Morphosyntactic commentary on the translated text
Here the examiner takes four or five words or short expressions from the passage and asks for their full morphosyntactic analysis: what the form is and what it is doing in the sentence. Marks are split between identification and function, so a flawless parse with no syntactic label earns only half.
The formula for every answer
Lemma (nominative + genitive, or first person + infinitive) → form (case, number, gender; or person, number, tense, mood, voice) → function, naming the word it depends on. Example: urbis: genitivo singular de urbs, urbis (3.ª declinación); complemento del nombre de moenia.
Cases: label and function
- Nominativo: sujeto, atributo.
- Vocativo: apelación.
- Acusativo: complemento directo; complemento circunstancial con preposición (ad, in + acusativo); extensión de tiempo o espacio; sujeto de infinitivo; doble acusativo con appello, creo, voco.
- Genitivo: complemento del nombre; partitivo; subjetivo y objetivo; con memini, obliviscor, egeo, impleo.
- Dativo: complemento indirecto; posesivo con esse; de interés; agente con la perífrasis pasiva (mihi faciendum est).
- Ablativo: medio, agente (a/ab), modo, tiempo, lugar (in + ablativo), comparación, causa, precio, compañía (cum), y ablativo absoluto.
Verbs
Give the conjugation and the enunciado (amo, amare, amavi, amatum). Specify tense and aspect (infectum vs perfectum), mood and voice. Subjunctive uses to name: ut/ne final, ut consecutivo, cum histórico, quin, interrogativas indirectas, condicionales irregulares. Verbals: gerund (neuter singular, declinable), gerundive (passive, obligation with esse), supine.
Worked example
His rebus cognitis, legati, qui missi erant, pacem petierunt.
- rebus: ablativo plural de res, rei; núcleo del ablativo absoluto junto a cognitis.
- cognitis: ablativo plural del participio de perfecto pasivo de cognosco; concuerda con rebus.
- qui: nominativo plural masculino del relativo qui, quae, quod; sujeto de missi erant.
- pacem: acusativo singular de pax, pacis; complemento directo de petierunt. Note the reasoning: rebus could also be dative plural, and only the agreement with cognitis settles it.
Traps that cost marks
- Naming the case but not the function, or the function without the lemma.
- Confusing third-declension dative and ablative plurals, especially i-stems (-ibus vs -is).
- Calling a gerundive a gerund, or a supine an infinitive.
- Reading a deponent perfect as passive.
- Treating cum + ablative (preposition) as cum + subjunctive (conjunction).