?
No, an active participle can't be translated with a passive meaning. (The opposite, a passive participle translated with an active meaning, is possible, but only if the verb is deponent.)
So only your ...
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7
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What is the history of the perfect active participle in Latin?
Wiktionary seems to be wrong. De Vaan derives clīvus and gnāvus from forms with the PIE suffix *-wo-, which is not the same as the pf. ppl. suffix *-wos-; he derives alvus by metathesis from an ...
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7
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How did the Latin past participle suffix -atus develop into modern French -é?
There is a regular sound change by which Latin a (long or short), when stressed and in an open syllable, became [e] or [ε]. A few examples out of many:
mare > mer
amāre > aimer
nāsum > nez
The past ...
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7
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Is there such a thing as the accusativus cum participio (a.c.p)? If not, what is this? (Greek)
Ephesians 1:16: οὐ παύομαι εὐχαριστῶν ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν μνείαν (ὑμῶν) ποιούμενος ἐπὶ τῶν προσευχῶν μου. (The second ὑμῶν is missing in the best Mss.)
The Vulgata has: non cesso gratias agens pro vobis, ...
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7
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Present Participles: can "respicienti" be part of an ablative absolute in this sentence?
As Sumelic says, both -i and -e can be used as the ablative ending of a participle. Even so, mixing them in the same sentence would probably be unusual.
Respicienti is really a dative here; the new a....
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7
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Is the U long or short in the forms ussi and ustus of the verb ūro?
The double ss is evidence for a short vowel in ussi (at least at some point)
Just a short time after posting this question, I remembered a relevant fact. Even though there wasn't (as far as I know) a ...
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7
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Using perfect participle as perfect active participle
This is a deponent verb.
Both the normal contemplare and the deponent contemplari exist and mean roughly the same thing.
I have the impression that the deponent one is more common, but the details ...
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