Talk:Latin tenses

Replacement of the lead

I have replaced and rewritten the lead for reasons (mentioned above): 1. It's too long, and doesn't summarise the whole subject succinctly. 2. The verb ago doesn't mean "act". 3. The "tense" agere coepero is not considered to be a tense by any standard grammar, nor is it one. 4. The terms "secondary present" and "secondary past" are not standard terms found in any Latin grammar book, but apparently invented by the previous writer. No citation is given for these terms. If such terms exist it should be made clear which author invented them (since they are completely non-traditional as far as Latin is concerned), and this should go further down the article, not in the lead. 5. There is no such thing as a "supinum" aspect. Tenses such as acturus sum are presumably infectum, and have a corresponding perfectum tense acturus fui, which have been omitted from the table. But to go into details of these rarely used tenses does not seem appropriate in the lead, which should just summarise the main facts. 6. The fact that subjunctives, infinitives, imperatives, and participles also have different tenses needs to be mentioned in the lead, even if no details are given, since these are very important in Latin grammar. Kanjuzi (talk) 10:15, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Headings and subheadings

When an article is read on a laptop, the topics can be nested, but this doesn't seem to work on a smartphone. Consequently, if topics are nested, then when using a smartphone you seem to get very long sections which you have to scroll down for ages. To prevent this I have upgraded some headings from ===x=== to ==x== so that on a phone there will be more headings and less scrolling between headings. But it still doesn't seem very satisfactory. If anyone can suggest a solution to this, I would be interested to hear. Kanjuzi (talk) 20:15, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Kanjuzi, since this article is about tense morphology and syntax, I think you could organize the content in two levels. At the first level, I would create an introduction section telling that there are 5 traditional 'modes' for Latin verbs, I would write five sections on morphology, one for each 'mode' (namely Indicative, Subjunctive, Infinitive, Participle, Imperative), and I would write a final section on possible tense combinations (syntax).

1. The Latin tense system
2. Indicative (Present indicative, Future indicative, Imperfect indicative, Perfect indicative, Future perfect indicative, Pluperfect indicative, Perfect passive tenses made with fuī and fueram, Perfect tenses made with habeō, Periphrastic future tenses, Tenses with the gerundive)
3. Subjunctive (Present subjunctive, Imperfect subjunctive, Perfect subjunctive, Pluperfect subjunctive, Subjunctive tenses formed with the future participle, Forem, Ductus forem, Archaic forms of the subjunctive)
4. Infinitive (Infinitive tenses)
5. Participle (Present participle, Perfect participle, Future participle)
6. Imperative (The imperative mood)
7. Tense combinations (Sequence of tenses rule)
8. Bibliography
9. References
10. Citations

At the second level, I would put the current sections you have, one level lower. Since the tenses 'future', 'present' and 'past'/'imperfect' occur in every mode, this content structure would create a navigation structure that allows people to jump across the modes. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 18:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Let me think about this for a bit. Kanjuzi (talk) 10:04, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, looking at the article again, it could certainly be organised better. Another improvement that could be made is to omit those tables at the beginning, under "Main tenses", which don't have much support from the sources. Kanjuzi (talk) 16:21, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I think this section on the six "main tenses" is not a bad idea in an article about verb morphology. Maybe we can find some references for it and adapt it to match the references better. These are all "simple tenses" (as opposed to "compound tenses") and they are all "indicative tenses". They are also the basis for compound tenses such as "perfect passive tenses" and also other compound tenses that are not listed in traditional grammar books such as the "future periphrases" (āctūrum est, agendum est, etc.). I will look up some books here to see if I find something useful.

As for the section titles, I think it will be easier for the reader if the titles are standardized.

