Chapter 38: Relative Clauses of Characteristic, Relative Clauses of - PDF document

Chapter 38: Relative Clauses of Characteristic, Relative Clauses of Purpose and Subordinate Clauses in Indirect Discourse Chapter 38 covers the following: relative clauses of characteristic and purpose (RCC/RCP); subordinate clauses in indirect discourse (SCID); the datives of reference and purpose; and at the end of the lesson we’ll review the vocabulary which you should memorize in this chapter. There are four important rules to remember in this chapter: (1) Relative clauses with subjunctive verbs show “characteristic” or “purpose.” (2) Subordinate clauses in indirect discourse often have subjunctive verbs. (3) The dative case shows reference. (4) The “double dative” consists of a dative of reference, plus a dative of purpose. Relative Clauses of Characteristic. You remember what relative clauses are, right? Clauses that begin “who, which, what, that,” as in “These are clauses which begin with relative pronouns li ke ‘who, which, what, that.’” And d o you remember the term for the noun outside the relative clause to which the relative pronoun refers? Yes, its antecedent. When a relative clause has a clear and specific antecedent ─ that’s the sort of antecedent we’ve been dealing with ever si nce you learned about relative clauses in Chapter 17 ─ the verb in the relative clause is indicative , which makes perfect sense. If something seems clear and factual to the speaker, it’s only logical to use the indicative. But what if the antecedent ’s not clear? Relative clauses can also describe a type of person or thing, as in “Here’s the type of person who would have done it.” He didn’t necessarily do it but he’s that sort of person . [Look at that sneer. He’s totally evil .] So what do you do in Latin when the antecede nt isn’t specific? What mood of verb should the relative clause use? The subjunctive, of course, which in this case generalizes the antecedent. It can also show purpose as we’ll see in a second. Generalizing the antecedent is a natural extension of the subjunctive’s basic sense of uncertainty. Let’s look into this type of syntax a little more closely. In a regular relative clause, one that uses the indicative, the antecedent is specific, a clear, real thing you can point at. For instance, “Here’s the poem which you like.” In Latin, the verb “like” will be indicative, because the poem under discussion is a real and specific one. The Aeneid , for instance. If you haven’t read it already, you’re going to love it. Everyone does. But make the verb in the relative clause subjunctive and the antecedent is no longer specific. For instance, “I know the type of poem which you like .” I’m not thinking about a specific one. I just know you like sonnets . H ere’s a book of sonnets by Shakespeare. I’ll b et you love them, too . [You better! They’re great!] Let’s look at what this will look like in Latin. A regular relative clause, like “He is the man who did it,” will be Vir est qui id fecit . The verb fecit is indicative, indicating that h e’s the man who actually did it. A rel ative clause of characteristic ─ let’s call them “RCC’s” for the sake of brevity ─ an RCC like “He is the type of man who would have done it,” will have a subjunctive verb and look like this: Vir est qui id fecerit . By changing the verb into the subjunctive fecerit , the meaning of the sentence changes, too. Now it means h e’s the type of person who would have done it, but whether or not he actually did this exact particular thing is not clear. What the relative clause is saying now is , “I don’t have solid evidence he did it, but he can’t be counted out as a suspect. ” 1

There is another type of relative clause that also uses the subjunctive: the relative clause of purpose (RCP). Regular positive purpose clauses, as we saw back in Chapter 28, use ut , for example, Virum misi ut tecum loqueretur , meaning “I sent a man to speak with you.” RCP’s make one simple change. They replace ut with a relative pronoun form like qui , for instance, Virum misi qui tecum loqueretur , meaning basically the same thing: “I sent a man to (lit. who was to) speak with you.” Since Wheelock doesn’t discuss RCP’s at all in his textbook, let’s look at a few examples of this construction. You are responsible for knowing it in this class. First sentence: Quosdam misit qui hostes interficerent , meaning “He sent some men to kill the enemy. ” Literally “… who would ( were to) kill the enemy.” Here’ s another example: Haec habebat quae de senectute diceret , meaning “He had th ese things to say about old age. ” Literally “… which he would (wanted to) say about old age.” And a third example: Dignus est qui exercitui imperet , meaning “He is worthy to command an army.” Literally, “He is a worthy man who would (could) command an army.” One minor point: if an RCP has a comparative form in it, Latin uses quo , as in scutum deiecit quo celerius fugeret , meaning “ He threw down his shield in order to run away faster,” literally “… by which the faster he might run away.” Note that both RCC’s and RCP’s are similar in another respect: they both build on the subjunctive’s original sense of uncertainty. That is, h e’s the “type” of person who would have done it (maybe he did, maybe he didn ’t, but you can’t count him out) or he’s the person I sent “to do” it ( but I’m not saying he actually completed the task). Both show uncertainty. There is yet a third kind of relative clause which takes a subjunctive verb but this one doesn’t reflect uncertainty. Instead, it incorporates the newer use of the subjunctive in classical times, to show subordination. This type occurs when a relative clause is embedded within another clause or construction. This syntax-inside-syntax situation happens most often when the antecedent of a relative clause is some component of indirect discourse. In this case, there is not necessarily anything “uncertain” about the information in the relative clause ─ the antecedent isn’t being generalized; the outcome of the verb’s action is not questionable in any way ─ the verb is subjunctive because the larger grammar around it, the syntax it’s inside, is complicated. Students in past classes of mine jokingly referred to this as the subjunctive in “deep syntax.” Inelegant but not inaccurate. Underlying this phenomenon is a principle called “hypercorrection,” in which speakers import a linguistic rule or feature associated elsewhere with “good grammar” into a context where it does not apply and often produces bad grammar. The classic example in English is “between you and I.” “Between you and me” is correct in that the preposition “between” calls for the object ive case, as is easily seen when the pronouns are reversed. Few English speakers would say “between I and you.” One factor driving hypercorrection is the speaker’s wish to sound “correct,” and knowing that other uses of “me,” such as “Me and him went home,” are looked down on as substandard speech, some English speakers will use “I” instead of “me” broadly, even when the objective form “me” is , in fact, called for. Hypercorrection is also probably a major factor, if not the major factor, driving “Subordinate Clauses in Indirect Discourse” in Latin [L et’s make our lives easier and call that SCID.] As subordination and complex syntax began to develop in Latin, some Romans made verbs subjunctive when there was no need or precedent to do so, because, well, lots of smart people were using subjunctives in fancy-shmancy new-fangled clauses, so subjunctives obviously made you sound hip and besides everything around the clause 2