Talk:Latin tenses (semantics)

Closed discussions

Article improvement

Hi @Kanjuzi,

this article currently fits all criterea for a B-Class article.

What do you think is necesary to turn this article from B-class to A-class in your opinion. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 21:21, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

@Daniel Couto Vale: According to the Talk page history, the person who gave this article a B rating and "High" importance was yourself. Obviously the person who composed the article cannot also rate it. I have therefore deleted the rating. In my opinion the article certainly does not meet the criteria for a grade B article. Almost all of the examples, together with their references, are copied straight from the article Latin tenses, simply rearranged. The remaining text, written by yourself, does not cite any proper sources dealing with Latin grammar and has more the flavour of a personal point of view than a report of the standard scholarly consensus. Kanjuzi (talk) 16:06, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

@Kanjuzi, there are four points in your comment that I would like to reply.

1. Importance and grade are two different things. There is no way an article about “Latin tenses” is of high importance and an article about “Latin tenses (semantics)” does not have the same importance. So please put it back.

2. As for the grade, do not simply remove the grade. Change it to a grade that you think the article should have. I want to improve the article and I am open to feedback from you and others. I called you because you wrote the article about Latin tenses. You are the best person to review this one.

3. I will add a citation to the first statement about Latin having three primary and three secondary tenses. Is there another point where you feel the need for a citation?

4. I do not see any problem in examples appearing in two pages, one organizing them by form and the other organizing them by meaning. Is there a Wikipedia policy against this?

If there is anything else that should be done to improve the article, please let me know. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 17:42, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I have not been appointed as a rater so I am reluctant to change the rating. Kanjuzi (talk) 18:24, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Who can appoint you as a rater? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:19, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Actually I looked it up, and it seems that anyone can be a rater. But obviously not of your own articles!

But I wouldn't rate this article as a B, in fact. First because a lot of the material is simply copied from another article, albeit rearranged. Secondly because the parts which are not copied are not properly referenced with inline citations.

Some of your terminology, such as "secondary present" you seem to have invented yourself. Phrases such as agere coepi "I began to do", which you call "secondary present" or "periphrastic coepi present", are not considered to be a tense in any grammar book that I know of. Is ululare coepit "he began to howl" a tense? And is it a "present tense" of any kind?

In some cases you have added new examples, but have not given their source. Sometimes you have not translated them correctly: for example, you have translated quotiescumque coeperis a te exire as "whenever you are coming out by yourself", which is certainly not correct and is meaningless. Arrowsmith translates it as "whenever you start spouting" and the Loeb as "whenever you proceed to forget yourself".

You have also written various sentences of this kind: "Generative grammar books reserve the term "past" for tense inflection and "perfect" for tense periphrasis and do not attribute a proper name to meanings either." You give no examples of what you mean by "generative grammar books", nor any reference for this statement; nor is the meaning clear. For example, amabo, amabis etc. is an example of tense inflexion, I suppose, but I know of no book which refers to it as "past"; so what do you mean? And what has your statement to do with Latin grammar? The two works you cite for this part (Halliday & Matthiessen and Halliday & James) are not concerned with Latin. The entire paragraph seems to be a personal essay on your part, rather than a summary of established opinion. Of course it is perfectly legitimate to write an article applying Halliday's ideas to Latin, but since it hasn't been done before, it should be published elsewhere, not on Wikipedia.

The Bibliography seems merely for show. There are many items here which have nothing to do with the article, e.g. Postgate (1905), which is about tenses in Oratio Obliqua. It needs cleaning up. There is also a strange little section at the end of six citations, isolated from the others. Kanjuzi (talk) 17:58, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Dear @Kanjuzi,

What I did:

1. I added a definition of tense citing a Latin grammar book published in 2021.

2. I added a citation for the fact that there being three primary tenses in Latin from the same book.

Questions again:

1. Does the fact that the examples are copied from another article prevents this article from becoming a B-class article? Is this one of the criteria listed? If it is, do you recommend me to substitute these examples by other ones? (By the way, should I reduce the number of examples whenever one suffices?)

2. Which parts do you think need inline citations?

3. Should I reformulate the terminology section so that all general references to books are followed by a list of books? For instance, "generative grammar books such as Book1 and Book2", "traditional grammar books such as BookA and BookB"... (Or do you think this whole section on terminology can be dropped once 'secondary tense' is properly referenced?)

Comments to your remarks:

A. "Some of your terminology, such as secondary present you seem to have invented yourself."

This is not the case. I even cite the book where the terminology occurs in the terminology section. For one example, there is one of many passages in the book "Halliday's introduction to functional grammar" on page 68 which reads "(ii) We cannot observe it directly in phylogenetic time, the evolution of human language; but we can track examples in the history of particular languages (for example, secondary tenses and the passive voice in English; see Chapter 6; Strang, 1970)." Should I add a reference to this book when the term appears for the first time on the article?

B. "Phrases such as agere coepi "I began to do", which you call "secondary present" or "periphrastic coepi present", are not considered to be a tense in any grammar book that I know of. Is ululare coepit "he began to howl" a tense? And is it a "present tense" of any kind?"

One thing at a time. I did not state that ululare coepit "he began to howl" represents a present event. It represents a past event. This wording happens in the sequence ululāre coepit et in silvās fūgit, which I translated as "he began to howl and ran away into the woods". What is "a present event at a past event" is coeperam dicere which I translated as "I was saying". Like not all occurrences of facit represents a present event, not all occurences of coepī facere represents "a present event at a present event". Present in present is a quite rare tense anyhow. Present in past is much more frequent.

C. "For example, amabo, amabis etc. is an example of tense inflexion, I suppose, but I know of no book which refers to it as "past"; so what do you mean?"

The sequence "amabo, amabis, amabit" is an agreement paradigm for the future tense. Each one of these verbs is inflected for a different person and all of them are inflected for the future tense. "Amabo, amo, amabam" is a tense paradigm for the first person. Each one is inflected for a different tense and all of them are inflected for the first person. Could it be that you are mixing the term 'inflection' (the grammatical reasons why a word is the way it is) with the term 'paradigm' (the list of alternative options one has)?

D. "And what has your statement to do with Latin grammar? The two works you cite for this part (Halliday & Matthiessen and Halliday & James) are not concerned with Latin."

Linguistics is the study of languages in general. These are books about languages in general, comparing all languages, stating how all languages work, so they are also books about Latin. Such books set up the terminology that books about specific grammars work with.

E. "The entire paragraph seems to be a personal essay on your part, rather than a summary of established opinion. Of course it is perfectly legitimate to write an article applying Halliday's ideas to Latin, but since it hasn't been done before, it should be published elsewhere, not on Wikipedia."

This is a different issue. You yourself presented the examples in your page as meaning 'past', 'present' or 'future'. I did not change the interpretation of the examples. I simply ordered the examples into the categories that are used in modern grammar books on the topic, including Latin in the book that I cited just now in the introduction.

