Linking Sentences and Predicate Nominatives
Table of contents
Linking Sentences
The verbs with which we’ve been working so far are either transitive verbs or intransitive verbs; the former means that the verb expects some kind of direct object (e.g., “The man saw the road”), while the latter means that the verb does not need an object to complete its meaning (e.g., “The man slept”).
A transitive verb leads us to expect an accusative somewhere in the sentence to serve as a direct object; for example, in the sentence vir cēpit aurum, leaving it at “The man took” would leave us wondering, “what did he take?” The answer comes in the accusative direct object aurum: “The man took the gold.”
Intransitive verbs, on the other hand, do not need an object to complete their meaning. For example, in the sentence equī cucurrērunt, the action of running in cucurrērunt is a complete thought in and of itself; we can leave the translation at “The horses ran” without any desire for a direct object to ‘finish’ the sentence.
This unit introduces a new kind of verb beyond the transitive and intransitive: a linking verb, so called because it links the subject with a word in the predicate (the part of the sentence that includes the verb and anything that follows it) that describes or modifies the subject. The most common linking verb in both English and in Latin is the verb “to be”, the dictionary entry for which in Latin is as follows:
sum, esse, fuī, futūrus - to be
In the perfect active, this verb is completely regular: we can use our familiar -it ending for 3rd person singular and -ērunt / -ēre ending for 3rd person plural to create conjugated verbs:
- puer fuit: “The boy was” or “The boy has been”
- puerī fuērunt: “The boys were” or “The boys have been”
The present system tenses (present, imperfect, and future) will involve irregular conjugations, but we’ll encounter those in the second part of the semester.
Linking verbs, like transitive verbs, lead us to expect something in the predicate, but while transitive verbs expect a direct object, linking verbs expect a word or words to be linked back to the subject to describe the subject: the boy was what? the boys were what? The answer to that question comes in a new use of the nominative case: the predicate nominative.
Predicate Nominative
The predicate nominative is a use of the nominative specifically in a sentence with a linking verb. Its function is to describe the subject via the linking verb intervening in between. Accordingly, a predicate nominative can be a noun, an adjective, or a pronoun.
If the predicate nominative is a noun, it will necessarily need to be in the nominative case and often match in number with the subject. For example:
- fēminae fuērunt mātrēs. “The women were mothers.”
- fēmina fuit mater. “The woman was a mother.”
If the predicate nominative is an adjective, it still follows the rules of adjective-noun agreement; this means that the predicate nominative adjective has to be in the same gender, case, and number as the subject:
- aqua fuit frigida. “The water was cold.”
- equī fuērunt pulchrī. “The horses were beautiful.”
- oppidum fuit magnum. “The town was large.”
Note that since word order doesn’t dictate function, it is technically possible to construe the preceding sentences with the adjective directly modifying the subject: “The cold water was”, “the beautiful horses were”, and “the large town was.” However, the linking verb sets up an expectation of something to come after it – you’re left wanting more.
If you see a form of sum, esse, fuī, futūrus, odds are good that there’s a predicate nominative somewhere in the sentence, and you can use context and common sense to see which word it is.
We will handle pronouns when we learn about them next week, but as a quick preview, pronouns, like adjectives, will take on a gender and a number based on the noun to which they refer. Case can change depending on context, but
- pater fuit hic. “The father was this man.”
- fīliae fuērunt illae. “The daughters were those women.”