Salvete,
I found sentence 43 of Prendergast’s The Mastery Series: Latin somewhat surprising:
Considering that the main sentence has a secondary tense, I expected the verb of the dependent clause to be in the imperfect subjunctive (ut…castigaret). Why present subjunctive instead? According to A&G it is possible, but hardly the ordinary case. Or am I missing some nuance in the English sentence?
Valete,
Carolus Raeticus
Indicative perfect can be a present tense for the purpose of sequence.
I re-read your post and I see that you consulted a grammar, so you already knew what I answered. Let me just add that I think Prendergast’s sentence can work, if you consider the result of the hastening as being a present state.
Is properavit perhaps an instance of the perfect-with-have, as some call it, which IIRC, may sometimes be treated as primary sequence?
Here is James Morwood:
The ‘perfect with have’ is a shorthand expression for a perfect which tells us about a present state, e. g. cognovi (I [have got to] know), intellexi (I [have understood =] understand), and venistis (you [have come=] are present. (p. 87)
@hlawson38
Precisely.
The Latin perfect indicative actually represents two different tenses (as you’ll discover when you learn Greek), one of them primary, the other secondary. dixi=“I have spoken” is primary, like present or future, with dependent clauses in present or perfect subjunctive in accordance with regular sequence rules, while dixi=“I spoke” is secondary, like imperfect or pluperfect.
Amicus meus iratus properavit ut nuntium patrui tui castigaret
would mean (in Prendergast’s quaintly archaic English)
My angry friend hastened in order that he might chastise the messenger of thy uncle.
Thank you for your comprehensive answers. But I am still wondering, would an English native speaker, who is sufficiently proficient in Latin, choose the Latin tense Prendergast used based on his English sentence? Or is Prendergast’s English sentence itself, in this specific respect, rather antiquated?
Valete,
Carolus Raeticus
As a native English speaker, I don’t feel that his use of “has hastened” is antiquated. It does have a present-tense feel to it that would justify the use of the pres. subj., but I personally would have chosen the imperfect since it’s far more frequent. Have you seen any other uses of “has” with the pres. subj. in this book?
would an English native speaker, who is sufficiently proficient in Latin, choose the Latin tense Prendergast used based on his English sentence?
Well, this one would. With all due respect to Nesrad, it’s entirely regular.
If the main clause had “hastened” as its verb, the purpose clause would have imperfect subjunctive. But with “has hastened,” castiget present is used.
I tried to explain in my post. The Latin perfect has collapsed two discrete tenses, the true perfect (as in “he has hastened”), a primary tense, and the aorist (as in “he hastened”), a secondary one. Any given perfect indic. in Latin is either the one or the other, and that makes a corresponding difference to the syntax.
I totally agree. My point was that as an automatism I would have used the imperfect subj. (which would not have been the best choice in this instance).
Thank you for the clarification. I do not know whether similar cases will occur later on, but I shall look out for those.
Valete,
Carolus Raeticus