My kind request:

Can we please focus on what you think needs changing regarding the criteria of Class-B articles? Your critique seems targeted at me as a person and not at the text. For instance, you say "some of your terminology you seem to have invented yourself" instead of "the term 'secondary tense' needs a reference". It is much easier for me to add the missing reference than to prove to you that I am not an evil person publishing bullshit on Wikipedia. If there is something wrong in the text according to Wikipedia article guidelines, I can change it. Just point to what needs change and I am open to do it. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 21:40, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

In the section 'secondary future', I did a few things:

- I reduced the explanation to a minimum.

- I reduced the number of examples.

- I simplified the table.

- I made the paradigm names a bit more explicit.

Do you think that the article will become better if I do the same to the other sections? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 00:30, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

A. I agree that Halliday uses the term "secondary present" but the sentence you quote doesn't say how he uses it. I doubt if he uses it for phrases such as agere coepi or the English equivalent.

B. I agree that ululare coepit is past, but you have not given any examples where agere coepi is used as a present, or any reference to any published source that accepts this as a tense and not simply as a collocation of two verbs. If I say in English "I'm going to the shop", the verb "going" has its full meaning, but in "I'm going to faint" it is simply a tense-marker. Is there any evidence of coepi being used simply as a tense-marker, and can you give a reference to any grammar book that says so?

C. The terminology is confusing. At any rate your sentence in the article is certainly very confusing for readers and to me it doesn't make sense. Further in the same sentence, when you say "do not attribute a proper name to meanings", this is a value judgement. Who is to say what is a "proper" name?

D. If you are going to use Halliday, you need to give a more precise reference for everything you take from it, not just a general reference supposedly covering your whole paragraph.

E. The reduction in length in the paragraph "secondary future" is certainly welcome. But some of your sentences such as "represents a person's action that is future at an ongoing event" are unclear. What do you mean by "future at an ongoing event" – what event? When you say "she's going to get married" what ongoing event do you have in mind? Do you have a reference for this formulation?

F. Your new introduction, which says "From a functional perspective, a tense is a temporal circumstance in which an event takes place" doesn't seem to me to be correct or clear. The Spanish book you quote doesn't say that at all – you seem to have mistranslated it. And while it is a good thing that the book in question is about Latin grammar, yet in this paragraph, where you are simply defining what you mean by "tense", surely an English-language linguistics book would be preferable. There must be plenty of linguistics books which give a definition of the word "tense" in English. Furthermore, despite having a degree in linguistics, I don't think I could easily explain to anyone what you mean by "from a functional perspective"; so right from the start your explanation is obscure to the majority of readers. An introduction should above all be simple and clear.

G. Although you have now cited Petronius and changed the translation of coeperis a te exire, you still misunderstand it; and since you don't understand it, it is obviously not a good example to give since few of your readers will understand it either. In Lewis & Short the passage is mentioned in "Exeo, B.1", but since they don't add an explanation in English it isn't much of a help. As far as I know it means roughly the same as the English idiom "to get carried away", to become ecstatic, to lose control of oneself – in this case, to be filled with inspiration and start spouting poetry, literally "to exit from yourself". Surely a more transparent quotation is needed if you want one that will illustrate the use of the verb.

At any rate, I don't think I'm prepared to invest any more time in correcting your article. I object very much to your copying large parts of my articles and setting them up as rival articles of your own. Even the bibliography is copied wholesale, as if you had read all those sources yourself and used them to compose your article! Why don't you give up on this area, which is already adequately covered on Wikipedia, and concentrate on an area such as computational linguistics, where you are an expert? Then you might do some good instead of blundering around, as you are doing at present, like a bull in a china shop. Kanjuzi (talk) 14:31, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback and for your time. I won't ask you for another review. And I'll consider each point at a time.

Answering your questions briefly:

C. I mean proper name or proper noun. 'Proper' here is not meant as an evaluation.

E. I have many translations of the same books throughout the years and it is often translated this way. I'll search for a quote in a paper or a book.

Final points:

1. "Even the bibliography is copied wholesale, as if you had read all those sources yourself and used them to compose your article!"

- You are correct. I will replace progressively the bibliography to reflect what grounds this article (which is indeed different from what grounds yours).

2. "Why don't you give up on this area, which is already adequately covered on Wikipedia[...]?"

- Latin tenses are not adequately covered on Wikipedia through your article.

a. It is a very long article about verb inflections and periphrases.

b. It does not define tense in any sense.

c. It does not include any contributions to the terminology on tense in linguistics since the 1970's (especially from generative and functional linguistics).

d. It is not structured according to the structure of the topic ("tense" in a mordern sense).[1]

e. It includes multiple alternative meanings of the verbal forms that do not have anything to do with tense under any definition.

In short, your article is a large collection of claims that contain the words 'tense'/'past'/'future'/'present' no matter what is meant by those words and, since the article is about the forms that can construe tense, not about tense, it contains multiple meanings unrelated to the anounced topic of Latin tenses.

Now something personal:

You see your article as 'your article', not as something created collaboratively belonging to humankind. Moreover, you think your article is excellent the way it is, you do not see any problems with it, and you do not want your article to be held up by any theory of tense. Your ownership of the article and your attachment to it prevent any meaningful improvement of that object (both in scope and in theory).

This article is not meant as a 'rival' article to yours. It is was created to be the product of a collaborative work that you yourself can participate in (if you want). It is meant to present the state-of-the-art notion of tense in current literature and I am open to any suggestions of changing it.

However, since the topic of this article is tense, not all alternative meanings of forms that can mean 'present', 'past' or 'future', it overlaps with your article in some parts. Despite this, the topic "Latin tenses (semantics)" is not covered yet and it does not belong to you (as far as I understand Wikipedia). Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 06:35, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

A. I agree that Halliday uses the term "secondary present" but the sentence you quote doesn't say how he uses it. I doubt if he uses it for phrases such as agere coepi or the English equivalent. B. I agree that ululare coepit is past, but you have not given any examples where agere coepi is used as a present, or any reference to any published source that accepts this as a tense and not simply as a collocation of two verbs. If I say in English "I'm going to the shop", the verb "going" has its full meaning, but in "I'm going to faint" it is simply a tense-marker. Is there any evidence of coepi being used simply as a tense-marker, and can you give a reference to any grammar book that says so?

– I added examples for 'present in present' and added information that such secondary tenses are quite rare. One of the two examples has ''ēligī coepimus'' predicated by ''erit'' with a present modal meaning. I will cite a grammar book where this phenomenon is described.

– As for what historical people would have said if they were still alive, I think such wonderings are not very useful to defend a statement in Wikipedia. What I can attest is that Halliday considered a vast set of examples collected from English corpora and described them very diligently. If you have access to a university library, please consider reading his article describing 'A quantitative study of polarity and primary tense in the English finite clause' (https://www.jstor.org/stable/24048920). It is very eye-opening. You can also find this article in the book 'Techniques of description: spoken and written discourse (pp. 32–66)'. See the citation in the article. This article is definitely worth reading if you are indeed interested in tense. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 22:01, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

G. Although you have now cited Petronius and changed the translation of coeperis a te exire, you still misunderstand it; and since you don't understand it, it is obviously not a good example to give since few of your readers will understand it either. In Lewis & Short the passage is mentioned in "Exeo, B.1", but since they don't add an explanation in English it isn't much of a help. As far as I know it means roughly the same as the English idiom "to get carried away", to become ecstatic, to lose control of oneself – in this case, to be filled with inspiration and start spouting poetry, literally "to exit from yourself". Surely a more transparent quotation is needed if you want one that will illustrate the use of the verb.

