The noun declension in any Indo-European language is a sort of indicator when we speak about the etymology of the language. Noun declension forms show the variety of endings which we can compare with their Proto-Indo-European ancestors and with other Indo-European groups and say where the language is conservative or progressive, whether it belonged to this or that dialectal group within the proto-community, and what were the phonetic and morphological processes in it. All that can be defined by analyzing the noun declension.
Latin is called one of the classical Indo-European tongues, and this is quite natural, because it is Latin which shows the majority of typical Indo-European features. In fact, we know this language from the 7th century BC, and this is enough to call it an ancient and a deeply-studied one, comparing, for example to Baltic language which become known only from the 16th century - the first Prussian and Lithuanian manuscripts. Indo-European tongues which preserved texts or glosses from the BC era include just a few: Anatolian, Vedic & Sanskrit, Avestan & Old Persian, Greek, Celtiberian, and Latin with a few more Italic dialects. Of them, Celtiberian, Anatolian and Italic cannot still be studied fully because of the lack of materials. Therefore, Latin is one of the most ancient Indo-European languages the grammar of which is known in detail.
Latin nouns had seven cases (one of them, locative, was unstable and in Popular Latin disappeared), two numbers (no dual number in any of the Italic tongues), and all three genders. The declension charts which are given below represent the development of nominal inflections from the Common Italic stage to the Classical Latin era. We did not mark reconstructed forms with an asterisk (*) just in order to save time. Examples follow to make the charts more comprehensive.
1. The first declension
It consisted mostly of feminine nouns which all belonged to the Indo-European
*a-stems.
This group of nouns is believed to have appeared rather late in the Proto-language,
and that is why no sign of it was found in Anatolian languages, which moved
apart from the Proto-Indo-European community rather late. All other group
make this type of declension very productive. At first it could be obviously
only feminine only. However, soon some masculine nouns were added to a-stems
as well. They existed not only in Latin: cf. Latin nauta
'a sailor', Greek poiétas 'a poet', Slavic papa
'father'. Only in Greek masculine nouns of this kind added an -s
to the nominative singular ending, Latin forms did not vary in gender.
The dative plural has two different equal endings, but the first one
-is
in Classical Latin became more widespread and finally replaced the second.
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á-bhyas > -abus (1) |
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-a- in all these forms is not quite an ending, but a stem indicator; the very ending follows it.
1. The formed marked by (1) were formed late in Common Italic or even in Early Latin under the influence of the second declension (see below)
2. This ending is pronominal and was borrowed by nouns in all Italic tongues. s > r under the law of rhotacism.
2. The second declension
This type included nouns belonging to masculine and neuter genders,
and was a reflection of Indo-European o-stems and jo-stems.
Though unified by the same type of declension, masculine and neuter were
distinguished by a category of animosity: masculine could be animate, while
neuter never, so the endings in nominative and accusative differ. The ending
-á
in neuter nominative plural did not in fact denote plurality, but collectiveness.
Masculine and neuter inflections in this chart are divided by ;.
Examples: stella 'star', rosa 'flower',
terra
'land', poeta (masc.) 'poet'
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1. Two endings were interchangeable, but in the Archaic period -osand -om were preferable. In Classical texts, Romans vice versa preferred -us, -um, while -os, -om could follow only u, v, qu (for example parvos, mortuos). Some words from the second declension did not have any ending in nominative singular, if ended in -r; all other inflections were the same for all kinds of nouns (puer, gen. pueri)
2. This genitive singular ending existed in Italic, Venetic and Celtic languages. Its origin is unknown, and it is often considered as an Italo-Celtic innovation.
3. -e for o-stem nouns (like lupus, puer), -i for jo-stems (like filius). Neuter nouns, naturally, could not have vocative which was used only when calling people.
