310

A p r il - M ay

A PR O PO SA L FOR N E W CITATION FO RM S
FOR
LATIN A N D C L A S S IC A L G R E E K V E R B S
The traditional choice o f the first person singular o f the present indicative as
a L atin or G reek verbs citation form o r nam e (and, therefore, its first principal
part) has clearly rested on its apparent logical priority (first person before other
persons, present tense before other tenses, and indicative m ood before other
m oods) rather than its actual utility as an unam biguous indicator o f the form al
classification o f the verb. In L atin a First C onjugation p o rto can only be
distinguished from a Third C onjugation scrTbd by the inspection o f its second
principal p a n , the present infinitive not to m ention the am biguity o f a Third
c apid beside a Fourth m unio and o f an Irregular abed beside a Second m aned.
In G reek the am biguity that all contract verbs w ould have in this form has been
resolved only by the artificial device o f citing them in their uncontracted
form s, as (pi^eco, 6 prico, etc .; otherw ise their nam es w ould all look the sam e:
<piX.d), 6 p&,
and 5r|X6>. I feel that it is unconvincing to say that this is a
reference to an earlier uncontracted form since o ther archaic form s are not
used as citation form s for G reek vocabulary; it is surely better for a language
student to be able to assum e that a citation form is also a form that he will
actually use and see used.
Two alternative citation form s that have been used from tim e to tim e, the
present infinitive and the third person singular o f the present indicative do
indeed each successfully resolve the am biguities m entioned above by exh ib it
ing contrasting stem vowels; yet they are not necessarily m ore convincing from
a sem antic point o f view.
The infinitive, o f co u rse, is the usual citation form in the gram m ars and
dictionaries o f m odem E uropean languages. It is indeed probably for that
reason that J. D. S ad ler used it as the citation form in his M odern Latin (Univ.
o f O klahom a 1973), but it has also been used in som e traditional reference
w orks as, for exam ple, Lew is R am sh o rn s D ictionary o f Latin Synonym s
(B utler 1877) and, for G reek, S tu rz Lexicon X enophonteum (L eipzig 1801).
T he fact, however, that it is norm ally not the m ain verb o f a sentence could
provide som e problem s for that self-taught o r ingenuous A m erican who
assum es that any citation form is ready to use in the way that the English one
is; indeed, I understand from a colleague in m odem languages that there is a
kind o f stock ugly A m erican character in L atin-A m erican novels, w ho quite
confidently uses nothing but infinitives for his verb form s! The third person
singular is a m uch better choice; it w ould presum ably sound less unnatural if
excessively used in that way by a beginner; in fact the great frequency w ith
w hich it occurs in narrative and nonfiction has previously led m e to prefer it as
a citation form to either o f the others so far m entioned. O ne current Latin
textbook that uses it until principal parts are introduced is Lingua Latina Viva
by Towey, etc. (M cG raw -H ill 1963). I now w ish, however, to recom m end still
another candidate, the second person singular o f the present im perative

