These posts will look at direct questions e.g. “Do you live in Rome?” “How many children do you have?” etc. Indirect questions e.g. “Can you tell me ¦ where the theatre is?” need to be discussed separately.
polar questions
A polar question
can also be expressed as a “yes – no” question, for example: ‘Do you live in
Rome?’ > Yes, I do / No, I don’t / No, I live in Naples.
There are two
common ways of expressing polar questions:
[1] the enclitic
particle -ne
Particle: a particle has no / little meaning in
itself unless it is associated with another word
Enclitic particle
refers the particle attached
to the end of a word to form a single unit i.e. it cannot stand alone and
have meaning; the English possessive marker ’s is an example of an enclitic
particle; alone, it has no meaning but added to the end of a noun, it fulfils a
grammatical function > John’s car
Two common
enclitics in Latin are:
[i] -que: and;
[ii] -ve: or
Arma virumque
canō │ I sing of arms and the man
duābus tribusve
hōrīs │ within two or three hours
The enclitic -ne
is added to the first word of Latin sentence to form a question; –ne
attaches to the focus word of the question which, as some examples show,
may not be a verb.
Lēgisne
librum bonum? │ Are you reading a good book?
Estne Gallia
in Eurōpā? │ Is Gaul in Europe?
Mēcumne
venīs? │ Are you coming with me?
Fēminamne
vidēs? │ Do you see the woman? [No, but I
see the man.]
Vidēsne fēminam?
│ Do you see the woman? │
[No, but I can hear her.]
[2] nōnne; num
The best way of
translating nōnne and num is with English question tags, for
example ‘don’t you?’ ‘can’t he? ‘did they?’ ‘was she?’
[i] Nōnne
expects a positive response, but English uses a negative question tag.
Nōnne vīs īre ad lūdōs hodiē? │
Surely you want to go to the games today? / You want to go to the games
today, don’t you?’
Nōnne mīlitēs rēgīnam interfēcērunt? │
Surely the soldiers killed the queen? / The soldiers killed the queen, didn’t
they?
Nōnne venīre potestis? Surely you’re able
to come? / You’re able to come, aren’t you?
[ii] Conversely, num
expects a negative response, but English uses a positive question tag.
Num vīs īre ad lūdōs hodiē? │
Surely you don’t want to go to the games today? / You don’t
want to go to the games today, do you?’
Num mīlitēs rēgīnam interfēcērunt? │
Surely the soldiers didn’t kill the queen? / The soldiers didn’t
kill the queen, did they?
Num venīre potestis? │
Surely you’re not able to come? / You’re not able to come,
are you?
Num dubium est? (Cicero) │
There is no doubt, is there?
