01/05/93



                             CHAPTER 13

     "Reflexive Pronouns and Possessives; the Intensive 'Ipse'"


FIRST AND SECOND PERSON REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS

In Chapter 11 you studied the first, second and third person
pronouns.  Here's what you should remember about them.  The first
and second person pronouns don't show any gender; there aren't
three forms, for example, for "I": one that's feminine, one
that's masculine, and another that's neuter.  The first and
second person don't have to indicate different gender for reasons
which are grounded psychologically in the nature of language
itself.  Another thing is that Latin uses the weak demonstrative
adjective "is, ea, id" as its third person pronoun.  Here making
distinctions among the three genders is very important, so the
third person pronoun has thirty possible forms: five cases in
three genders in both the singular and the plural.  Remember all
that?  Let's go on.  Look at these English sentences.

                "We saw you there".
                "You saw me there".
                "You saw us there".
                "We are coming with you".
                "You are giving it to us".

And so on.  If you had to, you could put each of these sentences
into Latin, using the appropriate number and case of the first
and second person pronouns.  But I have something else in mind.
As you can see in each of these sentences the person of the
pronoun of the subject is different from the pronoun that appears
in the predicate.  In the sentence "We saw you there", the
subject pronoun is first and the pronoun in the predicate is
second.  And similarly for the rest of the sentences.  This is
because in each of these sentences some one is doing something to
or with someone else.

     Now look at these sentences.  They're not in standard
English, but I'm going to make a point.

                "You saw you".
                "I saw me".
                "I bought me an apple".
                "We like us".

In these sentences, unlike the first batch, the person of the
subject pronouns is the same as the pronouns in the predicate.
In "You saw you", both the subject and the predicate pronouns are
second person.  And so on with the other three.  Now, I warned
you, these sentences are not in standard English, but suppose a
foreigner who's just learning English wrote them out.  Is there
any question in these sentences about who's doing what to whom?
No.  In "I saw me", the speaker is obviously trying to say that
he saw himself.  He's trying to say that the subject of the verb
is performing an action on itself, not on something or someone
else.  So even though they don't qualify as good English, these
sentence can be understood.  The subject of the verb is
performing an action that affect the subject itself; and because
the person of the pronouns in the subject and the predicate is
the same, you can see that.

     When the subject of a sentence performs an action which
affects itself, then the pronouns in the predicate are called
"reflexive", because they send you "back" through the verb to the
subject.  A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun in the predicate of
the sentence that refers you to the subject.  And in the first
and second persons, this task could be easily accomplished by
using pronouns that have the same person.  It's really not
necessary to have separate forms in the first and second person
for non-reflexive pronouns on the one hand and reflexive pronouns
on the other.  One set of forms can do double duty.  English,
however, does have separate forms.  Rephrase the sentences above
using the English reflexive pronouns.  As you can tell, we use a
form of the pronoun with the suffix "-self" attached to them:

                        FIRST PERSON     SECOND PERSON

           Singular:      myself          yourself
           Plural:        ourselves       yourselves

Latin, however, being the wise and economical language it is, has
no separate forms for reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns in the
first and second persons.  It simply uses the personal pronouns
you've already seen.

                Video me.            (I see myself.)
                Videmus nos.         (We see ourselves.)
                Videtis vos.         (You see yourselves.)
                Vides te.            (You see yourself.)

And so on, and so on.  In the first and second persons, if the
pronoun in the predicate is the same number as the subject
pronoun, the pronoun in the predicate is referring to the subject
and is therefore de facto reflexive.

     There is one interesting feature worth of comment.  Will a
reflexive pronoun ever be in the nominative case?  Think about
it.  When a pronoun is nominative, it is the subject of the
sentence.  But a reflexive pronoun by definition is in the
predicate and is receiving in some way the action which the
subject of the sentence is performing.  So a reflexive pronoun
will never be in the nominative case.  That's why you see
Wheelock listing the reflexive pronouns like this:

               FIRST PERSON         SECOND PERSON

     Nom.        -------               -------
     Gen.         [mei]                [tui]
     Dat.         mihi                  tibi
     Acc.          me                    te
     Abl.          me                    te

     Nom.        -------               -------
     Gen.   [nostri/nostrum]      [vestri/vestrum]
     Dat.         nobis                 vobis
     Acc.          nos                   vos
     Abl.         nobis                 vobis

No nominatives.  Actually, a better way to say this would be to
say that Latin has no separate forms for the reflexive pronoun in
the first and second persons at all; it simply uses the existing
pronouns reflexively.


