I would say that the overall thing to learn from this whole discussion is this: Unless clearly marked by ne/non, 1sg, etc., it is not worth stressing over a form such as ceperint.
There is not anything to be gained semantically by forcing a parsing upon the verbal form. In the other subjunctive/indicative tenses this is not the case and a single parsing must be sought.
I have been reading Latin almost daily for about 3 years now, and have come across many such forms. I leave forms such as ceperint ambiguous and have never failed to understand a single Latin phrase because of it.
Of course, maybe interficio should not be understood as simply meaning “to kill” or “to destroy”. Maybe we should concern ourselves about the subtle distinction the verb conveys… It appears to mean something like “to do through (to completion)” and not simply “to kill”.
Calvinist, I am definitely far more interested in interpreting the meaning of things rather than fretting over the grammar when there are other more pressing concerns with regard to the meaning! This saying from the Bible, for example, is of great interest for all kinds of reasons; I posted about a rhyming Latin proverb - Qui gladio ferit, gladio perit - in a blog post some years ago, which was of course an occasion to discuss Omnes enim, qui acceperint gladium, gladio peribunt - here’s that old post: http://audiolatinproverbs.blogspot.com/2006/09/qui-gladio-ferit-gladio-perit.html
The original Greek is: παντες γαρ οι λαβοντες μαχαιραν εν μαχαιρη απολουνται.
The Greek uses an aorist participle οι λαβοντες → “those who have taken” … further proof that the form of the verb is less important than the expressed meaning.
I’ve expressed this idea before. It’s important to remember that an author/speaker begins with a message which is then filtered through his particular language, style, etc., and manifests itself in some grammatical/syntactical form shaped and limited by the constraints of the particular language. We are presented with the output, and must work our way back to the input… the original message. This entails analysis of grammar, but it is much more than that. I think we can become overly fascinated with the system that is grammar and forget the one and only purpose of language: to transmit ideas across a seemingly impassible chasm of symbolic abstractions into the heart and mind of the hearer.
I’m only just on Chapter 3 of Pharr’s Homeric Greek: desperately fighting the Hydra of Accents on the lowest level of the Dungeon of Phonology with only the Wooden Shield of Interest and the Plastic Sword of Persistence for protection. κᾱλὴ βουλή…
I think I’ll just go and lie down…
Seriously, thanks to all who replied to my question: the thread went rather deeper than I expected, but I did enjoy it!
Hi David, one thing to observe from Calvinist’s invocation of the Greek here: Greek, unlike Latin, has an aorist active participle. One of the great imbalances in Latin, and one of its biggest difference from Greek, is that Greek has an aorist active participle, and Latin does not.
Although Latin verbs gives you a choice of aspect AND voice (when you want a passive verb, you can put it in the present or the perfect; when you want an active verb, you can put it in the present or the perfect), the Latin participle forces you into a very restrictive combined choice perfect/passive OR present/active - if you really want an active participle in Latin, you have no choice but to use present aspect; if you really want a passive participle in Latin, you have no choice but to use perfect aspect. Likewise, if you really want a perfect participle, you have no choice but to use passive voice; if you really want a present participle, you have no choice but to use active voice. So, if you are ever scratching your head over a Latin participle, remember the LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE and the way that the options are very symmetrical indeed, but very limited.
A great laboratory to watch the strange consequences of this problem is exactly the Latin translation of the New Testament. In general, the Latin follows the Greek with amazing closeness… but every time the Greek uses an aorist active participle, which is very often indeed since it is a commonly used form, the Latin translator has a kind of crisis: what to do? The use of a relative clause, as in this verse, is one of those possible solutions. Even someone with just a little Greek can learn a lot from looking at the Greek and Latin New Testament side by side; Sacred Texts Polyglot Bible online makes it easy to do that! http://sacred-texts.com/bib/poly/index.htm
Apologies for going back over old ground, but I’ve just noticed this.
