Grammar and Syntax: Forms in Service of Meaning
The grammar and syntax domain tests whether you can identify forms and explain their function in a sentence. Expect noun case and declension, verb tense, mood, and voice, agreement, pronouns, and subordinate clause types.
Noun and adjective system
- Five main cases: nominative for subject and complement; genitive for possession and partitive; dative for indirect object and reference; accusative for direct object, place to, and duration; ablative for means, separation, place where, and agent with a or ab.
- Adjectives agree in gender, number, and case, not necessarily in ending.
- Reflexive se refers to the subject; other pronouns may be emphatic or enclitic.
Verb system
- Principal parts give present, infinitive, perfect, and supine stems.
- Passive forms in -r; deponents look passive but are active in meaning.
- Subjunctive uses include purpose with ut/ne, result with ut/non, indirect command, cum clauses, conditionals, and indirect questions.
- Indirect statement uses an accusative subject plus infinitive; the infinitive's tense is relative to the main verb.
- Participles and ablative absolutes compress subordinate clauses.
Worked example
Pueri, qui in horto ludebant, a patre vocati sunt. The relative clause qui...ludebant modifies pueri; vocati sunt is perfect passive, were called; a patre is ablative of agent. Translation: The boys, who were playing in the garden, were called by their father. The relative pronoun's case comes from its own clause, where it is nominative subject.
Traps that cost marks
Matching adjective endings instead of agreement; confusing ablative of means with agent, since agent needs a or ab; translating deponents passively; using the wrong sequence of tenses; and treating gerund and gerundive as identical.