In LLPSI Cap. XXV Orberg explains ‘coepit’ in the sentence: Quae cum primum Theseum conspexit, eum amare coepit constituitque eum servare - as follows:
incipere, -io coepisse coeptum.
Now these are two different verbs that mean the same thing. Why is he implying they’re irregular in the same way as ferro, ferre, tuli, latum…? Or is he?
I don’t really understand what Orberg is getting at here.
Incipio and Coepio are both 3rd declension i-stem verbs with basically the same meaning. However, it’s not as if they are part of the same verb like “ferro, ferre, tuli, latus.”
Perhaps by placing them together he’s just suggesting that they are synonymous and follow the same pattern.
The verb coepi is basically a defective verb that is found only in the perfect. If you see “coepit” in a Latin author, you should assume you are dealing with the PERFECT, not the present.
Here in Lewis & Short (http://athirdway.com/glossa/?s=coepio) the “classical present” is given as incipio, because coepio is not standard classical Latin at all.
The Oxford Latin Dictionary (not online) takes the approach that I would recommend: it lists coepi, coepisse, coeptum - PERFECT forms only; no present forms for this verb. Admittedly, it’s confusing when you see a verb that exists only in the perfect system (like odi, memini, etc.), but it’s better just to get used to those verbs being perfect. Learning the form coepio is misleading at best; I would instead learn two separate verbs:
incipio, incipere, incepi, inceptum
—, —, coepi (coepisse), coeptum
I kind of think of the case of incipere/coepisse as a partial case of suppletion. Suppletion is when two verbs that were historically separate become parts of the same verb, like how “go” and “wend” merged into “go”, with the past form of “wend” – “went” – displacing “goed”. The various forms of “ferre” came from the same process.
The interesting thing about incipio, though, is that the perfect and participal forms of “incipio” have remained side-by-side rather than disappearing. In any case, whether you consider “coepisse” to be a form of “incipere” is something of an arbitrary choice, but since Latin has other verbs that lack present forms, it’s more typical to consider them separate. (Most if not all the other verbs lacking present forms still carry present meaning, though – ōdī means “I hate”, not “I hated” – but “coepī” always means “I began” or “I have begun”, not “I am beginning”, so coepisse is still special in that respect.)
Very interesting. I had no idea that coepi was a defective verb! I’ll keep that in mind the next time I try my hand at any composition.
Many thanks to you all. I did spot later in 501 latin verbs that coepi doesn’t have present, imperfect or future tense.