Download Chapter 34: Deponent Verbs

Chapter 34: Deponent Verbs
Like "Casinus," a male slave dressed up as a bride for a wedding night in Plautus'
comedy Casina, or like the men who broke into the all-female Bona Dea festival, deponent
verbs are not what they seem. To give another analogy, Latin deponents in some ways
resemble the Sony Aibo, the robotic dog. When it is turned off, the Aibo is completely
passive. Turn it on, however, and it is almost completely active, fetching bones and
answering commands (the one I saw 'understood' Japanese, but I believe that they are now
available with different language chips).
Here is the Latin deponent, the verb with passive verb forms which generally
functions as an active verb. Very often, the deponent takes a direct object
Iste canis leporem sequitur
that dog of yours is following/pursuing a hare
just like an ordinary active verb
Non omnes canes eadem amant et admirantur
Not all dogs love and admire the same things.
Deponent infinitives work like active infinitives, either transitive or intransitive (but note that
the present infinitives of third conjugation deponents end in –i, like passive infinitives of that
type)
Vicinus meus dicit canem tuum in viam profectum esse et carrum sequi
My neighbour says that your dog has set out into the road and is chasing a cart.
But just as an Aibo doesn't completely function like a living dog (it doesn't chew electrical
cords or damage carpets, for example), Latin deponent verbs have some peculiarities which
set them off from ordinary active verbs. The big differences come in the participles, of
which deponents have four:
1. present participle: active forms with active meanings
e.g., hortans, urging
sequens, following
2. future participle: active forms with active meanings
e.g., hortaturus, -a, um, about to urge
secuturus, -a, -um, about to follow
3. gerundive (=future passive participle): passive form with passive meaning
e.g., hortandus, -a, um, to be urged
sequendus, -a, um, to be followed
4. perfect participle: passive form but active meaning
e.g., hortatus, -a, um, having urged
secutus, -a, -um, having followed
1
2
Locutus ("Having spoken"—hence the name of Patrick Stewart when taken
over by the Borg in Star Trek)
Some deponents also have peculiarities with objects. Utor (along with fruor, to enjoy,
fungor, to perform, potior, to possess, and vescor, to eat) is followed by a noun in the
ablative, when we might otherwise expect a direct object. The technical explanation for this
is that utor is a reflexive verb and means 'benefit oneself by means of something,' with the
'something' in the ablative, as one would expect for an ablative of means.
e.g., Utor stilo (I use a pencil)
Non debemus uti navibus (we shouldn't use the ships).
In addition to true deponents, there is a category of verbs known as semi-deponents. For an
analogy, I suppose one could think of the cat example of the physicist Erwin Schrödinger,
which was sometimes alive and sometimes dead, depending on the circumstances involved.
Semi-deponent verbs have active meanings. They have active forms in the present system
but deponents in the perfect system. For example:
audeo (I dare)
audere (to dare)
gaudeo (I rejoice) gaudere (to rejoice)
ausus sum (I dared)
gavisus sum ( I rejoiced)
Beware: do not confuse audeo, audere, ausus sum (dare)
with audio, audire, audivi, auditum (hear).
Finally, some observations about deponent imperatives:
• Deponent imperatives look just like passive imperatives, which do exist but are
infrequent and thus are not handled in many elementary textbooks.
•
The second person singular has the same spelling as that of the alternate second
person singular of the present indicative (e.g., sequere).
•
Do not mistake the second person singular imperative for the non-existent active
infinitive form.