• (Top)
• Overview (instead of "Overview of the tenses")
• Indicative tenses
• Subjunctive tenses
• Imperative tenses (instead of "The imperative mood")
• Infinitive tenses
• Participle tenses (instead of "Participles")

Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 13:34, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

@Daniel Couto Vale: I have rearranged it according to your suggestions and it should be much easier to navigate now. It was a good idea. But I have not yet separated references from citations. How should that be done, I wonder? Kanjuzi (talk) 10:35, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I myself never remember how to do it. I separated the two in the article Latin tenses (semantics). Just check there. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 13:35, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

@Daniel Couto Vale: Yes, those uniform headings are fine by me. Better still, we could also just omit the word "tenses" from those headings and put "Indicative", "Subjunctive" and so on. But as for splitting up citations and references, I've had a look at your other article and it looks a bit too fussy. I think it's fine as it is. Anyone can see that if it says (Cicero) followed by a number, it refers to the passage in Cicero. If the reference number comes anywhere else, it refers to a modern work. Kanjuzi (talk) 14:25, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is much clearer now!

By the way, here is an interesting remark. I noticed that only "infinitives" and "participles" are plural and that the other section titles are not. It is very interesting how such small variations in grammar shine through the theory of language that we are using. You marked them like this probably because you probably assume that these are 'nouns' or 'nominal forms of the verb' and that the other forms are 'personal forms of the verb'. In a functional theory (the one I use), this distinction would not be in forms but in functions. Orandum (the act of speaking), orāre (the option of speaking), orātōria (the art of speaking), modus orandī (the way of speaking), orātiō (the speech), orātor (the speaker), orāns (the one speaking), orātōrium (the speaking room), hōra orātīva (the speaking time) would be 'verbs embedded in nominal groups' whereas orantem in a clause such as vīdistī, mē orantem (you saw me speaking) would be a finite verb and orāre in a clause such as orāre conātus sum (I tried to speak) would be an auxiliated verb in a finite verb group. In a functional theory, it is not the forms that are nominal or not but rather the function they have in a wording. This is probably why I would not be inclined to treat 'infinitive verbs' differently from 'indicative verbs' and this is probably why I immediately noticed that you were using a different theory than the one I usually apply. :-D Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 15:51, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

That's true. I'd noticed that slight discrepancy. But there is only one indicative mood, whereas there are several infinitives and three participles (or four if you count the gerundive). So inevitably the titles cannot be exactly parallel.

The reason I put an overview section is because one cannot assume that the readers have all studied elementary Latin. Some of them might be Chinese or Japanese, for example, who are educated but who have never learnt any inflected languages. I don't think there is any need for references for this section, since it merely states well known facts which are expanded on, with references and examples, later in the article. Kanjuzi (talk) 16:05, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

In a systemic functional theory, "infinitive" and "indicative" are attributes of a verb: for instance, amāre is infinitive and amat is indicative. In turn, tenses are also attributes of a verb: for instance, amāre and amat are present and amāvisse and amāvit are perfect. Therefore, there is one "present infinitive verb" (amāre) and there are 12 "present indicative verbs" (amō, amās... amor, amāris...). In your case, the number in the section title "Indicative" is the number of moods (of course, because "indicative" is the name of the mood); and the number in the section title "infinitives" is the number of tenses and voices of verbs that are infinitive (probably because "infinitive" is not understood as one of the moods in your theory). Is this what is going on? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 09:59, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

It's not any particular theory; it's just the way the English language is used in conventional grammar books. The word "indicative" is not usually used in the plural, but "infinitive" and "participle" can be. Still, if the discrepancy seems uncomfortable, we could always make all the words singular. Kanjuzi (talk) 11:57, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

No, it does not feel unconfortable. I just wanted to share with you that this small detail shined through that you were using a different linguistic theory from the one I usually use.

When I said "theory", I meant that such differences in wording are grammatical symptoms of an underlying "world view" like Firth would say, an underlying "logic" like Worth would say, or an underlying "theory" like Halliday would say.

Yes, I know that most grammarians talk about different infinitives like the "present infinitive" and the "past infinitive" where "infinitive" is a countable noun. I also know that most grammarians talk about moods and use "indicative" as an adjective of the countable noun "mood". The wording in the section title is fine and is typical.