4. The nominative plural ending of masculine nouns was pronominal by origin.
5. This was taken up by analogy with a-stems (see above)
Examples: lupus 'wolf', ager 'field', vir 'man', verbum (neut.) 'word'
3. The third declension
The third declension gathered nouns of all three genders with various
kinds of stems, both consonant and vowel ones. Within the Indo-European
structure, this type is often called athematic, as distinct from the thematic
declension which placed a thematic vowel between the stem and the ending
- this type is reflected in the Latin second declension. Athematic nouns
added the ending directly to the stem. Grammars sometimes mention two varieties
of the third declension: the vocalic and the consonant types, but in fact
the structure of declension does not vary greatly.
In dictionaries words of this group are always given together with their
genitive singular forms, for example custos, gen. custodis
'guard'. This is essential because nominative singular does not always
make it clear what kind of stem it is. The third declension includes different
types of noun stems, and that make the inflections vary somehow. See the
chart and the notes:
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neuter -a, -ia |
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-i > -e (3) |
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-i, -e > -e (4) |
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1. Null ending appeared due to the disappearing of -s in nouns of r,l,n-stems (fur, mater, sol, nomen); stems ending in a stop consonant assimilated the ending or often were assimilated themselves (*snigwhs > *nig-s > nix 'snow', *ducs > dux 'leader', *peds > pes 'foot'). In all other cases everything was all right: pedis, ducis, nivis.
2. By analogy with the 2nd declension - it was very popular in Classical Latin and became widespread in Popular Latin. In the 5th century AD practically all words of the 3rd declension disappeared moved in the 2nd one.
3. All kinds of stems acquired endings of i-stems here
4. This ablative ending was borrowed from locative
Examples:
consonant stems pes, gen. pedis 'foot',
vox,
gen. vocis 'voice', mus, gen. muris 'mouse',
pater,
gen. pateris
'father', homo, gen. hominis
'man'
i-stems hostis 'guest', mors,
gen. mortis (fem.) 'death'
í-stems vís 'strength'
The third declension nouns are the hardest to define the gender. Words from all three genders look the same, and that sometimes creates a mess when we use them in the sentence, especially when the sequence with adjectives is required. Some hints for the nouns of the group:
Masculine nouns end in -or, -os, -er, -ex (labor,
custos, venter, index)
Feminine ones can have -tas, -tus, -do / -go / -io at
the end (civitas, virtus, fortitudo) - remember that those
which end their nominative sg. in -o are n-stems
and form gentive with -inis.
Neuter nouns end in -a, -e, -al / -ar, -men, -us, -ur
(poema, mare, exemplar, animal, nomen, corpus, guttur) -
bear in mind that there are nouns here which look just like the 1st or
2nd declension, e.g. poema, gen. poematis,
and corpus, gen. corporis. Do not mix them.
4. The fourth declension.
This one gathers words which are not numerous and all belong to Indo-European
u,ú-stems.
They could be either masculine and neuter (domus 'home' is
the only feminine), but this is easily seen in the chart (masculine and
neuter forms are divided by ;):
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1. This one is not quite clear: it seems that neuter dative singular should have been the same as masculine, but it is not.
2. By analogy with the 2nd declension
3. Acquired the ending of i-stems
4. The word domus preserved several adverbia forms derived from ancient case forms: domi 'at home' from ancient locative, domos 'to homes', domo 'from home'. The same exists also in Greek and Celtic languages.
Examples: fructus 'fruit', lacus 'lake', domus (fem.), cornu (neut.) 'horn'
5. The fifth declension.
The last one for which only a few nouns existed in the language. Gradually
Romans realized that in fact the fifth declension is only clutters up the
language, so in Popular Latin all words from it were exiled to the 1st
declension. That appeared easy because all words of the 5th one were also
feminine. This kind of declension existed only in Italic languages, no
other branch show this sort of stems. Actually only two words of the kind
are declined in both singular and plural, others are abstract and
have just a few forms.
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Examples: dies 'day', fides 'loyalty', res 'matter' - the last one is famous for the word respublica 'republic' which in in fact res publica 'public matter'
If we compare case forms of all five declension, it is easy to see their common characteristics.
