Marco una soror est = Marcus unam sororem habet.
To Marcus there is one sister = Marcus has one sister.
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To Marcus there is one sister = Marcus has one sister.
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Marco
- Thread starter john abshire
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Both sentences are correct. What is your question?
Historically, the construction with Dative plus esse is the older way to express possession than the construction with nominative plus habere. Proto-Indo-European didn't have a verb "to have" and most likely used a construction like Latin with the dative and "to be"; the verbs meaning "to have" only developed in the individual Indo-European sub-families or even individual languages.
Historically, the construction with Dative plus esse is the older way to express possession than the construction with nominative plus habere. Proto-Indo-European didn't have a verb "to have" and most likely used a construction like Latin with the dative and "to be"; the verbs meaning "to have" only developed in the individual Indo-European sub-families or even individual languages.
The question was; is my translation correct?
And mainly the first sentence.
The Latin sentences were written on the margins of my book. I needed to confirm that my translation of the dative was correct. I did find the dative of possession online, but not until after I posted this.
The first translation is literal. The second translation is idiomatic. Both are correct (Latin teachers may insist on a literal translation to show that you know how the grammar works -- as I recall you are studying on your own.)
Yes I am studying on my own. I was most interested in the literal translation, and how the dative works in particular. I have run across this dative (of possession) before, so this was a bit of a refresher. But it probably won’t be the last time that I ask.
It's important to get both the literal meaning and the idea that's being conveyed. (The latter can't always be easily deduced from the former from an English perspective.)
In this case the meaning (and the idea conveyed) was written out for me (in Latin, but still it was clear) Marcus unam sororem habet. I just had to determine how to express that with Marcus (Marco) in the dative, Marco una soror est, “to Marcus” is all I could think of and “there is” for est I vaguely remembered. It turned out that I was right but I was not confident enough to not ask for confirmation.
Edit: there’s also the datives of _______ (fill in
the blank). And I feel like I need to understand these, at least generally.
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Concerning the meaning of the dative, wheelock says; … a person or thing that an act or circumstance applies to indirectly…..
plus variants on this basis theme.
And is generally preceded by “to” or “from “.
Is this basically it? I mean can a reader get by with this limited understanding?
[I found dative of adjectives, verbs, and compound verbs, plus I found datives of possession, and reference, and i am sure that the list goes on.]
I would say that this is a good introductory idea of what the dative is for, but the dative can't be reduced to an exact equivalent to phrases with "to" or "from" in English. For one thing, some common verbs which have a direct object in English take the dative in Latin.
I am hoping that there are not too many cases that are outside the “to-for” rule. So far (at least), sentences which can be rephrased using “to or for” have dative objects, for example “he ordered the man to work.”=“he gave an order to the man to work.”, so impero takes the dative.
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There are several, and they are significant, like verbs of pleasing, commanding, obeying, serving, etc. As has been mentioned elsewhere, at some point you should reach a proficiency with Latin where you aren't relying on how it translates into English to make sense of the grammar.
I'll give you an example from my own language journey: when I was first learning French, I really wanted to make the imperfect/perfect (passé composé) distinction map exactly onto English verb forms, so the imperfect would be the equivalent of the simple past, and the passé composé the equivalent of the present perfect, but it doesn't always (or even very often) work that way. I had to let go of the English structure and pay attention to how French people use these two forms without reference to translation. This can only be achieved by extensive input, which means reading in the case of Latin.
That won't work for all verbs of commanding. You just need to remember which one uses which construction(s).
e.g. iussit eos suum adventum expectare (Word order changed slightly)
Here is a list of uses of the dative. As you encounter more examples figure out which one is being used and you will start to recognise them.
We had a session once in a spoken Latin course where we had to use sentences with datives of possession for an hour. That made the concept sink in!
The rule should have been “to or for” (not “to or from”) for the dative. From is for the ablative. At least that’s my understanding.
"From" is more likely to correspond to an ablative, yes.
However, an ablative on its own (without a preposition like ab or ex) more often means "by..." or "with (= by means of)...". But it can also mean "from" in some special contexts.
And again, a dative can sometimes be translated as "from" although that's never its literal meaning. For instance, verbs of taking away like adimo, eripio, aufero, surripio... often take the dative of the person from whom something is taken away. Pecuniam patri surripuit = he stole money to (the detriment of his) father, he stole money with his father being the one affected, steal money is what he did and he did it to his father = he stole money from his father.
I guess if I had to choose only one preposition to represent simplistically each of the genitive, dative and ablative cases I'd say genitive = of, dative = to and ablative (without preposition) = with (in the sense of "by means of")—based on what's really the most common of the most common. But of course there are other translations that are common enough like "for" for the dative or "by" or "in" for the ablative, and beyond that also other less literal and highly context-dependent possibilities.
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Thank you, and I am glad that you answered my post. You seem to understand where I am coming from, and where my confusion is. In this case, it was how do I sort out the cases in terms of “to, for, from, etc” in the simplest way possible. The dative (my immediate target) can be complicated if you consider all the different labels, but (i am hoping) that most of the time, if the English “to” or “for” precedes it, (it makes sense to precede the word with to or for) then that is the meaning. In other words; things happen TO the dative, or FOR the dative, for BENEFIT of the dative, etc. Is this basically it?
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