LATN 271-001: Introduction to Reading Latin Fall Semester 2020 Dr. Jacqueline Long

Verb-form	Person or Substantive-attributes1	Number (if any)	Tense	Voice	Mood or Part of Speech2	Sense in Context	Construction3
imitētur	3	sing.	pres.	act. (deponent)4	subj.	imitate	main verb: jussive/hortatory subj.
dīcendī	neut. gen.	sing.	pres.	act.	gerund	(of) speaking	gen. of possession with vīs
concēditur	3	sing.	pres.	pass.	indic.	is granted	verb of relative clause: fact
fuisse	neut. nom.	sing.	pf.	act.	infin.	to have existed	complemenatry infin. with dīcitur (relative clause)
dīcitur	3	sing.	pres.	pass.	indic.	is said	verb of relative clause: fact
superāret	3	sing.	imp.	act.	subj.	overcame	verb of result clause

¹Finite verbs have person, among other attributes, non-finite verbs don't: so if the form is a finite one, give the person, but if it's a non-finite form like a participle or an infinitive, use this box to state what gender and case it has (gender and case are attributes of a substantive; number, which is an attribute of both substantives and verbs, here gets a box of its own).

²Finite verbs have mood, among other attributes, non-finite verbs don't: so if the form is a finite one, give the mood, but if it's a non-finite form like a participle or an infinitive, use this box to state what part of speech it is.

³"Construction" asks you to indicate briefly the verb's grammatical function in the sentence, why it takes the form it takes, in order to tell you what the sentence is using it to tell you: what type of clause, participial phrase, etc., is the verb-form helping to create?

⁴Deponent verbs use the endings non-deponent verbs use to indicate passive meanings, but nearly all Latin deponent verbs' meanings correspond to active verbs in English. It's better to think of them as legacies of a "middle voice" in Latin's linguistic ancestry, in which the subject of the verb both performs the action and is acted on by it (the hortatory/jussive subjunctive encourages the orator both to imitate Demonsthenes as an external object and to shape himself according to the model Demosthenes constitutes). In Latin the "middleness" of deponent verbs is distilled into their meaning, but their form reflects their history.

Revised 18 August 2020 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/depts/classics/