Nōmen _______________________
Term 1
Diēs 9/8
Latin I, Magistra Snyder / Magister Jaffe, R ______
Packet 1
PARTS OF SPEECH & SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION
STATIM:
Write 3 short sentences in English. Make one of them the SHORTEST sentence you can come up with.
1.
2.
3.
What 2 components does every sentence NEED to have in order for it to qualify as a sentence?
Identifying Parts of Speech in English
Any sentence in either English or Latin that you will ever read or write can be broken down word by word
and phrase by phrase. If we want to truly understand how we read English sentences and how we translate Latin
sentences, we must be able to look at a word and identify what kind of word it is and what role it plays in the
sentence.
1. NOUN – A word that is either a ___________________, ___________________, ___________________, or a ___________________.
Examples:
_______________________ _______________________ _______________________ _______________________
2. VERB – A word that represents an ___________________, ___________________, or an ___________________.
Examples:
_______________________ _______________________ _______________________
3. ADJECTIVE – A word that modifies, describes, or gives more information about a ___________________.
Examples:
Descriptive:
___________________________________
Demonstrative: __________________________________
Possessive: __________________________________
Interrogative: ________________________________
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EXERCITĀTIO (Exercise)
Directions: Circle the nouns, underline the verbs, and write an “A” above any adjectives you see.
NB: There are words in the sentences below that are neither nouns, nor verbs, nor adjectives!
/1/ O vi d , a f amou s L ati n p oet, u sed to go f req u en tl y to p ub l i c even ts i n an ci en t Rome.
/2/ H e l oved to ob serve an d to w ri te a b ou t th e cu stoms of th e p eop l e th ere.
/3/ O vi d ’s p oems w ere se en as scan d al ou s an d th ey somet i mes mock ed mi gh t y p eop l e.
/4/ T h e e mp ero r A u gu stu s sen t p oor O vi d i n to exi l e on th e B l ack S ea.
4. ADVERB – A word that modifies a ___________________, ___________________, or a ___________________.
Examples:



Verb: She ran to school ___________________.
Adjective: I eat ___________________ cold ice cream.
Adverb: She ran to school ___________________ quickly.
5. CONJUNCTION – A word that links together different ___________________, ___________________,
___________________, or even full ___________________ to express a relationship between them.
Examples:



Words: cats ______ dogs, chicken ______ fish
Phrases: about a boy ______ about a girl
Clauses: TBLS discipulī are bright, ______ they still must study their Latin.
6. PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE – A phrase of at least two words consisting of a preposition + noun.
Prepositional phrases describe ________________________________ or ________________________________.
Examples:


physical location: ____________________________________________________________________
movement:
____________________________________________________________________
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EXERCITĀTIO (Exercise)
Directions: Circle nouns, underline verbs, mark adjectives with “A,” mark adverbs with “ADV,” draw
triangles around conjunctions, and draw brackets around complete prepositional phrases.
NB: There are words in the sentences below that are not among the types listed above!
/1/ At th e ci rcu s, O vi d rooted f or h i s favori te ch ari ot ee r, an d h e saw man y you n g
men an d w omen th ere.
/2/ O vi d w as a f ri en d of Au gu stu s’ d au gh ter, b u t th e f ri en d sh ip d id n ot h el p
h i m i n th e e mp e ror’s ey es.
/3/ I n exi l e, O vi d wrote sad p oe ms, an d h op el essl y ask ed to retu rn to Ro me.
/4/ Wi th ou t O vi d we w ou l d k n ow mu ch l ess ab ou t Rome, si n ce h i s p oems sp ea k ab ou t
my th ol ogy, d escri b e Ro man soci al l i f e, an d are mod el s of L ati n li teratu re .
How many of each type of word or phrase did you find? There should be
25 NOUNS
11 VERBS
8 ADJECTIVES
5 ADVERBS
5 CONJUNCTIONS
7 PREP. PHRASES
Which words from these sentences do not belong to ANY of these categories?
Grammatical Roles of Nouns
Most sentences have many nouns. But not all nouns do the same thing in a sentence.

The SUBJECT of a sentence is always a noun, but it plays the role of the ___________________ or
___________________ of the verb in that sentence. It is the subject that performs or completes the
action or the condition of the verb. It is the subject that VERBS.
Ex. I eat pancakes. She was a toddler.

Stupidity can get you killed.
The DIRECT OBJECT of a sentence is always a noun, but it plays the role of the ___________________ of
the verbal action. The subject VERBS the direct object.
Ex. I eat pancakes.

Honesty is the best policy.
The fall broke my phone.
Latin increases intelligence. Cats have hats.
An INDIRECT OBJECT is an ______________________________________ of the verbal action. The subject
VERBS the direct object TO or FOR the indirect object.
Ex. I made pancakes for you.
I gave my broken phone to my sister. They told a story to us.
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
Verbs that express ___________________ or ___________________ (e.g. the verb “to be”) DO NOT EVER take a
direct object, because they do not express an action that happens to another person or thing. Such
verbs instead are followed by a PREDICATE NOMINATIVE.
Ex. I am a pancake., My phone was broken., Cats are not hats., A student becomes a graduate.
Annotation
When we translate Latin sentences, we will always ANNOTATE them first. Annotation is a crucial step
when looking at a Latin text. It ensures that one is correctly understanding the grammatical roles that
words are playing in a sentence.
For the rest of your career at The Brooklyn Latin School, you will be expected to follow these procedures
when deciphering a Latin text:

You will UNDERLINE a verb.