Nominative singular of masculine and feminine genders has got either the ending -s (lupus, domus, vox, res), either null ending (stella, praetor). In neuter gender nouns have either null ending (tempus, mare), either -m in thematic type (bellum). Genitive in Indo-European always ended in -s (domus, vocis, consulis), but in the Latin 1st, 2nd and 4th declensions this inflection was -i (stellae < *stellai, lupi, rei), a Common Italo-Celtic innovation. Accusative singular had -m almost everywhere (stellam, lupum, domum, vocem, rem). Vocative case coincides with nominative except the 2nd declension masculine nouns which have -e, -i (lupe, fili).
Nominative plural of neuter nouns ends in -a, the same in accusative. Genitive plural has got -um, sometimes with -r- before it (stellarum, luporum, vocum, fructuum, rerum).
This is enough for the Latin noun declension which is of course much more complicated then in English and therefore frightening for the majority of English-speakers. As for Slavic or even German readers, I think they can easily manage it: the system of declension is to my mind neat, exact and beautiful.
Cases may seem obscure for those who have no idea what is their meaning in the language. So we decided to include a small usage guide which can explain how Romans could speak such a language. Each case had its usage, and this syntactic scheme is not useless to know.
The nominative case was used mainly for the subject in the sentence. A usual sentence in Latin always began with a noun in nominative, e.g. Sol illustrat terram 'The sun illustrates the earth', where 'sun' is in nominative. Being a predicate is also possible for nouns in nominative: Via bellum est 'Life is war', where both 'life' and 'war' stand in nominative. This is simple, and one should just remember the ending.
The genitive case can be situated in different positions in the sentence,
and there are several genitives:
a) genitive possessive (ager caesaris - emperor's field,
pila
puellarum - girls' ball, victoria Romanorum - victory
of Romans). Here the genitive is quite close to the English possessive
case.
b) genitive objective deals with objects in the sentence (e.g. ira
magistrae - teacher's anger, memoria virorum - memory
about people)
c) genitive separative answers the question 'from what? from whom?'
(nemo nostrum - none of us)
d) genitive partitive is used everywhere to denote quantity of something
uncountable (copia aquae - a lot of water, adfero aquae
- I bring some water)
e) genitive qualitative describes qualities of a thing or a person
(vir magni ingenii - a man of strong mind)
The dative case is primarily used for addressing or directing something
to someone, or someone to someone, but also can used in other ways:
a) dative simple (epistolam frateri scribo - I write
a letter to the brother)
b) dative possessive is used only with the verb esse
'to be' and its forms (mihi liber est - I have a book)
c) dative objective point a goal (auxilio mittere - to
send to help) answering the question 'what for?'
d) dative double is a well known Latin feature (mihi praesidio
venire - to come to assist me; here mihi is dative
for ego 'I')
The accusative case is typical for direct object in the sentence answering
the question 'whom?'. Besides, it is common in following situations:
a) accusative double (Ciceronem consulem creant - they
appoint Cicero as a consul)
b) accusative temporal answers the question 'whither?' and is responsible
for time and place (domum venio - I come home, unum
diem legere - to read during one day)
c) accusative exclamative (O me miseram! - Oh me unhappy!)
The ablative case was one of the eight Proto-Indo-European noun cases.
Classical Latin preserved only six, both instrumental and locative cases
coincided with ablative. The primary meaning of it is separation or moving
away from something.
a) ablative simple (educere castris - to lead out of
the camp)
b) ablative instrumental (nuntiare litteris - to inform
by letter)
c) ablative causative denotes the reason for doing something (clamare
ira - to shout of anger)
d) ablative of manner (omnibus viribus resistere - to
resist with all strength)
The locative case existed in the Archaic period, but was gradually assimilated by ablative in the Classical time. It was used to point a place (locis novis vivere - to live on new places).
