Transcript Latin Conditionals “if/then” If/Then in Latin First off, this is a moment

Latin Conditionals
“if/then”
If/Then in Latin
• First off, this is a moment to step back, take a
deep breath, and feel for a moment that your
life isn’t as hard as your friends’ lives in other
languages. Because Latin conditionals aren’t
that hard.
•
Spanish makes the tenses really hard in conditionals. French has a
whole other verb form just for conditionals. Ancient Greek
conditionals are an unimaginable nightmare. Call this your payoff for
learning all those case forms!
Vocabulary
• A conditional sentence is just an if/then type
sentence.
• In a Latin conditional, we call the “if” clause the
protasis and the “then” clause the “apodosis”.
• General conditions are about the present or
past. Future conditions are about the future.
Unreal conditions are about what would have
happened if things had been different.
General Conditions
•
These are so simple you’ve probably already read plenty of them
without having to be taught.
•
If the whole thing is in the present, both verbs are present
indicative. si vir servus est, non liber est. (If a man is a slave, he
is not free.)
•
If the whole logical relationship is in the past, then you can use
either imperfect or perfect indicative, depending on which works
for the specific actions. si vir servus erat, non liber erat (If a man
was a slave, he was not free); si vir servus fuit, non liber fuit (If a
man used to be a slave, he was not free [then]).
•
Notice that, unlike English, do you not need a word for “then”.
Future Conditions
• These are the most common
conditional sentences. Logically, you
most often talk about “if/then”
relationships when speculating about
the future.
• There are two types: future more vivid
and future less vivid.
Future More Vivid
• This is by far the most common conditional
sentence structure in Latin. It’s equivalent to
English, “If you do this, that will happen.”
• The only trick is that the Latin tense usage
in this sentence is actually more logical than
the English. Why, come to think about it,
would we use a present tense verb such as
“do” when the whole sentence is thinking
about future possibilities?
Why We Need Future Perfect!!
•
This is where the Latin future perfect tense, which some students may
have spent a long time wondering why the Romans even needed,
comes in handy.
•
Future perfect tense, as you remember, is for a future action that is
already over and done with BEFORE another future action starts.
This means it makes perfect logical sense in an if/then sentence
about the future. You need to do the “if” action before the “then”
action can result!
•
Because of this, most of the time these sentences will have a
future perfect verb in the protasis, and a normal future verb in the
apodosis. So, si Catullus carmina magna scripserit, homines eum
laudabunt (If Catullus writes [lit. “will have written”] great poems,
people will praise him).
Future Less Vivid
•
This is less frequent and does not translate well into contemporary
English. The best equivalent is “If she should do this, this would
happen.”
•
The tone is more speculative than the future more vivid condition. It’s
not ruling out that the circumstance might happen, but the speaker is
less committed.
•
You most commonly construct this with present subjunctive in both
protasis and apodosis. si vir servus sit, non liber sit (“If a man should
be a slave, he would not be free.” Perfect subjunctive is grammatical,
but rare.
Unreal Conditions
• These are very different logically from all the
other kinds of conditions. In all other
conditions, you are talking about things that
are happening, did happen, or realistically
could happen.
•
The unreal condition (also called contrary-to-fact or contrafactual
condition), though, is a speculation about what WOULD HAVE
happened if something is/was true that is really false. It’s like
reasoning about an alternate universe.
Present Unreal Conditions
•
These are constructed with both protasis and apodosis
in imperfect subjunctive. You can compare how you
use imperfect subjunctive to mean “same time” in
sequence of tenses, if you like the mnemonic.
•
si septem annos haberem, non haec scriberem (If I
were seven years old, I would not be writing this).
•
Don’t be too confused with seeing “were” in a present
conditional in English. Again, think about the logic--I
am writing that sentence about myself, this moment
(May 8, 2013), at which moment I am NOT seven
years old. Present tense.
Past Unreal Conditions
•
For these, use pluperfect subjunctive in both clauses.
Again, you can compare the use of pluperfect
subjunctive in secondary sequence for all “before” verbs
as a mnemonic.
•
si Cleopatra non femina fuisset, Romanos non tam
graviter terruisset (“If Cleopatra had not been a woman,
she would not have scared the Romans so badly.”)
•
All of this is in the past relative to the moment of writing.