I am trying to understand the logic of Latin nouns derived from pluperfect verbs. For example, we have facta, things done, and scripta, things written, but I thought the pluperfect gerundive would be something like scribenda, things having been written. What exactly is the syntactical logic behind Latin pluperfect gerundives?
2 Answers
A lot of confusion here... Let's try to clear it up:
Forms like facta, scripta are neuter plural forms of the perfect passive participle. The meaning of the perfect passive participle is "having been (verb)ed", so factus, -a, -um means "having been done"; factum as a neuter used nominally means "thing having been done, thing done", and facta is the plural of this.
The gerundive, a.k.a. future passive participle, is something completely different. Its meaning is "that will be (verb)ed" or more often "needing/deserving/etc. to be (verb)ed". So scribendus, -a, -um means "(something) to be written", and scribenda are "things to be written*.
The pluperfect plays no part here at all: neither of these are derived from the pluperfect, and there's no pluperfect gerundive.
Facta and scripta are perfect passive participles in the neuter plural. They are not pluperfect.