In Latin, impersonal verbs do not have a personal subject i.e. they are not used with a nominative subject that performs the action. Instead, they typically express natural phenomena, mental states, necessity, obligation, emotion, or general events, and are normally used only in the third person singular.
In English, we often express impersonal ideas using the dummy subject “it”, as in:
It is raining.
It seems that…
It is necessary to…
Latin does not use a dummy subject, and so these ideas are expressed by impersonal verb forms alone, without a grammatical subject.
Example:
pluit: it is raining
There is no nominative subject; the verb stands by itself.
Latin impersonal verbs fall into several main semantic groups. Here we will look at:
[1] natural phenomena i.e. describing weather or natural events, for example:
grandinat: it is hailing
pluit: it is raining
ningit: it is snowing
tonat: it is thundering
Similarly:
French: il pleut; German: es regnet
Latin, however, does not use any pronoun.
[i] plumbō et saxīs grandinat. (Pacuvius)
- it’s hailing with lead and rocks
[ii] At quārē aliquandō nōn fulgurat et tonat (Seneca)
- But why is there no lightning sometimes and yet it thunders?
[iii] prius quam lūcet adsunt (Plautus)
- before it is daybreak they are with me
[iv] intereā tōtō nōn sētius aëre ningit (Virgil)
- Meanwhile it snows no less over the whole sky
[v] cum pluit in terrīs et ventī nūbila portant (Lucretius)
- when it rains on earth and winds bring clouds
[vi] cum tonat, … fulminat, cum serēnat (Minucius)
- when it thunders, … lightning strikes, when it’s clear
[vii] Ante rorat* quam pluit (Varro)
- it drizzles before it rains
*rorat can also refer to the formation of dew
Inchoative verbs may also function impersonally, for example:
- calēscit: it is getting hot; it’s starting to get hot
- frigēscit: it’s turning cold
- vesperāscit: it grows late
https://adckl.blogspot.com/search/label/inchoative%20verbs
The entire topic of weather can be found at:
https://adckl.blogspot.com/search/label/topic%3A%20weather
