Verb/translation question

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Poema
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Verb/translation question

Post by Poema »

In my Latin text book, I have been learning about verbs. However, I came across a verb (?) form ending that I am not familiar with:

aedifcatAE

This word was used in the following sentence:

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  _                _             _
Quorum arte aedificatae sunt urbes?
I was always under the impression that the AE ending was for nouns only. Could you please explain?

Aedificat means "build," so I also theorized that aedifcatAE could be a noun that meant building, but I can't fit that into the sentence. Maybe I'm just stupid. :D

ingrid70
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Post by ingrid70 »

Hi Poema,

You're learning Latin, ergo, you're not stupid :).

What you have here is a passive perfect tense.
Aedificatae sunt means: they have been built. Because the subject, urbs, is plural feminine, the passive perfect participle, aedificatae, is plural feminine too.

e.g.
murus aedificatus est - the wall has been built
muri aedificati sunt - the walls have been built
urbs aedificata est
urbes aedificatae sunt
oppidum aedificatum est
oppida aedificata sunt

Hope this helps.

Ingrid

primitive
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Post by primitive »

Passive voice can be thought in this way.

The boy kicks the ball.

Here the subject is the boy. The boy is doing the kicking. This is active voice. It is present tense.

The ball is kicked by the boy.

Here, the same ball is kicked. The tense is present. So what is the difference? The subject is not doing the action. It is being acted upon. Its kind of like it becomes the direct object, but still the subject. The passive voice is formed by taking the 4th principle part of a verb, getting the right gender and number, and adding a form of the verb to be. For example, the perfect tense passive would use the present form of sum. This is just like yours.

aedificatae sunt

Poema
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Post by Poema »

Hi Ingrid,

I had been under the impression that present participles had ended in "ens."

Now I seem to recall that the past participle is sort of like an adjective and it has a form for each gender. Is that correct?

Thank you for your very helpful replies.

Cheers,
Poema

ingrid70
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Post by ingrid70 »

Yes, the present participle ends in -ens or -ans. There are three different participles:

present active: laudans, monens, regens, audiens
perfect passive: laudatus, monitus, rectus, auditus
future active: laudaturus, moniturus, recturus, auditurus.

Note that the future resembles the perfect, but the first is active (being about to praise), and the latter passive (praised).

All the participles can act as adjectives, and have to agree with the noun they belong to: puer ridens (the laughing boy); pueri ridentes (the laughing boys).

Ingrid

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