What I find surprising is that this habit of saying induces a habit of thinking whereby the things being counted are not verb forms nor verbs. For instance, there are 36 "past particle verbs" as in locūtus, locūtum... (3 genders x 6 cases x 2 numbers), there are 24 "present participle verbs as in loquēns, loquentem (2 genders x 6 cases x 2 numbers), and there are 36 "future participle verbs" as in locūtūrus, locūtūrum... Nonetheless, most grammarians speak of "three participles": "the past participle", "the present participle" and "the future participle". What they are counting with the number 3 is not the number of verbs nor of verb forms but the number of tenses in participle verbs (past, present and future). I assume that the reason for that is that they assume that a participle is like an adjective: "nominative", "masculine", "singular" are attributes of the form of the "past participle", and "past participle" is a form of the verb. The theory works like this: there is a form of a form of a form of a dictionary entry. :-D Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 13:07, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

This way of speaking, saying there are "36 past participle verbs", isn't familiar from any grammar that I have ever seen. What they say is that each verb has one perfect participle of which the ending changes according to gender, number, and case. It seems sensible enough to me! Kanjuzi (talk) 13:56, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

I know. Such a wording is not common in traditional grammar books. Saying there are "36 past participle verbs" is only common in corpus-based linguistic descriptions. In corpus studies, researchers annotate text. A word such as locūtus needs to be tagged as a verb, then as past, participle, masculine, nominative and singular. This information about the word is stored in a database. Then if one searches for a "past participle verb", one finds 36 entries in the database, one for each combination of remaining features. This is why people doing linguistic description based on annotated corpus come to a wording such as "36 past participle verbs" and "14 past participle verb forms". Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 18:44, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Perfect subjunctive in ideal conditional

Why do the translations use present conditional forms? They imply a general meaning, while I would assume that the meaning of perfect subjunctive in ideal conditional is comparable to the meaning of pluperfect subjunctive in counterfactual conditional and these actions would have been completed in the hypothetical situation. 109.42.179.83 (talk) 11:35, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

In English, there are two counterfactual conditional forms for each tense: the form of the conditioning event and the form of the conditioned event.

Conditional nexus between future counterfactual events

'It will be very hot. If I earned more money, I would buy an air conditioner next month.'

Conditional nexus between present counterfactual events

'It is very hot. If I earned more money, I would be buying an air conditioner now.'

Conditional nexus between past counterfactual events

'It was very hot. If I had earned more money, I would have bought an airconditioner last month.'

In Latin, the 'perfect subjunctive' verb represents a present or future conditioned event (imperfect meaning) and the 'pluperfect subjunctive' verb represents a past conditioned event (perfect meaning).

sī nunc mē suspendam, meīs inimīcīs voluptātem creāverim (Plautus)

'If I were hanging myself now, I would be pleasing my enemies.'

However, the same cannot be said of concessional nexuses between counterfactual events. In this case, both conceded and conceding future and present events are represented by 'perfect subjunctive'.

Cicerōnī nēmo ducentōs nunc dederit nummōs, nisi fulserit ānulus ingēns (Juvenal)

'nowadays no one would give Cicero two hundred denaries, unless a huge ring glittered (on his finger)'

As I understand your question, the expression 'would give' above has a connotation of generalised subject, whereas the expression 'would be pleasing' does not. Indeed, in English this difference between conditional forms exists and in Latin it does not. Translators tend to translate words such as creāverim systematically by 'would please' because Latin translators learn to translate form-by-form, not meaning-by-meaning. Nonetheless, it is a wrong assumption that a 'perfect subjunctive' verb such as dederit represents a past conceded event as in 'would have given' or that one such as fulserit represents a past conceding event as in 'had glittered'.

