I verbi impersonali secondo i grammatici latini

The Author analyses what Latin grammarians wrote about impersonal verbs. The Latin language does not have impersonal verbs stricto sensu, with a morphology different from the one of personal verbs. According to Latin grammarians, a verb is impersonal if it occurs in the third person of the singular and it needs a pronoun in order to express the person; consequently, impersonal verbs are of the type amatur and curritur and of the type pudet, decet, contingit. According to Latin grammatical tradition, the impersonal is either a mood or a voice: the Author manages to explain why it is considered as a mood, although impersonal verbs have moods, and why it is considered as a voice in addition to active, passive, deponens, common and neuter. Even if Latin grammatical tradition is neither always coherent nor explanatory, the research lets us penetrate the system of analysis of the structure of the language.