In Rosa (1962), a song in French by the Belgian singer Jacques Brel, Brel sings the declension of "Rosa" as rosa, rosa, rosam, following the modern British order of cases. This order was introduced in Benjamin Hall Kennedy's Latin Primer (1866), with the aim of making tables of declensions easier to recite and memorise (the first three and the last two cases having identical forms in several declensions). However, in Britain and countries influenced by Britain other than the United States, the Latin cases are usually given in the following order: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative. More recent Latin grammars published in the United States, such as Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar (1903) and Wheelock's Latin (first published in 1956) follow this order except they list the vocative last. Gildersleeve and Lodge's Latin Grammar (1895) also follow this order. That order is still followed in most other European countries. This traditional order was formerly used in England, such as in The School and University Eton Latin Grammar (1861). The names of the cases also were mostly translated from the Greek terms, such as accusativus from the Greek αἰτῐᾱτῐκή. This order was based on the order used by earlier Greek grammarians, with the addition of the ablative, which does not exist in Greek. "There are six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative and ablative." The Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus (4th century AD), whose work was used as standard throughout the Middle Ages, placed the cases in this order:Ĭasus sunt sex: nominativus, genetivus, dativus, accusativus, vocativus, ablativus. The case names are often abbreviated to the first three letters, for example, "nom." for "nominative". However, the locative is limited to a few nouns: generally names of cities, small islands and a few other words. However, numeral adjectives such as bīnī 'a pair, two each' decline like ordinary adjectives.Ī complete Latin noun declension consists of up to seven grammatical cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and locative. The cardinal numbers ūnus 'one', duo 'two', and trēs 'three' also have their own declensions ( ūnus has genitive -īus like a pronoun). These latter decline in a similar way to the first and second noun declensions, but there are differences for example the genitive singular ends in -īus or -ius instead of -ī or -ae. Pronouns are also of two kinds, the personal pronouns such as ego 'I' and tū 'you ( sg.)', which have their own irregular declension, and the third-person pronouns such as hic 'this' and ille 'that' which can generally be used either as pronouns or adjectivally. There are no fourth- or fifth-declension adjectives. Other adjectives such as celer, celeris, celere belong to the third declension. Each noun follows one of the five declensions, but some irregular nouns have exceptions.Īdjectives are of two kinds: those like bonus, bona, bonum 'good' use first-declension endings for the feminine, and second-declension for masculine and neuter. There are five declensions, which are numbered and grouped by ending and grammatical gender. Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives are declined (verbs are conjugated), and a given pattern is called a declension. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |