Hello,
I have a short M&R question (I post it here because the M&R forum seems stalled).
Does the proposition “Amare est reginae nautaeque” should be translated as “To love is proper to the queen and the sailor”?
This seems to be a case of posessive dative with the object in infinitive. Am I right? But the sense does not fit the context properly…
Thanks for any advices!
Salve nivaca
Just genitive, I believe, and “to love” is the subject:
Solummodò genetivo casu, ut credo, et subjectum est “amare”:
It is the habit of/in the nature of/what you expect of a queen and a sailor to love.
Wouldn’t you say it’s a pun, also, on “amare”, surely: “to love” and “from the sea”.
Nonnè adnominationem seu lusum sono “amare” vocabuli id esse dicas: “amare” et “â mare”.
My money is on dative of reference. I do agree that the infinitive is the subject. My take: It is for the queen and sailor to love.
Salve paulusnb
Those nouns aren’t, and cannot be, in a dative of reference case. As A&G say, you know the dative of reference right away because you can omit it without damaging the sentence. “Amare est” would be incomplete as a sentence. And infinitive + genitive of characteristic + ‘est’ is a pretty common construction.
Dativo casu referendi illa nomina non sunt, nec esse possunt. Ut dicunt A&G, referendi dativum statim agnoscatur quià, etsi id omittes, sensum in toto non dirrumpes. Imperfectum ut sententia sit “amare est”. Non rara etiam haec formula: infinitivum et genetivum descriptivum unâ cum ‘est’ verbo.
I have never heard that about the dative of reference. I will have to look it up. I cannot think of an instance where an infinitive takes a genitive. I will look that up as well.
Thanks.
Gratias omnibus vobis!
I was puzzled, since this is from the first lesson of the M&F, and its grammar hadn’t been explained by the authors yet.
Nicolas Vaughan
No problem. In the meantime, I see these references: A&G §376, §343c
Licet. Intereà, eccest quod prae manibus habeo.
What’s M&F, nivaca? Quid est?
Inveni! Moreland and Fleischer
Well, Hells Bells Adrianus, you are right, and I shall stick my pedem in my os. Here it is. http://books.google.com/books?id=Q7cAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=Allen+and+Greenough+Genitive+of+Characteristic&source=bl&ots=tNI6YiFi3V&sig=FmWxEuiqhGkhOzU2WPUGpjDUGwA&hl=en&ei=sW4TSvvGGoeJtgfz3tWaBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA212,M1.
This guy explains it too. http://www.resipsa.eu/lia/grammar/pdf/cases_genitive.pdf
Where have I been? I have never seen this. Or at least when I have, maybe I assumed it was something else.
The Morland & Fleischer’s Latin: An Intensive Course book.
nivaca
I infinitely impersonate an ouroboros, too. We need a new party piece.
Et ego ad infinitum ouroboroa simulo. Nostrum est novum convivium offerre.
Hi nivaca.
(Sticking my remum in)
Whereabouts is the quote? I can’t find it in my copy. Is it from the preliminary (1976) edition perhaps, and they didn’t like it either by the time of the 1977 one?
Hi phil96,
I’ve got the 1974 preliminary edition. The quote is from page 29, part III. Reading (second to last line). However, I also found it in the most recent edition (but I don’t have it here to tell you its locus).
Cheers,
nivaca
Ah! I have the later edition (1977) and the corresponding part of the Reading from Unit 1 is smoother and simpler:
Poēta fābulam nārrat dē rēgīnā et nautā. Rēgīna cum turbā incolārum ē patriā exit et ad Africam appropinquat. Ibi novam patriam aedificābat sed nōn timēbat. Subitō nauta cum turbā et incolārum et fēminārum ē patriā Trōiā ad rēgīnae patriam appropinquat. In Africā diū manent. > Rēgīna nautam amat et nauta rēgīnam. > Fāma enim rēgīnae nōn erat cūra. Postrēmō nauta rēgīnam relinquit et rēgīna vītam.
Yes. And since the authors don’t explain the predicative genitive until a later lesson, it surprised me to find it here.
I wondered why the authors originally chose to use the genitive of characteristic. Before I read the following, I imagined (given the context now supplied) “Amare est reginae nautaeque” should be translated like “The queen and sailor are destined to be in love”. Now I see (unless I misunderstand) it can mean just “The queen and the sailor are/fall in love”, referring to an internal emotional state, and not necessarily a permanent one.