– I checked a few translations that I have and the majority of translators understand this passage like you do. I took your advice that this example will be misunderstood and I selected another example, this time from Apuleius.

– The Petronian passage is indeed mentioned in Lewis & Short, though I find their Trop. section moving from abstract things such as potestate, consilio, ratione, mente to material things such as the Petronian se quite inadequate because Satyricon was written in a pre-Christian context. In his context, a pronoun such as ego usually represents a physical thing, a moving body, not abstract things such as a soul or a mind. Independent of this, I agree with you that this wording is a bad example of the described tense because the tense does not occur in the majority's reading. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 06:47, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to the review of Halliday. His book is no doubt useful for computational linguists. The fact remains, however, that he makes no mention of Latin, so the application of his ideas to Latin is your own, and so not allowed on Wikipedia, according to their policy WP:NOR. Your labels such as "present in past" (for pugnabat) are not found in any Latin grammar, as far as I know.

The new examples which you have added do not seem to illustrate your points and you haven't translated them correctly. E.g. "now instead of freedom it seems to be that we are being selected" isn't a correct translation of the Tacitus sentence locō lībertātis erit quod ēligī coepimus. Where do you get "it seems to be" from? The meaning is more like: "It will be a substitute for freedom that from now on we emperors are going to be selected" (the verb erit has its future meaning here as usual, not a present meaning). There are far simpler and shorter examples which you might have chosen, e.g. Cicero Fam. 10.30: cohortes ... quas sequi coepimus, of which the meaning is much clearer. But as I said, agere coepi "I have begun doing" is not a tense any more than agere desii "I have stopped doing" is a tense. I don't think you will find anyone who says it is, so this is another example of violation of WP:NOR. The phrase cum coeperis deae servire doesn't mean "when you are serving the gods", as you put it, but "when you have begun to serve the goddess": it doesn't refer to a process happening at a certain moment, but to a process which will begin at a certain point and continue into the future. Your choice of the example magnum animum habet and your translation "is having a large breath" is bizarre: you have mistranslated it and it doesn't illustrate your point. Your application of macrons is also often incorrect: quasi not quāsī; Titus not Tītus etc. It would be a good idea to check the words in a dictionary.

The definition at the top of the article "a tense is a temporal circumstance in which an event takes place" is surely incorrect. In a sentence like "When I got home, I made some tea" you might say that "when I got home" is a temporal circumstance; but it isn't a tense.

There seems now to be a puzzling division of references into two groups, some numbered 1, 2, 3 and others i, ii, iii; but without any rhyme or reason for the division. And your bibliography needs to be purged of any works you don't quote.

There are various typos which need correcting, such as "perefct" and "dong". Kanjuzi (talk) 12:27, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Typos corrected. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 00:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

All references numbered 1, 2, 3 are references to Latin examples. All references numbered i, ii, iii are citations of literature. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 00:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The definition at the top of the article "a tense is a temporal circumstance in which an event takes place" is surely incorrect.

– This is only a segment of the definition. The full definition is From an interpersonal and logical perspective, a tense is a temporal circumstance in which an event takes place relative to a given point in time.

In a sentence like "When I got home, I made some tea" you might say that "when I got home" is a temporal circumstance; but it isn't a tense.

– I would say that the temporal circumstance construed by "when I got home" relates the event "made" to the event "got", which is past at the speech act. In this sense, this temporal circumstance does count as a secondary tense for the main clause. However, in this article, we are focusing on the tenses realised by the verb group, not on the tenses construed by dependent clauses and adjuncts, which is another topic altogether. Do you think we should add another disclaimer that we are not considering the tenses realised by adjuncts in this article? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 00:53, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The fact remains, however, that he makes no mention of Latin, so the application of his ideas to Latin is your own, and so not allowed on Wikipedia, according to their policy.

Halliday's introduction to functional grammar is about functional grammar, not about English. This is a book about what characterises a functional description of grammar. There is another book by him called "Construing experience through meaning" where he adds examples in multiple languages, including Russian, Chinese and African languages. Your critique that he does not mention Latin when defining tense does not make sense. This is like saying that one did not mention Latin when defining space or reference, so we could not use definitions of such concepts in the article.

Moreover, the notions of "absolute"/"relative" tenses is not new and it is present in multile grammar books, including those about Latin. I have at least three here that do make this distinction. And the notion of secondary tense is included at least in one book about Latin that I have, namely the one in Spanish that I cite. So this is not new. Should I add more citations of Latin grammar books to the first paragraph? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 01:09, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I found a very nice article where a researcher looked at translations from Hebrew and Greek into Latin and she found out that the periphrases with "coepit"/"cēpit" + infinitive are indeed sometimes used to translate expressions of beginning, attempt and posteriority, but that they are mostly used to translate simultaneity. See Page 193. Should I cite this paper?

https://books.google.de/books?hl=de&lr=&id=OE_jCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA189&dq=coepi+latin&ots=Y6B3zJmJUp&sig=dUhZv_RDedv-lyD3DG8Lw-6M68E&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=coepi%20latin&f=false Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 01:55, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether a tense can be relative to a point of time other than the present or not; that I don't disagree with, but I disagree with the phrase "a temporal circumstance in which an event takes place". That doesn't make any sense. A tense is not a circumstance of any kind, and it's also not what the Spanish sentence says. A tense is a form of the verb that indicates the time of the state or event referred to by the verb, rather than the time in which the action takes place.

And no, I don't think that article on coepit is relevant. Just because a translator decided to translate a Hebrew verb using coepit it doesn't mean that coepit has lost its ordinary meaning and become an auxiliary verb making a new tense.

As for Halliday applying his ideas to other languages, I don't disagree that they could easily be applied to Latin. However, since he didn't apply them to Latin, to do so violates the Wikipedia policy: "Articles must not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that reaches or implies a conclusion not clearly stated by the sources themselves." Kanjuzi (talk) 08:44, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

@Kanjuzi, the example you cited is incomplete. It does not contain "coepī + infinitive", but the very complicated causal periphrasis sequī coepimus coāctī ('we were forced to follow'). Notice that this "perfect" auxiliary coepī functions in the same way as most 'perfect' verbs for it represents an event that is past at the time of the speech act. It does not represent an event that is present at the time of another event, which in turn is present at the time of the speech act. In short, it is not an example of "present in present".