THIRD PERSON REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS

In the third person things are a little more complicated.  You
remember that the third person pronoun needs to show gender,
because, unlike the first and second persons, the gender of the
topic of conversation may not be obvious.  The same kind
ambiguity is possible in the third person with regard to
reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns. It may be possible that the
third person subject is performing an action which is affect
another third person.   Consider this:

                          "He saw him".
                          "They saw them".
                          "She saw her".

Here the person of the pronouns is the same in each of these
sentences, and in the first and second persons you need to know
that the subject is acting on itself.  But that's not going to
work in the third person.  You can't tell whether the "her", for
example, in the predicate of the third sentence is the same
female which is the subject of the sentence.  "She" could be
seeing another female.  The third person must have one form for
the reflexive pronoun and another for the non-reflexive pronoun,
since the possibility of ambiguity is real if the forms were the
same.  In English, we use the old stand-by: the suffix "-self"
for the reflexive:  "He saw himself"; "They saw themselves"; "She
saw herself".

     In Latin as well the standard third person pronoun "is, ea
id" won't do; different forms are required for the third person
reflexive pronoun -- that is, for a pronoun which will refer you
to the subject of the sentence and not to some other third
person.  Latin does indeed have separate forms, but unlike the
barbarous prolixity of English, Latin keeps its forms to a bare
minimum.

     Look at it this way.  All the third person reflexive pronoun
has to do is to refer you to the subject of the sentence.  The
pronoun itself does not have to tell you the gender or the number
of the subject of the sentence.  The subject itself can tell you
that.  The reflexive pronoun only has to point you back to the
subject, and if you remember the subject of the sentence you're
reading or listening to, you can mentally bring forward the
number and gender.

     Try it this way.  Suppose in English the sign "*" is the
reflexive third person pronoun.  It tells you to go back to the
subject of the sentence, so every time you see it, you plug in
the words "the subject"

   "He saw *".            =     "He saw [the subject]".
   "They saw *".          =     "They saw [the subject]".
   "She bought it for *".       =    "She bought it for [the
subject]".

     Do you see.  In all three sentence you get a full
understanding of what's going on without having to be told by the
reflexive pronoun what the gender and number of the subject is.
But in English we'd have to say:

                     "He saw himself".
                     "They saw themselves".
                     "She bought it for herself".

     But really, in sentence #1, we don't need to be told again
by the reflexive pronoun that the subject is masculine and
singular.  Yet this is precisely what English does.  Similarly
for the other two.  Does the speaker of the English sentence
really think our attention spans are so short that we have to be
reminded after a second or two what the subject of the sentence
is?  Evidently.

     In Latin, no such stupidity is impugned to us.  The Latin
third person reflexive pronoun is simply a sign which directs us
back to the subject of the sentence.  It declines, of course,
because it may be used in the different cases (not the
nominative), but it tells us nothing about the number or gender
of the subject.  It just tells us, 'no matter what the subject of
this sentence was, think of again.'  Here's the reflexive third
person pronoun.

                            SINGULAR AND PLURAL

                     Nom.       ----------
                     Gen.       [sui]
                     Dat.       sibi
                     Acc.       se
                     Abl.       se

     How do we translate this into English?  Remember that the
English third person reflexive pronoun indicates number and
gender, so when we bring a Latin third person reflexive pronoun
over into English, we have to reinsert the number and gender of
the subject.  Like this: "Ea se videt".  To a Roman ear it means,
"she sees [the subject]  For us, we have to repeat the gender and
number in the reflexive pronoun.  We would say, "she sees
herself".  Let's try a few more.

   "Ei homines se viderunt".         (The men saw themselves.)
   "Eae se vident".                  (The women see themselves.)
   "Vir se videt".                   (The man sees himself.)
   "Eae litteras ad se mittent".     (They (the women) will send a
                                     letter to themselves.)

