Estisne PRAESTO confundi? (Are you READilY to be confused?)

[Iynx]

Old Iynx is bewildered again, and hopes that his friends in the Forum can help him out. The source of his present confusion is the word praesto (not the verb, the...well, the other) Authorities insist that this is an adverb. Yet its usual use is in the idiom praesto esse (which means to be in place and ready to serve or help in some way), and in this construction it feels (at least to an Anglophone) like an indeclinable adjective used as a predicate nominative.

There are a few instances in which praesto is otherwise used; for example

Era, eccum praesto militem. ("Milady, look, the soldier waits.")

--Plautus: Miles Gloriosus (1216)--


But here too, and in fact in every instance Iynx has encountered (or at least that he remembers encountering; he is getting on in years) it seems to him that praesto is acting as an indeclinable adjective (here modifying militem, not eccum).

Why then is praesto considered an adverb?

This may seem a trivial question, but Iynx likes to have his parts-of-speech neatly sorted and arranged.

Why is praesto considered an adverb?

 

[Cato]

It is really adjectival--the cites I see invariably refer to a person or thing as at hand, and quite often is used with a form of sum. Perhaps it's called an adverb because if it were considered an undeclined adjective, it would be a class unto itself in classical Latin?

 

[Iynx]

With respect, Cato amice, surely not in a class to itself? Consider
damnas, frugi, necesse, nequam, and most of the cardinal numbers.

 

[Cato]

With respect, Cato amice, surely not in a class to itself? Consider
damnas, frugi, necesse, nequam, and most of the cardinal numbers.

Interesting; I hadn't thought about the cardinal numbers, a good example of common adjectives used in a number of constructions.

Checking the OLD on the other examples I see they are listed as undeclined adjectives. Still, I wonder if damnas shouldn't be considered an old genitive form of damnum (cf. pater familias, though there the root word is 1st declension), and frugi is clearly a dative from frux.

Necesse is more problematic, but it seems to be related to some lost noun necessum (in any event, I can only recall seeing it with sum or habeo). Ditto nequam, which I believe I have seen used as a noun (need a cite...). In any event, I see little difference in the usage for these terms than I do for, say, fas and nefas, and yet the OLD categorizes these as indeclinable nouns.

Whether or not these are the actual derivations, the words all seem to be related to nouns (or obsolete nouns). Praesto, on the other hand, is clearly derived from the similar verb. I don't know why this would make a difference to the authorities, but it's the best I can do in lieu of a better explanation. I sure wouldn't want to have to defend praesto as an adverb, and see no real reason why it couldn't be categorized with other indecl. adj.

 

[QMF]

pater familias isn't even really Latin. pater familias is really just a rough transliteration of the Greek πατερ φαμιλιας (I think I spelled that correctly, my Greek is miniscule) which is why the declension of "familias" seems so strange, since Greek's first declension has an -s in the genitive singular. I do believe φαμιλια is a word though, someone can check into that.

 

[Cato]

pater familias isn't even really Latin. pater familias is really just a rough transliteration of the Greek πατερ φαμιλιας (I think I spelled that correctly, my Greek is miniscule) which is why the declension of "familias" seems so strange, since Greek's first declension has an -s in the genitive singular. I do believe φαμιλια is a word though, someone can check into that.

It is true that -as most likely is an imitation of the Greek gen. sing., but familia is derived from local Italian languages (Oscan and Falernian, according to the OLD). In any event, the usual word for family in Greek is οικια[/ι]; [ι]φαμιλιας[/ι] is a word I can't seem to find in my Koine dictionary, but it may be late...

 

[QMF]

pater familias isn't even really Latin. pater familias is really just a rough transliteration of the Greek πατερ φαμιλιας (I think I spelled that correctly, my Greek is miniscule) which is why the declension of "familias" seems so strange, since Greek's first declension has an -s in the genitive singular. I do believe φαμιλια is a word though, someone can check into that.

It is true that -as most likely is an imitation of the Greek gen. sing., but familia is derived from local Italian languages (Oscan and Falernian, according to the OLD). In any event, the usual word for family in Greek is οικια[/ι]; [ι]φαμιλιας[/ι] is a word I can't seem to find in my Koine dictionary, but it may be late...

Perhaps the term (as it is a very old term) emerged when the Italian dialects (of which old Latin is also one, we must not forget) came into contact with Greek, which was before Rome's founding if I recall. After all, if they used the form of the Latin, it would be pater familiae, which just isn't as good of a term.
P.S.
I did at least get πατερ right, I hope...? I've been embarassing myself on this forum lately.
P.P.S.
Perhaps φαμιλια is a pre-Koine term that didn't continue to exist with it...? Grasping at straws here
P.P.P.S.
This is actually making me think about going back and taking a crack at Koine Greek again or maybe finding an Attic Greek book, thanks for your accidental accomplishment guys

 

[Marius Magnus]

What I've read is that etymologically, -as was originally the genitive singular ending of first declension nouns, later elided to -ae. Therefore "pater familias" is merely an old phrase that managed to stick while the language changed around it.

The ending is preserved in Greek because Greek is one of the most conservative languages in the Indo-European group. Greek is actually closer to Sanskrit than it is to Latin.

 

[Iynx]

Gildersleeve agrees with Mario, speaking (p. 15) of "The early [First-Declension] ending of the Gen[itive], as, found in a few cases in early poets..."