Talk:Latin periphrases

Periphrasis tables[edit]

TODOS

There should be one section per periphrasis.
There should be one periphrasis table per periphrasis.
There should be one row per tuple <paradigm, meaning>.

PERIPHRASIS LIST

perfect
habeō perfect
teneō perfect
future
parātus sum future
gerundive
coepī present

COLUMNS

Paradigm - the paradigm of the auxiliary verb
Latin Example - a constructed example for the paradigm
Meaning - a meaning name with a link to an article section explaining that meaning
Comment - a constructed gloss of that meaning

Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 20:13, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

@Kanjuzi, @Austronesier: I am standardizing the tables as explained above. Can you please add your input if you think we should have an extra column or extra periphrases? The focus of this page is to give grammatical information on agreement, word order, and auxiliaries for tense and mode. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 20:13, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ductum iri[edit]

Note that ductum in ductum iri is not a perfect participle, as your introduction to the section would imply. Kanjuzi (talk) 08:49, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Kanjuzi I added a comment on the invariability of the 'ductum īrī' paradigm in the introduction of the 'perfect periphrasis'. Do you think it suffices? Or should I create a section for a 'supine periphrasis' with "ductum īre" and "ductum īrī" as future infinitives? Do you know of any examples of such a construction for the active voice?

On a different note, I think the 'evolution' segment of that sections should go to a different page about the Evolution of the perfect periphrasis. Would you agree? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:07, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think you should move this whole article for the time being to a second sandbox (you can have more than one), since it is full of errors and not at all fit to be published. For example, to mention but a few of the many errors:

1. homo ā Caesare ductum īrī is ungrammatical (ductum iri cannot have a nominative subject).

2. The labels in your tables are all incorrect by the usual reckoning. For example, locutus ero is not future indicative but future perfect indicative; it is the same tense as dixero "I will have said".

3. divisum sit cannot mean "whether it is being divided"; i.e. it cannot have a progressive meaning, which would be dīvidātur.

4. ego hominem occultum habeō does not mean "I held the man hidden" but simply "I have hidden the man". Nor does occultum habeō mean "I hid it" or "I am having someone hide it". These meanings are not supported by any examples.

5. ego hominem ducturus eram does not mean "I would lead the man" but "I was going/intending to lead the man", which is not the same thing.

6. There is no form ducendus tenuero, which is quite ungrammatical, and also tenuero is indicative not subjunctive.

7. ducere coepi does not mean "I am leading" but "I began to lead". If Caesar began to lead an army at some time it does not imply that he is leading it now.

8. ductum ire is not usually considered to be a future infinitive. It expresses purpose and means "to go (in order) to lead". So it is not the active equivalent of ductum iri, which is definitely future and does not express purpose. Of course you may argue that when you say "I want to go tomorrow" the infinitive has a future meaning, but it is usually referred to as a present infinitive.

To sum up, I don't think this article is anything like ready for publication, and so you should move it to the sandbox for now. Kanjuzi (talk) 00:52, 2 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I applied all but the last suggestion.

I clarified on the table titles that the first column refers to the auxiliary paradigm.

As for 'occultum habet', it can mean 'to have someone hide something'. I removed the gloss anyhow as you suggested.

Example:

Puerum sporum exsectis testibus etiam in muliebrem naturam transfigurare conatus cum dote et flammeo persollemnia nuptiarum celeberrimo officio deductum ad se pro uxore habuit; exstatque cuiusdam non inscitusiocus bene agi potuisse cum rebus humanis, si domitius pater talem habuisset uxorem.

'... [Nero] had [the boy Sporum] taken to him as a wife...'

As for the 'coepī' periphrasis, you can see examples of 'secondary present' meaning if you click on the "present in future" and "present in past" links.

Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 20:41, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's an interesting example from Suetonius. But on what authority do you translate it as "he had him brought to him" (i.e. causative)? Rolfe in the Loeb edition for example simply translates it as "married", i.e. he takes deductum habuit as a periphrastic equivalent of duxit. I don't remember seeing in any grammar any indication that this construction can have a causative meaning. Kanjuzi (talk) 10:05, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Deductum ad se pro uxore habuit" indeed means "married", but in Latin these words describe the act of walking someone down the aisle to someone else "within a marriage ceremony" ("per solemnia nuptiarum") "in the most festive fashion" ("celleberrimo officio"). A translator can represent either the motion or what is achieved by it ("the marriage"). So I have no problem with this translation. However, we should not take the translation for an English speaking readership as the meanings of the words in the original text, especially when there is no one-to-one correspondence between words.

There is little work in Latin regarding how material actions differ from initiations of material action. From corpus analysis, we know that Caesar says either "dūxit" ("took") or "īre cūrāvit" ("had go") when he represents himself guiding the army around. This means that periphrasis is optional for action initiation. Later authors such as Suetonius use "habuit" with the same meaning, especially for situations like this where the initiator is at the destination of the movement and cannot be the one moving objects around. As for published studies, I know of the chapter "Zur Kausativität" in the book "Lateinishe Linguistik" by Roland Roffmann (BUSKE) where the author collects nice examples of translations into Latin such as "puer bibit" ("the boy drank") vs "deditque puerō bibere" ("and she had the boy drink"), where the original texts distinguish actions from initiations grammatically. It is a nice read, but does not tackle this periphrasis. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 20:02, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]