🗣️ 10. Subordination and the moods

Classical Latin builds long periods: a main clause with participles, ablative absolutes and several subordinate clauses around it, each marked by its conjunction and its mood. The subjunctive is the mood of most subordinate clauses. It marks a clause as dependent, wished, purposed, possible or reported, rather than asserted by the speaker. Indirect speech turns statements into the accusative with the infinitive and questions and commands into the subjunctive. The sequence of tenses ties the tense of a subjunctive to the tense of the main verb. This chapter gives these in turn, then the conditional sentences, then how the system changed in late Latin.

Contents

1. The subjunctive in main clauses
2. The sequence of tenses
3. Indirect statement: the accusative with the infinitive
4. Indirect questions and indirect commands
5. Purpose and result: ut, nē, ut nōn
6. Cum and the clauses of time
7. Causal and concessive clauses
8. Conditional sentences
9. Relative clauses with the subjunctive
10. Indirect discourse (ōrātiō oblīqua)
11. The change in late Latin: quod, quia, quoniam
12. How Mova handles it

1. The subjunctive in main clauses

In a main clause the subjunctive expresses (Bennett 1918 §§272–280):

• a wish (with or without utinam; nē when negative): Valeās! "May you fare well!", Utinam adesset! "If only he were here!";
• an exhortation in the first person plural: Eāmus! "Let us go!";
• a prohibition with nē + perfect subjunctive: Nē timueris! "Do not be afraid!" (or nōlī + infinitive: nōlī timēre);
• a deliberative question: Quid faciam? "What am I to do?";
• possibility (the potential): Dīcat aliquis "Someone may say"; crēderēs "you would have thought".

2. The sequence of tenses

A subjunctive in a subordinate clause takes its tense from the main verb (Bennett 1918 §§266–268):

Rogō quid faciās. "I ask what you are doing." — Rogō quid fēcerīs. "I ask what you did." Rogāvī quid facerēs. "I asked what you were doing." — Rogāvī quid fēcissēs. "I asked what you had done."

Later action in an indirect question is the periphrasis with the future participle: Rogō quid factūrus sīs "I ask what you will do".

3. Indirect statement: the accusative with the infinitive

After verbs of saying, thinking, knowing and perceiving, a statement is reported as an accusative and infinitive (accūsātīvus cum īnfīnītīvō, AcI): its subject is in the accusative, its verb in the infinitive (Bennett 1918 §§330–331).

Dīcit Caesarem venīre. "He says that Caesar is coming." Dīxit Caesarem vēnisse. "He said that Caesar had come." Dīcit Caesarem ventūrum esse. "He says that Caesar will come."

The infinitive's tense is relative to the main verb: the present for the same time, the perfect for earlier, the future for later. A reflexive pronoun (sē, suus) in the AcI refers to the subject of the verb of saying: Dīcit sē venīre "He says that he (himself) is coming"; eum would be another man. The same construction is the subject of impersonal expressions: Constat terram esse rotundam.

4. Indirect questions and indirect commands

An indirect question keeps its question word, and its verb goes into the subjunctive, following the sequence: Nescio ubi sit. "I don't know where he is." Quaesīvit num vēnissem. "He asked whether I had come." (Bennett 1918 §§295–296, 300)

An indirect command after verbs of ordering, asking, urging, persuading has ut (negative nē) and the subjunctive: Imperāvit ut mīlitēs venīrent. "He ordered the soldiers to come." Iubeō and vetō take the AcI instead: Iussit mīlitēs venīre.

Verbs of fearing take nē for what is feared to happen and ut (or nē nōn) for what is feared not to happen: Timeō nē veniat "I fear he may come"; Timeō ut veniat "I fear he may not come". (The French expletive ne after craindre continues this nē: fr chapter 8.)

5. Purpose and result: ut, nē, ut nōn

Edō ut vīvam. "I eat in order to live." (purpose) Tam fortis erat ut nēmō eum vinceret. "He was so brave that nobody defeated him." (result)

A relative pronoun can introduce purpose: lēgātōs mīsit quī pācem peterent "he sent envoys to seek peace". Purpose is also expressed by ad + gerund or gerundive, the supine in -um, and causā/grātiā + genitive of the gerundive (chapter 6) (Bennett 1918 §§282, 284).

6. Cum and the clauses of time

Cum "when, since, although" (Bennett 1918 §§287–293):

• with the indicative, it dates the main event (cum temporāle: cum Caesar in Galliam vēnit "at the time when …");
• with the subjunctive in the past, it gives the circumstances of a narrative event (cum historicum: Cum Caesar in Galliam vēnisset, … "When Caesar had come into Gaul, …"), and often a cause or a concession (cum causāle, cum concessīvum).

