Indirect Questions
As we discussed last semester when we learned about indirect statements, there are two ways to report what someone says. We can report it directly by using quotations or we can report it indirectly by paraphrasing it. When we paraphrase a declarative sentence, we use an accusative and infinitive structure to report the substance of the indirect statement.
Things get more complicated when we want to indirectly report a question. In this module, we will examine how Latin signals that it is paraphrasing a question, a grammatical construction known as indirect question.
Indirect questions consist of four key features:
- A verb of the head (i.e., speaking, thinking, learning, perceiving, believing, seeing, agreeing, doubting) that sets up the indirect question
- An interrogative pronoun (quis/quid), interrogative adjective (qui, quae, quod), or interrogative adverb (cur, ubi, utrum)
- A subject, either explicitly stated (including with an interrogative pronoun or interrogative adjective/noun combination) or implicit in the verb
- A verb in the subjunctive in accordance with sequence of tenses with one key exception (to be discussed below)
Take, for instance, the following sentence:
- He asked what the gods had said.
This is an indirect question composed of each of the elements listed above. The verb of the head, “he asked”, sets up the indirect question, while “what the gods had said” explains the content of what he asked. The direct version of the question might be something like “What had the gods said?” However, the indirect question format shuffles the word order around: “He asked what the gods had said.”
In Latin, the sentence will look like this:
- Inquisivit quid dei dixissent.
Here inquisivit is the verb of the head introducing the indirect question that follows. Quid is the interrogative word (here, a neuter accusative singular direct object) and dei is the subject of dixissent, the verb in the subjunctive. Note how indirect questions do not typically end with a question mark. The main clause is simply a statement and the indirect question depends on the main clause; the main clause is not a question in and of itself.
When translating an indirect question, the only tricky thing is the subjunctive verb. Since the subjunctive mood is the marker of the fact that the question is indirect, we translate the subjunctive verb as an indicative verb, paying close attention to the sequence of tenses. In this case, we see that dixissent is in the pluperfect subjunctive, in order to illustrate that the verb’s action (saying) happened prior to a past action (asking, inquisivit in the perfect tense). Thus we translate the above sentence as follows:
- He asked what the gods had said.
Below are some more examples of indirect questions:
- Hōc dubium est uter nostrum sit inverēcundior. (It is doubtful which one of us is more immodest.)
- Quam sīs audāx omnēs intellegere possunt. (Everyone can understand how brave you are.)
- Dum deliberat secum quidnam fecisset, intervenit Iovis. (While she was thinking about what she had done with him, Jupiter intervened.)
Future Periphrastic
To avoid the ambiguity regarding contemporaneous (present) and subsequent time (future) that exists in indirect statements, indirect questions use a future periphrastic construction to express future time. The future periphrastic consists of the future active participle of the verb and the present or imperfect subjunctive of sum (depending on sequence of tenses). This distinction can be seen below:
Primary sequence:
- Dico te quid faciam. (I am telling you what I am doing.) (present tense = dependent verb and main verb happening at the same time)
- Dico te quid facturus sim. (I am telling you what I will do.) (future periphrastic = dependent verb will happen after main verb)
- Dico te quid fēcerim. (I am telling you what I did.) (perfect tense = dependent verb happened before main verb)
Secondary sequence:
- Dicebam te quid facerem. (I was telling you what I was doing.) (imperfect tense = dependent verb and main verb happening at the same time)
- Dicebam te quid facturus essem. (I was telling you what I would do.) (future periphrastic = dependent verb would happen after main verb)
- Dicebam te quid fēcissem. (I was telling you what I had done.) (pluperfect tense = dependent verb happened before main verb)