The vocative case is used only when addressing or calling people (fili! - son!).
Summarizing the syntactic overview of noun cases we should say that the use of the majority of them was typical for all Indo-European group. Such a feature as the genitive partitive exists in Slavic, Germanic, Baltic, Greek, Celtic and Sanskrit. The difference often lies in the number of cases and the speed of their reduction. For example, Sanskrit preserved all eight Indo-European cases, and Common Germanic had only four. Greek is considered a rather conservative tongue, but already in Homer's language there are only 5 of noun cases active. Usually, as the variety of languages shows, the ablative case disappears coinciding with genitive or dative. This is not the case with Italic where ablative was quite productive. This makes the Italic group unique, because none of other Indo-European branches (except Indo-Iranian) uses it.
To make this long story a little shorter, let us go through some more exercises, just to check out how you managed the nouns:
Define the declension type and decline the nouns
deus (masc.), consul (masc.), nomen
(neut.), domus (fem.), dies, luna, pax (fem.),
bellum
(neut.)
Identify the form basing on the nominative singular:
dies - diebus (fem.)
ira - iram (fem.)
auctor - auctores (masc.)
humus - humo (masc.)
puer - pueri (masc.)
mare - maria (neut.)
Translate the combinations using the glossary below and explain the
use of cases:
leo murem corripuit
labores gignunt honores
multum pecuniae
dea silvarum
Senatus Caesarem praetorem creat
Glossary: leo 'lion', mus 'mouse', corripuit 'caught', labor 'labour', gignunt 'they generate, they create', honor 'honour', multum 'much', pecunia 'money', dea 'goddess', silva 'forest', Senatus 'Senate', praetor 'praetor', creat 'he creates'
Now try the same from Latin into English (the glossary follows):
a lot of money
to go on foot (lit. 'by feet')
write to a friend
leader's matter
many fruits
Glossary: copia 'a lot of', pecunia 'money', ire 'to go', pes 'foot', scribere 'to write', amicus 'friend', dux 'leader', res 'matter', multum 'many, much', fructus 'fruit' (4th declension)
Answers are here. Waiting for Adjectives?
Before we proceed to the description of Latin adjectives I would like to remind once more that there were none of them in Proto-Indo-European. Our ancestors treated nouns and adjectives the same way, and there was no morphological distinction. Endings, cases, usage was the same, and though the situation changed some relics of this prehistoric tradition remained in every Indo-European branch, Latin being one of them. In a few groups adjectives do not even become a separate part of speech - for example in Anatolian. Linguists usually link this question with the existence of feminine gender in the language, and it is often claimed that adjectives began to move apart from nouns at the moment when a-stems were forming and the Proto-Indo-European common gender broke in two - masculine and feminine. By the way, it was Anatolian which did not have a-stems either.
See essay: Gender Category in Indo-European
Still, as Latin is rather archaic (in comparison with English or French), its adjectives are very easy to learn if you know the nouns (do you?).
Adjectives have 3 genders, can be singular and plural, and are declined in three different ways (3 declensions), unlike nominal 5 ones. Moreover, there is a special kind of pronominal adjectives which take up the pronominal type of declension.
