Latin
Except the main case (Dativus), there are several other kinds:
- Dativus finalis with the meaning of purpose, e.g., auxilio vocare - "to call for help", venio auxilio - "I'm coming for help", accipio dono - "I receive this as a gift" or puellae ornamento est - "this serves for the girl's decoration";
- Dativus commodi (incommodi), which means action for somebody, e.g., Graecis agros colere - "to till fields for Greeks"; Combination of Dativus commodi and finalis (double Dative): tibi laetitiae "to you for joy"
- Dativus possessivus (possessive dative) which means possession, e.g., angelis alae sunt - literally "to (or for) the angels are wings", this is typically found with a copula and translated as "the angels have wings".
- Dativus ethicus (ethic dative) indicates that the person in the dative is or should be especially concerned about the action, e.g., 'quid mihi Celsus agit?' ' What is Celsus doing' (I am especially interested in what it is)?
- Dativus auctoris, meaning; 'in the eyes of', e.g., 'vir bonus mihi videtur' 'the man seems good to me'.
- The Dative is also used to express agency with the gerundive, a future passive participle that, along with the verb to be, expresses obligation or necessity of the action being performed on the noun with which it agrees, e.g., 'haec nobis agenda sunt,' 'these things must be done by us'
Read more about this topic: Dative Case
Famous quotes containing the word latin:
“OUR Latin books in motly row,
Invite us to our task
Gay Horace, stately Cicero:
Yet theres one verb, when once we know,
No higher skill we ask:
This ranks all other lore above
Weve learned Amare means to love!”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (18321898)
“He tries by a peculiar speech to speak
The peculiar potency of the general,
To compound the imaginations Latin with
The lingua franca et jocundissima.”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)
“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
—George Orwell (19031950)