I’ve checked and none of my textbooks (Allen and Greenhough, Orberg / Neumann, Collins Latin Dictionary) has an ī in any of the endings of either tense - they are uniformly short. The only difference they note between the Perfect Subjunctive and the Future Perfect Active is the first person (-erim / -erō).
From the research I’ve done it appears that Adrianus is technically correct. Many Latin teachers and books do not stress this point because it is not reflected in the orthography and in many cases a form like ceperimus is ambiguous in a written text.
It notes that the perfect subjunctive is formed from the future perfect tense, with a modal marker in the final vowel. This would be a very subtle distinction in both meaning and pronunciation. Latin did not have a strong stress accent, which means that the only difference between the perfect subjunctive and the future perfect was a very slight shift in accent (only in 1pl and 2pl, and probably unnoticeable to our ears), and a lengthening of the final -i-. This is assuming that the speaker is speaking slowly and being careful to enunciate his words properly, which even educated speakers don’t generally do during everyday speech. The distinction between long/short vowels in final, unstressed syllables is very subtle, even in a language that distinguishes clearly between long/short. Combine this with the fact that the distinction between long/short vowels was already fading during the Imperial period, plus the fact that the two overlap considerably semantically, and the result is that people learning Latin as a second language (and even as a first language) probably did not distinguish them as two separate tenses.
An interesting paper - I’ve read the paragraph you point out and I’ve filed the link for more detailed reading later. It makes sense that there was a distinguishing feature between moods, and I had wondered why there wasn’t in Latin - hence my interest in Adrianus’s comments.
You’re welcome. As I’ve said earlier (and Laura), I don’t disagree entirely with Adrianus. I just think that in a sentence such as Omnes qui ceperint gladium, gladio peribunt, it is not worth the time sorting out whether ceperint is perf.subj. or fut.perf.ind. Actually, the -i- in ceperint would be short either way, since final -nt always shortens the preceding vowel whether it is meant to be long or not. So it truly would be ambiguous even being pronounced by a careful orator such as Cicero.
Yes, the distinction between the indicative and subjunctive moods is important and noteworthy. However, the hypothetical use of the subjunctive (as opposed to its other uses in dependent clauses) can blur with the future tense, as we see in this case.
Either way you look at it Omnes qui ceperint gladium, gladio peribunt is describing a hypothetical situation. “If one takes the sword, he will die by the sword” is semantically identical, although the subject has moved 180* from the all inclusive “all” to the indefinite “one”, and other structural elements have changed. The meaning is exactly the same.
Thank you for that link! I’ve wanted to have something like this, but thought I’d have to buy one of those expensive Bible software packages. Which version of the Vulgate is it? I prefer the Nova Vulgata, since it matches the Greek more closely.
I am not sure about the version - I just use that polyglot as a quick-and-dirty reference. It could even be that Nova Vulgata is copyrighted (I am not really sure about that - it’s fascinating and depressing the way that copyright issues affect very much just which Greek and Latin Bible texts you will find online).
Another good resource, but not for Greek, is the Bible at New Advent, which has the Douay-Rheims English translation is done from the Latin rather than King James: http://www.newadvent.org/bible/mat001.htm
One last thought about the future perfect / perfect subjunctive discussion that I think is worth remembering: the future is just not as “indicative” as the other indicative tenses. That’s why I don’t fuss about the ambiguity of forms like “Quid faciam?” either - faciam could be future (so-called) indicative, or present subjunctive, but to me the future and subjunctive are so close in meaning (something I would obviously not say about present indicative and present subjunctive!), that I don’t fret about the formal ambiguity.
Adrianus, I think you are missing a very important point about language in general. Languages are fundamentally different not in what they can express, but in what they force their speakers to express. A Latin author was required to choose one of the tenses, and the fact that he chose one does not always mean that he felt that it expressed some subtle distinction that he wanted to convey… now we are thinking backwards. We are thinking that the distinctions which a language makes with its tenses are the exact distinctions that an author sees as important. Not true.
