BLD Exercise 63

[smatsik]

I have a question concerning the key for question 2 of this exercise. It goes

Quid bona filia agricolae parat?

The key translates this as

What does the farmer's good daughter prepare? with agricolae in the genitive.

I translated it as

What does the good daughter prepare for the farmer? with agricolae in the dative.

It appears that the usage of agricolae in this is ambiguous. Am I correct in that assumption or is there something I am missing?

Steve

[Kasper]

Hi Smatsik,

you are correct, agricola is ambiguous here. You're answer is fine.

[smatsik]

Thanks Kasper.

Thats what I thought, but as I am a beginner at languages just wanted to check so as to avoid developing bad habits.

[Os Ridiculum]

Not sure if this will help; but, here are my thoughts.

This may be one of those cases where it is 'understood' from the context that the genitive is used.

Why? Because the word daughter was chosen, not girl.

A daughter is a daughter of someone.

Who? The farmer.

If you reverse your translation from English to Latin this may help.

[smatsik]

Os Ridiculum,

Sorry not to respond sooner but I have been busy and unable get back to this. My question is based on the fact that in the immediately preceding exercise one of the sentences to translate into Latin was "(His) daughter is getting (parat) a good dinner for the farmer." Here the genitive is implied while the dative is used explicitly. It just seemed to me to be more appropriate to treat agricolae as the dative in view of this connection. Even here I still think it is probably ambiguous if both sentences were in Latin and I probably would go with the genitive myself.

Steve