In the eighteenth class of the Latin from Scratch course, we’ll study the morphology and syntax of the possessive adjectives/pronouns. This class will have to be expanded with the classes about personal pronouns and demonstratives.
Contents
I explain everything in the following video (⏳ 09m 01s ⌛):
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Morphology
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Latin possessives are declined just like any other 2-1-2 adjective, so we just need to know the distribution and the statements:
| 1st person | 2nd person | 3rd person | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 possessor | meus, mea, meum | tuus, tua, tuum | suus, sua, suum (see below) |
| 2+ possessors | noster, nostra, nostrum | vester, vestra, vestrum |
The vocative is always the same as the nominative, except for meus, mea, meum, whose vocative is mi.
Opsecro te, Olympisce mi, mi pater, mi patrone!
I beg you, my Olympian, my father, my patron!
Syntax
This part is a bit more complicated.
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The first thing we need to know is that Latin uses possessives much less often than English. If the possessor can clearly be deduced from the context, Latin usually omits the possessive.
Quinctius cum patre (suo) adest.
Quinctius is here with his father.
Also, notice that Latin possessives work more like Spanish and romance languages. In English, the possessive agrees with the possessor, but in Latin the possessive agrees with the thing possessed.
Pater tuus hic est, sed mater mea abest.
Your father is here, but my mother isn’t!
The most important and confusing syntactic feature we find in the 3rd person suus, sua, suum, which is always reflexive (it refers to the subject of the sentence).
Gaius patrem suum et matrem suam non amat.
Gaius doesn’t love his father nor his mother.
If we need a non-reflexive 3rd person possessive, we need the genitive of the pronoun is, ea, id.
Regem suspectum habebant pro eius crudelitate.
They had their king respected due to his cruelty.
We’ll learn more about this soon enough, but this is it for now. In the next class we’ll learn personal pronouns!
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