Of course, in the sentences Wheelock gives you it may be
impossible to say precisely what the gender of the third person
subject is if it isn't explicitly stated, as in the examples
above.  For example, "Se videt" could be translated as "he sees
himself", "she sees herself", or "it sees itself  Without a
context, it's impossible to decide.  Choose whichever you prefer.

DRILLS

Translate into Latin.

1.  I see you (pl.).                   _________________________

2.  They see us.                       _________________________

3.  They will send us the letter.      _________________________

4.  She sees herself.                  _________________________

5.  The tyrant loves himself.          _________________________

6.  The tyrants love themselves.       _________________________

7.  Give yourself to philosophy!       _________________________

8.  He gives himself to philosophy.    _________________________

9.  She will not see them.             _________________________

10. He will not see him.               _________________________

11. The farmers can't see them.        _________________________

12. The farmers can't see themselves.     _________________________


     So let's collect ourselves.  Here's what we've covered so
far.  (1) In the first and second persons in Latin there are no
new forms for the reflexive pronouns.  If a pronoun in the
predicate is the same person as the subject, then the pronoun is
reflexive.  This is because the pronoun in the predicate must be
referring to the same person as the subject of the sentence.
Additionally, for this reason, the reflexive pronoun will never
be in the nominative case.  If it were in the nominative case it
would be the subject of the verb and hence not in the predicate;
and all reflexive pronouns must be in the predicate.  Despite
this inherent simplicity of reflexive pronouns in the first and
second persons, English nevertheless adds "-self" or "-selves" to
the end of the non-reflexive pronouns to form the reflexive
pronouns.  Strictly speaking, it's not necessary to distinguish
formally the non-reflexive from the reflexive pronouns in the
first and second persons; context could do that for you.  The
third person reflexive pronoun must differ in form from the third
person non-reflexive pronouns.  But all the third person
reflexive pronoun need do is to point you back to the subject of
the sentence.  Because you remember the subject of the sentence,
it's not really necessary for the reflexive pronoun itself to
remind you of the gender and the number of the subject.  The
Latin third person reflexive pronoun therefore does not in itself
make any distinctions in number and gender.  It simply works as a
sign pointing you back to the subject.  To translate the Latin
reflexive pronoun properly in English, however, you must resupply
the gender and number to the pronoun.


REFLEXIVE AND NON-REFLEXIVE POSSESSIVES

On to new business.  Read this English sentence: "I see my
daughter".  Now is there any question whose daughter this is?
It's the daughter of the subject of the sentence.  And how do you
know that?  Because the possessive "my" is first person and the
subject of the sentence is first person.  So the subject of the
sentence is being recalled in the predicate, because the subject
owns the direct object of the verb.  We can call this
relationship between "I" and "my" reflexive possession.  The
subject of the verb is possessing something in the predicate.

     You can see that to show reflexive possession no new form of
the possessive pronoun is needed.  "My" does just fine.  Only a
dolt would need more information about whose daughter this is.
But English has plans for the dolt.  The speaker can underline
this reflexive possession by inserting "own" after "my".

           Speaker:  "I see my daughter".
           Dolt:     "Whose daughter"?
           Speaker:  "I see my own daughter, you dolt".

More examples:

   "Do you have your money?" (reflexive possession)
   "Do you have my money?" (non-reflexive)
   "Have you seen our friend?" (non-reflexive)
   "Hey, we can see our car from here". (reflexive possession)
   "I haven't found my book yet". (reflexive possession)

Latin has no different forms for reflexive and non-reflexive
possession in the first and second persons.  There's no need.
Latin simply uses the existing possessive adjectives:

           FIRST PERSON              SECOND PERSON

           meus, -a, -um             tuus, -a, -um
           noster, -tra, -trum       vester, -tra, -trum

If the person of the possessive adjective in the predicate is the
same as the person of the subject, then the possessive is
reflexive.  Simple.