Me rogavi cur illi auctores istam formulam (per genetivum qualitatis) primitùs scripissent. Ante id legendum quod sequerit, illam formulam rem quae permanet indicare credideram. Quod qualitas affectûs interna et temporaria cogitanda sit nihil obstare nunc (nisi malè intellego) video.
E. C. Woodcock, “Review: Ablative and Genitive of Quality”, The Classical Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (May, 1947), pp. 22-23 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/704581) Review of Genetivus und Ablativus Qualitatis by Eirik Vandvik
Attention is called to semantic change of value in the various genitive expressions which are usually classed together as Genitives of Quality. V[andvik] would restrict this term to genitive expressions in which the noun denotes a real quality or characteristic (vir maximi anirni, summae audaciae, etc.), and would exclude those in which the noun denotes something external which, with its epithet, serves as a means of classifying (res eius modi, magni periculi res, multi cibi hospes, magni sunt oneris, puer decem annorurm). The latter types are the earlier, and of the former there are only two examples in early Latin. But these classifying expressions, in most of which the possessive idea of ’ belonging to a class’ is fairly clear, were capable of developing a secondary qualitative sense (e.g. magni oneris suggests ‘patience’, ’ endurance’; multi cibi suggests ’ greediness’, etc.). This led to the extension of the construction to nouns denoting internal characteristics and to epithets other than demonstrative or quantitative (homo animi perditi), in which expressions the possessive idea is no longer clear. The bridge between the nouns denoting external things and those denoting internal characteristics is further strengthened by an appeal to the primitive habit of personification. Just as this enabled an external abstract quality to be expressed as an accompaniment by the ablative (femina eximia forma), so an internal quality, such as courage, virtue, vice, when personified into a principle which pervaded, possessed, or governed a person or thing, was naturally expressed by the genitive. V. thus agrees with Edwards and Wolfflin in deriving the Genitive of Quality from the idea of possession, and follows the generally accepted derivation of the Ablative of Quality from the Sociative-Instrumental. But he differs from them in his conclusions about the difference in the underlying sense of the two constructions. It is not that the ablative expresses temporary and the genitive permanent characteristics, but that the ablative originally expressed external, and the genitive internal qualities. The ablative was the normal method of expressing permanent as well as temporary external characteristics from Plautus to Cicero, while the use of the genitive to express external characteristics is poetic and post-Augustan, i.e. cervus vasti corporis is not classical. On the other hand, the extension of the ablative to express internal qualities had already taken place in the time of Plautus. This was due to two main causes: (i) The adverbial origin of the Ablative of Quality caused it to be preferred whenever the quality was predicated, even when the quality was internal. In Cicero 66 per cent. of the Ablatives of Quality are predicative. (2) Authors up to Cicero had some objection to genitives of the third, fourth, and fifth declensions in this construction, and so used the ablatives of them even of internal qualities and adnominally. There is not enough difference between the appearance of a quality, viewed as an accompaniment, and its actual existence apart from appearances, to prevent the use of the ablative to express internal and essential qualities, whenever stylistic or other reasons favoured it…
Authors are divided into two groups: (I), the early dramatic poets, Cicero, Caesar, Nepos, and Sallust; (2), Cicero’s correspondents, the ‘Caesarian’ authors of B.G. viii, Bellum Alex., Hispan., and Afric., Livy,. and the authors of the Silver Age. Tacitus, with a finer linguistic sense than other authors of his age, shows a tendency to return to classical usage, and occupies a position midway between the two groups. The authors of the first group, particularly Cicero and Caesar, were keenly alive to the distinctions between the two constructions, which are indicated above. In them apparent disregard of the inner sense can be traced to observable reasons, semantic or stylistic. But their reasons were not appreciated by the authors who followed them. These began to prefer the genitive for both external and internal qualities, both predicatively and adnominally; genitives of the third and fourth declensions were no longer banned, etc., and from Livy onwards the distinction in sense between the ablative and genitive in these expressions was clearly no longer felt…
It is probable that the findings of this investigation, as often happens, are too complicated to be fully expounded in text-books intended for schools and colleges, but present methods of exposition must be modified in the light of them.
Wow! Thanks for the information. It’s very useful.
Sudden about face! I may be wrong about this. I’m muddled. The genitive of quality is not the genitive of characteristic.
Recursum subitum (seu conversionem signorum subitam)! De hâc re, fortassè erro. Turbida mens mihi. Qualitatis genetivus non est genetivus praedicativus.