UNUS NAUTA

As most Latin students know, UNUS NAUTA is not just "one sailor" but the acronym U.N.U.S. N.A.U.T.A. It is taught as a mnemonic device to memorize the 9 special adjectives whose genitives end in -ius: unus, nullus, ullus, solus, neuter, alter, uter, totus, and alius.

In a recent post, I noted a problem with the adjective neuter. In the neuter form, my parser was not discovering the forms for nominatives and vocatives. I dug into this problem and discovered some interesting facts that I never really took to heart.

UNUS NAUTA is not one declension, as many Latin grammars would have us believe. It is actually composed of four different declensions: the normal UNUS NAUTA declension (unus, nullus, ullus, solus, totus), then the alius declension (which is unique because its genitive is alius instead of aliius as we would expect; and it has neuter-singulars in -ud), next the R-type declension (neuter, uter), and finally the ER-type declension (alter). I can see why Wheelock compressed his declensions, but it turns out that he didn't spend enough time pointing out the differences! To be sure, they are minor, but somewhat important if you're writing software to parse out the different forms!

So I created 4 unique declensions for the 9 different types of adjectives. Now, the UNUS NAUTA adjectives parse properly!

Update: I fixed indeclinable nouns, too. I had forgotten to add their (non-) paradigm.

Enjoy!

A couple of small changes...

It's been a few weeks since it's been a busy semester. But I'm still making changes and continually updating words!

But here is some news to keep it fresh. First, I added a couple of rare "metria gratia" forms. The form "largibar" in Propertius 1.3.25 is from the verb "largior." The correct imperfect passive form should be "largiebar" but it seems to have been contracted to "largibar" ... Apparently this happens in Propertius and Plautus and not many other places. I will have to do some research to see what other rare forms show up.

Second, I fixed a couple of small bugs with neuter nouns and adjectives. There was a problem with them not showing up in the accusative (since neuters are always the same in the nominative, accusative and vocative). I also found a bug (but didn't have time to fix it) in some pronouns ... a pronoun like "neutrum" should be parsed as nominative, accusative and vocative, but it's only being parsed as accusative.

Finally, I applied for a grant for a new, faster, dedicated server. With any luck, they'll give me the grant and I'll have the new server up in a month or two!