We all remember that the 1st declension of nouns consists of feminine ones ending in -a in nominative singular. The second declension is composed of masculine and neuter nouns which end in -us, -er, -um. This is simple. Bearing in mind that the same adjective can have masculine, neuter and feminine forms, it is also simple to conclude that the first and the second declensions of adjectives also include those which have the same endings as nouns. See examples:
rosa pulchra - a beautiful flower (rosa
'flower')
fructus pulcher - a beautiful fruit
caelum pulchrum - beautiful sky (caelum
'sky', neuter)
I.e. the first two declensions of adjectives include the same ones,
just different in gender. The declension table (for the adjective bonus
'good') is as follows:
| Singular | Plural | |
| Nominative | bonus (masc.), bona (fem.), bonum (neut.) | boni (masc.), bona (neut.), bonae (fem.) |
| Genitive | boni (masc., neut.), bonae (fem.) | bonorum (masc., neut.), bonarum (fem.) |
| Dative | bono (masc., neut.), bonae (fem.) | bonis |
| Accusative | bonum (masc., neut.), bonam (fem.) | bonos (masc.), bona (neut.), bonas (fem.) |
| Ablative | bono (masc., neut.), boná (fem.) | bonis |
The third declension of adjectives originated from the consonant stems and i-stems, and is declined just like the same declension of nouns. There is, by the way, a specific difference in semantics between the 1-2 declension of adjectives and the thrid one. While the adjectives which are declined with the 1-2 type always express quality, size or manner (bonus 'good', pulcher 'beautiful', magnus 'great', niger 'black'), the 3rd declension words are often abstract in meaning. This reflects their late origin comparing to the previous type (stabilis 'stable', popularis 'popular'). But this is not a rule, and this just proves that all new abstract adjectives which emerged in the language along the development of the Roman civilization were included into the 3rd declension. Another fact is that the 3rd declension consists mainly of derivative adjectives, formed from respective nouns and verbs, for example popularis from populus 'people', stabilis from stare 'to stand', mobilis 'mobile, fast' from movere 'to move'. This is usually done with the help of certain suffices.
The third declension, or the athematic declension as it is also called, exists in other Indo-European groups as well. Linguists sometimes divide all Indo-European languages into two groups: "two endings" and "three endings". Those which have 3 endings are gathered in the 1-2 declension, with the inflections -us, -a, -umfor 3 genders. The third declension uses only two of them: one for masculine (mobilis, sapiens), and one for both feminine and neuter (mobile, sapiente). The Greek system of adjectives is divided the same way: complex, prefixed and derivative adjectives are declined with two endings (-os for masculine and feminine, -on for neuter). This distinction came from the most ancient stage of Proto-Indo-European, when genders were only two - animate and inanimate.
Consonant stem adjectives like sapiens should also be memorized in their genitive form, for it often differs from the nominative one, e.g. sapientis.
The group of pronominal adjectives is really the
least, because includes just a few adjectives. They are very widespread
in the language though. Pronominal adjectives, again a common Indo-European
morphological unit, are declined just like pronouns. Here are they:
unus 'one'
solus 'the only'
totus 'all'
alius 'other'
alter 'the other of the two'
uter 'which of the two?' and uterque 'both,
each of the two' (declined like utraque, utrumque, etc.)
neuter 'none of the two'
ullus 'some' - this one is a derivative from unus,
IE
*oinos,
with the suffix -elo-: *oinelos is a proto-form.
nullus 'none'.
To see how they were decline, wait for the Pronouns section.
Now it is time to recall the degrees of comparison, another good example of comparative Indo-European grammars of all epochs. Linguists do not stop arguing which suffices were used in the Proto-Indo-European times to make comparative and superlative degrees. In fact there are several such suffices, used in major Proto-Indo-European dialectal groups, and this distribution makes us think that the Proto-language itself did not have a strict suffix system for degrees of comparison, they were formed later, different within each dialectal group. It is often claimed that the most widespread element for forming the comparative was *-yos-, *-yes-, *-is- found in Slavic, Baltic, Germanic (only *-is-), Phrygian, Italic and sometimes in Greek. But actually Greek had two sets of comparative suffices: the regular one consisted of -tero- for comparative (also found in Osco-Umbrian subgroup of Italic) and -tato- for superlative, the irregular and a rarer one having *-iso- for comparative and -isto- for superlative. This very *-isto- is also found in Germanic, and Indo-Iranian languages. The Celto-Italic branch accepted the suffix *-yos- for comparative and one more form: *-samo- for superlative.
Here is the rule for Latin:
The comparative degree is formed by adding the suffix -ior
(masculine, feminine) or -ius to the stem. Adjectives in
comparative are declined as consonant stems (the 3rd declension).
