June 2006 Latin

<p>Well, i didn't exactly think it was a joke, but i thought the passages were manageable, the derivatives were pretty easy, and the grammar questions were challenging but fair for an AP level student.</p>

<p>Infinitive of purpose? How does that work?
I translated the bit you mentioned as follows, feel free to make any corrections with regard to an infinitive of purpose or otherwise. </p>

<p>Namque umeris de more habilem suspenderat arcum
venatrix, dederatque comam diffundere ventis,
nuda genu, nodoque sinus collecta fluentis. </p>

<p>For the huntress had hung a handy bow from her shoulders in custom, and had given to spread out her hair to the winds, with a bare knee, and kept together with the knot of her flowing toga.</p>

<p>Grammatical point: learn the difference between hung and hanged</p>

<p>1st line: umeris: ablative place where, location not place from which as you translate it and it does not go with the prep. "de"</p>

<p>de+mos,moris= as is customary....better than "in custom" though that's not really incorrect</p>

<p>the infinitive of purpose is not a construction construction like the way you think of an ablative absolute but it is still a construction nevertheless...it occurs from dedratque to ventis and is BEST translated "and had given her hair to scatter (for the PURPOSE of scattering) by/with the winds..."</p>

<p>Now the case and reason of ventis is not a dative, indirect object with dederat, but an ablative of means...i.e.Venus is giving her hair so that it may be scattered by the wind </p>

<p>The third line contains two accusative of respects...genu and sinus...
The accusative of respect occurs 99.9% of the time with a perfect passive participle which acts like a Greek Middle Verb...Greek has active, middle, and passive voices the middle conveying a sense of reflexivity such as I wash myself...but without the reflexive pronoun myself...</p>

<p>The huge mistake you made in the third line is translating fluentis as a genitive modifying a genitive noun, sinus...neither one of these nouns are genitives...fluentis is an alternate ending for the accusative fluentes (this is because it is an i-stem third declension participle) I'm sure you've seen many times navis instead of naves...this is because navis, navis is also an i-stem because the genitive and nominative singulars are the same....but anyway...the sentence should be translated like this and this is as literally as possible...." naked with respect to her knee, and held together (kept together w/e) with respect to her/the folds in/by a knot</p>

<p>few notes: nodo- ablative, means (the means by which the knots were held together), sinus- accusative plural 4th declension modified by fluentis (fluentes)...means fold, not toga...sinus can also be translated as a singular depending on whether or not you believe sinus is a poetic plural....</p>

<p>I think that's it for now</p>

<p>sed forsan plura ventura</p>

<p>argh-- last year, when I took the exam, did anyone else take it? noooo....</p>

<p>Now there's a whole bunch of you!</p>

<p>I definitely see what you're saying with sinus being accusative plural, and like that translation better, but as you said, it is a fourth declension noun, and the second syllable is even long...</p>

<p>Honest mistake. </p>

<p>And come on, can't i translate genu as an ablative if i want to? Yes, parallel structure makes more sense, but it's fourth declension neuter!</p>

<p>I think the umeris bit is ok, there are so many ablative uses that to limit yourself to place where with only the preposition "on" instead of "from" is needlessly constricting. True, there isn't a de, but is there an in? I like to interpret the ablative as more fluid than only using "in" with place where constructions. </p>

<p>Tell me more about the accusative of respect bit! I've only ever used that once in my life (something in the Amores poem with Nape). 99.9% of all ppp's with an accusative? Usually i just translate "subject verb (participle)ed object." (of course there are occasionally intermittent things, but you get the idea). </p>

<p>Thanks for the tips.</p>

<p>By the way, 800 was 94th percentile, which explains why 4/6 people who posted here got an 800.</p>

<p>"But as you said, it is a fourth declension noun, and the second syllable is even long.."..yeah..what's your point</p>

<p>and no, genu is absolutely 100% not an ablative...remember it is a 4th declension NEUTER noun, like cornu and so the accusative singular and the ablative singular are going to both be genu...but in this case don't make the mistake of thinking it is an ablative...it is clearly an accusative of respect with the passive perfect participle nuda...and if genu were an ablative nuda would have to be also, as you have nuda modifying genu...however nuda is simply a 1st declension nominative singular modifying venatrix, not an ablative singular modifying genu...plus the fact that it would have to be nudo, because genu is neuter not feminine...however your translation "with a bare knee" is not wrong because it is essentially the same thing as nude/naked with respect to her knee (but the with is something you would use to make it sound better in english not because it's an ablative)</p>

<p>also i noticed that you tried to make comam the object of the infinitive diffundere, which it is clearly not...it is the object of dederat and the infinitve conveys the purpose of her giving her hair...</p>

<p>yes often times in latin poetry there is no preposition before or after (in the case of anastrophe) the noun it goes with..i was thinking that you might have translated it "from" because there was a de close to it...i didn't think that you thought it was implied...but what you said about it being needlessly restricting to not sometimes translate an ablative place where as "from" instead of just "in,on," makes no sense because if you wanted to translate it "from" it would have to convey a sense of place from which, which is an entirely different reason for the ablative...the ablative of location (or place where, they are the same thing) is the best understanding of the context and thus the best translation is "on her shoulder" (can't be "in" because that wouldn't make sense unless she were pierced by an arrow)</p>

<p>As for the accusative of respect, also called the "Greek Accusative," it is an accusative that is the object of what looks to be a passive verb (a passive perfect participle), but what is in fact the equivalent of a Greek Middle Verb, which is neither active or passive, but in between. Ex. mentem pressus- overwhelmed in/with respect to his mind..
It is extremly rare but you may see an accusative of respect with an active participle...these are a little bit trickier but you will almost never see them...
i suppose you would like me to teach you about the dative of respect now lol???</p>