The argument for excluding vocatives from Latin noun pardigms

[Jayne]

When I was a girl, I learned to decline Latin nouns in six cases, in the following order: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, vocative.  This is a fairly common way to do this, although there is another common order and some authors omit vocative from the paradigm.  Lately I've been teaching using Memoria Press material and they omit vocative, as does Wheelock.

There are some advantages to leaving out the vocative.  It makes one less thing for beginners to memorize.  It avoids the confusion caused by having identical nominative and vocative forms in four of the declensions.  It is easy to learn later.  I am not seeing a down side to doing it this way. 

In another thread, I mentioned this in passing and received a negative reaction.  I am hoping to discuss this further.

[Insanis]

There are some advantages to leaving out the vocative.  It makes one less thing for beginners to memorize.  It avoids the confusion caused by having identical nominative and vocative forms in four of the declensions.  It is easy to learn later.  I am not seeing a down side to doing it this way.

St. Augustine wrote of his disdain for Greek for learning it in this way.

In another thread, I mentioned this in passing and received a negative reaction.  I am hoping to discuss this further.

I am no scholar, but I appreciated Latin the most when reading it as a language, not diagramming it. Learning it more organically has some advantages.

I once had to make a table of Latin demonstrative (handcoded in HTML).

It was an experience like that that reminded me that this is perhaps not the most effective way to learn. It is a great reference though.

EDIT: My argument is that lists and charts are references and whatever works is good enough and that learning the language and using it doesn't require the usage of those references like that. It is a third argument: list what you want to have a reference for.

[Daniel]

I don't like paradigms to begin with. Maybe I just wasn't taught correctly or wasn't paying attention in class, but I never understood which ending was used for which purpose, nor did I learn the names of the cases. All I ever learned were the various endings in list/table format, and it all seemed to be quite useless information. Only after seeing the declensions appear in actual sentences did I begin to understand what was going on and why we were bothering to decline the words in the first place.

Another thing that I notice is that the locative is omitted. To this day I have no idea what a locative even is, because it wasn't taught.

But anyway, the biggest downside that I see to omitting the vocative is that a lot of Latin prayers are full of vocatives. And I'd think that prayers are some of the first Latin sentences that ought to be learned and/or memorized. Same problem with the imperative and subjunctive verbs... this stuff is all in the prayers, and should probably be taught early on.

edit - I'm also not really a fan of numbering the different declensions (first declension, second declension, etc.), because I find it confusing and not important. I think it's best just to become familiar with the individual words as they appear in actual texts. To say "Vocative is the same as nominative in first declension" means little to me, since I don't really know which words are considered to be "first declension".

[Insanis]

Another thing that I notice is that the locative is omitted. To this day I have no idea what a locative even is, because it wasn't taught.

It is a case which is only used with one Latin word most of the time: domus. There are a few others, but you almost never encounter it.

It refers to location

See this which is right and explains it. And it is the only word which uses it. I recommend the scene. I do not recommend the movie. I never actually watched it, but I understand it to be quite irreverent (at best).

[Jayne]

I don't like paradigms to begin with. Maybe I just wasn't taught correctly or wasn't paying attention in class, but I never understood which ending was used for which purpose, nor did I learn the names of the cases. All I ever learned were the various endings in list/table format, and it all seemed to be quite useless information. Only after seeing the declensions appear in actual sentences did I begin to understand what was going on and why we were bothering to decline the words in the first place.

The case endings tell the function of the word in the sentence.  It is how we can tell what is the subject, object, etc.  Latin is almost impossible to understand without knowing those endings.  If one makes an initial effort to memorize this thoroughly, it all becomes much easier.  It is a good foundation to learning Latin.  You probably weren't paying attention.  I have never seen a Latin program that did not explain what the endings are for.

Another thing that I notice is that the locative is omitted. To this day I have no idea what a locative even is, because it wasn't taught.

I cannot recall ever seeing a declension table that includes the locative.  It is a rare construction that is normally taught at a more advanced level.

Latin also had a Locative Case, but few of the forms are still used in Classical Latin. The locative case is used to indicate "place where" and is found primarily with the names of cities, towns and small islands. (Actually, these three places are all the same since the island has to be small enough to be named for the only city or town on it; if there are two towns, you much use in + Ablative. The forms for the Locative are the same as the genitive in the 1st and 2nd Declension Singular and the same as the Ablative in the 3rd Declension Singular. Towns (like Athens, Athenae) whose form is plural take their locative forms from the Ablative plural in all declensions. Other locative forms are: domi, humi, belli, militiae, and ruri.

This quote is from https://classics.osu.edu/Undergraduate-Studies/Latin-Program/Grammar/Cases/latin-case and I recommend you read the whole thing if you want an overview of the Latin cases.

