Download Aspects of a Verb

Aspects of a Verb
Verbs are identified by 5 aspects you can count them off on your fingers or use this
mnemonic device:
Please = Person
Never = Number
Tickle = Tense
My = Mood
Vulture = Voice
Person & number describes who the subject is. The subject is either singular (one)
or plural (more than one and compound subjects such as bread & butter are plural). The
subject also refers either First Person (I, We), Second Person (You, Y’all), Third
Person (He, She, It, They, or some other noun).
Tense describes what time the action takes place. Latin only has 6 tenses. Because
English makes more time distinctions (has more tenses), some of the Latin tenses can be
translated in more than one way to do double or triple duty:
• Present tense describes action which takes place now or is still on-going:
amat = he loves, he is loving, he does love.
• Imperfect tense describes incomplete past action (including habitual or attempted
action in the past:
amabat = he was loving; he used to love; he tried to love
• Future tense describes action that has not yet occurred:
amabit = he will love
• Perfect tense describes completed past action:
amavit = he loved, he has loved, he did love
• Pluperfect tense describes action that has taken place even further in the past:
amaverat = he had loved
• Future Perfect tense describes action that will be completed (past) at some point
in the future:
amaverit = he will have loved
Mood is probably the hardest of the aspects because it is the one we least think about,
though use unconsciously. There are three moods, and two things that fill the mood slot:
• Indicative mood is the most common. It indicates something about reality –
makes a statement or a claim, asks a question, etc.: The boy hits the ball. The boy
doesn’t hit the ball. Does the boy hit the ball? (It doesn’t matter whether the
claim is true or false).
• Imperative mood gives a command: Drop and give me 20! Note that this is not a
statement about reality – you can’t say “That’s false!” to an order.
•
•
•
Subjunctive mood is often a bugbear because it does multiple things, but it
covers many types of action not included in the indicative, such as wishes “Would
that I win MegaMillions!” or purpose statements “I am going to the store to get
milk.” There is a chart of subjunctive uses available on the website.
Infinitive is not a mood, but fills the slot (i.e. you will never have an indicative
infinitive). It is strickly speaking a verbal noun (and it is singular and neuter,
nom./acc. only). E.g.: To err is human (Errare est humanum) or I love to teach
(Amo docēre). It has no person and number – the name “infinitive” means
unbound by person and number; a conjugated verb (amo, amas, amat) is also
called a finite verb because it is bound by those.
Participle is also not a mood, but fills the slot. This is a verbal adjective. It has
no person, but does have gender and case. It can modify a noun like any old
adjective (amans pater = the loving father) but can also operate like verb, taking
d.o. and other constructions (pater filium amans = the father loving his son).1
Voice describes whether the subject does the action (the farmer loves the poet) or
receives the action (the poet is loved by the farmer). Be careful with the tense in the
passive voice! People tend to try to translate all passives as past tenses. Be sure your
helping verb in English is the right tense (is loved, was loved, will be loved, has been
loved, etc.).
Questions?
1
Sometimes the participle is used as part of a compound verb along with a form of the
verb “to be” as a helping verb. When this happens, you need to identify the whole
compound verb, not its individual parts. So in this situation, the mood comes from the
helping verb: eram amatus = pluperfect passive indicative 1st pers. sg. (masc.); esse
amatam = perfect passive infinitive (fem.); sit amatus = perfect passive subjunctive 3rd
person sg. (masc.)