De Periculo Verborum Componendorum
"De Periculo Verborum Componendorum"
"About the Danger of Combining Verbs"
So, you are writing in Latin, and you want to create a compound verb that uses a particular noun. Let us use "mountain climbing" as an example of something you want to render in English. It seems easy enough to combine mons, "mountain," and ascenere, "to climb," and so you write montascendere.
This seems good enough as a Latin verb, right? Wrong.
The problem with montascendere is that verbs do not compound with nouns (substantives and adjectives) like that. Strictly speaking, only nouns can be compounded in such a way, and verbs have to be shoehorned into a nominal form. So, for instance, in armiger, there is the word element -ger, which is related to the verb gerere. The gerere cannot simply be compounded with arma, but instead has to gain a nominal form like -gero- before the two words can be compounded. A verb like laetificare does not derive directly from laetus and facere, but instead comes from an intervening compound word laetificus. In vomificus, the first part is from the verb vomere, and yet this vomi- was formed on the analogy of the noun stems, as if we had a substantive vomum, "a vomiting."
(Words like animadvertere, from the phrase animum advertere, are syntactic compounds, compounds of inflected words, and do not behave like the nominal compounds armiger, laetificare, vomificus, etc.)
For "mountain climbing," you want a verb like montascendare, really a denominative verb from an intervening substantive montascenda, "mountain climber" or adjective montascendus, "climbing mountains."
This may strike some as more work than necessary, but it really is the nature of this sort of word formation.
"About the Danger of Combining Verbs"
So, you are writing in Latin, and you want to create a compound verb that uses a particular noun. Let us use "mountain climbing" as an example of something you want to render in English. It seems easy enough to combine mons, "mountain," and ascenere, "to climb," and so you write montascendere.
This seems good enough as a Latin verb, right? Wrong.
The problem with montascendere is that verbs do not compound with nouns (substantives and adjectives) like that. Strictly speaking, only nouns can be compounded in such a way, and verbs have to be shoehorned into a nominal form. So, for instance, in armiger, there is the word element -ger, which is related to the verb gerere. The gerere cannot simply be compounded with arma, but instead has to gain a nominal form like -gero- before the two words can be compounded. A verb like laetificare does not derive directly from laetus and facere, but instead comes from an intervening compound word laetificus. In vomificus, the first part is from the verb vomere, and yet this vomi- was formed on the analogy of the noun stems, as if we had a substantive vomum, "a vomiting."
(Words like animadvertere, from the phrase animum advertere, are syntactic compounds, compounds of inflected words, and do not behave like the nominal compounds armiger, laetificare, vomificus, etc.)
For "mountain climbing," you want a verb like montascendare, really a denominative verb from an intervening substantive montascenda, "mountain climber" or adjective montascendus, "climbing mountains."
This may strike some as more work than necessary, but it really is the nature of this sort of word formation.