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Someone in my organization is trying to sell memorial challenge coins with the text "Fratres Occasi", which they claim means "Fallen Brothers".

This seems, not right to me. My Latin is not excellent, so I though I would ask the group here what you make if this.

cmw
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user10786
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2 Answers2

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You are right, fratres occasi is not correct. Occasus, -a, -um is indeed the perfect passive participle of occidere (with a short i), and this verb does indeed mean “to fall,” usually not in the literal sense, but in the sense “to perish, to be lost.”

However, since it is an intransitive verb, it forms no personal passive. Fratres occasi would mean “brothers that have been fallen,” and that makes no sense. The only exception to my knowledge is if the subject is sol, as in post solem occasum (after sunset), etc. But never mind that. Quod licet soli, non licet fratri.

But occidere has a doppelgänger, occīdere (with a long i), which means “to strike down, kill, slay.” It is transitive (unsurprisingly) and does form a personal passive, but the perfect participle is occīsum. So you could say: fratres occisi.

Sebastian Koppehel
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    You're right that sol is the exception, not the rule. Whoops. – cmw Feb 12 '22 at 00:59
  • The perfect ("passive") participle occasus seems to be lexicalized only in a "dominant participle" construction, perhaps by analogy with the deponent verb orior: e.g. cf. the expected post solem ortum with the unexpected post solem occasum. So, rather than saying, as above, "However, since it is an intransitive verb, it forms no personal passive", here I'd say: "Since it is not a deponent intransitive verb, it is not expected to form a perfect ("passive") participle". Related: https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/12529/ante-solem-occasum-vs-ante-diem-adventum – Mitomino Feb 12 '22 at 03:57
  • @cmw Your deleted statement is, linguistically speaking, very interesting (although it is wrong): “there's nothing wrong with fratres occasi meaning ‘fallen brothers’”. I find it VERY interesting since it shows that unaccusativity in Latin is not to be “equated” with unaccusativity in English and Romance languages (NB: interestingly, ‘fallen brothers’ is perfect in these languages but fratres occasi is out in Latin). So your statement seems to be motivated by a nice transposition of L1 (English) to L2 (Latin). That’s why I said that it is very interesting from a linguistic point of view. – Mitomino Feb 12 '22 at 04:00
  • @Mitomino It's not entirely alien to the Latin mindset, but it's odd enough that it warranted comment. The Twelve Tables (V?/IV?/III? s. BCE) and Lucilius (II s. BCE) both have sol occasus meaning "setting sun", but that prompted questioning from Aulus Gellius (II s. CE). Because of the similarity with occasus, -us, it's difficult to pin down exactly the number of times it was used in this way, but it seems this is a singular usage. It's the only way occaso is used, for example, and there are no instances of occasorum or occasis. – cmw Feb 12 '22 at 04:41
  • @Mitomino But indeed, I had a linguistic lapse for a second. It actually caught me off guard, as I'm usually more careful than that! I'll chalk it up to a distraction and hope it doesn't recur. – cmw Feb 12 '22 at 04:42
  • @cmw Well, perhaps, as you say, it was a (mere) "distraction", but, as noted above, I thought that it was due to a L1-to-L2 transfer, which is, linguistically speaking, more interesting. Yes, sol occasus is a nice example of a dominant participle construction in subject position, which is, by the way, not a frequent position for this kind of participles. Finally, since, as pointed out by Sebastian, this participle is only applied to sol, it is not surprising that "there are no instances of occasorum or occasis". – Mitomino Feb 12 '22 at 05:09
  • @Mitomino It indeed was a L1-toL2 transfer. What's more interesting is subjective, but as this is not the Linguistics stack, I was trying to keep it more on topic with Latin. What I find interesting is that there's an exception at all. Whence comes it? – cmw Feb 12 '22 at 06:06
  • @cmw You're right, "what's more interesting is subjective" but what I was just trying to say is that the transfer "is, linguistically speaking, more interesting" than a mere distraction (sorry, I omitted this part in italics!). As for the issue that concerns us here, the existence of the participle occasus is not unrelated to the lexical-semantic fact that the verb occido also expresses a change of state like the deponent verb orior. Otherwise, the participle occasus would be impossible. See above for a "like"(analogy)-proposal. Construction Grammarians love these quirks! – Mitomino Feb 12 '22 at 07:15
  • @Mitomino I was fully expecting you to comment ;-) My wording was not very precise, to be sure. (Glaringly obvious example: One might write fratres mortui.) Veniam mihi dari posse spero. If I had written that these verbs are not expected to form passive participles at all, a pedant might have asked what about huc ut perventum est etc. … – Sebastian Koppehel Feb 12 '22 at 09:23
