Salvēte amīcī,
For example, in the phrase (from Matthew 26.52, vi LLPSI…):
Omnēs enim quī cēperint gladium, gladiō perībunt.
If I’ve understood this correctly, cēperint could be both “who might have taken up the sword (already)”, or “will have taken up the sword (in future)”. There seems to be a distinction in meaning there - is it one Latin recognises? How can you tell which is being used?
Many thanks
David
There is a huge amount of overlap between the future and the subjunctive in Latin, because in a sense the future is subjunctive; it is not an event actually taking place or which has taken place - the future cannot really be indicative when you think about it, right? Indo-European did not have a future tense because it is not really indicative… and so all the I-E languages had to evolve the notion of a future tense. They did that in a lot of different ways (look at “will” in English), and the subjunctive was one common way that languages used to express the idea of the future. That is what happened with Latin. The actual forms of the Latin future (hodge-podge that they are) actually EVOLVED from old forms of the subjunctive in Latin. (If you have a copy of Palmer’s The Latin Language, there is a good description of how that happened on p. 271-272).
So, making a distinction between the perfect subjunctive and the future perfect is a bit of a grammatical red herring: there is a reason why the forms are (almost) identical - it is because the meaning is identical, too.
So, think about it this way: the future really IS a subjunctive kind of thing, something that may/might happen but which has not happened yet, so the idea of subjunctive perfect and future perfect are really the same thing. If someone will have or if someone might have grabbed the sword, he will (surely) die by it. Same meaning either way.
Laura
Thanks very much for the explanation- fascinating how different languages approach common concepts and how they evolve. I shall add Palmer to my already too long reading list…
Regards
David
The future tense in particular is absolutely FULL of weirdness of all kinds, as you can see just from the odd imbalances in the verb tables: there is a present subjunctive, and a perfect subjunctive… but no future subjunctive! Right there, that sets off all kinds of alarm bells: if the indicative mood and subjunctive mood are “paired” (as they clearly are)… then the absence of a subjunctive mood for the future is a clue right there as to the weird evolution of the future tense, which is really only sort-of-indicative! 
Would that I were such who one day might understand all this… 
Not strictly the same, I reckon. Consider the first person plural.
Eadem strictìm non sunt, ut puto. Personam pluralis numeri primam tractemus.
Non subjunctivo modo // not subjunctive
“Nōs omnēs quī cēperīmus gladium [per i longam, id est perfecti temporis subjunctivo modo], gladiō perībimus.”
sed indicativo // but indicative
“Nōs omnēs quī cēperimus [per i correptam, id est futuri perfecti temporis indicativo modo] gladium, gladiō perībimus.”
quod vividior affectus temporis futuri habetur cum protasis perfecta ante est apodosis // because a vivid future condition is intended with protasis completed before apodosis.*
Had it been less vivid, it would have been // Si minùs vividum, ità fuisset:
“Nōs omnēs quī cēperīmus gladium [per i correptam, id est perfecti temporis subjunctivo modo], gladiō pereāmus.”
(“All of us may die who would take up the sword”)
*QUI clause as protasis // Clausula pronomine relativo incepta ut protasis habeatur (A&G §519)
I think that’s a little too technical and splitting hairs. How many native Latin speakers could cite a technical grammar “rule” like this? Real language is about communicating ideas, not rigorous adherence to “rules”. I bet that if we could go back in time and ask an everyday native Latin speaker that he/she wouldn’t register any difference in meaning between the two. Or wait, should I say “I bet” or should I say “I would bet”… what’s the difference in meaning?
Maybe someone 2000 years from now will look back in time and split hairs over the differences in Ancient English “I bet” and “I would bet”. They’d probably love to analyze the enormous semantic difference between “If I was a rich man” and “If I were a rich man”. One is technically past tense, while the other is subjunctive. The interesting thing is that 99% of native English speakers couldn’t care less, and the only real difference to them is that the use of the subjunctive (If I were) sounds more “formal”.
Don’t take offense adrianus, I just think we can get a little too rigid with our understanding of how grammar really relates to language sometimes. I quit fussing over future perfect indicative/perfect subjunctive a long time ago. They’re identical in form except in 1sg, and as laura said they are nearly identical semantically. After considering how my own native language is very confused sometimes about how to express probable/possible/future/conditional events, I realized it has more to do with the fact that probability/possibility/futurity are incredibly complex concepts which have inspired entire philosophical tomes. No wonder the grammar that deals with such ideas is not so neatly packed into a little box… the concepts themselves are deeply philosophical in nature. Note that the future tense is always learned by children after the present and past tenses (this has been noted by linguists studying children acquiring their native tongue). It’s the most complex tense conceptually. It references something that is non-existent.
A speaker need not articulate a rule but may still subtly and fluently use it. I said that I thought there is a basis for distinguishing usage or distinguishing meaning. Caring about that is a separate matter.
