Latin morphology and sentence structure
Establish forms before assigning functions
Latin endings express grammatical information, but many forms have more than one possible analysis. Record a noun's dictionary nominative and genitive before selecting its declension. Then test case, number and gender against agreement and sentence structure. In the original example „Puella librum legit“, puella is the nominative subject and librum is the accusative object. Word order helps interpretation but does not replace morphology: moving librum to the beginning need not make it the subject.
Adjectives agree with their nouns in case, number and gender, not necessarily in identical visible endings. A relative pronoun usually takes gender and number from its antecedent, while its case comes from its role within the relative clause. In „Librum quem puer legit video“, quem is accusative because it is the object of legit; its antecedent is librum. Analyse the embedded clause separately rather than copying the antecedent's case mechanically.
Verbs and constructions
Identify person, number, tense, mood and voice. Perfect-system forms and present-system forms use different stems, so knowing only the present dictionary form may be insufficient. A deponent such as loquor uses forms that look passive while ordinarily having active meaning; locutus est means that the subject spoke. Do not translate it automatically as „was spoken“.
In an accusative-and-infinitive indirect statement, the infinitive's time is generally relative to the reporting verb: present infinitive for contemporaneous action, perfect for earlier action and future for later action. The natural tense in a modern-language translation depends on that relationship and the reporting context, not a universal one-to-one conversion table.
An ablative absolute provides circumstances through an ablative noun or pronoun with an agreeing participle, adjective or noun. In „Urbe capta, legati discesserunt“, the capture supplies background for the envoys' departure. A temporal or causal rendering must fit context. The ending alone does not prove an absolute construction; dative and ablative forms can overlap.
Check competing analyses
Distinguish cum as a preposition governing an ablative from cum introducing a clause. Distinguish gerund, a verbal noun, from gerundive, a verbal adjective; obligation is especially clear in the gerundive with esse. For each interpretation, identify the governing word, agreement and construction before committing to a translation.