The superlative degree is formed by adding suffices -imo-, -timo-,
-simo-, -issimo- to the stem. The most widespread suffix is -issimo-,
all other ones are used only in a few cases (-imo-: infimus; -timo-:
intimus; -simo: pessimus). The superlative suffix -issimo-
is a combination of *-yos- (a comparative degree element)
and *-samo- which is found only in Celtic and Italic languages.
Adjectives in superlative are declined as the 1-2 declension.
Examples:
altus 'high' - altior (masc., fem.), altius
(neut.) 'higher' - altissimus (masc.), altissima
(fem.), altissimum (neut.) 'the highest'
pulcher - pulchrior, pulchrius - pulcherrimus
utilis 'useful' - utilior, utilius - utilissimus
There are a few adjectives which traditionally do not form degrees of comparison with the usual suffix forms, but use different stems for them. In almost all Indo-European languages the most common qualitative adjectives like 'good', 'bad', 'big', 'little', 'much' always use so called suppletive stems for the comparative and superlative degrees. Moreover, it seems that the Proto-Indo-European language did not have stable forms for degress of comparison of those adjectives. Here is an interesting chart showing some of them for the word 'good':
Greek agathos - ameinón - aristos
Gothic go×s - batiza - batists
Old Irish maith - ferr - dech
Russian horoshij - luchshe - nailuchshij
Latin is not an exception. Its suppletive forms are the following:
bonus - melior, melius - optimus 'good'
malus - peior, peius - pessimus 'bad'
magnus - maior, maius - maximus 'big, great'
parvus - minor, minus - minimus 'little, small'
multi - plúrés, plúra - plúrimi
(m), plurimae (f), plurima (n) 'much'
These are the forms, and now you can see where the common English forms major, minor, maximum, minimum came from. Actually there were two kinds of forming degrees of comparison in the language - the other one is called complex. Compare for example the pairs: easy - easier and useful - more useful. Both English and Latin prefer to use the complex forms with lengthy words, which contain more than two syllables, though in Latin this was not a kind of rule:
idoneus 'useful' - magis idoneus 'more useful' - maxime idoneus 'the most useful'
The comparative degree is often met in Latin texts, and syntactically
it could be used in two ways in comparisons:
a) with the conjunction quam: Aqua levior
est quam ferrum 'water is easier than iron' (both nouns are used
in nominative)
b) without conjunctions: Aqua levior est ferró
'water is easier than iron' (here the word ferrum is in ablative)
Done with adjectives.
The pronominal system in Indo-European used to be extremely rich. This is shown clearly in Hittite or Old Irish which use hundreds of pronouns and pronominal particles everywhere in the sentence. Pronouns could be enclitic or even could exist inside the noun, as an infix. A characteristic feature of personal pronouns was their ability to act in different forms, which meant the same. In Old Irish, for example, personal and possessive pronouns could be simple, emphatic, infixed, suffixed, relative, negative, and after all they could be declined. In Hittite, personal pronouns again act either independently, as a separate word, or as a suffix of a noun.
We are not sure if this complex system of nouns existed in Proto-Indo-European. But it was really quite archaic, and maybe it began to form in separate branches parallelly shortly after the breakup of the Proto-community. Such process could really take place - the same way as the process of forming definite articles in Indo-European languages, though no article existed in Proto-Indo-European.
The Latin system of pronouns unifies different types, most of which were quite widespread in the language. We will go step by step and discuss the most significant of them.
1. Personal pronouns.
They are formed using five basic Indo-European roots: *eg'h-,
*m-, *t-, *wo-, *no-. The first of them exists only in 1st person
singular. Remember that personal pronouns in Indo-European have only 2
persons, while the 3rd person pronouns appeared much later, borrowed from
demonstrative ones.
