Verbs Governing the Genitive

The genitive most often depends on a noun, as in domus patris “the father’s house,” but a limited set of Latin verbs also licenses a genitive complement. Patris meminī means “I remember my father”: genitive patris completes meminī directly, not an unspoken Latin noun meaning “memory.” English usually uses a direct object or an “of” phrase, and neither translation pattern reliably predicts the Latin case.

These constructions are lexical remnants rather than one freely productive rule. Learn them in families, including their alternative accusative, ablative, or prepositional frames.

Memory, Forgetting, and Reminding

Meminī “remember,” reminīscor “recollect,” and oblīvīscor “forget” commonly take a genitive, especially of a person or of something recalled as a concern or field of thought.

The genitives avī meī and beneficiōrum are arguments of the verbs. Their position is flexible: placing the genitive first can make the remembered person or thing the topic, but does not change its case.

An accusative is also classical, particularly for things and neuter pronouns: haec meminī “I remember these things,” officium oblītus est “he forgot his duty.” Authors and lexical combinations vary, and there is no honest rule that eliminates the variation. For production, the genitive is especially dependable with persons; learn frequent accusative phrases individually.

Here accusative haec omnia and genitive nōminis are both licensed. Perfect oblītus sum is deponent and active in meaning: “I have forgotten,” not “I was forgotten.”

Verbs of reminding such as admoneō and commoneō may take an accusative person and a genitive topic. A dē + ablative phrase is also common and is often clearer when the genitive would be cumbersome.

Accusative mē is the person prompted; genitive officiī is what the reminder concerns. English order happens to put “me” first too, but Latin roles come from the frame and endings, not from position.

Virgil supplies an authentic (literary) example, reproduced without editorial macrons:

Genitive Elissae depends on meminisse. The elevated compression is poetic, while the genitive with remembering is a normal Classical option.

Pity and Impersonal Emotion

Personal misereor “have pity on” governs the genitive in its standard Classical frame.

The impersonal verbs miseret, paenitet, piget, pudet, and taedet organize the participants differently. The person experiencing the feeling is accusative; the cause or object of the feeling is genitive.

Neuter pronouns such as id, hoc, and nihil may stand in the accusative as the cause instead; an infinitive or clause can also express what produces the feeling. Again, the genitive pattern is strong but not mechanically exclusive.

Accusing, Convicting, and Acquitting

In (formal) legal language, verbs such as accūsō, arguō, convincō, damnō, and absolvō may take an accusative person and a genitive of the charge.

In the second example, the omitted charge remains recoverable from the coordinated legal context. Latin also uses fixed dē + ablative expressions, such as dē vī “on a charge of violence,” and the ablative for a definite penalty or fine. The genitive charge is therefore one legal frame, not a license to translate every English “of” with a genitive.

The active sentence’s accused person is accusative and can become nominative in the passive; the genitive charge remains genitive:

This passive test shows that repetundārum is not the direct object. For fuller legal distinctions, see Verbs of Accusing and Condemning.

Concern, Need, and Indefinite Value

Interest and rēfert “it concerns, it matters” can mark the person concerned with a genitive noun or name: Cicerōnis interest “it is in Cicero’s interest.” Personal pronouns use the feminine ablative singular of the possessive adjective—meā, tuā, suā, nostrā, vestrā—not an ordinary personal genitive.

Egeō and indigeō “need, lack” occur with a genitive or an ablative. Auxiliī egēmus and auxiliō egēmus can both mean “we need help.” Potior likewise has a classical genitive beside its common ablative, most famously rērum potīrī “gain mastery of affairs.” These are genuine variants conditioned partly by phrase and author, not errors to be regularized.

A different genitive appears with verbs of valuing, such as aestimō and faciō. Forms including magnī, parvī, tantī, quantī, plūris, and minōris express indefinite value.

Here plūris does not name an object; it predicates a degree of value. A definite price normally uses the ablative. The contrast is lexical-semantic, not free stylistic variation.

Parsing from Form to Function

When a genitive stands near a verb, use this sequence:

1. Exclude an ordinary genitive inside a noun phrase: in memoria patris manet, patris depends on memoria, not manet.
2. Identify whether the verb belongs to a genitive-governing family.
3. Locate the other arguments: accusative experiencer with impersonal emotion, accused person with legal verbs, or person reminded with admoneō.
4. Check licensed alternatives rather than assuming the genitive is obligatory.
5. Use discourse to resolve a form that permits several attachments.
6. Translate naturally only after the Latin dependencies are fixed.

Word order can separate the genitive from its head or place it first for contrast. Huius factī mē paenitet and mē paenitet huius factī have the same core government; the first foregrounds the regretted act. Copying English order before identifying heads may attach huius factī to the wrong noun or invent a nominative subject that Latin does not have.

Common Mistakes

Forcing an accusative with a remembered person

Treating a deponent perfect as passive

Making the experiencer nominative

Using an ordinary personal genitive with interest

Reading every genitive as possession

Key Takeaways

• Only restricted lexical families allow a genitive to depend directly on a verb.
• Memory verbs vary between genitive and accusative; impersonal emotion uses accusative experiencer plus genitive cause.
• Legal verbs can take an accusative person and a genitive charge, preserved under passivization.
• Interest/rēfert, verbs of need, and expressions of indefinite value have their own specialized patterns.
• First establish the Latin head and argument frame; English “of” and English word order are not parsing tools.