Wednesday, October 30, 2024

27.01.25: Level 2; the passive voice [27]: the perfect passive [8]; the fourth principal part / perfect passive participle: ways of learning [1]; Dr Lecter’s method!

The perfect passive occurs all the time in Classical Latin literature, far more than the other passive forms which is why more time has been spent on it.

In a previous post I mentioned that most of the time they are easy to identify since they end in -tus, -ta, -tum or -sus, -sa, -sum and bear a resemblance to other forms of the verb. If your focus is primarily to recognise them when reading then they rarely pose a challenge. However, if you want to get them into your head, spell them and be able to reproduce them in speaking or writing then we can dig a little deeper. In doing so, we’ll see that a huge number of them appear in English derivatives i.e. we reverse engineer the English derivative which will show that it is telling you what the perfect passive participle is.

When you look at all the participle forms they seem random and difficult to work out, yet you see them all the time not only in Latin, but also in English! Follow Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s comment from the movie Red Dragon: “The answer was right in front of you. You looked, but didn’t see.”

First conjugation

laudō, laudāre, laudāvī, ¦ laudātus, -a, -um

Stem: laudā- + -tus, -ta, -tum > laudātus, -a,-um │ (having been) praised

The English suffix -ate is derived from the perfect passive participle -ātus, -āta, -ātum of 1st conjugation verbs:

advocō, advocāre, advocāvī, advocātus: call for > Engl. advocate

aliēnō, aliēnāre, aliēnāvī, aliēnātus: estrange > Engl. alienate

captīvō, captivāre, captīvāvī, captīvātus: take captive > Engl. captivate

creō, creāre, creāvī, creātus: create > Engl. create

cūrō, cūrāre, cūrāvī, cūrātus: take care of > Engl. curate

dōnō, dōnāre, dōnāvī, dōnātus: gīve; present > Engl. donate

negō, negāre, negāvī, negātus: deny > Engl. negate

ōrnō, ōrnāre, ōrnāvī, ōrnātus: adorn > Engl. ornate

sēdō, sēdāre, sēdāvī, sēdātus: settle > Engl. sedate

dō, dare, dedī, datum: give > Engl. data


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