I hope I have helped. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 19:44, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is here. But certainly, your translation of si me nunc suspendam doesn't seem quite correct. It must mean 'if I were to hang myself'. The way it's translated in the article is better. Kanjuzi (talk) 10:16, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Dear anonymous visitor, consider Kanjuzi's correction. Kanjuzi's sentence If I were to hang myself now, I would please my enemies is future, not present. It is a valid interpretation since nunc in Latin can extend into the future like now in English. This is the case if suspendam opposes suspendēs in person and suspendō and suspendī in tense as Kanjuzi's interpretation suggests. It is not the case if suspendam opposes supsendās in person and suspenderem in tense as my commentary suggests. In suspendam, suspendās, the verb is "non-past" and may mean either present or future. In this case, words such as nunc would function as a present adverb like the word gerade in German (a language with two tenses: "past" and "non-past"). Since I do not know what is being discussed in the quoted text and since I do not know the author's typical usage of tense in conditioning clauses, I trust Kanjuzi in his correction. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 15:19, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

The remainder of the response to your complaint is still valid, though. The word dederit was correctly translated as would give because the subject is people nowadays, a generalised subject. If the subject were a named person, dederit should be translated as would be giving. However, dederit should never be translated as would have given in this sentence because, together with nunc, it represents a present event, not a past event. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 15:37, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Translation: future in past

Hi @Kanjuzi, I was reviewing the article to see if there are things that could be improved and I found some translations that don't seem optimal in the section about the future periphrasis. In my corpus study about this periphrasis and future participles, I found out that the future periphrasis may be simply indicative as in "was expected/intending/about to do", "is extected/intending/about to do", "will be expected/intending to do", but that it may also have a "had to", "has to", "will have to" deontic meaning (obligation) depending on the presence of adverbs such as "jūre" ("by law"). For this reason, I think that the current translation of the next sentence might be wrong and that we might find a better translation in the literature for the same passage.

sī tibī nōn pāruissem, iūre datūrus fuī poenās (Curtius)

'if I had not obeyed you, I would rightly have paid the penalty'

Without checking the context of wording, discourse and situation and without checking the author's style and the way other authors write during the same period as Curtius, I would intuitively come to the following translation for the legal discourse in a situation where two people are discussing about their contractual rights and duties.

sī tibī nōn pārvissem, jūre datūrus fuī poenās (Curtius)

'if I had not obeyed you, I would've had to pay for the damages by law'

Is this something that we can find in any of the translations that you have access to for Curtius? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 18:55, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

No, I think you'll find, if you consult the dictionaries and the passage itself, that iure idiomatically means 'rightly' or 'with justice', and poenas dare means 'be punished', not 'pay damages'. So perhaps a better translation would be 'I would rightly have been punished'. I don't think there is any deontic meaning here. Kanjuzi (talk) 17:01, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

The experiential ajustments ('pay for the damages' vs 'pay the penalty' and 'by law' vs 'rightly') are irrelevant. I will keep your translation in this regard and only mark the difference that I am discussing.

'if I had not obeyed you, I would rightly have paid the penalty' (past)

'if I had not obeyed you, I would have rightly had to pay the penalty' (future in past)

'if I had not obeyed you, I would have rightly been expected to pay the penalty' (future in past)

What I am saying is that any translation with a 'future in past' is better than a translation with a 'past' for the periphrasis datūrus fuī. Otherwise, we cannot justify why the author used this future periphrasis and not simply dedī or dedissem. Which translations do you use as reference for Curtius? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 22:27, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

I did not use a translation of Curtius. However, the Loeb Classical Library edition, by J. C. Rolfe (which you can access through the Wikipedia Library), has a translation very similar to mine: "if I had not obeyed you, (I) would justly have suffered punishment". It may well be that you are right and that there is a slight difference between daturus fui and dedissem. However, none of the grammar books I have consulted express an opinion on this. I don't think "had to" is right though. Kanjuzi (talk) 05:23, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I like that translation better for a full-text translation. The other translator moved away from the active role in the act of paying for the damages after sentencing to the passive role in the act of sentencing. That means that a person being sentenced to pay the penalties is a person suffering punishment (being sentenced > being punished). This sentencing interpretation has a reason. There is sē datūrum promīsit (promised to give), eum datūrum credidit (believed he would give), thus datūrus fui (was senntenced to give). So I like the other translator's choice for his book.

