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Dative of Agent

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 3:51 pm
by elduce
Getting through passive periphrastic is proving difficult. And with the addition of dative of agent I'm confused. So every time I want to express an action that has to be done I use dative of agent? i.e. Future passive participle + Esse + Dative.

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 9:05 pm
by Turpissimus
Getting through passive periphrastic is proving difficult.
Are we talking about the future passive periphrastic of indirect speech?
And with the addition of dative of agent I'm confused. So every time I want to express an action that has to be done I use dative of agent? i.e. Future passive participle + Esse + Dative.
Ah! You seem to be on about the gerundive. Another issue entirely.

Consider:

Pons est aedificandus
Here, Pons changes from being the object to the subject. What happens if we want to say who built the bridge?

Civibus patria defendenda est
Patria remains in the nominative, and the gerundive still agrees with it. But the agent is in the dative. If you like you can think of this as a dative of interest (so far as the citizens are concerned...). This dative needn't be mentioned, as we saw above.

If there is another dative in the sentence, confusion can sometimes arise. If we say consulibus tribunis parendum est or pecunia mihi vobis reddenda est, then who gives money to who, or who obeys who? This is an instance where we'd use the ablative of agent with a gerundive: consulibus a tribunis parendum est or pecunia a vobis mihi reddenda est. This is done only if confusion would arise. Laws can't obey people, so omnibus civibus legibus parendum est has only one meaning and is the correct form.

There are of course other ways to express obligation or necessity.
Debeo aut fustem aut lapidem capere
Aut fustem aut lapidem capere me oportet

In some circumstances a jussive subjunctive can be used: caperes aut fustem aut lapidem: you ought to have taken a stick or a rock.

ASIDE:

Since we're dealing with passives of intransitive verbs that take dative objects, I'll add what I've learned about the subject here.

Normally intransitive verbs (ones that don't take objects, like to go, to come, to fall) can't be made passive in English. No-one could say "It was gone to London by me yesterday". But this is sometimes possible in Latin.

Itur in antiquam silvam : It is gone into an ancient wood, or they go into an ancient wood.

Likewise: Ab hostibus acriter pugnatum est : It was fought fiercely by the enemy, or the enemy fought fiercely.

This is the only passive construction usable by verbs in the dative: omnibus argumentis utendum est : use must be made of all arguments.
consulibus paretur the consuls are obeyed.

There, bit of a braindump, but I think everything you want to know should be there...

If you want to know about the future passive periphrastic in indirect speech, that's for another time.

Thanks Turpissimus

Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 3:35 pm
by elduce
Thank you for the help. I have more questions on participles and such but I'll post them separately.

Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 3:50 am
by benissimus
The passive periphrastic is just another name for the gerundive, when it is used with a form of esse. Do yourself a favor and do not consider the gerundive to be a future passive participle (which for some odd reason Wheelock does mention it as). That concept of the gerundive may be historically correct, but in practice it almost always shows mere obligation. There is also a rare future passive periphrastic, which uses the supine, but that is quite a different beast.