Answering to your question, I took my example to be a variant of locō lībertātis ēligī coepimus ('[in this new post-triumvirate period] instead of freedom we are being selected'), which is present-in-present. This basic clause can be predicated by est as in est quod locō lībertātis ēligī coepimus ('it is the case that [in this... period] instead of freedom we are being selected'). The question here is why one would use a future "erit" to predicate something in the present as in "it will be the case that we are being selected". My interpretation was that "erit" here is a "werden" verb (verb of "turning"/"becoming") and that it is being used non-literally as in "instead of freedom it turns out that we are being selected" or an epistemic variant of that, namely, "instead of freedom it seems that we are being selected". This is the rationale. As for your translation, I do not understand how ēligī coepimus represents the future tense 'we are going to be selected' nor how this speculation about the future fits the context of discourse. Could you explain? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 22:27, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I believe you misunderstand quas sequi coepimus coacti. sequi goes with coepimus not with coacti, so it means "which we have begun to follow, having been compelled to do so". If you take sequi with coacti, that leaves coeplmus without any way of fitting into the sentence.

You also misunderstand the Tacitus quotation. eligi coepimus doesn't mean "it turns out that we are being selected" nor does it mean "we are being selected" or "it seems that we are being selected", but simply what it says, i.e. "we have begun to be selected". What the emperor Galba means is that in past Roman emperors simply inherited their position; but he himself was chosen, and he in turn has chosen Piso, and from now on this is what will continue to happen. It won't quite be a democracy but it will be the next best thing (loco libertatis. Your translation of erit as a "werden verb" is not needed and not correct. Kanjuzi (talk) 09:45, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

@Kanjuzi,

in short, the concensus since the 80's is that the insertion of auxiliary verbs is not always accompanied by a change in the verb group structure. For instance, sequi coepimus ('we began to follow') becomes sequi coeopimus coacti ('we were forced to follow', word-for-word 'we began to follow forced') without any change in the status of coepimus as the finite verb. However, the compositional operation is still there in meaning and the carrier of tense becomes the act of forcing, not the act of following anymore. The same happens in English in the expression "outside Nothern California". The object of reference in "Nothern California" is the northern part of California, not California, despite the fact that "California" is still in the center of the grammatical structure in "Northern California". For this reason, we cannot leave the word coacti out of the cut as you did because the words of the cut have a different meaning from the same words in the original text. The same apply to "Nothern California", we cannot cut "outside Nothern California" down into "outside California" without chaning the meaning of the location expression.

However, the resulting periphrasis is different from the one I needed an example for not only in wording (sequi coepimus coacti instead of sequi coepimus), but also in meaning ('past' instead of 'present-in-present'). In other words, since this is an article about tense from a functional perspective (semantic perspective), what a wording is used for (its function in the example) has precedence over the words and word parts that the wording contains. I was searching for wordings that construe a 'present-in-present' tense in Latin for the section about 'secondary present' (something that is present during a present event other than the speech act) and you provided me with an example that represents a past act of forcing, which is not what I was looking for.

Do you understand that this is not a good example for the section on secondary present? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 09:53, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

As for sequi coepimus ('we are being selected'), you are ignoring my claim, my argumentation and my question about how you argue for your counterclaim of future meaning.

In particular, your new claim about what the emperor Galba means is quite similar to mine.

What the emperor Galba means is that in past Roman emperors simply inherited their position; but he himself was chosen, and he in turn has chosen Piso, and from now on this is what will continue to happen.

My claim is the following:

What the emperor Galba means is that in the past regime (during the Julian-Claudian dinasty resulting from the triumvirate) Roman emperors simply inherited their position, but in the present regime (after the Julian-Claudian dinasty), emperors are being selected like he himself was, like he himself selected Piso and like Piso is expected to do in the future.

The tense of eligi coepimus ('we are being selected') is not relative to the speech act directly. It is relative to the present regime as opposed to the previous one. In turn, the regimes are temporally related to the speech act. This is the reason why we have here a 'present habit in a present regime', a 'present in present'.

I think we do not understand the examples differently. Do you agree?

=========================

As for the my question regarding your previous counterclaim of 'future meaning', how do you defend that eligi coepimus means in your own words 'are going to be selected'. Here is your translation again so that we know what we are talking about.

[...], loco libertatis erit quod eligi coepimus; [...]

[...], it will be a substitute for freedom that from now on we emperors are going to be selected; [...]

Do you still hold that the 'future' interpretation for this periphrasis is correct? Do we need to see the previous and the following clauses in the context of discourse to notice that eligi coepimus ('we are being selected') is not a future habit, but a present habit in the present regime? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 10:31, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

As for the translation of erit, since I have not read the whole text, but only a few paragraphs, I assume you are right about the goal of the Galba's speech: to defend that the selection of followers by emperors in the new regime is a valid substitute for direct elections ('freedom'). Would you agree with the following translation?

[...], loco libertatis erit quod eligi coepimus; [...]

[...], it will work as a substitute for freedom that we emperors are now being elected; [...]

Is this better? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 11:03, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

"it will work as" sounds a bit too like a 21st-century Americanism but otherwise the translation is unobjectionable. But although "I've begun to do it" and "I am doing it" are similar in meaning, they are not quite the same, since "I've begun to do it" carries three implications: (a) until recently I wasn't doing it, (b) I am doing it now, and (c) from now on I expect to continue doing it. Similarly, "I've stopped doing it" implies (a) I used to do it (b) I'm not doing it now and (c) I am not going to do it any more in future. But neither "have begun to do" nor "have stopped doing" is a tense of the verb "do". I would say that a verb becomes an auxiliary verb when it loses its basic meaning and simply marks the time of the action. For example, "he's going to die" doesn't imply motion, "he has died" doesn't imply possession, "he will die" doesn't imply volition.

In answer to your other question, when I wrote "from now on we are going to be selected" I was just picking out the third implication of "we have begun to be chosen", which implies (a) until recently we weren't being chosen (b) we are now being chosen (c) in future we are going to be chosen. In the same way when you wrote "we are now being selected" you picked out the second of the three implications. Kanjuzi (talk) 13:07, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Ok, I corrected the translation. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 11:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

As for whether 'coepī + infinitive' is a tense periphrasis or not, here is my understanding of your claim (please correct me if I understood your claim wrongly):

The Latin periphrasis 'coepī + infinitive' as in "ēligī coepī" always carries three implications: (a) until recently I wasn't doing it, (b) I am now doing it, (c) I am going to do it in the future. For this reason, it is different from the English periphrasis 'am going to + infinitive', which not always means movement. This is why 'coepī + infinitive' is not a tense periphrasis.

My claim is that:

The Latin periphrasis 'coepī + infinitive' can place the initial phase of a process in a past sequence of events as in "postquam lupus factus est, ululāre coepit et in silvās fūgit." (once he turned into a wolf, he started to howl and ran into the forest). In such cases, the initial phase of the action is placed in a timeline and there is no implication that the act of howling is being carried out at the time of the speech act. However, like "mortuus est" can mean either a past event (he died) or a present state resulting from that event (he is dead), the periphrasis 'coepī + infinitive' can also mean a present action at the time of the speech act, a started and not-finished event resulting from the starting. There is quantitative evidence from translation corpora (both into Latin and from Latin into other languages) that the 'durative' aspect is the primary meaning of this periphrasis.

