Capitulum XI — Corpus hūmānum

A sick boy, a doctor, a knife: the setting is memorable, but the chapter does two quite different things. It closes the 3rd declension by finally giving the neuters, and it names the construction you have been reading unawares since capitulum X: the accūsātīvus cum īnfīnītīvō. The first half costs you three endings; the second changes how you read.

1. The 3rd declension in the neuter

Two rules are enough, and the first holds for every declension:

Neuter: accūsātīvus = nōminātīvus, in the singular as in the plural — and the plural ends in -a.

That leaves the cells that really differ. The book sets two models side by side:

Only three cells differ: abl. sg., nom.-acc. pl., gen. pl. Everything else is shared.

Every neuter in this chapter is of the consonant type. The book lists them itself — ut corpus dēclīnantur:

The parentheses are the book's own: cor and caput have a nominative that departs from the model. cor further takes -ium in the genitive plural.

The chapter's masculines and feminines fall on both sides of the line:

• gen. pl. -um: sanguis, sanguinis · color, colōris
• gen. pl. -ium: auris, auris · frōns, frontis · venter, ventris

Quantities to watch: ōs (mouth, long ō) ≠ os, ossis (bone, short o, not yet in the book); frōns but frontis, frontem; color but colōris; sānus / sānāre (long ā) ≠ sanguis (short a); aeger (short e) ≠ aegrōtāre (long ō).

2. The accūsātīvus cum īnfīnītīvō

A whole clause can be filed under another verb. In the process it loses its nominative and its finite verb:

Iūlia dormit. → Medicus Iūliam dormīre videt.

Subject in the accusative, verb in the infinitive. Nothing else.

The book closes the list of verbs that govern the AcI:

Three consequences worth memorising.

(a) With esse, the predicate goes into the accusative too. Two accusatives, one subject:

puer aeger est → puerum aegrum esse

(b) The AcI's infinitive can itself govern an infinitive, posse included — the very form this chapter adds to potest / possunt:

medicus puerum sānārī posse dīcit — "the doctor says the boy can be healed"

(c) iubēre ≠ imperāre. The book glosses one by the other, but their syntax is opposed: iubēre + ACCUSATIVE + infinitive, imperāre + DATIVE. The same trap applies to necesse est, which took the dative in capitulum X (avī volāre necesse est) and takes the accusative here.

For gaudēre the book supplies an equivalence: eum vīvere gaudet = gaudet quod is vīvit.

3. Three prepositions, two ablatives

• super + acc. ↔ sub · īnfrā + acc. ↔ suprā · dē + abl. = ab, but downwards.
• Ablative of respect — glossed by the book: pede aeger est = pedem aegrum habet. The ablative says where you are ill: pede, capite, bracchiō.
• Ablative of means, applied to organs: oculīs vidēre, auribus audīre — no preposition.

And two useful turns: the genitive of content (pōculum aquae = pōculum cum aquā) and the compound verb + bare accusative (cubiculum intrāre = in cubiculum intrāre).

4. The rest of the kit

• modo = tantum = sōlum — correlations nōn modo… sed etiam, nec modo… sed etiam; nec = neque; atque = et.
• bene ↔ male: adverbs, not the neuters of bonus and malus. Careful: male ≠ mālum "apple".
• noster, nostra, nostrum — stem nostr-, like ruber/rubr-, aeger/aegr-, culter/cultr-, venter/ventr-.
• horrēre carries three senses in three margins: capillī horrent (to stand on end), horret (to be terrified), medicum horret (to dread, + acc.).
• manus, manūs f. is 4th declension — introduced here, taught in capitulum XII. The book gives only ūna manus, duae manūs; add the accusative manum, and stop there.

One line to remember: neuter acc. = nom., plural in -a; corpus, corporis, corpore, corpora, corporum against mare, marī, maria, marium; AcI = accusative subject + infinitive, after vidēre/audīre/sentīre, iubēre, dīcere, putāre, gaudēre, necesse esse; predicate in the accusative with esse; sānārī posse; iubēre + acc. but imperāre + dat.; pede aeger est.