Latin Language and Grammar
What the grammar domain tests
The grammar section of the SLLC Preliminary checks whether you can identify forms and explain their function, not merely recite paradigms. Expect noun and adjective declensions, pronoun forms, the four conjugations plus esse and its compounds, and the six tenses of the indicative with the present and imperfect subjunctive.
Core rules
- Case is function. Nominative marks subject and predicate nominative; genitive marks possession, partitive, and objective relations; dative marks indirect object and accompanies intransitive verbs such as parcere, credere, imperare; accusative marks direct object, object of prepositions like ad, per, post, and subject of indirect statement; ablative marks separation, means, manner, absolute, and object of ab, cum, de, ex, in.
- Agreement links adjective to noun in gender, number, and case; a relative pronoun agrees with its antecedent in gender and number but takes its case from its own clause.
- Principal parts drive tense formation: amo, amare, amavi, amatus. The third part is perfect active; the fourth is the perfect passive participle.
- Subjunctive uses are signalled by trigger words: ut/ne purpose and result, cum causal, temporal, or concessive, si conditions, and indirect questions.
Worked example
Milites, qui urbem ceperant, praedam ad ducem rettulerunt. The main clause is milites ... praedam ... rettulerunt: 'the soldiers carried the booty back'. Qui refers to milites (masculine plural) but is nominative because it is the subject of ceperant, a pluperfect active indicative: 'who had captured the city'. Ad ducem is accusative after ad: 'to the leader'. Translation: 'The soldiers who had captured the city carried the booty back to the leader.'
Traps
- Giving the relative pronoun the case of its antecedent.
- Missing deponent verbs (videor, loquor) whose passive forms are active in meaning.
- Confusing cum + ablative (accompaniment) with cum + subjunctive (clause).
- Forgetting that in takes accusative for motion into and ablative for position.