Do you understand my claim? Do you hold your claim of three implications for examples such as "ululāre coepit"? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 10:46, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, ululare coepit has three implications just as eligi coepimus has, namely (a) he wasn't howling before that moment; {b) he howled at that moment; (c) he continued howling for some time after that moment. And eligi coepimus has the implications (a) we weren't being selected before now (b) we are being selected now (c) we will continue to be selected in future. What is the problem?

I agree that coepi can mean "I have begun" (referring to the present time) or "I began" (referring to a time in the past), just as most other Latin perfect tenses have two meanings in the same way. But I think perhaps you are defining "tense" differently from the usual meaning. For you it seems that "tense" means the time or temporal circumstances (as you put it) of the action of the verb. But for most people "tense" is the form of the verb. Thus "erat" is a past tense but in some circumstances (e.g. when used potentially) it can refer to a future time.

Your interpretation of Cicero's sequi coepimus coacti is still incorrect. It means "I have begun to follow them, since I cannot do otherwise" (Cicero often uses "we" when he means "I"). coacti is not the main verb either grammatically or semantically, and the sentence makes perfectly good sense without it. You could substitute inviti "unwillingly" and it would have much the same meaning. Kanjuzi (talk) 15:52, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I cited four different Latin grammarians talking about Latin tenses in the same way: two in English, one in Spanish and another in German (translated from French). Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 23:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

@Kanjuzi, here you have a point.

For you it seems that "tense" means the time or temporal circumstances (as you put it) of the action of the verb. But for most people "tense" is the form of the verb. Thus "erat" is a past tense but in some circumstances (e.g. when used potentially) it can refer to a future time.

Indeed, this article is about tense from a "semantic"/"functional" perspective. Each section is about a different way whereby an event can be temporally placed relative to another event (meaning). In each section the reader is told the different ways whereby this placement is achieved in Latin (form), with one example for each way of placing events. The other article about tense was written from a "formal" perspective. Each section is about a different combination of word parts (form). For instance, "er-a-t", "putā-ba-t", "vidē-ba-t", "audi-ēba-t", "faci-ēba-t", "dīc-ēba-t"... are "imperfect" forms of the verbs, thus there is a section about them. In this section, the reader is told the different meanings of that form, which include past, present and future (meaning).

The only thing I must correct in your note is that I am not the one who defines tense as a temporal circumstance of the represented action. This is the common practice in functional descriptions of grammar, including modern Latin grammar books. I will add more references. It is not "me" versus "most people". It is "functional descriptions" (focus on the meaning/function of wordings) vs "formal descriptions" (focus on form of wordings).

Thank you for all your input. I think the article was significanlty improved because of you. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 18:31, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Glad to be of help. Kanjuzi (talk) 08:32, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

B-Class Evaluation

Here are the evaluation criteria for the evaluation whether the article belongs to the B-Class.

Evaluation table

Topic	Kanjuzi	CoutoVale
1. The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations. It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. Any format of inline citation is acceptable: the use of <ref> tags and citation templates such as cite web is optional.		Ok
2. The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. It contains a large proportion of the material necessary for an A-Class article, although some sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing.		Ok
3. The article has a defined structure. Content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind.		Ok
4. The article is reasonably well-written. The prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but it does not need to be "brilliant". The Manual of Style does not need to be followed rigorously.		Ok
5. The article contains supporting materials where appropriate. Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams, an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content.		Ok
6. The article presents its content in an appropriately understandable way. It is written with as broad an audience in mind as possible. The article should not assume unnecessary technical background and technical terms should be explained or avoided where possible.		Ok

Kanjuzi, would you like to evaluate the article? Do you know someone who would like to evaluate the article? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 20:17, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

My view of this article is that no, it is not a grade B article or anything near it. – @Kanjuzi, in respect for your time, I will not ask you again to evaluate this article. However, I will consider the feedback below with great appreciation for your time. I will add my comments to your feedback so that you and others know how the feedback was (or was not) incorporated. However, I do not intend to argue for any of the points in my comments nor to start discussions about examples or grammar theory. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

The article now has citations but they don't necessarily support what is written. For example, the first sentence "From an interpersonal and logical perspective, a tense is a temporal circumstance in which an event takes place relative to a given point in time" is by no means supported by any of the three references cited. None of them say that tense is a temporal circumstance. They all say that it is a category of the verb which locates the action of the verb in time. Adding the words "From an interpersonal and logical perspective" doesn't help and merely confuses the issue; it is unclear what you mean.

None of the citations say that tense is a temporal circumstance. – This is not the case. Aerts says Tense is a deictic (meta)category: it is concerned with (external) temporality, i.e. the temporal location of a state of affairs and Gerreira says This is what we call 'tense': the deictic morphosyntactic category that determines the temporal circumstance (situación en el tiempo) of the event represented. There are two points here. 1) In functional linguistics, a category of wording is a meaning, therefore tense is both a category of wording and a meaning. There is no need to claim that we are talking about a category of wording in my opinion because this is an article about "tense in Latin". 2) In turn, "temporal location", "temporal situation" and "temporal circumstance" are synonyms in this context. I notice in your comment a desire for lexical cohesion between citation and article (the words "location"/"situation" not the word "circumstance") instead of semantic equivalence. I myself prefer an article with internal lexical cohesion (a defined term always applied as defined) and semantic equivalence between article and cited sources (of course, the cited material should be added without change as I did). I will search for wikipedia guidelines in this regard. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

It is unclear what you mean by "from an interpersonal and logical perspective – Indeed, interpersonal semantics and logical semantics are terms that come from functional linguistics. They may feel like jargon. I will replace them by "from a semantic perspective". Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@Kanjuzi According to Wikipedia guidelines, citations should be added unmodified (as I did), but the article body should have simple terms used consistently throughout (as I did). Using consistent synonyms in the article for jargon in the cited text (as I did) is not a problem, but the desired practice, as long as the information is verifiable in the sources (which the information in this article is) and as long as it is not politically biased (which the information in this article is not). Clarity and consistency in description is to be preferred over jargon of any specific group.

Since this is an article about the temporal deictic meaning of wordings, not about the names of verb forms and verb periphrases, I see any critique of lack of “present in future” / “relative to absolute” / “secondary tense” phraseologies a non-issue as long as what the authors are claiming by “these forms are durative” corresponds in their work to what is defined in this article as “secondary present” according to other authors.

In other words, Wikipedia articles should not be a collection of uninterpreted statements containing disparate jargon, but rather a consistent text with verifiable statements. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 08:03, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Your citation from Rosén for coepi verbs is irrelevant and doesn't prove anything; the one from Touratier is much better, but you have yet to show that he or anyone else refers to such forms as "present in future" or "present in present" etc. Nor do you have any citation justifying the label "present in future" for exspectabo. Most grammarians would simply call this "future" (or "future continuous").

Your citation from Rosén for coepi verbs is irrelevant. – Translations into and out of a language are one of the ways whereby a meaning is attested. This assessment is not correct.

you have yet to show that he or anyone else refers to such forms as "present in future" or "present in present" etc – I notice here again a desire for lexical cohesion between cited material and the statement in the article body. Howerver, "durative forms" in this citation of Rosén's article is a synonym for "continuous past forms" or "verbs for present events at a past event". In her article, she uses the term again with other meanings. "This morpheme" in Touratier's book is what we usually call "this verb" because Touratier has a 'morphematic' theory of grammar. I myself think the article is better with the full citations in the original form and a fluent body in English with internal lexical cohesion than with a body containing different terms for the same meaning and the same terms meaning different things.

