castra "a camp", litterae "a letter", nūptiae "a wedding". A few nouns, called plūrālia tantum ("plural only"), although plural in form, have a singular meaning, e.g. Most Latin nouns have two numbers, singular and plural: rēx "king", rēgēs "kings". In this article a line over a vowel (e.g. For example, the Latin verb exit (a compound of ex and it) means "he/she/it goes out". Latin also exhibits verb framing in which the path of motion is encoded into the verb rather than shown by a separate word or phrase. Latin is a pro-drop language that is, pronouns in the subject are usually omitted except for emphasis, so for example amās by itself means "you love" without the need to add the pronoun tū "you". vir bonus or bonus vir "a good man", although some kinds of adjectives, such as adjectives of nationality ( vir Rōmānus "a Roman man") usually follow the noun. (See Latin word order.)Īn adjective can come either before or after a noun, e.g. Different word orders are used to express different shades of emphasis. Latin word order tends to be subject–object–verb however, other word orders are common. Note the opening door in the background and the unshod feet of the first pupil. The scene is an allegory of grammar and, by implication, all of education. Priscian, or the Grammar, marble cameo panel dated 1437–1439 from the bell tower of Florence, Italy, by Luca della Robbia. There is no definite or indefinite article in Latin, so that rēx can mean "king", "a king", or "the king" according to context. Nouns for places have a seventh case, the locative this is mostly found with the names of towns and cities, e.g. Nouns for people (potential addressees) have the vocative (used for addressing someone). Genitive ("of"), dative ("to" or "for"), and ablative ("with" or "in"). Most nouns have five cases: nominative (subject), accusative (object), These different endings are called "cases". There are also two numbers: singular ( mulier "woman") and plural ( mulierēs "women").Īs well as having gender and number, nouns, adjectives, and pronouns have different endings according to their function in the sentence, for example, rēx "the king" (subject), but rēgem "the king" (object). Specific kinds of stuff and abstract things also have one of the three grammatical genders. male animals such as hic vir "this man" and hic gallus "this cock", female animals such as haec mulier "this woman" and haec gallīna "this chicken", and either sexually undifferentiated animals such as hoc ovum "this egg" or stuff in general such as hoc "this thing". The gender of the classified thing is realized by the last syllables of the adjectives, numbers and pronouns that refer to it: e.g. Most verbal forms consist of a single word, but some tenses are formed from part of the verb sum "I am" added to a participle for example, ductus sum "I was led" or ductūrus est "he is going to lead".Ĭlassified things (represented by common nouns) belong to one of three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). Thus verbs can take any of over 100 different endings to express different meanings, for example regō "I rule", regor "I am ruled", regere "to rule", regī "to be ruled". The inflections are often changes in the ending of a word, but can be more complicated, especially with verbs. Nouns are inflected for number and case pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, case, and gender and verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, voice, and mood. Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order.
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