     "Videtis amicos vestros". (reflexive possession)
     "Videtis amicos meos". (non-reflexive possession)

Let's look just a little more closely at these possessive
adjectives.  They consists of two parts.  There's the stem and
the adjectival ending.  The stems tell you about the possessor,
not about what the possessor is possessing.  The stem "me-" of
the adjective "meus, -a, -um" tells you that the possessor is
singular and in the first person.  It doesn't, however, tell you
what gender the possessor is.  The adjectival ending agrees in
number, gender, and case with the object possessed.  Got that?
You can think of the possessive adjectives of the first and
second persons as having two parts: the stem which tells you
about the possessor, and the adjectival ending which tells you
about what is being possessed.

     Now let's get on with the third person.  The simple rule
that worked so well in the first and second persons isn't going
to work here.  Look at this sentence: "She had her ticket".  The
possessive pronoun "her" is the same person as the subject --
third person -- but can you tell from this sentence whether "she"
has her own ticket or the ticket of some other female?  No, you
can't.  There is a real ambiguity here, and often in English we
have to ask for further information.  "Whose ticket?"  If the
speaker hasn't made it clear, an additional "own" can be used to
help out:  "She has her own ticket".  Now normally we rely on
context to clear up any possible ambiguities, but sometimes it's
really not clear who's owning what:  "They have their books"
(Their own or some other peoples' books?).  The only thing the
possessive pronoun "their" tells you about the possessors is that
there is more than one of them.  But you can't tell whether these
people are the same folks indicated by "they".

     In Latin, the same possibility for ambiguity exists; so some
solution to the problem is in order.  First off, how does Latin
show non-reflexive possession in the third person?  It uses the
genitive of the third person pronoun "is, ea, id".  Watch:

 "Eius librum habuit".      (He/she had his/her book (not his/her
                            own).)
 "Eius gladium invenit".    (He/she found his/her sword (not
                            his/her own).)
 "Servavit patriam eius".   (He/she saved his/her fatherland
                            (someone else's).)
 "Servaverunt patriam eorum".        (The saved their (other
                                     peoples') fatherland.)

     A couple of things to notice.  First, unlike the first and
second person possessive adjectives, the possessive in the third
person is not an adjective.  It does not agree with the thing
being possessed.  Look at the three sentences above.  "Liber" is
masculine, "gladium" is neuter, and "patriam" is feminine, yet
"eius" didn't change.  Similarly, in the last sentence, "eorum"
tells you that the owners are plural and masculine, but it has
nothing whatsoever to do grammatically with "patriam".  In the
third person, the possessive pronoun only tells you about who's
doing the possessing; it tells you absolutely nothing about the
object possessed.

     Secondly, the genitive of "is, ea, id" is used to show only
non-reflexive possession.  "Eius librum habuit" could not
possibly mean "he had his own book".  It can only mean "he has
his [another person's] book".  In English, by contrast, the
possessive "his" can be used to show reflexive or non-reflexive
possession; but the Latin "eius" and "eorum, earum" can only be
used non-reflexively.  So what does Latin use to show reflexive
possession in the third person?  How does it say "his own", "her
own", "its own" and "their own?"

     To show reflexive possession in the third person, Latin uses
the "reflexive possessive adjective":  "suus, -a, -um".  This
adjective has a couple of interesting features.  First, it's an
adjective, so it must agree with the object which is being
possessed.  You've seen that already in the possessive adjectives
of the first and second persons.  Second, unlike the first and
second persons, the third person reflexive possessive adjective
has no different form for the plural number.

     Like this.  The "-us, -a, -um" part of the adjective agrees
with the object possessed.  The "su-" part tells you to go back
to the subject of the sentence.  And that's all it tells you.
Like the reflexive pronoun "sui, sibi, se, se", the possessive
adjective only tells you that the subject of the sentence is now
involved in the predicate, and you shouldn't have to be reminded
of the gender and number of the subject.

 "Habuerunt suos libros".       (They had [the subjects'] books.)
 "Habuit suos libros".          (He had [the subject's] books.)
 "Puella habuit suos libros".   (The girl had [the subject's]
                                books.)

But to translate this into English, we have to reinstate the
number and gender of the subject in the predicate.

 "Habuerunt suos libros".       (They had their own books.)
 "Habuit suos libros".          (He had his own books.)
 "Puella habuit suos libros".   (The girl had her own books.)

