AM: Lesson - Passive Voice - Perfect System Introduction
Passive Voice - Perfect System Introduction
The Roman tradition of the Saturnalicius princeps had been continued in Europe during medieval times. Called the Lord of Misrule, and celebrating the Feast of Fools, the idea of the King of Saturnalia lasted for centuries. Painting by David Teniers, c. 1634. That construction: had been continued, is an example of how English translates the Latin pluperfect tense in the passive voice. The pluperfect tense is a part of the Latin Perfect System of tenses.
Perfect System Active Review
The perfect system is a set of Latin tenses that, in the active voice, are formed using the perfect stem (formation: 3rd PP - i). The system includes:
- Perfect tense
- Pluperfect tense
- Future Perfect tense
Perfect System Passive Voice
For the passive voice forms of the perfect system, we do not use the perfect stem. Instead, every perfect system passive voice verb uses two words:
- Perfect Passive Participle in the nominative case
- The perfect passive participle indicates the meaning of the verb
- Why nominative? In the passive construction, the perfect passive participle must agree with the subject of the clause. Subjects are in the nominative case in Latin. This agreement also applies to gender and number.
- The perfect passive participle indicates the meaning of the verb
- A form of sum, esse, fui
- The form of esse used indicates the person, number and tense of the passive construction.
- Present tense forms of sum = perfect passive
- Imperfect tense forms of sum = pluperfect passive
- Future tense forms of sum = future perfect passive
- The form of esse used indicates the person, number and tense of the passive construction.
All verbs, regardless of conjugation, form the perfect system in the same way. No matter whether you are working with a 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th conjugation verb or even most irregular verbs, the passive voice formation rules apply universally in the perfect system.