Just wanted to check my understanding of a sentence:
Dorippa flores extra limen iacentes ianitori monstrat
I think this translates as:
Dorippa points out the flowers lying outside the threshold to the janitor
I just wanted to query as in this case I know that she’s pointing at the flowers and not the janitor BUT … if it was three people rather than two and some flowers, how do I know WHO she’s pointing at? Is it the case that the nominative points at the accusative, to bring it to the attention of the dative?
I think this is a case where the English is getting in the way. “pointing at” and “pointing out” can both have roughly the same meaning in English as “monstro” in Latin, but grammatically they’re different constructions. “point at” and “point out” are phrasal verbs (in other words, they require both the verb and the preposition to make the proper sense and so function as a unit). In Latin, it’s much more straight forward: “monstro” takes a direct object (points out something) and can also take an indirect object (to somebody). The direct object will be in the accusative, the indirect object in the dative. So now I think you can answer your own question! How would you write “Dorippa points out the flowers to the janitor and the watchman (custos, ōdis)”?