Relative Pronouns and Clauses. Chapter 17 covers the ..., Slides of Latin

Download Relative Pronouns and Clauses. Chapter 17 covers the ... and more Slides Latin in PDF only on Docsity! 1 Chapter 17: Relative Pronouns and Clauses. Chapter 17 covers the following: the formation of the relative pronoun; the nature and translation of relative clauses; and at the end of the lesson we'll review the vocabulary which you should memorize in this chapter. There is one rule ─ one very important rule! ─ to remember in this chapter. (1) A relative pronoun agrees with its antecedent in number and gender but not case; it derives its case from its use in its own clause. OK, kiddies! Vacation's over. Hope you enjoyed the rest that you had with Chapters 14-16. Welcome back to Pluto's happy home of grammar torture, aka “hell-o subordination”! This chapter incorporates some of the most important grammar we'll study in all of Latin. It involves how to form Latin clauses comparable to English clauses that begin with "who," "which," and so on. We'll also encounter some important and fundamental grammatical concepts and terms which you'll need to know for your future study of Latin, terms and concepts like clause, subordinate, relative, antecedent, all of which you should know by the time we're done with this chapter. Let's start then by looking at those four terms. "Clause" refers to a dependent or subordinate thought or sentence which is embedded inside another thought or sentence. When the clause is called subordinate or dependent, it means it can't stand alone grammatically. For instance, if I said "When I'm home,…" ─ yeah, you kinda go like “Well, what?,” because it's not a full thought. “Although you tried,” …? While I think I know where you're going with that, just to be safe, you ought to try finishing the grammar … “as they say.” I think you get the point. The presence of subordinating conjunctions like "when, although, as" turn sentences like "I'm home," "You tried," "They say" into clauses which cannot stand alone. The term "relative," the term used for the type of clause we're studying in this chapter, refers to a certain sort of subordinate clause, one which begins with what grammarians call a “relative pronoun.” English has a number of relative pronouns, primarily "who" and "which." But also "what" and "that" can sometimes function as relative pronouns and, as we'll soon discover, in English even the absence of a relative pronoun can indicate the beginning of a relative clause. The horror, the horror! Latin, blessedly, has only one relative pronoun. A relative pronoun is called “relative” because it relates a subordinate thought to a noun outside the relative clause. To look at it another way, the entire clause functions as a sort of big, complex adjective modifying that noun, called its antecedent, and just like an adjective, the whole relative clause describes or defines that noun. Got it? No? Don't worry! Nobody gets it the first time. Let's look at some examples and see if that doesn't clear a few things up. Let me introduce you to a few of my friends ─ and my fish!  “I have friends who eat fish.” "Who" is a relative pronoun.  “I have a fish which eats friends.” "Which" is a relative pronoun.  “This is my fish that eats friends.” "That" is another relative pronoun.  “What my fish eats is none of your business.” "What" is a relative pronoun. 2  And finally, “Or do you want to be the food my fish eats?” The absence of the relative pronoun between "food" and "my fish" is also a relative pronoun, of sorts. That's right, there are five different ways to represent the relative pronoun in English. That's more out of control than my fish. Notice that each of these relative pronouns introduces a clause, called a relative clause. I've underlined them here: "who eats fish, " "which eats friends," "that eats friends," "what my fish eats," and "my fish eats" where the relative pronoun is omitted. Each of these relative clauses is really a little, separate thought, a separate sentence with its own grammar. In the clause "who eats fish," "who" functions as the subject, "eats" is the verb, and "fish" is the direct object. If you turn the dependent relative clause into an independent sentence and use "and" so it reads "and they eat fish," you can see very clearly that "they," the equivalent of "who," is the subject of the sentence. In the relative clause "which eats friends," "which" again is functioning as the subject, as you can easily see if you turn the relative clause into an independent sentence, and rephrase it as "and it eats friends." And the same for "that eats friends": it's equivalent to "and it eats friends." But while all these clauses have full grammar ─ nominative subjects, verbs, objects, and so on ─ none of them can stand alone grammatically and make sense because they're introduced by the relative pronoun, a subordinating conjunction that creates a non-independent clause. That's what "clause" means, that there's full grammar, but that the statement cannot stand alone and make sense. In order to be part of a grammatical construction that makes sense, the relative clause must be embedded inside a larger sentence or thought which is not (or at least less) subordinate grammatically, and the way the clause is connected to the main sentence is through the relative pronoun, which has an antecedent, a noun that it's tied to in the main sentence and that the clause modifies. Antecedents get their name from the fact that they tend to cede (“come”) ante ("before") the relative clause that modifies them. Before we take the next step and look at how relative pronouns and antecedents interact, and even how the Latin relative pronoun is formed, let's make certain that you understand the English side of the equation fully. English