T h e C l a s s ic a l Jo u r n a l

311

(hereafter referred to as the imperative singular), on the grounds that it has a

significant formal advantage over any o f the three forms already proposed, and
yet is no less sensible a proposal in term s o f its m eaning and potential formal
ambiguity.
The imperative singular is unique am ong these forms in being norm ally
nothing but the verbs present stem without any further ending. This m akes it a
logical starting point for m orphological analysis since all forms can be made
from it by sim ple addition while each o f the other citation forms requires
deletion before any addition. A nother com m on error o f beginners is an
attem pt to create a desired verb inflection by adding an ending directly to a
first person form rather than to the true stem contained within it, and a
com parable error could be m ade with an infinitive or third person form.
Surely, then, the best citation form would be one that could better facilitate the
analysis and understanding of a languages forms so that a student would be
more inclined to m ake them , as well as abler. Indeed, if the im perative were
adopted as the name o f a verb, a gram m atical theorist could, if he preferred,
think o f it as the abstract stem itself while the general student was thinking of it
as an imperative. Such a choice, furtherm ore, would seem especially natural
to E nglish-speaking students since an English verbs citation form , although it
is usually considered, because of its origin, to be an infinitive without the
normal to (as w rite in I can w rite. ), is also both the stem and the
im perative o f that verb.
Since the Latin imperative ends in the indicator o f its verbs conjugation,
the stem vowel, it would also resolve the sam e am biguities as does the
infinitive o r third singular: First porta versus Third sc rib e , Third cape versus
Fourth m u n i, and Irregular a b i versus Second m ane. For G reek it sim ilarly
would resolve the am biguity of the contract verbs: <jn7.ei, o p a ,
and
5qAOu. (An uncontracted them atic verb like rcep7tco w ould at the same time
remain d istinctas rcepTte.) In fact, the accent on a sem i-contract like TiXei
would then distinguish it from <t>i7.ei in a way that was never possible in the
first singular. The entries of the few Third C onjugation im peratives without
stem vowels in standard Latin could have them added in parenthesesas
dic(e). There is, o f course, no form that could sim ultaneously separate cape
from both scribe and m iini or by itself indicate that a b i does not com pletely
follow the m orphology of any one conjugation. Any citation form of each of
these, therefore, will need to be listed with som e additional information before
other forms can be derived from it with any confidence. To illustrate at this
point a notation that I am developing to provide such information more
concisely than a principal part, cape (-i) and a b i (-e) would respectively
indicate that cape, unlike sc rib e , inserts an i in forms like capio and that a b i
differs from m iini by using an e instead o f an i in those forms. A com parable
notation could be used to distinguish the four G reek athem atic verbs (riG qpi,
e tc .) th a t have im p e ra tiv e s re se m b lin g c o n tra c t verbs: n'O ei (-q-)>
let (-q-), la x q (-a-), and 5(5ou (-co-); an athem atic like 5eikvu, however,
would be distinctive alone. If one also uses the actual normal Roman
orthography and does not add long m arks, an am biguity will arise between the
Second and Third C onjugations, which adm ittedly are the one pair o f classes
that the traditional first person citations m aneo and scribo clearly dis

312

A p r il - M ay

tinguished. (O f the new candidates discussed, only the third person forms
m anet and scribit would avoid this am biguity but at the cost o f adding another
between all verbs other than the First and Second, namely, scribit, capit,
m unit, a b it.) One notation that would resolve both o f these am biguities would
appear as follows: scribe
-u-), cape
-iu-)y and abi (-i-, -eu-): an
unm arked verb (like p o rta , m ane , and muni) would be one in which the stem
vowel tends to m aintain itself orthographically throughout most forms while
the other verbs would be m arked with the vowels occurring respectively in the
third person singular and plural forms o f their present indicative; the
occurrence of the third singular
will identify scribe and cape as in the Third
Conjugation rather than the Second while a double vowel in the plural will
separate cape from the normal Thirds as it separates abi (by the use of the e)
from the Fourths. As for other truly irregular verbsfor fer(e), form erly fero,
is, descriptively, sim ply a syncopated Third Conjugation verb with suppletion
in its principal parts, and fi(e ), the new name for fio , besides contraction in
present forms has no irregularity but the infinitive fie r ies (s-) would provide
an accurate presentation of the two forms o f the stem o f su m , as would es(ed~) for edo. These are com parable in G reek to writing i'aOi (ei-, to -), toGi
(0 (6-, 18-) and T0 i (ei-, i-) for the verbs traditionally cited as e ip u o t 8a , and
e ip t respectively; it would, o f course, have to be explained that the - 0 i in these
is an ancient im perative singular ending rather than part o f the stem; this small
minority o f Greek athem atics, then, adm ittedly would not offer the advantage
o f a bare stem for the citation form , but only because none o f them ever uses
its stem in isolation. Furtherm ore, I feel that a reconstructed p o tes (poss-)
along with voli (vel-) after the attested n o li would be equally valid citation
forms. These last two verbs are a rem inder that, for sem antic rather than
m orphological reasons, an imperative is not attested for verbs with a modal
m eaningalso probably not for negative stative verbs (like sorde or siti,
not to m ention 8 (y r| again) although, o f course, the imperatives o f some
positive stative verbs do occur (as the salutations salve and vale dem on
strate). The absence o f these two irregular im peratives could, then, be a
possible objection to my proposal (for after all no one would object to the
reconstruction o f the im perative o f a regular verb); the utility of a particular
verb form , however, should be a more important factor in selecting it as a
citation form than its em pirical reality (a utility, however, which the uncon
tracted G reek citation forms m entioned earlier lack). An exception would be if
the om ission of the expected citation form gives a valuable clue to the
syntactic lim itations of a word; such a criterion would, for exam ple, continue
to justify 1 the citation of an impersonal verb like licet in the third person
singular and of a deponent verb in a passive form (now, o f course, its
imperative, which in Latin happens to look like an active present infinitive,
rather than the first person form as, for exam ple, gradere rather than
gradior) even though that would prevent, in this second m inority of instances,
the use o f the bare stem as the citation form . In Greek deponents, however,
except again for the athem atic type k g i c t o , the imperative is nothing other
than an 0 -grade o f the stem: p a x o o , (po(3oi>, 0eo), a n d corresponding to
8 i'vj/r| xpd). (No deponents corresponding to 5qX ou appear to be attested.)
A ssum ing, then, that the formal advantage o f the imperative singular as

