I've got a few questions, and I know that I'll never remember them all in class...
I am confused by the given definition of "debere." What is the infinitive translation? The textbook just says "I ought, I must." "To ought, to must" couldn't be the infinitive translation, could it? That seems strange, but maybe it's just me? Even so, I tried to look up "ought" in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and got "verbal auxiliary," "transitive verb" from the infinitive "to owe." When I looked up "must" I got "to be compelled to by necessity," "to be obliged to." So I looked up "oblige." But in the etymology for that entry, there's another Latin verb: obligare. So I figure "debere" must have a different literal translation... I thought, it looks close to what must be the root of the English word "debt." So I looked that up... And there's "debere" in the etymology, defined as the Latin for "to owe." Should I just not worry about what the infinitive means in this case?
For "constituere," because the "u" is part of the stem, would the 3rd person plural really look like "constituunt"? Or would it just be "constitunt"?
According to the glossary in the textbook, "domus" is a feminine noun. But it is declined like a masculine noun?
That's all I've got for now. I'm sure I'm posting *way* too much, but this class has me very excited and I'm tied to my computer, so the temptation to post is too much to resist.
~Rachael Stern
posted by Ex Pluribus Unum @ 11:24 PM
1 Comments:
Ok, I will try to address all of these very stimulating postings:
Yes, Posca means 'demanding one', and is supposed to activate some distant Latin memory (> like oculus reparo!) but there is not a real adjective Posca. There is a participle (all verbs have participles) which operates as an adjective, but no need to bother ourselves with this now.
Your investigation of Debere is an excellent example of what Latin does in terms of getting to the bottom of language, our native one I mean. Understanding how languages operate within a socio-economical, cultural context. The original meaning of Debere was quite literally 'to owe money'. If the money could not be paid of, there was a law that made the >debtor a slave to the loaner. A slave! So, that being the ultimate 'must do' the verb even later signifies 'to have to, to must' even when the law got abolished. And now get this: obligare literally means 'to tie with a rope' because this is how slaves were dragged into the market to be sold, and they HAD to obey once they were slaves. The word ligature (=surgery a piece of surgical thread used to tie off a duct or blood vessel in order to cut off the supply of body fluid) comes from the same root 'ligare' (to tie) (ob is a preposition that means 'around'). This one goes to all my premed peeps out there!
Yes, constitu-e-re ends in -u- which remains as part of the stem. The Romans undestood -u- as both a consonant and a vowel. This yields the type 'constitu-u-nt' in the third plural.
Domus is feminine indeed, but it does not belong to the 2nd declension. It belongs to the 4th declension that we will learn later (it only contains about 10 nouns).
Thank you all for your questions and comments. Keep them coming!
Laters, EM.
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