  • @SebastianKoppehel Let me say I wouldn't think it is "pedantic" to comment on the fact that an intr. verb like pervenio can enter into an impersonal passive but, probably (I'd say "interestingly"), the same cannot be said of the apparently similar intr. verb occido, the verb at issue (!) here. I'm aware I can often be regarded as a pedant. Sad but, given your comment, probably true... BTW: if I were you, I'd add a translation/gloss of fratres occisi at the end of your answer. In the context of the question above, an inattentive reader could interpret/translate this example incorrectly. – Mitomino Feb 12 '22 at 14:54
  • @Mitomino It was not at all my intention to accuse you of pedantry. Your comments are always welcome, if on occasion perhaps a bit above my pay grade. I do think, by the way, that an impersonal passive like postquam ad Cannas occasum est would be possible, although unusual and perhaps not attested. But why not? – Sebastian Koppehel Feb 12 '22 at 17:04
  • @SebastianKoppehel An important condition for an impersonal passive to be possible is that the verb must be agentive. That's why occasum est would be unusual and, as you say, "perhaps not attested". Probably, a similar semantic restriction is found in German. – Mitomino Feb 12 '22 at 17:13
  • @Mitomino that is a good question that I've never thought much about. The German Wikipedia happily claims that unaccusative intransitive verbs form no impersonal passive, and their first example is that "Dann wurde eingeschlafen" (Latin equivalent would be tum obdormitum est) is ungrammatical. I wonder how many speakers agree with that; I certainly don't. Another obvious counterexample is "Gestorben wird immer" (people will always die), title of countless books. So who knows ... – Sebastian Koppehel Feb 12 '22 at 19:41
  • @SebastianKoppehel Yes, you'll also find this typical restriction not only in Wikipedia but also in the linguistic literature (e.g. cf. the unergative/agentive ex. (1b) and the unnaccusative/non-agentive ex. (2b) on page 317 of https://web.stanford.edu/~azaenen/publications/unaccusativesindutch.pdf ). However, when the verb "fall" is construed as agentive, the sentence is said to sound better (e.g. see ex. (41) on page 329 of this pdf). – Mitomino Feb 12 '22 at 20:55
  • So, mutatis mutandis, one could entertain the hypothesis that pugnatum est is perfect but occasum est, if possible, would sound as somewhat unnatural unless construed as agentive. As far as I can tell, this hypothesis is borne out in Latin impersonal passives (e.g. pugnatum est and perventum est sound perfect because they contain agentive predicates). – Mitomino Feb 12 '22 at 20:57
  • @Mitomino: What does "they contain agentive predicates" mean--they are amenable to an agent e.g. "pugnatum est a militibus" = "it has been fought by the soldiers". Is that correct? – tony Feb 14 '22 at 18:13
  • @tony Yes, pugnare is a prototypical example of agentive verbal predicate (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_(grammar)), whereby an impersonal passive construction like pugnatum est is very natural. In contrast, the intr. verb occidere does not involve an agent (i.e. a participant who carries out an action deliberately or with volition/control), whereby I don't think that an impersonal passive like occasum est would sound natural (the reason is given in the comment that contains this link: https://web.stanford.edu/~azaenen/publications/unaccusativesindutch.pdf ). – Mitomino Feb 15 '22 at 01:13
  • @Sebastian Koppehel: If "fratres occasi" is translated as simple (aorist) past, as opposed to, perfect passive, then it's "brothers (who have) fallen" e.g. "amatus sum" = "I have been loved"; simple-past = "I was loved". Do you agree? – tony Feb 15 '22 at 08:57
  • @Mitomino: Thank you. In the light of this analysis how does, "occasum est a gladio" = "one (impersonal pronoun) has been killed by the sword", work? I suppose, as you say, this does not sound very natural. – tony Feb 15 '22 at 09:05
  • @tony if you wanted to translate it as active, which, as I wrote, would be wrong, then the "fallen brothers" would seem fine, but it depends on context. It might also be a dominant participle. You usually don't translate post solem occasum as "behind the set sun," but as "after sunset." – Sebastian Koppehel Feb 15 '22 at 12:06
  • @tony The instrumental ablative of your example should not be preceded by a preposition (cf. the ablative of agent a militibus in your previous comment vs. the instrumental ablative gladio). Note also that your example contains the (non-relevant) verb occīdere (with a long i; cf. Sebastian's answer), which means 'to kill'. The relevant verb that is at issue here is the intransitive occidere (with a short i), which means "to fall, to die". So note the difference between occisum and occasum. – Mitomino Feb 15 '22 at 15:27
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In virtually all Indo-European languages, ancient or modern, there is a rule that states that the perfect participle of transitive verbs is passive in meaning, but the p.p. of intransitive verbs is active. E.g. in Sanskrit sthā- means “to stand”, but sthita- means “having stood”, in exactly the same way that English says “departed friends”, from the intransitive verb “to depart”, or “fallen soldiers” from the intransitive verb “to fall”. In Latin, however, this use of the p.p. is mostly restricted to intransitive deponent verbs. What is surprising is not that Latin can say “post solem occasum” but rather that it cannot use this inherited IE construction with other intransitive verbs. Essentially what has happened is that this construction is no longer productive in Latin and has survived only in the fossilised “post solem occasum”.