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nostrum |
vestrum |
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Practically all Indo-European offsprings demonstrate forms of personal pronouns very similar to those above. It seems that in Proto-Indo-European the system of pronouns was already quite stable and solid, and was not subject to dialectal varieties. Especially it is concerned the 1st and the 2nd persons singular forms, where *m- and *t- forms seem the most ancient. The nominative form for 'I' is sometimes a stumbling point because it is not so easy to decipher its original appearance. Probably it sounded like *eg'hom, where the final *-m is again from the 1st person stem. However, this phoneme could exist only in several dialects, because no trace of it is found in Italic or Greek languages, where the final -m was never dropped (in Greek it became -n). Indo-Iranian languages show aham, azam for 'I'.
The word nos in the 1st person plural at first was used only in the indirect cases, while nominative had a suppletive form. Still, we do not know what it was like, for there were at least two different ways of forming the word 'we' in the Proto-language. This differentiation is well seen when comparing different Indo-European groups: the stem *wei- exists in Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Iranian, Anatolian, Tocharian (Balto-Slavic turned it from plural into dual), while the stem *mes was preserved in Celtic, Baltic and Slavic (plural). Some linguists suppose this occurred as a result of two different systems of plural personal pronouns: those having *wei- were called inclusive, meaning 'we, me and you', and those in *mes are exclusive, meaning 'we, me and him'.
2. Reflexive
It shows no gender, no number, and no person.
G suí
D sibí < sibei < sibhei
Ac sé
Ab sé < séd, seséd
The reflexive pronoun was declined practically the same as personal pronouns, with a very interesting detail: it did not have nominative. It could be used only in indirect cases, and can be found only in subordinate clauses, when the principal clause contains a personal pronoun, or it is supposed to exist, e.g.:
Optavit, ut sibi liber daretur - He wanted [someone] to
give him a book
Here sibi is translated as 'him', though literally it
is 'himself'. Though here we do not see a personal pronoun 'he' in the
principal clause, the word optavit literally means 'he wanted'.
3. Possessive
Possessive pronouns are in fact adjectives formed on basis of personal pronouns. This is a matter of name: the English call their my, your, his possessive pronouns, while the French name their mon, ton, son adjectives. These pronouns in Latin are declined like adjectives of the first two declensions and are made derivatively from corresponding personal pronouns:
meus (m), mea (f), meum (n)
- my
tuus - your, thy
suus - the reflexive form, meaning 'of myself, of himself'
noster < *nos-tero- - our
vester < *vos-tero- - your
-ter- in the last two forms is a specific suffix with unclear origins.
4. Demonstrative
The system of demonstrative pronouns is extremely branched in Latin. There were at least ten different stems which could form them, each with its own tint in meaning. Moreover, some of them meant also personal pronouns of the 3rd person: 'he, she, it, they'. Here are the stems with some easy comments:
hic < *hoi-ce (masculine and neuter stem
he-
/ ho- < *ghe-/gho-, feminine stem há-)
- this
iste - that (closer to the speaker)
ille - that (far from the speaker) - goes back to *ol-so
is - 'this, the discussed one'; it uses several stems
(or several ablaut forms of the same stem):
i- (nom. sg., acc. sg. masc-neut.)
ei- > í- (dat. pl., abl. pl.)
e- (gen.sg.: *esjos > *ejjos > ejus,
also dat. sg.)
the rest of the cases use eo- (masculine and neuter),
or ea- (feminine)
As usual in Indo-European, the pronominal declension differs a bit from
that of nouns and adjectives. That is why we would like to show the chart
of declension below:
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| N | hic | haec | hoc | hí | hae | haec |
| G |
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hórum | hárum | hórum | ||
| D |
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| Ac | hunc | hanc | hoc | hós | hás | haec |
| Ab | hóc | hác | hóc |
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| N | ille | illa | illud | illí | illae | illa |
| G |
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illórum | illárum | illórum | ||
| D |
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| Ac | illum | illam | illud | illós | illás | illa |
| Ab | illó | illá | illó |
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| N | is | ea | id | eí | eae | ea |
| G |
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eórum | eárum | eórum | ||
| D |
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| Ac | eum | eam | id | eós | eás | ea |
| Ab | eó | eá | eó |
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As we already mentioned somewhere above, these demonstratives gave birth to definite articles which appeared in Romance languages of Europe. The pronoun ille was the most productive in forming articles, and today's French and Spanish le, la, les, las are its descendants.