Your citation xiv from Guerrera does indeed say that languages usually have three basic time divisions but it does not support your statement that Latin has three primary tenses. You have no citation for the label "secondary tenses". To say that agam "I will do" is a different tense from agam "I will be doing" is your own idea. Who is to say that these are different tenses, just because they are different in English? You might as well say that egi "I did (this morning)" is a different tense from egi "I did (yesterday)" just because in certain languages like Chichewa they have a different translation. What about "I was" in English, which in Latin can be fui or eram (and similarly in Spanish and Portuguese)? Are those two meanings different tenses, even though most monolingual English speakers are completely unable to see any difference between them?

[Your citation xiv from Guerrera] does not support your statement that Latin has three primary tenses. – I will expand the citation. In the context, the sentence is not about languages usually having three tenses, but about Latin verbs usually locating events at one of three locations in a timeline, but sometimes locating them at one of two locations, especially so in modal variants. Here is the continuation: Observaremos así en latín (§ 4) que las FV referidas al pasado son, salvo alguna pequeña distorsión, muy nítidas en su deíxis temporal, que las referidas al fugaz presente no lo son tanto y que las que apuntan al futuro se confunden con otras de carácter modal o incluso no existen cuando una variante morfológica modal está por medio (la inexistencia de Futuro de Subjuntivo, por ejemplo).

To say that agam "I will do" is a different tense from agam "I will be doing" is your own idea. Who is to say that these are different tenses, just because they are different in English? – No, it is not my idea. I will add a citation. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

You might as well say that egi "I did (this morning)" is a different tense from egi "I did (yesterday)" – No, I won't do this. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

What about "I was" in English, which in Latin can be fui or eram (and similarly in Spanish and Portuguese)? – No, I won't do this, but I will say that "I am happy" is different from "I am a happy guy" or "I have a happy personality". And I will say that "the car is here" is a variant of "the car is located here" but that "I am happy" is not a variant of "I am located happy". If you want to know which words can fit the slot "the car [...] here", there are two options: namely "is" and "is located". And if you want to know how to complete these slots "I [...] happy [...]", be sure to consider "am"|"", "am a"|"guy" and "have a"|"personality". Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Are those two meanings different tenses, even though most monolingual English speakers are completely unable to see any difference between them? – Yes, they are. Functional descriptions of grammar may reveal aspects of a language that most people know intuitively, but that they would not be able to explain. It is not that people are unable to notice semantic distinctions between two wordings in English. It may be the case that 1) the distinctions are simly not there (for instance, when a wording in English is less specific than its equivalents in other languages) or that 2) the distinction is there in a either lexical or grammatical way. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Your translation of the Petronius quotation Titus noster magnum animum habet is, as I said earlier, not correct or even correct English, and if it were correct it would still not be a suitable example to illustrate the present continuous meaning. It doesn't describe something which is happening now, but something which is generally true: "Our Titus is a guy with lots of crazy ideas" or something like that (not "warm-hearted"!).

Thank you for the comment, I will check my translations. Maybe add citations to translations. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I checked translations and I decided to expand the context window to make it clearer that the statements are relative to the time frame, not to the speech act. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 23:15, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Your choice of decessit illius pater as an example for what you call the "past in past" is puzzling; nor does it mean "he came dead" (that isn't a correct English expression), but simply "he died", simple past. And why do you add in triduo die festa? That isn't the time Trimalchio's father died, but refers to a future time when Trimalchio is going to put on a gladiatorial show. The translators seem to think this phrase means "on the holiday the day after tomorrow"; nothing to do with a party! Your translation 300 sesterces came left to him" in the next example is equally bizarre. It simply means "300,000 sesterces was left to him" or "he inherited 300,000 (not 300!) sesterces", a simple past tense, not a secondary tense at all. I would say that you wold do best to check with a published translation before adding an example, since your knowledge of Latin is clearly still a bit rudimentary. That doesn't of course stop you from writing an article on Latin, but it needs to be based on the works of people who do know the language.

The translators seem to think this phrase means "on the holiday the day after tomorrow"; nothing to do with a party! – Indeed, it's a fest, not a party. As for the day, I am not sure there is agreement between translators. I will double check. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I checked 5 translations (EN, PT, 3x ES). There is no consensus. The best translations (the ones that make most sense in the target language) are the ones that talk about the current three-day fest. I'll stick with that reading. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 22:53, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

300,000 (not 300!) – Thank you, I will check. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I checked 5 translations (EN, PT, 3x ES) and all of them say '30,000,000'/'thirty million'. I'll follow the translators. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 22:51, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

best to check with a published translation before adding an example – I agree. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

nor does it mean "he came dead" (that isn't a correct English expression), but simply "he died", simple past – Indeed, "came dead" is bad English. The translations I checked for this passage are very convoluted wordings. Translators tried to solve a difficult issue here. The general implication is that the man "entered" the fest with his 300,000 sesterces inherited and with his father dead, which means that he inherited this money and lost his father prior to the current ongoing festivities ('past in present'). Since there is no English wording for 'event prior to present timeframe', I will change the contextual adjunct from "in this fest" to "prior to this fest" and cite translations. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Instead of changing the time frame, I expanded the context window by adding the statement 'habet unde' (he is holding resources [in this three-day fest]). This solves the issue at the experiential semantics since the result of inheriting money is having money. :-) Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 23:14, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

In your paragraph 2 you say that ago "I am doing" is both a primary tense and a secondary tense, which can't be right. There are doubtless other points to make but I have spent enough time already.

This comment is due to a wrong assumption that the article is meant to name the verb forms, which it is not. This article is about the meanings of the verb forms. In this context, the same form can mean two different things in different contexts and there is no problem here. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

My view of this article is that no, it is not a grade B article or anything near it. The examples you copied from Latin tenses are fine, bu the others are incorrect or unsuitable, the labels you give to them such as "past in past" have no citations to support them, and citations you give in several cases do not support your text. Kanjuzi (talk) 16:05, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

It would be best if you add your comments at the bottom of the section, not in between my comments, which makes it difficult to follow the argument. Kanjuzi (talk) 10:02, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, my mistake, it's 30,000,000 sesterces (centena milia is understood: [1] §3a). But as for in triduo, the passage is discussed here. It seems that some commentators think it means a three-day festival, but Bocciolini Palagi adduces passages such as Cato, De agri cultura 157.15 (in triduo polypus excidet "within three days the polyp will fall out") and Plautus Persa 37 (quos continuo tibi reponam in hoc triduo aut quadriduo "I'll repay you straightaway within these three or four days"). Certainly it seems to me that die festa implies just one day of festival. (I don't know why you have added this phrase to the example, by the way: it belongs to a completely different sentence.) So I would go for "in three days' time, i.e. the day after tomorrow, on the holiday". I don't know where you get "entered the fest" from; that's just nonsense. You have misunderstood et habet unde. The sentence seems to mean: "and he has the wherewithall (i.e. he has sufficient cash): he was left 30,000,000 sesterces when his father died". (The word male is a difficulty; some commentators think it means something like "damn!" and is not connected with decessit. Müller puts it between daggers.) And why change "his father died" into "he has lost his father"? It confuses the issue and is unnecessary. At any rate I don't think it is "past in present" or if it is, it is a very dubious example. It would be better to choose a less ambiguous example.