uses its relative pronoun forms (who, which, what) both as relative pronouns and as interrogatives (question words). But while these forms are identical, their grammatical function couldn't be more different. Interrogative pronouns are used in independent thoughts such as "What are you doing?," where "what" introduces a question that's a full thought, versus "what you are doing" which is not a full thought. It needs an independent sentence to attach to, such as "It is wrong," creating a full thought: "What you're doing is wrong.” There, "what" is functioning as a relative pronoun. So in English, it's important to ask yourself, whenever you run into "who, which, what," if that "w-" word is introducing a question, and thus part of the main sentence. If so, it's interrogative, not relative. This is mostly true of Latin as well, and you'll learn very quickly how to tell whether a "w-" word is interrogative or relative from context. 5 Next sentence: Puella cui librum dat est bella, meaning "The girl to whom he is giving the book is pretty." Cui is feminine singular because its antecedent is puella, also feminine singular, and it's dative because it functions as the indirect object in its own clause. Next example: Puer cuius patrem iuvabamus est miser, meaning "The boy whose father we used to help is unfortunate." Cuius is masculine singular because it agrees in case and number with puer, but it's genitive in case because in its own clause it's a possessive attached to patrem. Next: Vitam meam committam eis viris quorum virtutes laudabas, meaning "I will entrust my life to those men whose virtues you used to praise." Quorum is masculine plural because its antecedent viris is masculine plural, but its case is genitive to show possession because that's how it functions in its own clause. And finally: Timeo periculum quod timetis, meaning "I fear the danger which y'all fear." Periculum, the antecedent, is neuter singular, and the relative pronoun quod functions as the direct object in its own clause. Therefore, it would be accusative in Latin. Note that in this instance, the antecedent and the relative pronoun just happen to have the same function in their two different grammatical constructions, but that's a lucky coincidence here. It doesn't happen all that often. Now let's turn to the vocabulary for this chapter. The first word is amicitia, amicitiae, f., meaning "friendship." It's a first-declension feminine noun. The -tia, -tiae suffix is first-declension, and it creates abstract nouns. It's seen widely in Latin and is worth memorizing as such. This word amicitia is often used in the ablative of manner, that is, cum amicitiā, meaning "with friendship" or "in a friendly way." The next word is another abstract noun, veritas, veritatis, f., meaning "truth." It's third- declension feminine. We've already encountered the -tas, -tatis suffix when we reviewed third- declension nouns way back in Chapter 7. Remember, they're always feminine, have third- declension endings and form abstract nouns. The next word is qui, quae, quod, which we have discussed at length above. No need to rehearse all that here! So the next word is aut, meaning "or." It's a conjunction, and it's often seen in pairs where the first aut means "either" and the second means “or.” The next word is nimis, nimium. Nimis and nimium are just alternate forms of the same word, meaning "too (much), excessively." It’s an adverb. The next word is the verb coepi, coepisse, coeptum, meaning "began." Because of its meaning, it takes a complementary infinitive after it: "he began to do something." But do you notice anything else unusual about this verb? The principal parts of this verb start with the perfect active coepi. That means this verb must not have a present base. Therefore, it can’t have any of the present tenses: present, imperfect or future. Well, maybe it did once, but since no ancient 6 author ever uses the present base of this verb, we have to conclude it was somehow not seen as proper Latin, at least not during the Classical Age, and therefore it can't be part of your vocabulary list. Instead, in all surviving Latin texts, this verb always appears in one of the perfect tenses: perfect, pluperfect or future perfect. The technical term for this type of verb is “defective.” The coepisse, the second principal part, is the perfect infinitive, meaning "to have begun." You don't know that form yet, but we have to supply an infinitive … well, because that's what we always do with verbs. So here is a little glance ahead to a form you haven't learned yet and don't need to know yet, so except for memorization purposes, you can ignore this form. The next word is deleo, delere, delevi, deletum, meaning "destroy, wipe out, erase." It's a second- conjugation verb. And it's fairly regular except for its perfect active delevi. There it acts as if it's fourth conjugation. The next word is neglego, neglegere, neglexi, neglectum, meaning "neglect, disregard". It's a third-conjugation verb. Notice that it forms its perfect active in a way third-conjugation verbs often do, by adding an s-sound to the end of the base. And the last word in this vocabulary list is factum, facti, n., meaning "deed, act, achievement." It's a second-declension neuter noun. It literally means "that which has been done," a form we'll learn more about in a lesson or two. What would be the accusative plural of this word? Good for you: facta. And that ends this presentation. Does the rule that was cited at the beginning of this chapter now make sense to you? If not, please review this presentation. If so, please proceed to the next slide. For the next class meeting, please bring in a copy of the worksheet for chapter 17. Here's a link to that worksheet. Vos qui magnā cum curā studetis laudo diligoque.