But anyway, the biggest downside that I see to omitting the vocative is that a lot of Latin prayers are full of vocatives. And I'd think that prayers are some of the first Latin sentences that ought to be learned and/or memorized. Same problem with the imperative and subjunctive verbs... this stuff is all in the prayers, and should probably be taught early on.

edit - I'm also not really a fan of numbering the different declensions (first declension, second declension, etc.), because I find it confusing and not important. I think it's best just to become familiar with the individual words as they appear in actual texts.

I teach my students the basic prayers in Latin and mention vocative, imperative and subjunctive when we encounter them.  But the students are not responsible for memorizing the grammar at that point.  They just memorize the prayers.

There are five distinct patterns of case endings and it is easier to remember the endings if one is aware of the patterns.  There are thousands of individual words and nobody (with normal abilities) is going to be able to remember each word separately.

[Daniel]

You probably weren't paying attention.  I have never seen a Latin program that did not explain what the endings are for.

Probably. It was a college class, and we used Wheelock's Latin, so I'm sure it was covered somewhere in the textbook. Whether or not the teacher explained it sufficiently, I cannot recall. (It was too long ago.)

The case endings tell the function of the word in the sentence.  It is how we can tell what is the subject, object, etc.  Latin is almost impossible to understand without knowing those endings.  If one makes an initial effort to memorize this thoroughly, it all becomes much easier.  It is a good foundation to learning Latin. 

True, but even if you memorize the paradigm tables it still doesn't do much good unless you know what each case is actually used for. Knowing that nautam is accusative is one thing, but knowing that nautam is used as a direct object is something else entirely. The case names aren't very straightforward (at least not to English speakers), and so it leads to a lot of unnecessary frustration and wasted time. Somebody really should fix it. Same thing with labels such as "first declension", "second declension", etc. The declension names should be descriptive, not just arbitrarily numbered.

My point was mostly that what I've found (at least in the classes I've taken, as an adult) is that I've been bombarded with tables and junk, and the bulk of time is spent on pointless tasks such as declining nouns and conjugating verbs, rather than actually reading a text or translating Latin to English or English to Latin. It remains on the level of the abstract, and never really manages to find its way down into what you actually need it for.

In my opinion Latin classes should be primarily inductive, and the grammar should be supplemental. (Not just Latin, but languages in general. Because this is how the learning process works. First you become familiar with the language by hearing it and speaking it... and only once you're familiar with it do you begin to take a step back and analyze it.)

I teach my students the basic prayers in Latin and mention vocative, imperative and subjunctive when we encounter them.  But the students are not responsible for memorizing the grammar at that point.  They just memorize the prayers.

Just wondering... do students ever bring it up? (I can definitely imagine myself as a kid raising my hand and asking, "Why does this say Domine rather than Dominus? I don't even see Domine anywhere on the declension table!")

[Insanis]

Probably. It was a college class, and we used Wheelock's Latin, so I'm sure it was covered somewhere in the textbook. Whether or not the teacher explained it sufficiently, I cannot recall. (It was too long ago.)

I just went through it to check (I have a copy of that book) and it does explain it, however, I can see how a student might not remember it or how a teacher might not cover it sufficiently for all students. I don't see an explanation of the Locative, although, the glossary does give the meaning of the form for domus at least.

You may find this interesting, in chapter 8 of St. Augustine's Confessions:

But what were the causes for my strong dislike of Greek literature, which I studied from my boyhood? Even to this day I have not fully understood them. For Latin I loved exceedingly--not just the rudiments, but what the grammarians teach. For those beginner's lessons in reading, writing, and reckoning, I considered no less a burden and pain than Greek. Yet whence came this, unless from the sin and vanity of this life?

So you are not alone: St. Augustine was taught Latin and Greek in school, and he hated Greek, primarily because of how it was being taught and the teacher.

[Jayne]

The case endings tell the function of the word in the sentence.  It is how we can tell what is the subject, object, etc.  Latin is almost impossible to understand without knowing those endings.  If one makes an initial effort to memorize this thoroughly, it all becomes much easier.  It is a good foundation to learning Latin. 

True, but even if you memorize the paradigm tables it still doesn't do much good unless you know what each case is actually used for. Knowing that nautam is accusative is one thing, but knowing that nautam is used as a direct object is something else entirely. The case names aren't very straightforward (at least not to English speakers), and so it leads to a lot of unnecessary frustration and wasted time. Somebody really should fix it. Same thing with labels such as "first declension", "second declension", etc. The declension names should be descriptive, not just arbitrarily numbered.

