Supine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Supine (disambiguation).
In grammar, a supine is a form of verbal noun used in some languages.
[edit] In Latin
In Latin there are two supines, I. and II. They are originally accusative and dative or ablative forms of verbal noun after the fourth declension, respectively. The first supine is often used as the fourth principal part of Latin verbs and ends in -um. It can only be used with verbs of motion and indicates purpose. The phrase: "The gladiators have come to fight" would be rendered as "Gladiatores adfuerunt pugnatum" where pugnatum is a supine form. Another example is "the messengers came to congratulate and sleep" or in Latin "legati gratulatum cubitumque venerunt."
The second supine can be used with adjectives but the form is very rare and only a small number of verbs traditionally take it. It is derived from dativus finalis which expresses purpose or ablativus respectives which indicates in what respect. It is the same as the first supine minus the final -m. "Mirabile dictu", for example, means "amazing to say", where dictu is a supine form.
[edit] In other languages
Outside of Latin, a supine is a non-finite verb form whose use resembles that of the Latin supine.
The English supine is the bare infinitive (the verb's plain form) introduced by the particle to; for this reason it is often called the full infinitive or to-infinitive.
The Romanian supine generally corresponds to an English construction like for doing; for example, "Această carte este de citit" means "This book is for reading."
The Slovene supine is used after verbs of movement. See Slovene grammar.
In Swedish the supine is used with an auxiliary verb to produce some compound verb forms. See Swedish grammar.
