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Post by richardw on Oct 10, 2007 1:45:40 GMT -5
Sorry for that...:-( got the HTML wrong...Here it is: <a href="http://www.babylon.com/define/112/Latin-Dictionary.html">Latin Dictionary</a>
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Post by dianaholberg on Oct 10, 2007 20:37:19 GMT -5
You've got the HTML right... but this board uses UBB, which is different. But I think most of us will be able to copy the url. Thanks!
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Post by Amalcas on Oct 11, 2007 20:13:25 GMT -5
As some of you probably know (I believe I've mentioned it), I've been taking Latin for the past couple years; like Littlepea, my vocabulary is very limited (in this case, not because I am not required to know the vocabulary, but because the focus has been on grammar, a necessary focus for the first couple years of Latin), but I know the majority of common Latin grammar (the only major concept I know of that I have no familiarity with is the subjunctive). Thus, if you have any questions about Latin, I can hopefully answer them, though no promises.
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Post by Amalcas on Oct 11, 2008 19:14:53 GMT -5
Well, this is a bit later. I noticed this (still on the front page) and read through the posts. In particular, I noticed your question about the use of stems versus infinitives in teaching verbs (if I understood the question right). The answer is simple: the infinitive gives insufficient information to fully conjugate the verb. Consider the common word for "to make:" facere. This present active infinitive tells me that the verb is either second or third conjugation, and thus the present system stem (for progressive conjugations, and present and future simple) is either face, fac, or faci. If I know the macrons (long marks), specifically that facere doesn't have one over the first e, I can reduce it to fac or faci. In order to resolve this, I introduce the first principal part (the present active infinitive is the second), which is the first person singular active present progressive/simple: facio, facere Now, I know that facere is an i-stem 3rd conjugation (faci), and I can produce all the present system verbs. But I still can't conjugate the perfect system (perfect conjugations, and past simple), as the perfect system actually uses a different stem, which generally relates to the present stem, but may do so by one of four transformations, with there being no real way to find out which other than looking it up (and it sometimes doesn't follow one of those rules, anyway--see fero, ferre, tuli). Thus, we introduce the third principal part: facio, facere, feci I can now produce every verbal form of facere, using this information. However, there are no passive perfect verbs in Latin, so I'm still stuck (e.g. while, I can say, "I have made the chair," I can't say "The chair has been made by me"). Instead, I'll have to do something similar to what we often to in English: use a participle. Just like we say "I am making" in English, in Latin you say "The chair is having been made by me." However, I still don't know how to form the perfect passive participle; in fact, there's no definite way to know what it is beside knowing what it (or the future active participle) is. So, we introduce it as the fourth principal part: facio, facere, feci, factus Now I know how to fully conjugate facere, including adjectival forms (participles) and all noun forms (infinitives are technically nouns in most of their uses, not to mention the supine). "The chair has been made by me" I now know is "Sella facta me est" (word order being completely arbitrary in this case). In short, Latin conjugation requires four principal parts to determine all forms of regular verbs (defective, deponent, and irregular verbs all are exceptions to this rule, for various reasons). In even shorter, Latin is crazy. I hope I understood what question you were asking correctly. I am now a fourth year Latin student, though the course I am taking is technically a fifth or sixth year course (yikes), so I should be able to answer any grammatical question you have. I'm still working on the obscure rhetorical constructs with unpronounceable Greek names, though.
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Post by dianaholberg on Oct 12, 2008 7:03:10 GMT -5
LOL, yes you understood the question much better than I understand the answer! But thanks!! ;D
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