Well, of course, memorizing the table alone is not sufficient to learn Latin.  It is a very useful thing to know, but not the totality of Latin.  The case names describe the functions and are easy enough to learn.  But if you don't like them, you can make up your own.  The declensions are identified by their distinctive genitive singular endings.  So one could call the declensions, ae, i, is, us, ei.  But then one would not understand the people who referred to them by the numbering conventions used for thousands of years.

My point was mostly that what I've found (at least in the classes I've taken, as an adult) is that I've been bombarded with tables and junk, and the bulk of time is spent on pointless tasks such as declining nouns and conjugating verbs, rather than actually reading a text or translating Latin to English or English to Latin. It remains on the level of the abstract, and never really manages to find its way down into what you actually need it for.

In my opinion Latin classes should be primarily inductive, and the grammar should be supplemental. (Not just Latin, but languages in general. Because this is how the learning process works. First you become familiar with the language by hearing it and speaking it... and only once you're familiar with it do you begin to take a step back and analyze it.)

Those tables are not useless.  It is very difficult to translate if one does not know that information.  Your approach is like a person saying "I want to learn to drive by getting in the car and driving.  I don't want to waste time on learning what the rules are or what road signs mean." 

There is a program based totally on inductive learning. https://www.hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illustrata-series  Many students find it frustrating and difficult to use.

I teach my students the basic prayers in Latin and mention vocative, imperative and subjunctive when we encounter them.  But the students are not responsible for memorizing the grammar at that point.  They just memorize the prayers.

Just wondering... do students ever bring it up? (I can definitely imagine myself as a kid raising my hand and asking, "Why does this say Domine rather than Dominus? I don't even see Domine anywhere on the declension table!")

I tell the students when I introduce the prayer.  There is no reason for them to bring it up because I have already told them.

[Fleur-de-Lys]

The locative case had already largely fallen into disuse at the time of Classical Latin. That is why it is normally not included in the paradigm. Its use persisted mostly in some common fixed expressions that are simply memorized.

Learning a language inductively is ideal, but impractical. It requires thousands of hours of input. Teaching grammar is a way to speed up the process exponentially. Unfortunately, as schools have all but stopped teaching grammar, most students today are lacking the necessary knowledge to take advantage of this actually very effective shortcut.

[Vetus Ordo]

The locative case had already largely fallen into disuse at the time of Classical Latin. That is why it is normally not included in the paradigm. Its use persisted mostly in some common fixed expressions that are simply memorized.

Exactly. Locative was used for the names of cities, islands and some other isolated words such as domi, ruri or militiae. In all other instances, its grammatical function was absorbed by the ablative.

The vocative, on the other hand, remained in use, although in form it was indistinguishable from the nominative except for the 2nd declension singular. Since its grammatical function is distinct and wasn't absorbed by any other case, its inclusion in the paradigms of noun declensions has always been a practice of all good grammars.

There are some advantages to leaving out the vocative.  It makes one less thing for beginners to memorize.  It avoids the confusion caused by having identical nominative and vocative forms in four of the declensions.  It is easy to learn later.  I am not seeing a down side to doing it this way. 

In another thread, I mentioned this in passing and received a negative reaction.  I am hoping to discuss this further.

The downside of leaving the vocative out is that you're omitting a distinct grammatical function that wasn't absorbed by any other case. The rote memorization of the vocative is easy and keeping it in the paradigms enables students to remember a distinct grammatical function which is one of the main reasons why they need to memorize the cases to begin with.

[Insanis]

its inclusion in the paradigms of noun declensions has always been a practice of all good grammars.

Are good grammars being defined or described by their inclusion of it?

[Vetus Ordo]

its inclusion in the paradigms of noun declensions has always been a practice of all good grammars.

Are good grammars being defined or described by their inclusion of it?

Yes.

[Insanis]

Yes.

Touché

[Jayne]

The downside of leaving the vocative out is that you're omitting a distinct grammatical function that wasn't absorbed by any other case. The rote memorization of the vocative is easy and keeping it in the paradigms enables students to remember a distinct grammatical function which is one of the main reasons why they need to memorize the cases to begin with.

Leaving the vocative out of the memorization table is not the same as pretending that it does not exist in the Latin language.  They learn about the case and what it does.  They just have a more streamlined paradigm because they are leaving out a case that is identical to the nominative most of the time.

[Vetus Ordo]

The downside of leaving the vocative out is that you're omitting a distinct grammatical function that wasn't absorbed by any other case. The rote memorization of the vocative is easy and keeping it in the paradigms enables students to remember a distinct grammatical function which is one of the main reasons why they need to memorize the cases to begin with.

Leaving the vocative out of the memorization table is not the same as pretending that it does not exist in the Latin language.  They learn about the case and what it does.  They just have a more streamlined paradigm because they are leaving out a case that is identical to the nominative most of the time.

Why don't you streamline it further by dropping the dative or the ablative, since they look identical most of the time?