Henle 1- principal parts of maneo

[Mom2mthj]

I was grading the quiz for week 24 in Henle and somehow I missed that Henle gives the fourth principal part for maneo as mansurus instead of mansus like I learned in the form series. I was aware of the us vs um endings to show whether the verb is transitive, but the urus ending has me stumped. Can someone please explain? Thanks!

[Mom2mthj]

Editing my post - cedo also has the urus ending in Henle. I am very confused.

[Bonnie]

I'm not sure whether you are asking what the -urus form is generally or why it is particularly given for those verbs. Have a look at Henle Grammar 156. The future participle active is formed by changing the -us of the perfect participle passive to -urus; this has active meaning. It is translated, about to verb. Think about the fourth part of sum -- futurus, about to be.

Think about what the fourth principal part means in English. For example take transitive laudo. The fourth part laudatus is having been praised – that makes perfect sense in English. But we do not used intransitive maneo to say, having been remained. However, the fourth principal part can be given as mansurus, about to remain, {e.g., as in mansurum esse, to be about to remain, i.e., in indirect statement, was about to remain/will/would remain}. You will not see forms in Caesar built on mansus or mansum.

Cedo is also intransitive; you can say cessurus, a, um, about to yield, but you do not use cedo to say having been yielded – at least not in Latin. Henle supplies the forms that you are most likely to meet in reading Caesar and Cicero.

Bonnie

[Bonnie]

You might want to read the NOTE on p. 326 of Henle I. He sums up the way in which he gives the form of the fourth principal part in intransitive and defective verbs.

Bonnie

[Bonnie]

(Ubi terrarum est “edit button”?) I hope I did not leave the impression above that only intransitive verbs have a future participle active in –urus. This form is used in transitive verbs as well.

[Mom2mthj]

Bonnie,
Thank you for explaining this. I have been through fourth form so I know about -urus endings, but both my son and I had memorized these two verbs in the form series with -us. I looked ahead to p.326 in Henle 1 and the explanation makes sense, but it makes me wonder why the form series has students memorize a form that doesn’t make sense. Both of these verbs are presented as irregular verbs in first form, why not give the -urus ending up front? It isn’t like a first form student knows what to do with the 4PP yet anyway. My son going through Henle 1 started with the form series and we honestly skipped over looking closely at these two verbs since he already knew them. I guess I should start correcting my youngest.

[Bonnie]

Here is my attempt at an explanation. There is wide variation in how different dictionaries, grammars, and textbooks handle the fourth principal part. For practicality and efficiency, most choose a uniform way to handle the 4^th pp of all verbs. (I’m choosing just a few of many sources as examples.)

Cassell’s, Lewis & Short, Allen & Greenough, and Wheelock’s routinely give the –um form. New College Dictionary gives the –us form. Jenney’s Latin series and Bennett’s Grammar follow the same rationale as Henle in deliberately choosing – us (tr.), –um (intr.), or –urus. Henle was attentive to whether a verb was used transitively or intransitively in classical Latin. For example, maneo is not used transitively in Caesar or Cicero. Henle gives the forms that may occur in Caesar and Cicero.

It does take considerable research time to make a deliberate choice on the 4^th pp on each and every verb included in a vocabulary for any given work. It is extremely time-consuming.This is further complicated as some verbs are used transitively and also intransitively – and this may vary between early, classical, and later periods of Latin. I think this is why most Latin books tend to choose one format and follow it. For a text specifically preparing the student to read Caesar, you see why Henle chose to be more specific. Other books give the 4^th pp in a more general way. There will not be that many verbs in the pattern of maneo and cedo. So I do not think that any real harm is done by learning –us or –um and then later becoming more specific about particular verbs.

Bonnie

[momgineer]

Bonnie can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the ending of the 4th principal part isn’t too important. You need the stem. So whether you memorize with us, um, or urus, they all still have the same stem and it’s the stem you use by adding a wide variety of endings. Think of the third principal part. It gives you the stem needed for all those perfect system conjugations. It happens to have the first person perfect ending on it, but you could technically memorize it with any of the endings because you know you have to take the ending off and replace it with the appropriate ending for the situation. It’s just easiest to memorize it with the first person perfect ending as that is the first ending used when reciting. It’s kind of the same with fourth principal part. When Henle gives a different ending, it’s because it is saying you really won’t use the standard ending so might as well memorize the one you would use, but regardless, you still take that ending off and replace with the appropriate one for the situation. The different ending just triggers your mind that the word is being used in a different usage than what the “us” ending would be used for and you have to grab a different set of endings (much like passive has different endings than indicative but they use the same stems in the present system).

