X-Message-Number: 17173
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 21:05:42 -0500 (CDT)
From: Eivind Berge <>
Subject: Re: Avoiding death in Latin

Kennita Watson:

> I came up with "evite mortem" as a back-construction from
> "carpe diem"; Is it "evita" because the verbs are different
> conjugations?

Yes, "evito" is first conjugation but "carpo" is third (principal
parts: carpo, carpere, carpsi, carptum), and here the stem vowel
is -e-, not -a-. By the way, in this conjugation there are four
exceptions to the rule that the imperative is identical to the
present stem (found by dropping -re from the second principal
part). In these verbs the stem vowel is missing from the singular
present imperative: dic, duc, fac, and fer (from dico, duco,
facio, and fero). The plural imperative is what you would expect.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17173