Moreover, in a full-text translation, the active role in "paying the penalties" is not compatible with the past tense in the context of discourse. In my opinion, the passive rendering of a previous event like "being punished" is to be favoured in a full-text translation because the past event of sentencing to pay is being compared to the event of dying, which only has a passive role.

But you know. There is a difference between (1) a full-text translation, whereby a translator is interpreting the text and rendering it in the best way possible in the target language, substituting tenses and processes so as to make the text most fluent, and (2) a translation made for teaching grammar, whereby the grammarian tries to represent the same event, with the same participant roles, with the same tenses. In other words, I find the translator's translation inadequate for an article about tense such as this because he represented a different event from the one in the original text ('dat poenās' = 'pay the penalties' != 'suffer punishment'); meanwhile, your translation is not showing that the event of paying is future at that past time and is making the article readers believe that datūrus fuī and datūrus fuissem are equivalent to dedī and dedissem, which is not the case. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 07:39, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

daturus fui 'I would have given' is certainly not equivalent to dedi 'I gave', so this part of your query makes no sense. Nor does daturus fui mean 'I was sentenced to give'. The experts say that in this context poenas daturus fui simply means 'I would have been punished'. Possibly there is a very slight nuance of difference between poenas daturus fui and poenas dedissem, but it doesn't seem worth worrying about. I think the translation as it stands is fine. If you think differently you will need to find a reference book to back you up. Kanjuzi (talk) 11:36, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Starting with the simple. Google translation engine is trained with hundreds of translation pairs. Statistically, according to Google Translate these are the two most likely translations for datūrus fuī:

(a) 'I was going to give'.

(b) 'I was about to give'.

As you can see, the event of giving stays forthcoming during the past sequence of events. This means that it is not integrated in the past chain of events.

As for grammar books, Kühner and Stegmann (Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache, Vol. 2.1., Page 160) say that there are three groups of meaning for this periphrasis: a) Will and intention, b) Capability, power, permission, and c) Outer determination (Bestimmung), inner determination (Bescaffenheit) and necessity. The translation I am suggesting follows the third meaning. The glosses that they provide are: 1) 'I was sentenced to do something' ('es ist mir beschieden, etwas zu tun'), 'I was told/am expected to do something' ('ich soll etwas tun'), 'I have/need/am decided to do something' ('ich muss etwas tun').

Example 1 – Outer determination

ē quō intellegī potest, quam acūtī nātūrā sint, quoniam haec sine doctrīnā (crēditūrī) fuērunt (Tusc. 1, 48)

'from which one can notice, how intelligent they were by nature, given that they were told (to believe) this without doctrine'

Example 2 - Inner determination

[dēditōs] ultimīs crūciātibus (adfectūrī) fuērunt (Liv. 21.44.4.4)

'they decided (to endure) [being put] to the final tortures.

From the context, I interpret the example you have as Example 1.

Kühner and Stegmann also note that this periphrasis can also be subjunctive, from which it follows that crēditūrī fuērunt ('were told to believe') can be used instead of crēditūrī fuissent ('would have been told to believe') with the meaning of the latter, especially so in conditional clauses, they say.

You seem to be very confident of your translation, but this translation is communicating a wrong information about the meaning of the periphrasis. Even if this translation happens in a book (with the event of being punished instead of the event of being sentenced to pay something), it is not adequate for describing the meaning of the periphrasis because it merges the passive meaning of the auxiliary with the active meaning of the main verb. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 16:26, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Google Translate is notoriously inaccurate for Latin, so it can't be relied on. Kühner–Stegmann is of course very good, but I don't think you can have translated the German correctly: beschieden doesn't mean 'sentenced', for example, and credituri fuerunt cannot mean 'they were told to believe'. If you could send me a photo of the page in K-S to my email, it would be helpful perhaps. The phrase "outer determination" doesn't mean anything in English, so it is puzzling. Kanjuzi (talk) 18:31, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

