Finite verbs
Finite verb forms have five properties: person, number, tense, mood, and voice. To properly identify a finite verb form, you must identify all five properties. Latin finite verb forms contain all of this information in the verb form itself. In English, we often need other words to convey some of this information, such as subject pronouns to convey the person and number, and auxiliary (or “helping”) verbs to express tense, mood, and voice.
Person
A verb’s person expresses the subject of the verb in relation to the “speaker” of the sentence.
- The first person (I or we in English) subject includes the speaker.
- The second person (you in English) subject is the addressee(s) of the speaker.
- The third person (he, she, it, they in English) subject is a person or thing separate from the speaker and addressee.
Number
Number combines with person in describing the subject of verb. It indicates when the subject is singular or plural. In English, for example, the first person singular is I while first person plural is we.
Tense
The tense of a finite verb describes the time of the action. Latin has six tenses: three of them refer to present or future time, name the present, future, and future perfect tenses. Three other tenses refer to past time: the imperfect, perfect and pluperfect tenses.
Mood
The mood of a verb indicates the function of the expression and the nature of the action in the speaker’s conception. “Mood” and “mode” come from the same root in English: the “mood” of a verb is the “mode” in which the verb is operating.
Latin has moods:
- the indicative, used to express a statement or question of a factual nature (in the eyes of the speaker) in the past, present, or future.
- the imperative, used to give a command
- the subjunctive mood has many uses in subordinate clauses, and is also used to express potential or possible action.
Voice
Voice expresses the relationship between the action of the verb and the subject. Like English, Latin has two voices: active, in which the subject is performing the action of the verb (“I love”), and passive, in which the subject is receiving the action of the verb (“I am loved”).