What is sigmatic future and how to translate it properly? Is there any equivalent verbal tense in the classical latin?
Gratias omnibus!!
Gratias omnibus!!
Sigmatic Future..
- Thread starter Hermes Trismegistus
- Start date
The sigmatic future is a formation that exists in several Indo-European languages / subfamilies, like Classical Greek, Indo-Iranian (e.g. Sanscrit), Celtic, and Baltic (e.g. Lithuanian)*). The details of the formation are different in the individual languages, but they all contain the suffix -s- (Greek letter name Sigma), that's why it's called sigmatic. In Latin, it mostly exists in older stages, e.g. in Plautus and is rare in later Latin; it is used as futurum exactum, e.g. faxo = fecero (see also this post.)
*) It is debated whether at least some of these formations go back to a sigmatic future that was commonly developed by some Indo-European sub-families or whether they all were independently developed out of subjunctives of the sigmatic aorist in the individual branches.
*) It is debated whether at least some of these formations go back to a sigmatic future that was commonly developed by some Indo-European sub-families or whether they all were independently developed out of subjunctives of the sigmatic aorist in the individual branches.
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[ENG]
It is an archaic feature, thus found mainly in old writers (especially in poetry). One famous example can be read in the first lines of Cicero's De senectute: levasso. It is often translated by the future perfect, so, for instance, levasso = levavero.
[LAT]
Est enim forma vetusta, potissimum apud veteres scriptores reperta (præsertim in re poëtica). Unum exemplum præclarum plane legitur jam initio libri illius a Cicerone conscripti, c.n. De senectute: levasso. Sæpenumero convertitur per futurum perfectum, e.g.: levasso = levavero.
It is an archaic feature, thus found mainly in old writers (especially in poetry). One famous example can be read in the first lines of Cicero's De senectute: levasso. It is often translated by the future perfect, so, for instance, levasso = levavero.
[LAT]
Est enim forma vetusta, potissimum apud veteres scriptores reperta (præsertim in re poëtica). Unum exemplum præclarum plane legitur jam initio libri illius a Cicerone conscripti, c.n. De senectute: levasso. Sæpenumero convertitur per futurum perfectum, e.g.: levasso = levavero.