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Latin declension is the set of patterns according to which Latin words are declined—that is, have their endings altered to show grammatical case, number and gender.Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives are declined (verbs are conjugated), and a given pattern is called a declension.
A few 2nd declension nouns, such as vir "man" and puer "boy", lack endings in the nominative and vocative singular. In the 2nd declension, the genitive plural in some words is optionally -um, especially in poetry: [5] [6] deum or deōrum "of the gods", virum or virōrum "of men". Neuter nouns such as bellum "war" have -a in the nominative ...
Impersonal verbs are those lacking a person. In English impersonal verbs are usually used with the neuter pronoun "it" (as in "It seems," or "it is raining"). Latin uses the third person singular. These verbs lack a fourth principal part. A few examples are: pluit, pluere, plūvit/pluit – to rain (it rains) ningit, ningere, ninxit – to snow ...
Latin word order is relatively free. The verb may be found at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a sentence; an adjective may precede or follow its noun (vir bonus or bonus vir both mean 'a good man'); [5] and a genitive may precede or follow its noun ('the enemies' camp' can be both hostium castra and castra hostium; the latter is more common). [6]
In linguistics, declension (verb: to decline) is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns , pronouns , adjectives , adverbs , and determiners .
Latin inflection can result in words with much ambiguity: For example, amābit 'he/she/it will love', is formed from amā-, a future tense morpheme -bi-and a third person singular morpheme, -t, the last of which -t does not express masculine, feminine, or neuter gender. A major task in understanding Latin phrases and clauses is to clarify such ...
The following similarly uses the perfect subjunctive with the 2nd person: nūlla est excūsātiō peccātī, sī amīcī causā peccāverīs (Cicero) [73] 'it is no excuse for doing wrong if you have done wrong for the sake of a friend' The subjunctive is also used in the apodosis of a generalisation if it has a 2nd person singular verb: [74]
Latin word order is relatively free. The subject, object, and verb can come in any order, and an adjective can go before or after its noun, as can a genitive such as hostium "of the enemies". A common feature of Latin is hyperbaton, in which a phrase is split up by other words: Sextus est Tarquinius "it is Sextus Tarquinius".