     Do you see?  The Latin adjective "suus, -a, -um" isn't
changing, but our English rendition, because in English we
clumsily repeat the gender and number of the subject of the
sentence in the reflexive possessive pronoun.  Latin doesn't, and
there's really no reason it should.  The "su-" part of the
possessive says, "Go back to the subject".  And that's all it has
to say to get the message across.


DRILL

Translate (as many as you need to reassure yourself.)

1.   I saw you.                 ______________________________

2.   They saw her.              ______________________________

3.   They saw us.               ______________________________

4.   I saw myself.              ______________________________

5.   You saw me.                ______________________________

6.   You saw yourself.          ______________________________

7.   You (pl.) saw yourselves.  ______________________________

8.   We saw ourselves.          ______________________________

9.   I gave it to him.          ______________________________

10.  We came with you (pl.).    ______________________________

11.  We gave it to ourselves.   ______________________________

12.  They gave it to her.       ______________________________

13.  Vidimus nos.               ______________________________

14.  Id mihi dedi.              ______________________________

15.  Vidistis vos.              ______________________________

16.  Venimus cum vobis.         ______________________________

17.  Id ei dedi.                ______________________________

18.  Id vobis dedistis.         ______________________________

19.  Vidit eum.                 ______________________________

20.  Venerunt cum eis.          ______________________________

21.  Id eis dederunt.           ______________________________

22.  Se vidit.                  ______________________________

23.  Se amant.                  ______________________________

24.  Id sibi dederunt.          ______________________________

25.  Amo meum canem (dog).      ______________________________

26.  Vidimus amicos nostros.    ______________________________

27.  Vides tuos amicos.         ______________________________

28.  Video tuos amicos.         ______________________________

29.  Videmus vestros amicos.    ______________________________

30.  Videbitis eius amicos.     ______________________________

31.  Vidit eius amicos.         ______________________________

32.  Vidit suos amicos.         ______________________________

33.  Viderunt eorum amicos.     ______________________________

34.  Viderunt suos amicos.      ______________________________

35.  Dederunt id eorum amicis.  ______________________________

36.  Dederunt id suis amicis.   ______________________________

37.  He saw himself.            ______________________________

38.  They saw our friends.      ______________________________

39.  We saw you.                ______________________________

40.  They saw themselves.       ______________________________

41.  I saw your friends.        ______________________________

42.  They saw your friend.      ______________________________

43.  I saw my friends.          ______________________________

44.  We saw our friend.         ______________________________

45.  They saw themselves.       ______________________________

46.  They saw their friends.    ______________________________

47.  I gave it to my friends.   ______________________________

48.  They gave it to them.      ______________________________

49.  She came with her friend.  ______________________________

50.  Venistis cum amicis vestris.


     _______________________________________________________

51.  You (pl.) gave it to yourselves.


     _______________________________________________________

52.  They gave it to their own friends.


     _______________________________________________________

53.  They gave it to themselves.


     _______________________________________________________

54.  He came with their friends.


     _______________________________________________________

55.  He came with his [own] friends.


     _______________________________________________________

56.  He came with his [not his own] friends.


     _______________________________________________________

57.  They gave it to our friends.


     _______________________________________________________

58. They saw their [own] friends.


    ________________________________________________________


VOCABULARY PUZZLES

ipse, ipsa, ipsum    This pronoun always causes some confusion
                     because of its English translation.  It's an
                     emphatic adjective or pronoun, and we
                     translate it with our "him-, her-, it- or
                     them- self (selves)".  Because it is the same
                     form we use for our reflexive pronoun,
                     students often mistranslate it.  "Ipse"
                     underlines or emphasizes the noun it's
                     modifying or the noun it's replacing.  "Ipse
                     id fecit" would mean "He himself did it", not
                     "He did it himself" which means he did it all
                     by himself, or "He did it to himself". "Ipsa
                     id fecit" would mean "She herself did it".
                     "Vidi ipsos viros:" would mean "I saw the
                     very men themselves".  You'll have to
                     practice with this demonstrative some.

ante + acc. or adv.  The preposition means "before" as in "ante
                     bellum" (before the war). It can also be used
                     as an adverb, but you won't see it in this
                     book.  Wheelock warns you not to confuse it
                     with "anti", which is a Greek word which
                     means "against" or "instead of".

