Background
Latin and Germanic languages such as German, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and probably several more, have a specific word to denote possession: As Latin says suus, sua, suum, I as a Norwegian can say sin, si, sitt. Similarly, as Latin has ejus, ejus, ejus, I as a Norwegian can say hans, hennes, dens/dets. English lacks the first one. We can add ‘own’ or ‘self’ to emphasise the pronouns his, her, its, but I fear the distinction might still be lost on many students.
Some example sentences from our discussion at Conloqvivm:
- Vi så ham lufte hunden sin
- We saw him walk (‘air’) his dog.
- * Wir sahen ihn seinen Hund gehen.
- However, German possessives work the same as in English, and thus the correct German translation would be ‘Wir sahen ihn mit seinem Hund spazieren (gehen)’.
- * Eum vidēbāmus canem suum ambulāre.
- However, ambulāre can only be made transitive with objects of place, so the correct Latin here would be ‘Vidēbāmus eum cum cane suō ambulantem’ Maybe Eum vidēbāmus canem suum vādere works?
Corrections to my translations are much appreciated; I am still learning. Thank you to Dario for these corrections
Rewriting this to use the same gender of the subject and the logical subject, further emphasises the difference between English and these other languages:
- Norwegian
- Han¹ så ham² lufte hunden hans¹.
- Han¹ så ham² lufte hunden sin².
Note that I corrected the numbers on this one from my Conloqvivm example.
- Latin
- Is¹ eum² vidēbat canem ejus¹ ambulāre.
- Is¹ eum² vidēbat canem suum² ambulāre.
- English
- He¹ saw him² walk his[¹ ²] dog.
Unlike English, there is no need for a rewrite to clearly communicate who is doing what. That is at the core of my question, which I will arrive at at the end.
Grammars and grammarians
Some grammar comments might also be in order:
- Eitrem § 28 mentions that the possessive pronouns (meus, mea meum; tuus, tua, tuum; suus, sua, suum; noster, nostra, nostrum; vester, vestra, vestrum) are used as adjectives and declined as per longus and pulcher. He also mentions that they often must be translated as hans/hennes/dens/dets/deres (his/her/its/its/their). They are strenghened/stressed by adding ‑met and ‑pte.
- Eitrem § 115 further emphasises that both personal pronouns and possessive pronouns are used ‘berre når dei har eit visst ettertrykk, ved motsetnad eller for å gjere meininga tydeleg’ ‘og bare når disse pronomenene står som subjekt.’ (‘only when have a certain secondary stressing, with negation or for sake of clarity’ ‘and only when these pronouns are subjects’).
- Eitrem § 116, which is specifically about the reflexives sē and sēsē, adds the following:
- ‘Det refleksive pronoment se og det refleksive eigedomspronomenet suus viser til subjektet i same setning (direkte refleksiv). Men dei kan også vise til andre setningsledd (objekt eller indirekte objekt)’ (‘The reflective pronoun sē and the reflective possessive pronoun sēsē points to the subject in the same sentence (directly reflective). But they can also point to other parts of the sentence (object or indirect object)’).
- ‘Se og suus i ei bisetning (leddsetning) kan vise til subjektet i hovudsetninga når bisetninga er noko som er sagt eller tenkt av subjektet (indirekte refleksiv) […] På same måte er det i akkusativ med infinitiv’. (‘Sē and suus in a subordinate clause can point to the subject in the main clause when the subordinate clause is something said or thought by the subject (indirectly reflexive) […] It is the same way with accusative with infinitive’.)
- Nils Sjöstrand § 63 has the same description as E.28, including the remark about adding ‑met or ‑pte.
- Nils Sjöstrand § 160, further elaborates that ‘De reflexiva pronomina se och suus ha en mera omfattande syftning än de svenska reflexivpronomina sig och sin.’ (‘The reflexive pronouns sē and suus have a more comprehensive usage than the Swedish reflexive pronouns sig and sin.’)
He lists several examples of Latin using the reflexive/possessive pronoun where Swedish (and as far as I can tell Norwegian too) would use a possessive determinative. Examples from NS:
- Honestātem ipsam per sē nōn amātis – Ni älska inte hedern i och för sig (You did not love honour in and of itself).
- Caesar Fabium cum suā legiōne remittit – Caesar sände tillbaka Fabius med hans egen legion (Caesar sent Fabius back with his own legion).
Question
As this makes clear, the possessive pronoun has more usage in Latin than it does in English and in the other Germanic languages as well. But whereas I, from my own experience, remember there not being many questions about when and how to use this in the classroom when we were taught this in Norway, I found that my English-speaking students found the usage of suus/sua/suum to be much more difficult to understand. My best explanation so far, has been that it can be translated as pronoun plus self or pronoun plus own: himself, her own.
This only gets us some of the way though. Thus my question: What are good approaches to teaching the usage of the Latin sē and suus, sua, suum to students whose mother tongue is English? Might there be some links to Old or Middle English that could prove useful?