The sentence with credituri fuerunt is rather difficult to translate. The Loeb edition (reading qui instead of quoniam) puts 'who would, without instruction, have believed them true'. Admittedly it's not very satisfactory. But given the obscurity of the context, it doesn't seem a good example for including in the article. The example from Livy is easier: it could either be a simple intention: 'if we had been handed over, they were planning to punish us with the most terrible tortures'; or it could be translated as a potential: 'they would have punished us etc'. It's a good example for showing the overlap between the two meanings. Kanjuzi (talk) 19:17, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

@Kanjuzi When one says 'ich soll' ('I was told to') in German, one means either that they were told by others to do something or that they are expected by others to do something. In contrast, 'du sollst' ('you must') is used as an imperative form when there is a clear hierarchy, mostly parents talking to children or a government worker telling what one must do to apply for some benefit. One can also use 'ich soll' ('I have to') as a clearly justifiable wish, especially when one wants to go home. See this discussion in English [1].

The expression 'es ist mir beschieden' ('it was ordered to me to') usually has one of two uses. It can be used in a religious context as in 'I was ordered by God to'/'I am destined to' and it can be used in a legal context as in 'I was ordered by a judge to'/'I was sentenced to'... 'Gerichtsbescheid' is one of the possible translations of 'court order'.

I took three photos of the section on future periphrasis because the information is spread in three pages (Vol. 2.1. Pages 160-162). How do I send them to you? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 21:30, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Latin tenses/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: FloridaMan21 (talk · contribs) 23:33, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: UndercoverClassicist (talk · contribs) 20:38, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

This is a real labour of love, and shows a great deal of erudition and knowledge. To get the bad news out of the way first, I'm going to have to fail this GA nomination on technical grounds. For GA, every statement of fact or analysis needs to be referenced to a secondary source (that is, a modern work of scholarship): while the examples from Latin authors are extremely impressive, they don't meet this criterion (under WP:PRIMARY). Nearly the whole article would need to be re-sourced to meet this criterion, and this is an unreasonable amount of work to expect to be done (or checked) within a seven-day hold period, so a quickfail is the only available option.

On another procedural note, we would normally expect a GA nomination to come from, or at least be co-sponsored by, the main editor of the article: I would suggest working with Daniel Couto Vale and the other major contributors before re-nominating. I hope the article will come up here again, once properly reworked, and continue to improve. A couple of pointers for that process:

• Remember that Wikipedia is not a textbook: make sure that the prose focuses on describing how the Latin tense system works, not how best to learn it.
• At the moment, the article seems to focus entirely on morphology -- as it's an article about tenses, not verb tables, I think the division into indicative, subjunctive etc is a mistake -- the article's sections should instead be tenses, and should primarily discuss (e.g.) the history and different uses of the present tense, rather than simply listing the endings used by it.
• It would be useful to draw on some discussion of the development of the language and its changes over time: although most of what is taught in schools as "Latin" is a century or so on either side of Augustus, Latin has a much longer linguistic history than that in both directions.

Do drop me a line if I can be of further help as you work on the article. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 20:38, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

@UndercoverClassicist: Thank you very much for your review. If that is the case, I accept it. However, may I reply to one or two points?

1. "At the moment, the article seems to focus entirely on morphology". Well, this comment seems to be a bit of an exaggeration: the morphology forms only a small portion of each section. As to whether morphology should be included at all in the article, I think it should, since the article is about "Latin tenses", so it ought to contain material about how the tenses are formed as well as how they are used. I have just been reading an article about Italian tenses which is organised in this way, and it seems entirely satisfactory. Without a sketch of the morphology of each tense it would be hard to follow and much less useful.

2. "I think the division into indicative, subjunctive etc is a mistake". Well, possibly, but I don't think I agree. The way the article is organised at present, which was recently suggested by Daniel, does seem to me to be the best one and the easiest for readers to navigate. I presume you would prefer it if the headings were "Present", "Imperfect" etc and the material about the present subjunctive was included in the section "Present". And yet this would not really do, since the use of tenses in the subjunctive is quite different from the same tenses in the indicative (for example, the imperfect indicative is invariably imperfective in aspect, which is not always the case for the imperfect subjunctive; the perfect indicative is usually counted as a secondary tense, but the perfect subjunctive is primary, and so one). So I think indicative and subjunctive need to be split up.