You will CIRCLE a subject or a predicate nominative.

You will BOX a direct object.

When an adjective modifies a subject or a predicate nominative or a direct object, you may
circle or box that adjective along with the noun it modifies.

You will put BRACKETS around a prepositional phrase.
A completely and correctly annotated sentence might look like this:
Wonderful Ovid wrote good poems at home for us.
In addition, when you are reading a full Latin text, you will SEPARATE meaningful chunks of text using a
single vertical line.


You may have realized that every single sentence, no matter how short, must contain both a
___________________ and a ___________________.
In a ___________________ sentence, there are two or more ___________________, each of which contains a
___________________ and a ___________________. A group of words which does NOT contain a
___________________ and a ___________________ is merely a ___________________.
When you annotate, you will separate clauses, each containing exactly one verb and one subject:
We are readers, and wonderful Ovid wrote good poems at home for us .
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NB: You will NOT be annotating every word in a sentence! Annotation is designed to bring out the
backbone of the sentence, not to bog you down in every detail.
EXERCITĀTIO (Exercise)
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Directions: Begin by counting the number of verbs in each sentence to determine how many clauses are
present. Then annotate fully and mark clause divisions.
/1/ O vi d w alk ed tow ard s th e f oru m an d h e gave p oetry l e sson s to ch i l d ren an d adu l ts .
/2/ O vi d w as a f ri en d l y man an d h e greeted th e ci ti zen s i n th e f oru m, an d th ey
greet ed h i m w i t h joy.
/3/ T h e d u s ty mark etp l ace sen t l ou d n oi ses an d stron g smel l s to O vi d ’s mi n d ,
s o h e w en t to th e p u b l i c b ath s w h ere h e soak ed an d he rel axed .
/4/ Al th ou gh O vi d h ad i mp ortan t f ri en d s, Au gu stu s exi l ed h i m an yw ay.
/5/ I n exi l e, O vi d excl ai med : “I w i s h th at I w ere w al k in g u p on Roman stree t s !”
/6/ O vi d cl ai med : “ a p oem an d a mi sta k e cau sed my exi l e, ” b u t w e d o n ot k now
th e p oe m or th e mi stak e.
/7/ T h e M et am orphoses i s th e most f amou s p oeti c w ork o f O vi d ; in i t h u mans b eco me
an i mal s an d god s tran sf orm i n to man y d i sgu i ses.
THE FOUR AGES
Ovid narrates the primordial origins of humanity ...
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1.
2.
3.
The history of the world is change. Time changes forms into new forms, and
changes bodies into new bodies, and even gods and humans transform.
In the beginning the world was chaos, until a god separated its parts. Then solid
4.
earth existed, and liquid water existed, and air existed around them, and stars
5.
existed beyond the air. Dumb earth looked at the stars, and with divine help it became
6.
human, because it had wonder and it had intelligence.
7.
In the golden age, food grew naturally on trees and in fields. People did not make
8.
laws for other people, and everyone lived happily without war. Eternal spring always
9.
offered nice breezes, and no one felt pain. Then the silver age came, when the seasons
10. began. Now humans built shelters and the earth did not give forth food willingly, so
11. cattle groaned while they cut the fields with plows.
12.
In the bronze age humans learned violence. But in the iron age true evil emerged.
13. Trees became ships so that people could conquer foreign lands. Humans dug in the
14. ground and obtained metals and the metals became swords and spears. Power and
15. authority ruled, because greed, crime, and deceit ruled the hearts of people.
16.
During the iron age the last god departed from the earth.
STATIM:
Compose an English sentence that contains at least a subject, a verb, a direct object, and an indirect
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object.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In what order do these items appear?
Syntax of English and Latin
When we consider the structure of language, we need to think about three different elements.

The VOCABULARY of a language consists of the body of words used in a particular language.

GRAMMAR is an analysis of the specific function that specific words play in a clause or sentence.

SYNTAX refers to the order in which words combine to form meaningful clauses and sentences.
“AN AUTHOR WROTE POETRY.”
VOCABULARY:
GRAMMAR:
SYNTAX:
EXERCITĀTIO (Exercise)
Directions: Consider the Latin sentences on the following page. Each one is an exact translation of a
clause from the story of the four ages.
1. Translate the Latin sentence into its English equivalent.
2. Annotate BOTH the Latin and the English.
3. Determine the syntactic structure of the Latin and the English sentence.
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LATIN
mundī historia mutātio est.
LATIN WORD BANK
mundī = of the world
ENGLISH
The history of the world is change.
historia = history
Subj. > Predic. Nom. > Verb
mutātio = change
Subj. > Verb > Predic. Nom.
est = is
in novās formās formās
tempus mutat.
in = into
novās = new
formās = forms
tempus = time
mutat = changes
cibus = food
cibus naturaliter in
arbōribus et in agrīs crēvit.
naturaliter = naturally
in = in, on
arbōribus = trees
et = and
agrīs = fields
crēvit = grew
libenter = willingly
nōn libenter cibum terra
dōnāvit.
cibum = food
terra = earth
dōnāvit = gave forth
What can you conclude about the SYNTAX of English sentences? What can you conclude about the
SYNTAX of Latin sentences?
............................................................... ...........................................
.................................................................. ........................................
CHECK: __________
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