Questions
Questions are sentences that are worded so as to elicit a response or answer. Take a look at these examples in English:
- What time is it?
- Where are you going?
- Did you see them?
- Which city will he rule?
These questions are direct questions because the speaker is posing the question. Next semester, we’ll learn about indirect questions, where the speaker is reporting a question asked by someone else.
In Latin, there are a number of ways to indicate that a sentence is a question.
Question Mark
As in English, we can indicate a question in Latin by ending the sentence with a question mark as opposed to a period or other terminal punctuation. When the question mark is present, we need to be careful to translate the sentence appropriately!
- ex urbe vēnērunt. They came out of the city.
- ex urbe vēnērunt? Did they come out of the city?
Enclitic -ne
Such punctuation marks did not exist for the Romans, however. So, to indicate that a sentence is a question, the speaker would attach a syllable, -ne, to the end of the first word of the sentence, which will often be the verb or the word that the question concerns. This syllable itself is untranslated, but it turns the whole sentence into a question:
- vēnēruntne ex urbe? Did they come out of the city?
- regetne quattuor annōs? Will he rule for four years?
Make sure to look for this -ne enclitic in questions; it is NOT an inflected ending, so you must separate it from the word that it’s attached to in order to parse correctly.
vēnēruntne = vēnērunt (3rd pl. perfect active indicative) + -ne
Question Words
As in English, there are certain words that explicitly signal a question: for example, “where” and “why”. A few of these words are listed in your Module 5 vocabulary.
- cūr laetī erant? Why were they happy?
- ubī ducēs erunt? Where will the leaders be?
- unde puerī currunt? From where are the boys running?
Interrogative Pronoun
A specific type of word that can signal a question is the interrogative pronoun. This pronoun stands alone in its sentence to ask the question “who?” “whom?” “which?” or “what?”. This pronoun declines and can function as any of the case uses we’ve learned about so far. Take a look at the following examples:
- Quis sub arbōre sedet? Who is sitting under the tree?
- Quem vīdistī? Whom did you see?
- Quid dīcit? What is she saying?
- Ā quō urbs regētur? By whom will the city be ruled?
- Cui pater carmen dat? To whom is the father giving the poem?
- Cuius māter est? Of whom is she the mother? OR Whose mother is she?
The declension chart for the interrogative pronoun can be found here.
Note that this pronoun is irregular, so you must memorize its forms.
Note also that in the singular, the masculine and feminine are identical, while the neuter differs in the nominative and accusative forms. In the plural, there are distinct forms for all three genders in the nominative, genitive, and accusative, but the dative and ablative plurals are all the same.
Interrogative Adjective
While the interrogative pronoun stands alone in a question, the interrogative adjective explicitly modifies a noun within the question, asking the question “which?” or “what?”. As an adjective, it matches its noun in gender, case, and number. Take a look at these reframings of the example sentences above with interrogative adjectives, as opposed to interrogative pronouns:
- Quī puer sub arbōre sedet? Which boy is sitting under the tree?
- Quam fēminam vīdistī? Which woman did you see?
- Quod verbum dīcit? What word is she saying?
- Ā quō duce urbs regētur? By which leader will the city be ruled?
- Cui fīliō pater carmen dat? To which son is the father giving the poem?
- Cuius puellae māter est? Of which girl is she the mother?
The declension chart for the interrogative adjective can be found here. Note that its forms are exactly identical to those of the interrogative pronoun in the plural, and mostly identical in the singular except for the nominatives, the neuter accusative, and the feminine accusative and ablative.
Deliberative Subjunctive
So far we have dealt with questions that have a definitive answer and can be restated as a declarative sentence that is factual in content (e.g. Did they come out of the city? Yes, they did come out of the city). However, this is not the only way that we can ask questions. Take, for instance, the examples:
- Should they come out of the city?
- Should they have come out of the city?
Here the answer is a matter of opinion, rather than fact. The speaker is thinking about and deliberating on the action in the question. The question may even be rhetorical in nature.
In Latin, we indicate such a question by changing the mood of our main verb. Instead of using the indicative, we use the subjunctive. We use the present subjunctive active or passive for deliberative questions in the present tense and the imperfect subjunctive active or passive for deliberative questions in the past tense:
- Veniant (present subjunctive) ex urbe? (“Should they come out of the city?”)
- Venīrent (imperfect subjunctive) ex urbe? (“Should they have come out of the city?”)
- Quis sedeat (present subjunctive) in monte? (Who should sit on the mountain?)
- Quis sedēret (imperfect subjunctive) in monte? (Who should have sat on the mountain?)
We refer to this use of the subjunctive as the deliberative subjunctive.
NB: There is no standard translation for the subjunctive - its translation is determine by usage.