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The ancient Romans themselves, beginning with Varro (1st century BC), originally divided their verbs into three conjugations (coniugationes verbis accidunt tres: prima, secunda, tertia "there are three different conjugations for verbs: the first, second, and third" (), 4th century AD), according to whether the ending of the 2nd person singular had an a, an e or an i in it. [2]
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.
Certain verbs in Latin have the form of a passive verb, but the meaning is active. These verbs are known as deponent verbs. [10] An example is the verb sequor 'I follow': (a) Infectum tenses Present: sequor 'I follow, I am following' Future: sequar 'I will follow, I will be following' Imperfect: sequēbar 'I was following, I used to follow' (b ...
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. For example, the Latin verb exit (a compound of ex and it) means "he/she/it goes out". In this article a line over a vowel (e.g. ē) indicates that it is long.
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]
Ablative case is used to modify verbs and can be translated as 'by', 'with', 'from', etc. Vocative case is used to address a person or thing. The genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative also have important functions to indicate the object of a preposition. Given below is the declension paradigm of Latin puer 'boy' and puella 'girl':
Pages in category "Latin declension" The following 9 pages are in this category, out of 9 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. ...
The gerundive of the verb (an adjectival form ending in -ndus) can be combined with the verb sum 'I am' to make a passive periphrastic tense. This usually expresses what is needing to be done: ego nec rogandus sum nec hortandus (Pliny) [1] 'I don't need to be asked or encouraged' (i.e. I will do it willingly)