Infinitives with Impersonal Verbal Phrase; Gender

1
Infinitives with Impersonal Verbal Phrase Gender

• An impersonal verbal phrase is one where you can
  only use the word it as the subject. It must
  use it and can not use he or she.
• Example
• It is necessary to work hard.
• Necesse est means It is necessary.
• In this sentence the only logical subject is
  It. He or She make no sense in this
  context.

2

• When an impersonal verb phrase is used, often it
  is an incomplete thought. It needs something
  else to finish it.
• Here is where a complementary infinitive would
  work nicely.
• Unlike the strict complementary infinitive
  though, this is called impersonal because of the
  use of It as the subject.
• No person as the subject makes it an impersonal
  verb phrase.
• Its really pretty easy.

3
Gender

• The idea of gender is a bit more complicated than
  the impersonal verbal phrase.
• It is complicated for native English speakers
  because we do not have gender with our language.
• But all other modern languages do, so we must
  force ourselves to get used to it.

4

• If I ask you to think of the word table, you get
  an image in your mind.
• But does that image feel particularly masculine
  of feminine?
• Probably not, but in other languages it has a
  gender assigned to it that must be memorized.
  Every noun has a gender assigned to it.
• The word for table, mensa, happens to be
  feminine. I dont know why it is feminine, I
  just know that it is, and I must remember that at
  all times.

5
How do you know the gender?

• The gender is part of the information provided in
  the vocabulary listing.
• Puella f. girl
• Servus m. slave
• You must memorize the gender immediately upon
  learning a new word. It should become a part of
  the process for you.
• You should never think of the word puella without
  automatically calling the other information to
  mind at the same time.

6
Why does it matter?

• In our language we dont change our adjectives in
  any way.
• But we have already seen that adjectives in Latin
  must be made plural to agree with the nouns they
  modify.
• Similarly, we must adjust the gender of our
  adjective so that it matches the gender of our
  noun.

7
Adjectives are like chameleons.They change to
suit their surroundings.

• We know the adjective laeta.
• But it is really laetus, laeta.
• All adjectives have both a masculine and a
  feminine form. The us is masculine, the a is
  feminine. From now on you must learn the
  adjectives in both forms.
• Happy girl puella laeta
• Happy boy puer laetus
• Large pool magna piscina
• Large branch magnus ramus

8

• Remember that the rule for agreement is that It
  does not have to look the same.
• Puer laetus is a great example. Both words are
  nominative and singular and masculine, even
  though they dont look identical.

The adjective must agree with the noun it
modifies in case, number, and gender.