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Latin Participle help?
Trying to take LAtin online, and I really don't get participles. I've tried the course, in addition to at least three diffrent resources, could someone please explain how to form them?
I understand that they are verbal adjective, and that they are a verb with a noun ending, but I don't understand how to form them.
I need to know how to form....
Present Participles
Perfect Passive Participles
Ablative Absolute
Future Active Participles.
If anyone could dumb it down a bit for me, I would really apprechiate it. I don't understand AT ALL.
2 Answers
- dollhausLv 71 decade agoFavorite Answer
Thet're really not that tough.
For present participle:
Take the present stem and add '-ns' for nominative and '-ntis' for genitive. [3rd conjugation 'io' verbs and 4th conjugation add 'iens, ientis] All the other cases are formed just like a THIRD declension noun. Take a verb you probably learned early on - amare. The present stem is 'ama-', so the participle is amans, amantis. The rest of the forms are just like those of 'rex.' [There is an oddity about ablative singular - the ending will be '-i' instead of '-e' when its used strictly as an adjective.]
Perfect passive participle
Take the participle stem. That's the fourth principal part without the ending. For amare, the 4th part is 'amatus', so the stem is 'amat-' Now, add the familiar '-us', '-a', and '-um' endings. Decline just like 'magnus, -a, -um.'
Future active participle
Take the same participle stem from above, and add '-urus, -ura, -urum. Decline the same way.
One memory help - the preseNT participle has 'NT' in it, and the futURe participle has 'UR' in it.
Ablative absolute
That's actually a way to use a participle.
In the simplest form, take a noun and a participle. Put the noun in ablative case. Put the participle in ablative - match the number and gender of the noun.
Rex = king. Rege = ablative sing.
Interficere = to kill. Interfectus = perfect passive participle. Interfecto = ablative singular masculine (matches rege)
Rege interfecto - that's an ablative absolute. It would translate as 'With the king having been killed...' Colloquial English would be more like: 'Since the king had been killed..' or 'After the king was killed...'