At present the article is organised tense by tense (formation and meaning of the present tense, formation and meaning of the future tense, and so on). This is the way it is done in the standard grammars, and so it seemed the best to follow. An alternative way of organising the article, originally suggested by Daniel, is by functions (different ways of expressing actions in the past, different ways of expressing situations in the past, and so on). This is possible, but I don't know any reference work that does it this way. It would also lead to the same tense being split up in a way which might be inconvenient to readers: for example, dūcēbat, which can mean 'he was leading' or 'he began leading', would be found in two different sections, when really for Romans the meanings overlapped and weren't really different. The same goes for quite a few other tenses. It's useful to know that ductūrus fuit can mean either 'he was going to lead' or 'he would have lead', information which would not be so easy to find if the meanings were split between different sections.

I agree with Kanjuzi that the article is not wrong when split in this way.

First, this is an article about "Forms and uses". It does two things: (1) it systematises verb groups into paradigms by fixing all features that are neither agreement (person, gender, number) nor case; and (2) it gives a unique name to each verb group paradigm following the naming convention found in formal grammar books. Latin verb groups are also traditionally classified based on the stem aspect of the main verb in active verb groups. This means that amāmus and amāmur are said to be infectum verb groups because amā-mus has the infectum stem amā whereas amāvimus and amātī sumus are said to be perfectum verb groups because amāv-imus has the perfectum stem amāv. The supinum stem amāt of the verb group amāt-ī su-mus is irrelevant for the classification of these verb groups (only the stem aspect of the main verb in the 'active' verb group counts). Moreover, it is also a common practice to classify further the same-aspect paradigms of verb groups with tense names and mode names whereby the underlying logic is that there are different modes of construing the same tense for the same aspectual class. As a last step, the verb groups are further classified for voice. All of this is well documented in traditional grammar books and the common sequence of classification is (1) aspect, (2) mode, (3) tense, (4) voice. This sequence reflect a descriptive movement from the verb stem, via the verb branch if any, to the verb leaf for the verb groups of the infectum paradigms. However, this traditional practice has a shortcoming for an article about tense. It applies this schema (aspect, mode, tense) only to finite and infinitive verbs, ignoring imperative, participle, supine, gerund... all of which have aspect and tense. Here, in this article, we backgrounded the aspect component of traditional grammars and foregrounded the modes, opposing the finite/infinitive modes to the other 'modes' of construing tense found in non-finite and non-infinitive verb groups. This is a way of content structuring, a way to make the article easier to navigate without changing the underlying theory. This way of structuring was motivated by the fact that the lists of paradigm sections are shorter in an article with 5 mode sections than in one with 2 aspect sections or in one with no section above paradigm sections at all. This is a way of organising content to focus on tense. In contrast, the way of organising content in traditional grammar books is meant to present on an overview picture of most frequent verb groups without focusing on any of the specific formal components. So the mode sections above paradigm sections are not an issue from a formal perspective, nor is the inclusion of both active and passive voice in the same paradigm section.

However, the issue here for the reviewer Undercover Classicist seems to be of another nature. The reviewer seems to want sections for tense from a semantic perspective and to classify examples based on their experiential meaning, based on semantics. There is already an article for that: namely Latin tenses (semantics), which is organised in such a way. The article Latin tenses is not about tenses in this sense. This article is about the 'tense' constituent of the verb group paradigm names. I shall explain. A paradigm such as (amō, amās...) is called '(4)[active] (3)[present] (2)[indicative] of the (1)[infectum]' and each slot in that name has a proper name: (1) 'aspect', (2) mode', (3) 'tense', (4) 'voice'. The purpose of this naming system is to name a paradigm of verb groups, not to describe the meaning of the verb groups. Once we have a full four-component name of the paradigm, we know which verb groups we are talking about and we can talk about their 'potential meanings', also known as 'uses' and 'functions'. This is how a formal grammar book works and most of the literature about Latin was written in this way with such a theory that has two steps: (1) form naming and (2) use listing for each form. So we cannot expect an article describing Latin with a formal theory to have a content structure that is typical of a functional theory, whose two steps are inverted: (1) function naming and (2) form listing for each function. Only a description following a functional theory allows us to place semantic tense at the content structure of the article. For that, the suggested content structure is only possible in a differet article, which already exists: namely Latin tenses (semantics).

