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I've never seen anything except this provide passive forms of the verb esse. And even with that most of the passive forms are crossed out. Why is this? It would make sense for there to be no passive forms of esse, because of the structure of sentences with est: nominative est nominative. There is no object to become the subject, but then why does the website provide passive forms? How would these work? Or are these just approximations to what such a word would look like?

Joonas Ilmavirta
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tox123
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    That conjugation table seems to be of very low quality, and I advice against trusting it at all. In addition to the errors others have mentioned, let me point out that the future participle is not esurus but futurus. – Joonas Ilmavirta May 08 '16 at 04:49
  • The passive forms of esse on that website are crossed out - it means they don't exist. – Alex B. May 08 '16 at 15:37

2 Answers2

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There are no passive forms of esse, for the reason you state -- it's not a transitive verb. Intransitive verbs cannot be passivized, with the minor exception of "impersonal passive" forms (in the 3sg. only), which are not used with esse. The crossed-out forms on that site don't exist. (Neither do some of the forms that aren't crossed out, like the gerundive esendus and several others. On the other hand, the "II imperative" forms actually do exist even though they are crossed out for some reason.) Presumably the site generates forms by an algorithm, which doesn't necessarily know which forms really exist.

TKR
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  • Random side question: what is the deal with II imperative and II future, do they refer to future imperative and future perfect respectively? – tox123 May 07 '16 at 23:09
  • @tox123 Looks like it, yes. It's not a terminology I've seen used elsewhere. – TKR May 08 '16 at 01:03
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    The reason supplied in this answer (and the below) is incorrect: plenty of intransitive verbs can be used impersonally with 3rd person passive forms, e.g. itur: "via qua itur ad Deum" = "the way by which it is gone [or: one goes] to God". – brianpck May 08 '16 at 01:14
  • @brianpck, can you turn that into an answer? If you happen to know why esse does not have an impersonal passive like that, it would be great. (For comparison: In Finnish we do have a regular (impersonal) passive for the verb olla "to be".) – Joonas Ilmavirta May 08 '16 at 04:56
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    @brianpck. ire can be a transitive verb, with direct object viam. Active: viam it, passive: via itur. – fdb May 08 '16 at 10:08
  • @tox123 future perfect is also known as futurum exactum or futurum secundum - hence Futurum II, as opposed to futurum simplex (Futurum I). This terminology was (and still is?) pretty common in German and Russian Altertumswissenschaft. – Alex B. May 08 '16 at 15:30
  • For instance, one of the best Latin grammars, Lateinische Grammatik by Leumann, Hofmann and Szantyr (1977), talks about Futurum exactum (Futurum II) on pp. 609-610. – Alex B. May 08 '16 at 15:49
  • @brianpck Fair enough, but only in the 3sg. Intransitives certainly don't have a whole passive paradigm like this website gives. – TKR May 08 '16 at 16:35
  • @JoonasIlmavirta My guess is that the reason esse isn't used in the impersonal passive is this: the impers. pass. is an extension of the normal passive based on the fact that even mostly-intransitive verbs can often take a small, semantically restricted set of objects (cf. the Greek internal accusative). Esse is not such a verb and can never take any type of object at all, so it can't be passivized even impersonally. (The Finnish "passive" is really more of an impersonal/generic active form, witness the fact that its "subject" can be in the accusative!) – TKR May 08 '16 at 16:59
  • @fdb, I've never seen ire used transitively like in your example...perhaps you're thinking of constructions like it Romam, which is not a direct object? If not, can you cite an author? Anyway, that was just the first example that came to mind--others include sedetur, venitur, statur, etc. – brianpck May 08 '16 at 18:29
  • @TKR, Agreed: my point was that almost all transitive verbs have this passive form while esse does not. If you could addressed this difference, I would gladly upvote! – brianpck May 08 '16 at 18:32
  • @brianpck Edited to add a reference to the impersonal passive. – TKR May 08 '16 at 18:38
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    @brianpck. “ire vias,” Prop. 1, 1, 17: “exsequias,” Ter. Ph. 5, 8, 37: “pompam funeris,” Ov. F. 6, 663 et saep. – fdb May 08 '16 at 19:47
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    @brianpck Ire viam, vivere vitam etc. are examples of the internal accusative mentioned by TKR in his or her comment; I believe it is usually a stylistic or rhetorical embellishment, and it is uncommon, as you say. I agree with you that with most intransitive verbs this is not done, while they still allow the impersonal passive; so I don't think that should be considered a determining factor. – Cerberus May 09 '16 at 01:40
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This thing you linked to is total rubbish. It was obviously produced by a machine. The passive forms given there are fictitious. The verb "to be" does not take a direct object and thus cannot be passive; this is true in Latin and all languages. I suggest you buy a Latin grammar and stop using machine-generated websites.

fdb
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    You are right: http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.php?T1=notawordio&Submit=Go&D1=9&H1=109 – tox123 May 07 '16 at 23:11
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    I don't find the intransitive therefore unable to be passive argument convincing. How then do you explain such forms as itur, potestur, nequitur, statur, etc.? – Anonym Sep 03 '18 at 18:21