Subjunctive vs indicative

C

Caelia Britannia

New Member

Hi everyone,
I had to translate this sentence into Latin:
"The tempest was so great that the ships were destroyed"
I would translate the result clause with a subjunctive, "tanta erat tempestas ut naves deletae sint". However, the translation provided in the book answers has an indicative "tanta erat tempestas ut naves deletae sunt".
Are they both correct? If yes, is there a difference in meaning?
 
C

Clemens

Aedilis

  • Aedilis
Location:
Maine, United States.
My Latin grammar only gives imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive as possible tenses in a clause of result when the main clause is in a "historical" tense, as they are showing relative time not absolute time. This mirrors classical French usage.
 
Pacifica

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis
Location:
Belgium
Your Latin grammar isn't being exhaustive. Clauses of result with the main verb in a past tense can also take the perfect subjunctive, but I guess this is something that's not always taught to beginners, for some reason (I remember learning about it relatively late myself; it wasn't mentioned in my course).

Things are different with clauses of purpose, which can't logically take a perfect subjunctive if the main verb is in a past tense (though there can be exceptions even to this, in the phenomenon called repraesentatio; but the present subjunctive would be more usual here than the perfect anyway, just as the imperfect is much more common than the pluperfect in the "normal" construction).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top