I agree that it is fine to rephrase a cited statement, but only if you end up with the same meaning. Aerts and the others don't say that a tense is a temporal circumstance. They say it is a category of the verb which indicates the time when the action happens or happened. To me that seems not the same thing.

The idea that ago has two different meanings is dubious. For Romans there was presumably only one meaning, just as with our "was", which we don't consider to have two meanings. It's like saying that the English word "teacher" or Turkish öğretmen has two meanings, since in German Lehrer and Lehrerin are differentiated. But, as you know, in Turkish there is no gender in any part of the grammar: the word on means "he" or "she" equally. So you are applying a category which the native speakers themselves pay no attention to. You could (as I pointed out) equally well add categories "hodiernal past" and "hesternal past" to your table but they would be meaningless as far as Latin is concerned, though important in Bantu languages.

I see you have added a new example from Plautus, but mistranslated it. It means something like "I shall make sure that you don't go unpunished for that lunch you've just eaten." And Menaechmi doesn't have a long e. – veni, vidi, vici is normally attributed to Caesar, even though Suetonius quotes it. – I don't see why you translate servire coeperis as "you are serving" rather than "you have begun to serve"; it's not quite the same thing, even though the second entails the first. – Another thing, caldicerebrius doesn't mean "hot-tempered" as far as I know. That doesn't fit the context at all. It's talking about how Trimalchio is always coming up with new and brilliant ideas. In any case you should omit it, as it's not essential to the example. Kanjuzi (talk) 11:58, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

The article you pointed out to is quite interesting. My hypothesis is one of the hypotheses pointed out there and I think it is one of the most reasonable ones. In short, like we say "in this week Friday" to mean "on Friday in this week", I read in triduō diē fēstā as the diēs fēsta within this triduum. A triduum is a three-day period like a week is a seven-day period. A triduum ends in a diēs fēsta like a week ends in a Saturday (or in a Sunday in Germany). Notice that this is a diēs fēsta (the 'Festday'), not a diēs fēstus (a day with a fest), in the same way that 'Monday' is not a day with a moon. Finally, I assume that the speech takes place in the diēs fēsta, thus that the expression means actually "on this Festday in this threeday".

This reading is confirmed by an earlier passage in the same book on chapter 26: venerat iam tertius dies, id est expectatio liberae cenae ('in the beginning of the third day, it was the expectation for the free dinner'). The speech with the expression in triduō diē fēsta happens later that day, during the free dinner.

However, the translation "in this three-day fest" is also correct if we assume that the "threeday" is the līberālia fest, which ended in a diēs fēsta. In such case, what we are calling a fest is the līberālia, not the relative position of the day within the three-day period.

Answering your other question, the reason for adding this time frame in square brackets is that the expression "in triduō diē fēstā" sets up the time frame that all following clauses rely on, which place the events either before, during or after this three-day period, which is the present triduum. That is the reason why we are talking about a 'future in present', 'present in present' and 'past in present' and not about a primary tense relative to the time of the speech act. The tense is relative to the triduum, not to the speech act. That is why we see habitūrī sumus ('in this triduum we are looking forward to have') and not habēbimus ('we will have'). This is why the behaviour of Titus thus far in the triduum is not necessarily his current behaviour at the time of the speech act. This is why the death of Titus' father and the inheritance took place prior to the triduum, prior to him currently having resources. The tense here for most of the verb groups is a secondary tense relative to the triduum. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 09:40, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Hooray! You have now got the right interpretation of in triduo die festa (except that I wouldn't use the word "fest" which is not an English word: better to say "festival" or "feast day" or "holiday"). But to try to add this phrase (which comes seven lines earlier, and refers to the time when the gladiator show will take place) to "he was left 30 million sesterces when his father died" doesn't make any sense. If I say "Next summer I'm going to Greece; last year I went to Italy" the words "Next summer" apply only to the first verb, not the second. Anyway, as I say, this example is not a suitable one to illustrate the point you are trying to make. pater eius decessit ("His father died") is a simple past tense not a "past in present" or anything like that. Surely somewhere in Latin literature you can find a more straightforward example to show what you mean.

Your translation "is having a great spirit" is incorrect English, and I don't think it means that anyway since it is talking about Trimalchio's character in general, not how he is acting at the moment. It is unclear to me whether erit means "he will be" or "it will be" (I think the latter); but it certainly doesn't mean "he should be now" (where have you got the word "now" from?). Again, in triduo die festa doesn't go with magnum animum habet. The time phrase goes with erit but not with habet. If I say "John is always helpful; he will lend me the money tomorrow", the word "tomorrow" applies only to the second sentence not the first.

Similarly, est caldicerebrius doesn't mean "he is being hot-tempered" (if caldicerebrius means "hot-tempered", which I doubt, since that meaning makes no sense here); it simply means "he is hot-tempered", i.e. general present, describing his character; it is not describing his present state. There is a difference between the sentences "he is stupid" (a permanent state) and "he is being stupid" (a temporary state, meaning he is acting at this moment in a stupid way). So this example doesn't illustrate the kind of tense you are talking about and I think you should search for a better one.

I would take et Titus etc. to mean "and Titus is", not "Titus is both..."; if the latter was intended I think et would probably be placed after noster. At any rate, because of its ambiguity, I don't think you have chosen a suitable example. Perhaps you should avoid passages like this speech of Echion, which is not in standard Latin, but very slangy. Take munus excellente, for example: you will not find the ending -te as an accusative singular neuter in any standard Latin grammar. Kanjuzi (talk) 11:32, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Hooray! You have now got the right interpretation of in triduo die festa (except that I wouldn't use the word "fest" which is not an English word: better to say "festival" or "feast day" or "holiday"). But to try to add this phrase (which comes seven lines earlier, and refers to the time when the gladiator show will take place) to "he was left 30 million sesterces when his father died" doesn't make any sense. – Either you did not read what I wrote or you did not understand it (maybe I was confusing in my explanation). This is what I mean:

Latin

– in triduō diē fēstā

Actual Meaning

– 'today, on this diēs fēsta, in this triduum'

– 'today, on this Festday, in this threeday'

Wrong Interpretation

– 'in three days at the holiday'

I mean that today is a diēs fēsta, today is the last day of a triduum and that the fight will happen after the triduum, after the diēs fēsta, after today. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 13:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@Kanjuzi, here is a constructed example scheme in English to illustrate the difference between 'future' and 'future in present'. Do you notice the difference in meaning between the two groups of wordings?