Chinese has no verbal tense system. It can express time with words like “tomorrow” or some particles which mark aspect. However, a Chinese verb can be totally unmarked in a way that a verb in an Indo-European language cannot. A Chinese speaker only includes time or aspect in his communication if he considers it relevant. In Latin we are forced to pick a time and aspect every time we use a verb. Many times we just pick one that fits, not because we really felt we needed to express all the subtleties of that tense, but because we had to pick something. The infinitive is unmarked, but we cannot use the infinitive to replace all our verbal forms in everyday speech.
Another example. In English we do not mark gender on nominals. The languages descended from Latin do. Consider this sentence:
“I went to see a friend.”
I do not have to express the gender of the friend if I think this is irrelevant to what I’m trying to communicate. The point is that I saw a friend. The gender is an accidental issue to me. Latin and its descendants must reveal the gender of the friend even if it’s considered irrelevant.
The elaborate system of tenses provides a very efficient system of expressing many subtle distinctions which a language like Chinese would have to describe in a roundabout way. This is a benefit when you need to express those distinctions. But at the same time, the system is always there, even when you don’t need it, constantly forcing you to mark both the time and aspect on verbs, number on nouns, etc. The language cannot be stripped of these added semantic features. You must choose.
Back to our example, “I went to see a friend.” English forces less upon the speaker than Latin does, but Chinese allows the speaker almost complete freedom to reveal only what he wants… <— note the English pronoun forces a gender distinction even now when I don’t want it to! Anyway, the Chinese would not be forced to explicitly state the time (past) or number of the noun (singular). We may think these are necessary, but that’s because we speak English!! The Chinese have built one of the greatest empires in history without a forced tense/aspect verbal system or gender/number nominal system. It works fine for them. Actually, it worked fine for them. You know what? The time really doesn’t matter… for them, work fine.
Calvinist, I have copied and pasted that post to use for future reference. That is one of the clearest expressions of the balance between structure and expression in language… I know others might see language differently, but I really agree with your approach and I really value the way you have expressed it here! Thank you!
Thank you! It’s insight that I’ve gained from long discussions with one of my linguistics professors and also by my own study and comparison of Latin, English, Chinese, Spanish, and Greek, which describe the exact same reality and yet do so in sometimes completely opposite ways.
Following from this…in the sentence “Omnes qui ceperint gladium, gladio peribunt” which one tense (the original question) was the author forced to choose? Alternatively, if you think that two tenses can have identical meanings (“I will” and “I might”, in English, as you have said) then how does language “force” me to choose between them?
Secundum hunc locum…Cum ita sententiâ “Omnes qui ceperint gladium, gladio peribunt”, quod unum tempus à scriptore optandum erat? Contrà, si dicas dua tempora eodem significationem habere (ut praeter “I will” et “I might” dixisti), quomodo tunc lingua in ipsâ me compellat ut inter eis eligam?
You do but “we” don’t, because I try not to. Of course, though, I often make mistakes in Latin.
Tu sic facis, nos non facimus, cum ego diversum facere coner. Saepè autem latinè erro.
If you do not want it to, speak otherwise in English (say “one”). Not that it does force a gender distinction necessarily. In latin and in English, the masculine gender (“he” in English / “amicus” in Latin) CAN stand for masculine or feminine (undetermined).
Si non sic audeas, aliter sones. Verò interìm femininum genus in anglicè “he” pronomine includitur non minùs latinè cum homine ut amico non descriptè expresso, vel includi potest.
The first and second sentences above work fine; the third is not proper English. (One what went to the store?) The fact is, in some instances, English forces one (grin) to mark gender where one may not wish to. This fact is born out by the silly movement by some “womyn’s” studies nuts to lobby for a new, gender-neutral pronoun “ze”, which is applicable to humans (unlike “it”).