Among other demonstrative forms the following are more or less important in the language:
tantus - such (in quantity), e.g. tanti legiones
'such legions', bearing in mind the number of people in those legions
Declined like a 1-2 declension adjective
talis - such (in quality), e.g. qualis rex talis
nex 'the kingdom is the same kind as the king himself is'
Declined like a 3rd declension adjective
tot - so many, so much
ibi - there (position); e.g. multi fluvii ibi
sunt 'there are many rivers there'
tum - then (time); e.g tum Caesar consul erat
'Caesar was consul at that time'
tam - that way
All of them, except ibi, are formed with the help of the demonstrative stem *to-, which is very widespread in Indo-European but was not preserved in its primary place in Italic.
The so-called definite pronouns include ipse ('himself', declined like ille) and idem 'the same' which is declined like is plus -dem (e.g. nom.sg. fem. ea-dem, dat.sg. eidem).
5. Relative.
Relative pronouns in English are 'which' and 'that'. There was only
one in Latin, and evidently in Proto-Indo-European too, though it could
be formed from two different stems: dialects had to choose between *kwis
(Italic, Celtic, Anatolian, Tocharian) and *yos (Indo-Iranian,
Greek, Slavic, Phrygian). You can look below and see was was the choice
of Latin:
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| N | quí | quae | quod | quí | quae | quae |
| G |
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quórum | quárum | quórum | ||
| D |
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| Ac | quem | quam | quod | quós | quás | quae |
| Ab | quó | quá | quó |
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The most interesting of all these tiresome endings is the nominative singular neuter -d, which is also common Indo-European. In nominal declension, as you still might remember, the neuter ending in nominative was -m, the same with adjectives. The pronominal system gives -d: one of the explanations (suggested first by Meillet) is that both endings used to reflect inactive forms, opposite to active ones - masculine and feminine. Another characteristic feature of inactive parts of speech was the identity of nominative and accusative in all numbers.
Most of Latin interrogative pronouns are based on the same element *kw- (by the way, their English counterparts too):
quis - who? (declined like the relative qui)
quid - what? (declined like the relative quod)
uter - which of the two? (originally *quuter)
- declined like a pronominal adjective
quantus - what kind? (means quantity and is declined
like the 1-2 declension adjective)
qualis - what kind? (means quality and is declined like
the 3rd declension adjective)
quomodo - how?
quot - how much? how many?
ubi - where?
quando - when?
unde - whence?
In order not to increase the mess of case forms and words beginning with qu- in your heads, we decided to avoid explaining the meaning of such pronouns as quis, qua, quid, quisque, quivis, quaevis, quidvis, quisquis, quidquid, quidam, quaedam, quoddam, quacunque, quamvis, quicumque, quaecumque, and quodcumque. We can only mention that many of them meant just 'some'.
And the last two which are easy to memorize: negative pronouns
nemo 'nobody' compressed from *ne-homo
(homo means 'man') and
nihil 'nothing'.
Now we know what the Latin pronouns look like. In order just to get the most essential data from this lengthy description, try to memorize the following characteristic traits of this part of speech in the Latin language:
1. Personal, demonstrative, and relative are the most important among
all pronouns
2. There are no 3rd person personal pronouns in the language; demonstrative
ones are used instead.
3. Demonstrative pronouns are based on several stems: *ho-, *i-,
*ol-, there are some traces of the stem *to-.
4. Relative and interrogative pronouns are formed from the root *kwi-.
Now get down to the next sections. Mind that the most difficult one will be The Verb.