![]() For example, puellae is the genitive form. The stem is the genitive form minus the declension ending. Stems : Use the genitive form to find the stem of a noun. Do not use the nominative case to identify the declension the nominative is part of the vocabulary entry in the Verba precisely because it can be irregular. For example, in the above vocabulary entry, the genitive ending in “ -ae ” tells us that this is a first declension noun. The genitive case identifies the noun’s declension. Identification : When you learn a new Latin word, you must memorize four details: the nominative case, the genitive case, the gender, and the definition. Gender is essentially a grammatical category that has nothing to do with sexual gender. For most nouns, however, the gender is not obvious and must be memorized. mater (mother) is feminine and pater (father) is masculine). In some cases, the gender is obvious (e.g. Gender : In Latin, nouns have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. In this Unit, you will learn three of the five declensions. The tail tells the tale.ĭeclensions: Gender, Identification, and Stemsįor nouns, Latin has five different patterns of case endings called declensions. In Latin, each case is identified by the ending of the word. Latin nouns have both singular and plural forms for each case, though this sentence uses only singular nouns. It receives the action.īrother (ablative): This word is the object of the preposition “with.” Story (accusative): This word is the direct object of the verb. The city (genitive): This word indicates possession-the story ‘belongs’ to the city. Mother (vocative): This is the person that the speaker is addressing.Īelia (nominative): This is the subject of the sentence. Mother, Aelia tells me the story of the city with her brother. Let’s look at a sentence in English and identify the cases of the nouns: Suffice it to say that you should familiarize yourself with the order of the cases as presented above. The order in which these cases are placed is the same order used to present the different forms of the noun. Vocative : the person directly addressed. )Īccusative : the direct object of an action or the object of certain prepositionsĪblative : the object of most prepositions (The sister offers a letter to her brother. “‘s” or “of”)ĭative : the object indirectly affected by an action (Eng. Genitive : a noun that indicates possession (Eng. Nominative : the subject or nouns that refer to the subject (predicate nominative) Memorize the names and functions of the cases as presented below. In this Unit you will learn the six cases of Latin nouns: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and vocative. For example, the nominative case is used for the subject and the accusative case is used for the direct object. The form determines what role the noun plays in a sentence. The term “ case ” is used to describe the form a noun takes. Latin is an inflected language, which means the forms of words change when their role in the sentence changes. If we want the sentence to say “Apollonius loves Aelia,” we change the endings on the words: ![]() The - a at the end of Aelia, identifies her as the subject, and the -um at the end of Apollonium identifies him as the direct object. We can move the words around, and as long as the endings stay the same, the function of the noun remains the same and the meaning of the sentence is unchanged: In Latin, however, the function of a noun is determined by an ending placed on the end of the noun. In English, word order determines a noun’s function. When we change the order of the nouns, the meaning changes: Apollonius is the direct object, the receiver of action, because he follows the active verb (loves). For example:Īelia is the subject, the actor, because she is first in the sentence. ![]() In English, the function of a noun is determined by its position in the sentence.
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