3.2 Nominative and Predicate — Epoché
What you will be able to do Take a nominative complement after sum and the verbs like it. Name the four kinds of verb that put a nominative on both sides. See that a predicate adjective agrees with the subject in gender and number. Read a sentence with two nominatives and decide which one is the subject. Read sentences like Amici eius eum amant. [34] — His friends love him. — without looking anything up. Prerequisites : 3.1 — word order and emphasis. Lesson 2.8 said in passing that both sides of sum are nominative. This lesson makes it a rule, extends it to the other verbs that behave the same way, and deals with the one question it raises: if a sentence has two nominatives, how do you know which is the subject? The answer turns out to be interesting, because Latin often does not distinguish them and does not need to. How English says it English has the same rule and has almost lost it. The prescription that one should say it is I rather than it is me is exactly the Latin rule surviving in a grammar book: "to be" links two subjects, so the second one takes a subject form. Almost nobody obeys it in speech, and English has made its peace with it's me . English Latin What is happening She is a girl. Puella est. [1] both nominative; no object I am a girl. Puella sum. [2] the complement is nominative, not accusative Water is life. Aqua vita est. [3] two nouns, both nominative I'm a man, not a boy. Ego sum vir, non puer. [4] three nominatives in one sentence So English gives you the instinct for free; the work is to trust it and never to reach for an accusative after sum . The mistake an English speaker makes is not grammatical but perceptual: seeing a verb, expecting an object, and mis-parsing the nominative that follows. The verbs that do this Four groups, and the second and third are the ones that will surprise you. Group Verbs Example being sum , fīō become Amīcus est. He is a friend. seeming videor seem, appāreō appear Bonus vidētur. He seems good. remaining, turning out maneō , ēvādō , exsistō Amīcus mānsit. He remained a friend. being called, made, chosen vocor , appellor , creor , habeor Rēx vocātur. He is called king. The fourth group is the one to remember, because it is common and because it is a passive . In the active, eum rēgem vocant — "they call him king" — has two accusatives. Make it passive and both become nominative: rēx vocātur . English does the same, which is why he is called king and not him . Verbs of naming, making and considering take two objects in the active and two subjects in the passive, and the technical term for the second one is a predicate noun. The second group is where the English instinct fails. videor is the passive of videō and means "I am seen" and therefore "I seem". So bonus videor is "I seem good", with a nominative adjective — and English speakers, translating "seem", reach for the same construction as "I see something" and produce an accusative. Getting this right is a small thing that makes Latin prose readable, because vidētur is one of the commonest words in philosophy: vidētur quod… "it seems that…" opens nearly every article of the Summa . Which nominative is the subject? Here is the honest answer: often there is no way to tell, and it does not matter. Aqua vīta est could be "water is life" or "life is water", and the two are the same claim. Latin writers relied on that. Where it does matter, three things decide, in this order of reliability. The verb's person and number. Puella sum must be "I am a girl", because sum is first person and puella is third. This settles most cases in practice. Definiteness. Latin has no articles, but the more definite or already-known item tends to be the subject and the more general one the predicate. In Deus bonus est , God is the subject and "good" is said of him. Position. Other things being equal the subject comes first. This is the weakest of the three, for the reasons lesson 3.1 gave, but it is not worthless. One consequence worth naming. Because the complement is nominative and not marked as a complement, a predicate adjective agrees with the subject in gender and number, and that agreement is often the only clue to the subject's identity. Pulchra est tells you the subject is feminine although no noun appears; Captae sumus from lesson 2.8 tells you the speakers are women. You met this in lesson 2.10 as an oddity. Here it is doing real work: in a language with no articles and free word order, agreement is frequently the only thing that identifies who is being talked about. A last small point about sum with a genitive, because it looks like this construction and is not. Domus patris meī est is "the house is my father's" — patris is genitive, not a second nominative, and the sense is possession rather than identity. Lesson 3.4 deals with it; here, notice only that the ending tells you at once which construction you are in. Seen in real Latin Latin English The two nominatives Hic puer frater meus est. [5] This boy is my brother. hic puer and frāter meus Nos pueri sumus. [6] We are boys. nōs and puerī — plural verb Nos omnes dei sumus. [7] We are all gods. three nominatives; omnēs agrees with nōs Illi sunt amici mei. [8] Those are my friends. illī and amīcī meī Hi libri mei sunt. [9] These are my books. hī librī and meī Bonus magister erit. [10] He will be a good teacher. subject unstated; the complement is nominative Deus mortuus est. [11] God is dead. mortuus is a participle agreeing with Deus Domus patris mei est. [12] This house is my father's. ★ patris is genitive — possession, not identity The tenth is the clearest case of the rule doing work. Bonus magister erit has no subject written at all: the verb says "he will be", and bonus magister is the nominative complement. An English reader who takes bonus magister for the subject gets the same meaning here by luck, but the habit will fail as soon as the subject is written and the complement is longer. Compare the last two lines. mortuus and patris both foll