Possible est oratorem regulam grammaticam non citare atqui eum eâ facundè subtiliterque uti posse. Argumentum exstare quod usus sententiasque varias distinguere possit modò expressi. Utrum curae alicui sit, id rem non spectat.
I’m not so sure that there is that much of a difference in actual usage, but it’s hard to say since they are identical in form in almost every instance. So it becomes circular reasoning: We (grammarians) make a distinction between the two and then we use instances as proof of that distinction by saying ceperimus → perfect subjunctive and then ceperimus → future perfect indicative and the only way we know one is subjunctive and the other indicative is because of the rule we previously formulated since they are identical in form (circular reasoning). A native speaker wouldn’t go through such over-analysis. I’m not a grammar-anarchist in any way, but I have an aversion to overly rigid analysis of language because it’s quite simply unrealistic. Language is much more flexible than we make it appear to be in the vacuum of a textbook.
Take my example from English. What, if any, is the difference between “If I was the President” and “If I were the President”? As a native English speaker I recognize no difference in meaning between the two. Is it possible that the same situation was present with the future perfect indicative and the perfect subjunctive in Latin? I think so. In fact, this is not that uncommon. It’s not that people are not educated enough to know the grammar well, because even uneducated speakers make proper distinctions between the various past (simple, progressive) and present (simple, progressive) tenses. It’s always in the area of future/probability/wish/desire/possibility/etc. As I said, I think it has to do with the fuzziness of these ideas. Making fine distinctions between these various aspects of unrealized potentiality is a philosophical pursuit at base. In one sense, they are all the same. In another sense they might express subtle shades of meaning.
Some grammarians have noted that analysis of conditional statements into categories is not as helpful as might be thought at first. The intended meaning of the author is usually discovered by analysis of the context of the conditional statement and not by analyzing it’s category inside a vacuum. The intended meaning can go contrary to what a particular protasis-apodosis combination is “supposed” to mean.
As a linguistics major, I treat language primarily as a means of communicating ideas. The systems by which that is done are a secondary (and very interesting) concern. Those systems are not perfect, and are very flexible. Take the present tense in English, which is described as the tense of “now”. In everyday speech it’s used regularly in place of the future. It may even be used more often than the future in normal speech. “We fly out tomorrow” “Next week I’m buying that book” To say that these are an exception to the normal usage of the present tense is very deceptive, because it happens quite frequently. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if every one of us use the present tense like this every single day.
Not so // Minimé!
cēperō cēperim
cēperis cēperīs
cēperimus cēperīmus
cēperitis cēperītis
four out of six forms differ between those tenses. Similarities of spelling are more likely to confuse the non-native speaker, not the native speaker, except if they don’t care, of course (which is possible, indeed).
quattuor figurae ex sex inter ista tempora distinguuntur. Is qui sermones latinos non sonat ante qui facundè sonat figuras eiusdem orthographiae confundet, nisi id non curae ei sit, certé (quod benè possibile est).
Do we know with certainty that the distinctions in pronunciation were maintained by everyday speakers? Have you seen some of the graffiti in Rome that reveals that actual Latin wasn’t as pristine as we sometimes think it was? If we based English usage on a select few highly educated elitists we would have a very caricatured view of the language.
I still believe that if we could go back in time we would find that everyday speakers made little or no distinction between the two tenses. There’s a certain beauty to a perfect system… I agree. But sometimes we try to press a language into a perfect system when it really isn’t. And to be honest, there’s even greater beauty in a fluid, dynamic, constantly adapting language. Some hate the fact that languages are like this. Remember your high school English professor who made it very clear that “Can I go to the bathroom?” is incorrect, even though she was somehow the only person you knew that couldn’t understand the utterance, perhaps because she was sooo smart?
Knowledge of ignorance is not a basis for deduction. Variation is likely between people and peoples, but that’s not a reason to throw away the textbooks.
Hic ratiocinandi modus est exemplum argumenti ad ignorantiam. Quod variet usus inter et intra nationes credibile est; non autem praeter hoc ignorandae grammaticae.
That’s nice but evidence is good, too.
Placet at et bona vestigia.
The question was rhetorical; We do know that Latin was spoken differently than what we find written.
It’s widely known that Classical Latin was limited to writing and some rhetoric of the elites. Even the elites spoke differently in their everyday conversations. This is historical fact. You are aware that final -m was probably never pronounced or if it was it may have represented a nasalization of the final vowel? This has been deduced by the scansion of Latin poetry. http://www.lingua.co.uk/latin/tour/pronunciation/accusobsol/
Of course we don’t have written evidence (except in some graffiti and some other sources), because the written form was meant to be the high form of the language. It’s the same as when a student is writing a term paper. It is written in a style that is more elevated than even that of a formal speech. It’s not the way people (even educated people) speak though.
My point is that it’s important to realize that Latin authors were writing in a somewhat unnatural style from their everyday conversational medium and that can have an effect on their language.
All (well, sort of) true, yes, Calvinist, but not grounds to deduce that there was no distinction between the future perfect indicative and the perfect subjunctive,—to contradict the textbooks.
