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Help! Latin grammar ?


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Ok, dd is really struggling with the concept of principal parts of a verb. We are doing Latina Christiana II and honestly this has been the 1st real hiccup in her understanding. FWIW, her English grammar skills are very good. She is currently doing R&S 5 and consistently scores in the high 90s on her tests. Now to the problem/question.

 

On page 56 of the TM for LCII (Ln 12), she is introduced to the principal parts of a verb. This is defined as , "Those forms of a verb from which all of the other forms are derived." Now we have always thought of PP as:

 

infinitive

present

past

past part.

pres part.

 

(Yes we do CC and I liked the way they taught that.)

 

Page 57 goes on to say, "In Latin most verbs have four principal parts, the first of which students will recognize as the form of the verb written in the vocab list, the first person singular of the present tense." If I understand this correctly then the correct answer for the following question:

 

Give the endings for the regular principal parts:

1st conjugation verbs

 

should be:

 

o, s,t, mus, tis, nt.

 

Except that it isn't. They are saying that the verbs whose infinitve ends in are are first conjugation verbs. I can understand why she is confused. Like I said, she understands the concept of principal parts in English, why is she confused in Latin? Heck, why am I confused? What am I missing?

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The o, s, t, mus, tis, nt are the personal endings of the present tense of a first conjugation verb. What they are looking for is the endings of the infinitive, first person singular present tense, past tense and participle forms.

 

Here is a link to a chart for celo--the paradigm is listed at the top.http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~econrad/lang/lv1.html

 

I learned to list the verbs the way they have them at the top of the chart-- first person singular present indicative tense form, present active infinitive form, first person singular perfect active indicative form, first person singular perfect passive participle.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_conjugation

 

Does this help? Or make it more confusing?

 

Jennifer

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