Latin/Participles Lesson 2

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The lessons are getting a little more involved to prepare, but we still have a lot of ground to cover. Thank you so much to those of you who have been following for so long. I truly hope these lessons have been helpful to you.

Present Active Participle
In the previous lesson we looked at the Perfect Passive Participle, or PPP, as it is used both for the perfect passive verb tenses, and in the new-to-us form of adjectival modifier. This lesson we will examine the Present Active Participle. It is always active, and it is essentially identical to a 3rd declension adjective, with just a few quirks. The following sample verbs are shown as participles in nom. s. and gen. s.

Participles formed from sample verbs: Deponent verbs can have present participles:
 * sequor – sequēns (following)
 * orior – oriēns (rising; perhaps you remember oriens and occidens as east and west from a previous lesson).

Some irregular verbs have this participle as well;
 * volēns (willing),
 * nolēns (unwilling),
 * ferēns (bearing/bringing).

The irregular verb “eō” along with its compounds is particularly weird:
 * iēns, euntis (going).

Declension of present active participles is similar to 3rd declension adjectives, always having the i-stem endings in nom. and acc pl. n., and gen pl; nom s. n. is the same as m. and f., and acc. s. n. is the same as nom. s. n. The biggest difference is the e ending for ablatives, instead of -i as it is in 3rd decl. adjectives.: If you spend enough time studying Latin verbs, you will see the roots of many English nouns derived from them. For example, “president” is from the verb praesideō = sit in front of, preside over; literally praesidēns means “the person sitting in front of/presiding over”. In modern Latin usage praesidens and praeses are both used to mean someone holding the office of president. An “agent” is a person given authority for acting. A “docent” is a person with teaching responsibilities. Protestants are people who protest. Intermittent, magnificent, convenient, solvent, and evident also derive from participles.

We hope you will forgive us for only inventing a few sentences for this lesson. We hope that by giving you several examples of participles used in real Latin texts you will get a good sense of Latin idiom however. Some of them are appropriate for the Christmas season.

Practice
Bonam fortūnam et laetitiam in novō annō vōbīs optō!