Vera quidem plerumque dicis, Calvinistice, sed rationes non das cur careant discrimina inter tempora dicta, cur grammaticae errent.
Yes, I agree with you adrianus. But back to the original question in this thread, I think it’s a distinction that can be for the most part disregarded, especially when one is just beginning to read Latin. I spent a lot of time when I first started reading Latin feeling that I was stuck with an ambiguous form when I came across a form such as ceperimus and I couldn’t tell if it was subjunctive or indicative. After a while I realized it would mean basically the same thing either way, so I quit worrying about it. I’m still aware of the two possible parsings when I come across a form like that, but I just don’t worry about it anymore.
This is a much different case than in Greek where the 2pl present imperative is identical in form with the 2pl present indicative. There are instances in the NT where the context doesn’t make it certain which form is being used and you have a true ambiguity with two very different meanings.
According to Diomedes in his Ars Grammatica (the only thing I can find on this in Keil and not a “classical” grammarian, I know, but still an authority) these tenses are pronounced differently:
Secundum Diomedem in libro Artis Grammaticae (de hâc re solum argumentum apud Keil à me repertum at non classicus ille grammaticus, scio,—verumtamen verus peritus):
.
(I confess I would have said the opposite: there’s an acute on an accented future-perfect antepenultimate and that it wouldn’t be circumflected, and the accented penultimate of the perfect subjunctive would be circumflected!)
(Ut fateor, adversùm dixissem: acui non circumflecti futuro syllabam antepaenultimam et circumflecti paenultimam perfecti conjunctivi!)
As you know, reconstructing pronunciation is a very difficult task. And it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the desire for a distinct pronunciation between the tenses could influence one’s research… Keep in mind the text you cite was written during a time when linguistic “evidence” was used to prove that humans hadn’t fully developed color vision at the time of Homer because of the peculiar color descriptions he gives objects (his most frequent color words by far are ‘black’ and ‘white’). It’s very desirable to have distinct pronunciations for pedagogical reasons, and that desire could influence one’s research. I’m a realist… I don’t believe there’s such a thing as “objective” research, unless it’s a rock doing the research.
I was recently reading how the desire for a separate, distinct pronunciation for each Greek letter led to inaccurate descriptions of the “historical” pronunciation.
If there was a significant difference in meaning and pronunciation wouldn’t we expect some ancients mentioning the ambiguity in the written form that would be so obvious (and make a difference in meaning) in the spoken language? Anyone who surveyed the literature of our own time 2000 years from now would not have much difficulty finding discussions of the fact that “read” can be ambiguous as either present or past tense (which is obvious in pronunciation).
Disregard my last post; I was confused with another text. That source carries a lot of weight considering when it was published. Late 4th century I think I read? Either way, I still contend that in most cases the difference in meaning is non-existent. Worrying about which form it is in order to distinguish pronunciation makes it even more cumbersome I believe.
I believe it to be possible that differences can be real and can have tiny significances on various levels, and that subtleties and nuances make the use of language artful and lovely, and worth the cumbersome effort of study. And if I’m wrong about those differences, I hope to be corrected.
Exstare credo discrimina inter tempora sufficientes per modos varios significationes subtiles, quae significationes in ipsas artem loquendi blandam merentemque redunt, et operam studii gravem remunerant. Et si errem de discriminibus, corrigenda quaesam.
I rummaged in Palmer but don’t see evidence there to support the notion that, with the future perfect and the perfect subjunctive, “the meaning is identical”. Palmer is far more careful, I think, and instead allows lots of room for distinction.
He talks about the “cautious” nature of the subjunctive and I see that as the basis for opposing the more assertive notion of an indicative future in classical latin. For example, he says
And there are other ways in which the perfect subjunctive is certainly not a future perfect (as in a reported or oblique subjunctive in speech, A: “tecum fui” B: “tun mecum fueris!” or "A: “Quid fecit?” B: “quid ille fecerit? [me rogas]”, (Palmer, opus citatum, p.312).
Surely if I say (in "Latin and English), “By tomorrow night I will not have eaten a thousand bananas”, that does not mean the same as “By tomorrow night I might/would not have eaten a thousand bananas.” Ambiguous third-person forms are ambiguous precisely because they embody both meanings, not because there is no difference between meanings.
LIbrum Palmeris percurri at indicia nullubi inveni quae sustinent ut futurum perfectum indicativum et subjunctivum perfectum itidem interpretari possunt. Diligentior ille auctor qui multas distinguendi possibilitates admittit, ut opinor,—quae possibilitates contemplativam et pertinacem naturas discriminare possunt.
“Ad crastinum nocte mille arienas non edero”, nonne id aliter vult dicere quàm “Ad crastinum nocte mille arienas non ederim” et anglicè et latiné. Ambiguae quidem formae tertiae personae sed duplicitatem ambiguitas significat, non unitatem significationis.