Questions tagged [syntax]
Syntax are the rules for how sentences and phrases are constructed in a language, including word order and how words change based on their relations to other words (snl.no/syntaks).
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What word order resolves the ambiguity of two nominative nouns in a sentence?
This question is a beginner's confusion about sentences of the form:
[subject_noun] [object_noun] est.
E.g. Bob agricola est.
From my understanding, both the subject and object are declined in ...
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"Deep" Meaning of "Gloria in excelsis Deo"
Sorry if the question is not very deep, please edit the question if it is not accurate in meaning.
According to Wikipedia (and common understanding of people who sang Gloria), the meaning is stated ...
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How do you show an infinitive for reason?
For instance, if you say, "I came here to eat," or "We want something good to eat," you are using the infinitive "to eat" to express reason or purpose. How do translate something like this in Latin?
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Are there instances of free indirect discourse in Latin or Greek?
Free indirect discourse is a type of narrative device which has some similarities with direct discourse and some with ordinary indirect discourse, but is different from both. Here's an English example,...
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"Tu quoque, Brutus, mi fili?" Grammar question
Someone told me these were Caesar's actual last words. Google confirms this. But I can't find an explanation for what looks to me like weird grammar.
First of all, shouldn't "Brutus" be &...
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Does Latin have a mechanism to disambiguate possessive pronouns of the same gender referring to distinct persons?
Question: does Latin have a grammatical mechanism to disambiguate the ambiguous use of `his' in the third of the three following English sentences?
Person A wrote a book.
Then person B wrote a ...
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Is the complement of esse in nominative or accusative when esse is a subject?
Suppose I want to say something like "I like being a human".
There are undoubtedly several ways to phrase that in Latin, but I want to do it so that it the subject is "to be a human".
The complete ...
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Can esse be used with a present participle?
I do not recall ever seeing esse in any form used with active present participles (like faciens).
One could imagine something similar to the English distinction between "he does" and "he is doing" in ...
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Can -que be used with adverbs?
If I wanted to say something like "I love you now and forever", can I use -que with one of the adverbs like I would with nouns?
Nunc perpetuoque te amo.
I tried searching various adverbs ...
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How can participles (inflected forms) be distinguished from deverbal adjectives (derived forms) in Latin?
Many modern linguistic analyses of languages like English draw a sharp theoretical distinction between participles, which are analyzed as inflected forms belonging to the paradigm of some verb, and ...
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What is the difference between accusative and genitive with meminisse?
The verb meminisse can take an accusative or a genitive object.
Also other constructions are possible (see the entry in L&S), but I want to focus on comparing these two in classical Latin.
Are ...
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Coordinating positive and negative imperatives
For positive commands, Latin uses the imperative: Da mihi librum "Give me the book."
For negative commands, it uses a number of constructions of which noli + inf. is most common: Noli mihi ...
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Parsing "quae cum audisset"
I'm having trouble parsing the phrase "quae cum audisset," which I've seen translated as "when [subject] heard" or "and when [subject] heard" in the latin vulgate. For ...
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Hearing vs hearing that
The English sentence 'I heard you play the flute' can have three distinct meanings:
At some point in the past, you played the flute while I was within earshot.
Someone told me that you are able to ...
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Jenney's First Year Latin, Lesson 37, comparatives with "quam"
I'd like some clarification on which cases are appropriate during the use of the word "quam" with comparatives. I'm teaching Jenney's First-Year Latin (1990).
In Lesson 37 (page 426 of the 1990 ...
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