Future

• 'he'll fight today'
• 'he's gonna fight today'
• 'he's fighting today'

Future in Present

• 'today he's about to fight'
• 'today he's longing to fight'
• 'today he's waiting to fight'
• 'today he's on his way to fight'

Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 17:29, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

As for munus + excellente, this 'munus' is the object of 'habere' and together they mean 'to receive a service'. In this context, I understand the adverb excellente as a kind of absolute ablative of the present participle ('while he excells'). In the context, I understand this adverb as a 'passive' variant of excellentiter ('excellently') because I assume that ego teum munus habebo ('I will receive a service from you') is a passive variant of tu mihi munus dabis ('you will do me a service'). In that sense, 'to do one a service excellently' is passivized as in 'to be done a service excellently'. At least, this is my reading and it matches what translators do. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 14:24, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that it is fine to rephrase a cited statement, but only if you end up with the same meaning. Aerts and the others don't say that a tense is a temporal circumstance. They say it is a category of the verb which indicates the time when the action happens or happened. To me that seems not the same thing. – Aerts does not say time, he says (external) temporality and temporal location. As I said before, temporal circumstance is a synonym for temporal location. In turn, he says that tense, as a temporal circumstance, is a deictic (meta)category [of wordings], where the prefix meta shows that he is talking about a metacategory of wordings, i.e. a category of wordings in usage, not in form, i.e. a category of wordings at the very act of speaking or writing. He is talking about a category of wordings in terms of what they mean: e.g. all wordings that represent 'past events' in the reality external to the text. He is talking about 'past' in the expression 'present form with past meaning'. Category in actual meaning as one speaks, not category in word formation. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 16:45, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I'll check the other points when I have time again. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 13:09, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

No, your interpretation of in triduo die festa cannot be right. It cannot possibly mean "after the dies festa", but only "on the dies festa". Nor does it mean "today, on this dies festa" either. The phrase in triduo, as the quotations which that Italian scholar gives make clear, means "in two days' time" or "the day after tomorrow". That is the obvious interpretation. It certainly doesn't mean "today", since if you read the story you will see that the day is already well advanced and they are having dinner.

Your interpretation of excellente is also incorrect. It is not an adverb, but an adjective. (See this page.) You have to remember that Echion is not a Roman but a Greek merchant who doesn't speak proper Latin. It's like when an English writer writes "ain't": it isn't correct English, but dialect.

The word munus here has its technical meaning of a gladiatorial show: see C.2.a in Lewis and Short.

I know what you mean when you say "Future in Present" but you give no reference for this terminology. (Incidentally, you might perhaps include "I'm going to fight" as "future in present", since the speaker is talking about his present intention. But that's a debatable point perhaps.)

I know what Aerts says in his definition, but my point is that it isn't the same as what you say. Kanjuzi (talk) 18:12, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

My interpretation again:

• in the three-day event, in the Festday, we are on our way to receive a service.
• in this three-day event, in this Festday, we are on our way to receive a service.
• in this three-day festival, we are on our way to receive a service.

I see you are basing your opinion on actual (in my opinion wrong) translations of the passage (because the narrator tells they are on the third day of the triduum on Chapter 26), but I am tired of this discussion. Should I search for another example? One with the word "hodiē" so that we have no discussion? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 18:27, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

You have to remember that Echion is not a Roman but a Greek merchant who doesn't speak proper Latin. – I accept that interpretation. The other interpretation with a broken grammar whereby he says [ā eō] excellente (receive a servie from him excelling) goes in the same direction. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 18:31, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I see you have now made some other alterations to the article. For example, you have translated nuptura est as "is on her way to marry". But it doesn't mean that, but simply "is going to marry", i.e. "is planning to marry". And I think venturus ero = "I'm on my way to arrive" is rather strange English; no one would ever say that. Perhaps "when I'm due to arrive" is possible. "I'm on my way to do" is an idiom of your own, it seems, not really correct English. Thirdly, I think that cum ab eō digressus essem means not "as I left him" but "after I left him". Here again I think that "due to sail" might be a good translation.

Once again, your interpretation of that phrase in triduo etc. is not correct. Nor does munus here mean "service". I find it rather strange that you, who are only a beginner in Latin, are telling me that my interpretation is incorrect, when I have more than 60 years' experience in learning and teaching the language!

Yes indeed, it would be an excellent idea to look for an example with hodie or nunc and to abandon this one. Kanjuzi (talk) 18:36, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

"Due to arrive" / "due to sail" sounds good. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 09:30, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

It would be an excellent idea to look for an example with 'hodie' or 'nunc'. – I will search for an example with 'hodie'. An example with 'nunc' will not work because we would definitely enter into a discussion about temporal adjuncts with cross-clausal scope and temporal cohesion, which is a linguistic phenomenon that philologists have not yet treated properly in the literature (as far as I know).

As for your assessment of my skills and your self-attribution of authority, I would like to add a point.

I have at least 15 translations of Satyricon home (six of which on my table now) and I published an article about the effect of linguistic theories and models in the understanding of this book. In addition, I worked on the automation of the interpretation of temporal adjuncts in multiple European languages (Spanish, French, Italian, German) for dialog systems. In other words, I have done corpus study with this book and I worked with automatic processing of this kind of expression crosslinguistically. I may not have as long an experience with reading and teaching Latin as you do, but I am not a 'beginner' as you may think I am. I truly appreciate your input, but I would like us to rely on the literature instead of authority. :-) Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 09:51, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't doubt that you are highly skilled in automatic processing and such things about which I know nothing. It's just that, having seen some of your translations, I question how far you are advanced in Latin. As I said earlier, that doesn't disqualify you from writing about it. But I do find it strange that you sometimes judge that my interpretations are incorrect! Kanjuzi (talk) 14:24, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I notice sometimes that you do not consider semantic hypotheses that are the default semantic hypotheses applied in automatic text processing across European languages (including all neo-Latin languages), especially so in the combined meaning of temporal adjuncts and tense. You also often do not consider the impact of inter-clausal coherence in the interpretation of tense, which is a necessary step to construe the logical chain of events in automatic text analysis. Most of the time, you arrive at a similar interpretation as I do through other paths, e.g. by freely selecting one of multiple potential meanings of a periphrasis or agreement paradigm that you find in grammar books and which you think best fits the context. This interpretation is a hidden internal process inside you and it is grounded not on an open published algorithm (which is external to humans and can be evaluated and improved). It often works because it is based on an intuition construed over time after reading many texts. When you are unsure, you check your intuition against what translators have done in the past. This is a fine process.

However, we know more about how temporal adjuncts work in living languages than we did in the past and this knowledge allows us to raise up hypotheses that grammar book authors and translators could not in the past, especially the ones who wrote a long time ago. The advances in linguistics are not something that you need to know, nor the research of Latin grammar done recently, but I notice you are not considering some truly common semantic hypotheses in text analysis.

Despite this background difference, I find your input very relevant since I want the examples not to be felt by anyone as misread independently of their background. I find the article now much better because it has references to research of Latin grammar and an organized bibliography. I thank you for that push!

When I am done applying all your suggestions, I’ll leave here a note. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 11:22, 16 October 2023 (UTC)