Comments Posted By Andrew Cuff
Displaying 0 To 0 Of 0 Comments
Why Vladimir Putin’s People Love Him
Monk James contended not that it was a later invention, but rather that it “did not exist in Latin writing.”
» Posted By Andrew Cuff On June 3, 2016 @ 8:50 pm
Sorry, it’s hard to link to “authoritative” sources on grammar. But Wikipedia is good because it’s constantly policed by dozens of Latin grammar Nazis for whom Latin is their whole life. Hopefully the link above gives you what you need. If not, type “double dative” in quotes into Google Books and you will find dozens of grammars describing it.
» Posted By Andrew Cuff On June 3, 2016 @ 8:48 pm
Monk James said: “Latin writing has no question mark.”
He didn’t specify “until the Xth century.”
This is a very common blind spot of those who have only ever studied so called “classical Latin” and think that its rules (the later approximations of 19th-century German grammarians) are “standard Latin” as opposed to the whims and style of a few 1st-century senators.
» Posted By Andrew Cuff On June 2, 2016 @ 9:49 pm
Dear Monk James,
Respectfully, you’re incorrect on multiple counts.
First, as a PhD student I have worked very extensively with medieval manuscripts. In several from the fourteenth century, written of course in Latin, I have personally observed the “?” Symbol used in an interrogative sense. Your classical Latin that you studied in school naturally would not have covered this.
Now as to the double dative (if we’re going to have a nerd-off, I wish to give it my all). You are right that Cicero likely did not know the term double dative, but that’s only because he couldn’t have learned grammatical terms that were invented by Germans in the 19th century.
If you will Google the term “double dative” you will find cui bono used in the Wiki article as an example. Dative of reference with dative of purpose. It feels clunky to us, but we musn’t impose our English senses on classical Latin, which had its own idioms.
Furthermore, if you Google cui bono, you will find that once again Wiki is aware that the phrase is a double dative and has classical origins (I had thought it was Cato, but I was wrong…Cicero).
Even Wikipedia.
“A lot of learning keeps you safe from the dangerous people with a little learning.” –AC
» Posted By Andrew Cuff On June 1, 2016 @ 8:27 pm
«« Back To Stats PageFather Patrick,
I hate to correct you on this, but I fear I must defend Cato’s honor.
The famous phrase “cui bono” does in fact mean “who benefits?”. It is essentially synonymous with phrases like “follow the money”.
While your grammatical explanation would have been correct in a typical case, with cui bono we are dealing with something called a “double dative”. I hope you’ll be kind enough to Google that to save me the effort of typing in a full explanation.
» Posted By Andrew Cuff On May 28, 2016 @ 10:22 pm
Recent Comments