Other conjunctions of time take the indicative when they only date: postquam (perfect: postquam vēnit "after he came"), ubi, ut "when", simul ac, dum "while" (present indicative even in the past). Antequam, priusquam "before", and dum, dōnec "until", take the subjunctive when the action is expected or intended.

7. Causal and concessive clauses

Cause. Quod, quia, quoniam + indicative give the speaker's own reason; + subjunctive a reported reason (quod … dīceret "on the ground that he said"). Cum + subjunctive (§6) (Bennett 1918 §§285–286, 308–310).

Concession. Quamquam + indicative "although (in fact)"; quamvīs, licet, cum + subjunctive "however much, although"; etsī, etiamsī like conditions.

8. Conditional sentences

Negative nisi "unless, if not" and sī nōn "if not (a single word)"; sīn "but if". The Romance conditional (French -rais) does not come from these subjunctives but from the late periphrasis infinitive + habēbam (cantāre habēbam → chanterais): chapter 13 (Bennett 1918 §§301–305).

9. Relative clauses with the subjunctive

A relative clause takes the subjunctive when it expresses (Bennett 1918 §§283, 312):

• purpose (§5);
• result or characteristic: Sunt quī dīcant "There are people who say"; nēmō est quī nesciat "there is nobody who does not know";
• cause or concession: Ō fortūnāte adulēscēns, quī tuae virtūtis Homērum praecōnem invēnerīs "fortunate youth, since you found Homer as herald of your valour";
• a clause inside indirect speech (§10).

10. Indirect discourse (ōrātiō oblīqua)

A whole speech reported in indirect form, as in Caesar and Livy, transposes every clause (Bennett 1918 §§313–322):

• main statements go into the AcI;
• main questions and commands go into the subjunctive;
• all subordinate clauses go into the subjunctive, by the sequence of the verb of saying;
• the persons shift: ego, nōs → sē, suus; tū, vōs → ille, is.

Direct: Ego, sī vōs mē sequēminī, urbem capiam. Indirect: Dīxit sē, sī illī sē sequerentur, urbem captūrum esse. "He said that if they followed him, he would take the city."

11. The change in late Latin: quod, quia, quoniam

In imperial and Christian Latin, a finite clause with quod, quia or quoniam replaces the AcI after verbs of saying and knowing: scio quod filius meus es rather than scio tē esse filium meum. This is the ancestor of the Romance que, che, que + finite verb. The subjunctive retreats in the same move: many clauses that took it now take the indicative.

On our data (UD Latin PROIEL training set, NC, counted only; 2026-10-22):

In Caesar and Cicero the AcI is the norm and the quod/quia clause an exception (4%). In the Vulgate the quod/quia clause has overtaken it (59%). The open treebanks agree: the subjunctive is 12.5% of the finite verbs in CIRCSE (Seneca's verse, Tacitus) and 12.8% in the LLCT charters (UD 2.18, 2026-10-22).

Greek turned the same way in the same centuries: the accusative with the infinitive against ὅτι clauses is 583 : 69 in Herodotus and 398 : 875 in the New Testament (grc chapter 14, §9).

Vidit Deus lucem quod esset bona. (Vulgate, Gen. 1:4) — "God saw the light, that it was good": a quod clause after a verb of perception, following the Hebrew kî (ki).

12. How Mova handles it

In the UD trees:

• a subordinate clause is ccomp (complement), advcl (adverbial), acl:relcl (relative) or csubj; its conjunction is SCONJ attached as mark;
• the subjunctive is Mood=Sub in the verb's FEATS;
• an AcI is a ccomp (or xcomp) infinitive whose subject is nsubj with Case=Acc;
• the ablative absolute is advcl:abs or advcl of a participle (by treebank: chapter 6).

In Mova. en xpos-fill maps the subjunctive to an ordinary finite tag, so the mood is lost from the tags (it stays in the FEATS). The parser learns the clause relations from the trees. A Latin frames reader needs, in order:

1. The mood from Mood and the conjunction from mark, to read purpose, result, condition (and its type, §8), fear and indirect command as not asserted (irrealis/cond, as the English reader marks if, so that, want to).
2. The AcI as reported speech: its subject is the accusative nsubj, and sē inside it refers to the speaker of the main verb (§3), the cross-clause link the English reader does with he said that he.
3. The sequence of tenses (§2) for time: a subjunctive's tense gives its time relative to the main verb, not to the speaker's present.
4. The late-Latin quod/quia clause (§11) read like the AcI, as reported content.

These are the same needs as the French reader's (fr chapter 11): the two languages are one family seen at two dates.

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