The Importance of Principal Parts

January Latin Challenge: Day 20 of 31

What are those extra words next to verbs in your dictionaries? What are they for? In this post, I am going to explain principal parts in Latin

Now you may have noticed that Latin has many rules, and often completely ignores them. This is because people spoke Latin for hundreds and hundreds of years, and so it evolved as it went on. Words changed and adapted and became easier to say or changed their meaning, just like English. Verbs especially went through changes. 

This makes it tricky when we come to learn anything in Latin. However, since people have been teaching Latin for literally thousands of years, they have come up with some handy tricks to make things easier. This is what the principal parts of verbs are for. They tell us how verbs change in different areas, and from that you can learn how verbs change in almost any context. 

Let’s break them down - your dictionary will show verbs like this:

porto,  portare,  portavi,  portatus

Some verbs might only have 3 parts, and I will explain why later, but generally there will be 4 parts. 

1. porto

   The first principal part is the 1st person singular present active, the normal I form of the verb. In this example, porto means I carry.

   This shows me what the verb looks like in the present tense. However, I might still not know how the endings attach - should I change the -o to an -a- or an -e- or an -i-?

   This is where the 2nd principal part comes in. 

2. portare

   This is the present active infinitive. It shows me several things.

   First it tells me the thematic vowel of this verb. Take off the -re from the end and this is what I get. In this case, portare shows that the present tense endings come after an -a-.

   Onto this I can also add the present, imperfect or future endings. They attach straight onto that porta- stem (the present stem). This is also true for the other conjugations, like audio, audire - which shows me -i- is the thematic vowel. 

3. portavi

   The third principal part is the 1st person singular perfect active form. This shows me how the verb changes when the verb becomes a perfect. Some don’t change a lot, just add in the ‘v’ perfect signifier, like porto, but others, like traho (traxi) change a lot. That is why this principal part is included.

   This also is the basis for how the pluperfect and future perfect are formed. Take off the -i from the 3rd principal part and you get the perfect stem.

   It is essential you learn these when you are learning your vocabulary list, so that you can recognise verbs in all tenses. 

4. portatus

   The final principal part is not always included. This is the space taken by the Perfect Passive Participle or the supine.

   The supine is only found in the accusative or ablative, and is rarely used except in exclamations like “mirabile dictu - remarkable to say”.

   Often in modern texts, they use the perfect passive participle, which is more common. This on its own is used to describe objects, such as the “having been carried chair”. However, if you add the verb “to be” in various tenses, it gives the perfect passive, the pluperfect passive, and the future perfect passive.

Side note:

This principal part is not always included in vocabulary lists, because it doesn’t exist for deponent verbs like miror, or for semi-deponent verbs like gaudeo.

This is because they don’t have a “passive” form, as they are deponent, so are already IN the passive form, but you translate them like an active. 

More irregularities

Some verbs like sum have the future participle as their 4th principal part, as they cannot be made passive. 

sum, esse, fui, futurus

So that’s why we have the principal parts!

• Present 1st person

• Present infinitive

• Perfect 1st person for the perfect stem,

• Perfect passive participle

I hope this post has helped! If you need more help with verbs follow this link to my page for a Complete Reference Guide to all forms of Latin verbs in every tense, voice and mood. Or you can find the previous posts about Latin tenses here in the bambasbat archive.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow on bambasbat for Day 21 of the January Latin Challenge!