LATIN CONIUNCTIVUS AS PROLEGOMENA IN STUDYING FRENCH SUBJONCTIF

Abstract

The French language inherited from the Latin language not only vocabulary, but also grammatical features. Some of these features owe their appearance in the French language, including translations of the Bible. So, for example, instead of the accusativus cum infinitivo, characteristic of Latin, when literally translating Holy Scripture from the ancient Greek of the Septuagint and from Hebrew, in which there was no such syntactic construction, subordinate clauses introduced by the conjunctions quod, quia, quoniam began to be used. In the poems of the French poet of the XVI century Pierre Ronsard, who combined in his work the knowledge of ancient literature and the desire to make his native literature similar to the classical one can find examples of the use of the conjunctive, very reminiscent of the use of the conjunctive in classical Latin: in frequency, in targeted, additional, consequential (for example, Exegi monumentum <...> quod (=ut id) non imber edax, non aquilo impotens possit diruere. – Seule en France est nostre lyre, qui les fredons sache eslire pour les Princes réjouir), explicative, concessive subordinate clauses. The use of the conjunctive in modern French literature also has similarities with the use of the conjunctive. The Latin language, which has a two-thousand-year tradition of studying various subordinate clauses, can be attracted and used by students after they have completed the course of the Latin language of French syntax in general and the subjunctive in particular. This immersion in historical grammar will allow students to better and deeper understand many phenomena in the studied language.