Yet, we could do four things to improve the article Latin tenses: 1) we could extend the introduction section by providing an explicit account of the way the article is organised and why it is organised in this way; 2) we can provide pointers to articles organised in a different fashion for people searching for tense from a semantic perspective; 3) we can add a parenthsis to the title as in "Latin tenses (forms and uses)", priming the reader for what he or she should expect; and 4) provide a table with the different ways that different reference grammar books and dictionaries call each paradigm at the beginning of each paradigm section. In this way, we prove to the reader that we are not 'inventing' stuff and we make sure they understand that 'tense' in this article is a component of paradigm name, not a component of meaning.

3. "It would be useful to draw on some discussion of the development of the language and its changes over time". The article does indeed at present do this. For example, it notes which authors first used the form ductus foret; the different use of tenses in conditional clauses in early Latin; the later development of the perfect active with habeō and the pluperfect passive with fueram and so forth. What more can be added? Most of the main tenses are in fact used in much the same way throughout the history of Latin and even in modern Italian, so there is no need to comment on them.

However, no doubt these points are not relevant to the main question. Meanwhile, I see that another editor, AirshipJungleman29, has downgraded the article's rating to a C, which seems a bit harsh. Is that your assessment also? Kanjuzi (talk) 14:09, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

My suggestions are just that -- you're welcome to disagree. As for the article grading, B class requires the whole article to be appropriately sourced, which currently isn't met, so C is currently the highest assessment possible. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 14:39, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Latest addition

Daniel Couto Vale I have undone your latest revision, because (a) much of it is not about tenses as such (b) what there is about tenses is already in the article (c) the terminology (and order of cases) in the illustration is German, not English (d) it simply adds confusion to cover the same ground twice. My aim in this first section is to be as simple as possible and just state the most basic facts. What you added could well be put in one of your own articles on this subject, however. Kanjuzi (talk) 13:35, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

The content in the article is not sourced and there is a complaint about that. You removed a sourced content that intruduces tenses in Latin. I think we should keep those paragraphs until someone (either you or I) can substitute them for another sourced content that you find better.

As for the pertinence, the content is about tense and how tense is embedded in the larger picture (overview). What needs to follow these paragraphs is how this theory, which is the one you adopt, is mapped to the content structure of the article. For this reason, I reverted your deletion. If you want me to use another source, please let me know which one here and I can do the work of substituting.

I Can change the image to say "Paradigms of the present tense" in English. The names of the paradigms are not in German. They are in Latin. Do you want me to do this image? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 14:08, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

It will be sourced as soon as I get time to do so. But there is no need to add a whole new section. Please stop messing around with this article. You have your own articles which certainly need revising and completing. Alternatively, why not write your own article on this topic on German Wikipedia? Kanjuzi (talk) 15:16, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for overtaking this task. Since you value other people's opinions, here is what I think could be changed to defend the formal description in this article.

1) you could extend the introduction section by providing an explicit account of the way the article is organised and why it is organised in this way (formal theory);

2) you could provide pointers to articles organised in a different fashion for people searching for tense from a semantic perspective, like the reviewer (alternative theories);

3) you could add a parenthesis to the title as in "Latin tenses (forms and uses)" or something like this so as to prime the reader for what he or she should expect (didactic);

4) you could provide a table with the different ways that different reference grammar books and dictionaries call each paradigm at the beginning of each paradigm section (formal descriptions).

In this way, you prove to the reader that you are not 'inventing' stuff and you make sure they understand that 'tense' in this article is a component of paradigm name, not a component of meaning. With the right mindset, the next reviewer will have a different opinion. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 12:37, 7 August 2024 (UTC)