Disputatio:Pueri viae Panispernae

Tempus pluperfectum: situm erat

Oh, OK, perfect tense if you insist! but I was reading quod Institutum Physicum tum in Via Panispernae situm erat in the pluperfect: 'because the Physics Institute had then been situated on Panispernae Way'. Thus my perception: situm est 'was situated', situm erat 'had been situated'. IacobusAmor 03:04, 9 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)

Well, usually situs,-a,-um functions as an adjective indicating the location of the thingie talked about. So, in my reading, situm erat = iacebat. In any case, tum doesn't go with est. --Neander 03:26, 9 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)

Then we'd better tell the people who produce Ephemeris, which in 2007 reported "Magistrorum tumultus tum ortus est" (http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:J6GKH29NNUEJ:ephemeris.alcuinus.net/archi2007/nuntius.php%3Fid%3D340+%22tum+ortus+est%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&ie=UTF-8)! IacobusAmor 03:39, 9 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)

ADJ + copula: situm est

Let's not! In my example, the temporal reference of "situm est" is to the present (because "situm" functions as an adjective). --Neander 15:43, 9 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)

A participle can go either way, and that's the problem! On the basis of Caesar's Gallia est divisa, I'd be likelier to expect est situm for 'is placed' and situm est for 'has been placed', but of course that distinction may merely be an idiosyncrasy, and of course one can find plenty of counterexamples, e.g., lingua in ore sita est (Cicero), in which sita is a predicate adjective. Sino 'I place', sivi 'I placed, I have placed', situs sum 'I have been placed'. IacobusAmor 17:04, 9 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)

Divisum est and situm est are scarcely comparable. While divisum est seems to involve the problem you're pointing out, this isn't the case with situm est. In classical Latin, sino, sivi doesn't normally mean 'I place', 'I have placed', respectively. Situm (in the meaning 'placed'), though formally part of the verbal (macro)paradigm, is a historical relic from those prehistorical days when sino did mean 'I place' (reconstructible from pōno < *po-sino). I think it's fair to say that, due to the slackening of the semantic bonds of situm 'placed' wrt the rest of the paradigm of sino 'leave, allow', situm has become practically ousted from the verbal paradigm. As a semi-autonomous form, situm is ADJ by default. --Neander 20:57, 9 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)