T h e C l a s s ic a l J o u r n a l

313

citation form has been established, it also seem s a reasonable, if unorthodox,

candidate for the sem antic priority traditionally expected from a citation form.
It seem s natural enough to consider com m ands a basic com ponent o f speech,
if not the m ost primitive historically, and it is, in fact, tem pting to speculate
that this may explain why the im perative singular is nothing but the verbs
stem! Indeed, most philosophers and other theorists have had a traditional bias
in favor of the indicative m ood. They were undoubtedly prim arily influenced
by the atem poral gnom ic use of the classical present indicative in general
statem ents like (Saepe) scribo , I (often) w rite, as opposed to its temporal
function, expressed in English by the present progressive, in references to one
specific present tim e as in (Nunc) scribo, I am w riting (now ). In reaction to
this traditional em phasis, John Dewey, for exam ple, reinterpreted factual
statem ents as practical judgem ents which could be considered to incorporate
im peratives, while ethical theorists like R. M. Hare have m ade a com parable
analysis for statem ents o f obligation. (Thus, although a modal does not
norm ally have an im perative, a modal o f obligation like debe seem s to imply
an imperative o f whatever verb is used as its com plem entary infinitive!) It does
not, in short, seem intrinsically unreasonable to consider im peratives to be
sem antically, if not logically, prior to indicatives. Furtherm ore, the English
imperative as well as the classical has a tem poral function along with the
atem poral so that Scribe can be translated W rite w hether it is accom panied
by nunc or saepe, another clear pedagogical advantage for introducing
im peratives first. (The problem s o f translation presented by the contrast o f the
durative Greek present im perative with its instantaneous aorist imperative are
unrelated since either G reek im perative may be gnom ic or specific.)
If a Latin or Greek program started with im peratives, its first sentences,
containing only verbs, would thus be both structurally parallel to their
translations and, as long as they used nothing but intransitive verbs or
transitive ones like scribe that can be used intransitively, would be com pletely
natural without any nouns. The student would then be able to think o f the
citation form as the basic starting point for all other forms in the way that
English speakers already think of itnamely, as som ething to which you
always add endings to form other inflections w ithout first deleting anything. In
this way the concept o f a stem can be presented immediately. Then one can
teach the form ation o f other verb forms from the im perative as soon as he
w antssom e o f them probably in the very same unit if not lesson and so
introduce the concepts o f personal endings and tense signs as entities that one
adds to the stem for the sam e reasons that English speakers add subject
pronouns and auxiliaries along with suffixes. (C om pare, for exam ple,
Scribebas with its equivalent You were w riting in which the -ba- equals
were . . . ing and the -5 m eans the same as Y ou. ) At the same time the
concept of a base, the part o f the verb that never changes (at least within the
present system), will be introduced by show ing that it is identical with the stem
in English but in Latin or Greek ends just before the variable final vowel. For
exam ple, Scribe becom es Scribis, etc. leaving only scrib- as the constant
elem ent. Every other verb inflection, in short, will clearly be interpreted as
both a m orphological and sem antic transform o f its citation form , the
im perative singular.

314

A pr jl - M ay

In summary, I have argued that a citation form should ideally be one from
which an inflection could be made by adding an ending w ithout any prior
deletion, that the imperative singular is such a form in the paradigm s of the
Latin and G reek verbs, and that it is ju st as plausible a sem antic starting point
as the traditional first person singular present indicative.
EDW ARD CAPPS
The University o f M ississippi