fdb
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  • From your parallelism between Sanskrit and English it is not clear to me if you consider the role of unaccusativity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unaccusative_verb). The participial construction exemplified by {fallen/departed} soldiers is only typical of a subtype of intransitive verbs (unaccusative ones like {to fall/to depart}) but not of the so-called unergative ones like e.g. to fight/to work (cf. {fought/worked} soldiers). Is this difference based on so-called "split intransitivity" relevant to Sanskrit as well? Thanks in advance for the clarification. – Mitomino Feb 15 '22 at 16:01
  • @Mitomino. I am not sure that I understand your objection. I have approached the problem from a morphological standpoint. sthā- / sthi-ta- is morphologically the exact equivalent of sto / sta-tus. But their usage diverges. – fdb Feb 16 '22 at 11:47
  • I was wondering if your "other intransitive verbs" (cf. "What is surprising is not that Latin can say post solem occasum but rather that it cannot use this inherited IE construction with other intransitive verbs") coincide with the set of (some) unaccusatives, unergatives being disallowed (*post Caesarem pugnatum). From what you say ("Essentially what has happened is that this construction is no longer productive in Latin"), it seems natural to infer that other (unaccusative?) verbs besides occidere could enter into this construction before the fossilization of post solem occasum. – Mitomino Feb 16 '22 at 15:33
  • My take is quite different: post solem occasum is indeed an unexpected (or “surprising”, to put in your terms) pattern since only deponent intransitive verbs would be allowed to enter into it. Since occido is not a deponent verb, my hunch is that the quirk post solem occasum could only have been idiosincratically created by analogy with post solem ortum on the basis of their related encyclopedic meaning (sunset and sunrise) and their shared structural lexical-semantic meaning as well (both orior and occido are change of state verbs). – Mitomino Feb 16 '22 at 15:49