[Bonnie]

I think the different capabilities of younger versus older students play into the choice of a system for the fourth principal part. Older students using Henle, 8^th grade and up, can understand the transitive-intransitive difference. This difference affects the way in which verbs may be used, as well as what verb forms may be built with that 4^th pp.

The transitive-intransitive difference is not so readily apparent to 4^th and 5^th graders. For such young students, the Forms use a simpler system (with all –us forms I believe). I think that future forms in –urus are not studied until toward the end of Fourth Form.

Henle marks the 4^th pp. of all transitive verbs with –us, and the intransitive verbs with –um. When you memorize the 4^th part, you have automatically memorized whether the verb is transitive or intransitive. And when there is no perfect participle passive in use in classical Latin, Henle substitutes the –urus form. Classical writers do not build verb forms on mansus, mansum, cessus, or cessum. For Henle I and II, I believe the -urus form is given only for maneo, cedo, and sum and its compounds – so not many exceptions to learn.

Transitive verbs may take an accusative direct object; intransitive verbs do not. This affects the way they are used and what verb forms may be built with the 4th pp. Intransitive verbs are used in the passive only in a limited number of singular forms in –um. It would be incorrect to take, for example, intransitive pugno … pugnatum, to invent a clause like, bella pugnata sunt, wars were fought. The use of intransitive verbs in the passive is introduced in Henle I and is fully explained in Henle II. Again, older students preparing to read Caesar and Cicero need to know and and can learn this concept -- and the reasoning behind it -- whereas it is not something that younger students need to comprehend.

Bonnie

[Jon Christianson]

Bonnie can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the ending of the 4th principal part isn’t too important. You need the stem. So whether you memorize with us, um, or urus, they all still have the same stem and it’s the stem you use by adding a wide variety of endings.

Lots of Latin folks disagree on this point, but I for one agree. The critical function of the fourth principal part is to establish the participle stem; the utility of changing it to account for which participles are available to that verb is dubious in my eyes. Some teachers swear by it, to which I say it is not polite to swear.

Mansus is indeed a very uncommon form - I cannot say that the form appears at all in the corpus of Classical Latin - and one line of thinking demands that a form that does not appear cannot appear. The other line of thinking, to which I ascribe, recalls that maneo can be transitive - especially in preclassical and postclassical Latin - and the possibility of a transitive maneo presumes the possibility of mansus. It matters little to me that a student will never encounter that stem in its unaugmented form; they will encounter it in its augmented form, and treating all -urus words as the same thing (i.e. as an augmentation of a stem that may or may not exist on its own) is its own valuable lesson. The other folks aren't wrong; they just see a different balance of risks and rewards.

We in the business call this dilemma descriptive versus prescriptive grammar. That is, do the rules describe how the language IS used, or prescribe how it CAN BE used? The former position, ever-mindful that 99% of students' Latin lives will be spent translating the existing works of Latin into English, prize Latin as it actually appears in the classical record; to them, muddying the water with forms they will never encounter suggests something false about the language. The latter position, tantalized by the sensibility and versatility of the language's scope and structure, prize the ability of Latin paradigms to permutate well beyond its ancestral house, for the union of etymology and morphology to beget words with unmistakable meanings before they are ever uttered. To us, restricting a word's principal parts, the very fount of its forms, only to those forms we encounter (or even more strictly, to those forms we COMMONLY encounter) suggests something equally false about the language.

I encourage you to decide which one you are: a descriptive or a prescriptive grammarian. Is it more useful to you to write out the fourth principal part you'll actually see in a translation sentence? Then you're a descriptivist! Is it more useful to you to have the fourth principal part that provides a consistent stem for use in other forms, even if that stem is rare or nonexistent on its own? Then you're a prescriptivist! That way, the disagreement of one Latin book's vocab with another's will not just be an annoying inconsistency you have to keep in mind, but the recognizable battle-lines of a debate in which you have taken a side. Nothing helps you learn a subject quite like having opinions about it!

- Jon

[Bonnie]

I think very creative people tend to be prescriptivists. I have only enough bandwidth in my brain to allow me to be a descriptivist.

Nothing helps you learn a subject quite like having opinions about it!
- Jon

So very true!!

Cheers.
Bonnie

[Jen_NH]

That ending matters for online quizzes! ha!