Disputatio:Genus (discretiva)
Shouldn't the list be in the accusative case?
- It's better to start from the purpose and shape the grammar to fit. The grammar's not in charge, we are. A list in the nominative will correspond to pagenames, will not puzzle readers who are innocent of Latin grammar, and will be twice as fast to create and edit. Moreover, those pagenames are what this page is all about: if anything should be in the nominative, they should.
- I have to admit this particular problem never struck me before -- and I have a feeling that lists of this kind, preceded by a colon, do occur in recent Latin books -- but, if we decide the initial sentence pattern is unsuitable, we can redesign it. My first thought was to put the verb in the passive; but that might then demand a lemma in the ablative, which is possible but not desirable. So we want a different verb, perhaps. Our former colleague Nuada, who created vast numbers of discretiva pages, was using "est:" at one period. That works. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:24, 29 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- I was going to suggest "potest esse", and then I saw that a lot of disambiguation pages I clicked on in the "Discretiva" category simply had "potest" (example: Andalum (discretiva)). Is that correct? If so, I would be seduced by the conciseness. Sigur (disputatio) 13:14, 29 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- That was another of Nuada's styles. Neat, but unluckily I don't think "potest" works that way. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:08, 29 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Esse potest sounds ok to me. A mere potest would be a solecism. Neander (disputatio) 14:10, 29 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Surely a mere est wouldn't be! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:49, 30 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Esse potest or potest esse (bearing in mind that the predicate nouns linked by esse are following - not preceding)? Sigur (disputatio) 15:15, 29 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, very much so. Neander (disputatio) 16:51, 29 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Esse potest sounds ok to me. A mere potest would be a solecism. Neander (disputatio) 14:10, 29 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- That was another of Nuada's styles. Neat, but unluckily I don't think "potest" works that way. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:08, 29 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- I was going to suggest "potest esse", and then I saw that a lot of disambiguation pages I clicked on in the "Discretiva" category simply had "potest" (example: Andalum (discretiva)). Is that correct? If so, I would be seduced by the conciseness. Sigur (disputatio) 13:14, 29 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Somewhere (in Ogilvie's Horae Latinae, quite possibly), I've read that our native-speaking models tended to use posse less often than English speakers use the idea of "can," and therefore (one might conclude) forms like esse potest would sound almost like a mistake for plain old est. Sadly, the passage isn't revealing itself, despite repeated rummaging. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:15, 29 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Iacobe, your musings with the difference of E 'can' and L 'posse' obviously led Sigur to abandon potest esse for est. No big harm per se, but your "almost a mistake" would suggest that I (almost) made a mistake yesterday in editing Andalum (discretiva). In Cicero, for example, esse potest/potest esse is no rarity at all. So, it's not clear to me what you think Ogilvie is saying. Is it supposed to be a general statement concerning how modal reality is dealt with in Latin, or is a narrower context at issue? Neander (disputatio) 10:31, 30 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Certainly "infinitive + posse" is grammatical, and so esse potest can't be faulted per se, and it turns up in prose & poetry by the best writers, but the original caution isn't coming to hand, and it may not be in Ogilvie after all, so we're left with a mystery, and let's hope it's temporary! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:49, 30 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Actually, potest esse already gave me a weird feeling of "this sounds too translated". I can't justify it, but it made me very hesitant. And therefore I only needed a very, very tiny push from Iacobus to go for the simple est. Sigur (disputatio) 14:50, 30 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Iacobe, the putative original caution must have applied to a very specific mode of expression in which English speakers might be inclined to use 'can' more readily than Latin speakers, 'posse'. For instance, if we were to say in Latin "I could easily see how much your letter pleased Mark", an average Latinist might be tempted to say "Marco litterae tuae, quod facile intellegere potuerim, periucundae fuerunt", though 'our native-speaking models' might have preferred saying "intellexerim" instead of "intellegere potuerim", cf. Cic. Fam. 1.7.3. Might it have been this type of expression you were out for? Neander (disputatio) 17:52, 30 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Quite possibly! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:04, 30 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Iacobe, the putative original caution must have applied to a very specific mode of expression in which English speakers might be inclined to use 'can' more readily than Latin speakers, 'posse'. For instance, if we were to say in Latin "I could easily see how much your letter pleased Mark", an average Latinist might be tempted to say "Marco litterae tuae, quod facile intellegere potuerim, periucundae fuerunt", though 'our native-speaking models' might have preferred saying "intellexerim" instead of "intellegere potuerim", cf. Cic. Fam. 1.7.3. Might it have been this type of expression you were out for? Neander (disputatio) 17:52, 30 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Actually, potest esse already gave me a weird feeling of "this sounds too translated". I can't justify it, but it made me very hesitant. And therefore I only needed a very, very tiny push from Iacobus to go for the simple est. Sigur (disputatio) 14:50, 30 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Certainly "infinitive + posse" is grammatical, and so esse potest can't be faulted per se, and it turns up in prose & poetry by the best writers, but the original caution isn't coming to hand, and it may not be in Ogilvie after all, so we're left with a mystery, and let's hope it's temporary! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:49, 30 Augusti 2019 (UTC)
- Iacobe, your musings with the difference of E 'can' and L 'posse' obviously led Sigur to abandon potest esse for est. No big harm per se, but your "almost a mistake" would suggest that I (almost) made a mistake yesterday in editing Andalum (discretiva). In Cicero, for example, esse potest/potest esse is no rarity at all. So, it's not clear to me what you think Ogilvie is saying. Is it supposed to be a general statement concerning how modal reality is dealt with in Latin, or is a narrower context at issue? Neander (disputatio) 10:31, 30 Augusti 2019 (UTC)