Words for ‘this’ and ‘that’ (or, in the plural, ‘these’ and ‘those’) are known as demonstratives. Latin has several, including hic ‘this, these’ and ille ‘that, those’; such words agree with nouns in gender, number, and case as adjectives do. They are declined irregularly.

The dative has a variety of uses, including the indirect object; that is, the additional object found with a verb meaning ‘give’. With such a verb, the gift itself is the direct object and is in the accusative case; the person to whom it is given is the indirect object and is in the dative case. In English there are two constructions used for indirect objects: the indirect object can come before the direct object, or it can come after the direct object with the preposition ‘to’. The indirect objects in these sentences are underlined: ‘I gave Mary the book’, ‘I gave the book to Mary’, ‘We gave them candy’, ‘He gave candy to the children’.

So far we have not mentioned the comparatives or the superlatives of the most common adjectives, such as bonus, malus, magnus, and parvus. Just as the most common verbs tend to have irregular conjugations, so the most common adjectives have irregular comparisons.

Verbs expressing fear, such as timeō and vereor, take several different constructions in Latin. As in English, they can take an infinitive; this occurs in exactly the same circumstances in both languages. They can also take a subjunctive clause using present or imperfect subjunctive according to the rules of sequence discussed in chapters 16 and 28.

Nouns are words for people, places, or things. In English, word order tells us how the nouns and verbs in a sentence are related: ‘Maria leads Julia’ has a very different meaning from ‘Julia leads Maria.’ The noun (or pronoun) that comes before the verb is usually the subject, the doer of the action of the verb. Likewise, in English, if there is a noun (or pronoun) after the verb, that is normally the object, the recipient of the action of the verb. In Latin, however, the information as to which noun is the subject and which is the object is conveyed not by word order, but by the endings of the words (inflection). The subject has an ending that identifies it as belonging to the nominative case, and the object has an ending that identifies it as belonging to the accusative case. Therefore any word order can be used in Latin without altering the basic meaning of the sentence, and when translating a Latin sentence into English one normally has to change the order of the words.

All the participles we have seen so far have a clear grammatical relationship to the rest of the sentence. Sometimes they agree with the subject (expressed or understood), as mīlitēs captī timēbant ‘the captured soldiers were afraid’ or captī timēbant ‘the captured men were afraid’; sometimes they agree with the direct object (expressed or understood), as mīlitēs captōs vīdī ‘I saw the captured soldiers’ or captōs vīdī ‘I saw the captured men’; and sometimes they have other functions that cause them to end up in a variety of cases, as mīlitibus captīs aquam dedit ‘He gave water to the captured soldiers’, cum captīs stat ‘He is standing with the captured men’, etc.

Cases

Nouns are words for people, places, or things. In English, word order tells us how the nouns and verbs in a sentence are related: ‘Maria leads Julia’ has a very different meaning from ‘Julia leads Maria.’ The noun (or pronoun) that comes before the verb is usually the subject, the doer of the action of the verb. Likewise, in English, if there is a noun (or pronoun) after the verb, that is normally the object, the recipient of the action of the verb. In Latin, however, the information as to which noun is the subject and which is the object is conveyed not by word order, but by the endings of the words (inflection). The subject has an ending that identifies it as belonging to the nominative case, and the object has an ending that identifies it as belonging to the accusative case. Therefore any word order can be used in Latin without altering the basic meaning of the sentence, and when translating a Latin sentence into English one normally has to change the order of the words.

Names like Marīa and Iūlia belong to the first declension, a group of nouns that end in -a in the nominative singular (when they are subjects) and in -am in the accusative singular (when they are objects). Thus ‘Maria leads Julia’ could be written in Latin Marīa Iūliam dūcit; this would be the normal order with the verb at the end. But ‘Maria leads Julia’ could also be Iūliam Marīa dūcit, dūcit Iūliam Marīa, dūcit Marīa Iūliam, Marīa dūcit Iūliam, or Iūliam dūcit Marīa. These six sentences are not identical in meaning; there are differences of emphasis depending on how they vary from the normal order. But all six could be translated into English as ‘Maria leads Julia’. Similarly ‘Julia leads Maria’ could be written in Latin Iūlia Marīam dūcit, Marīam Iūlia dūcit, dūcit Marīam Iūlia, dūcit Iūlia Marīam, Iūlia dūcit Marīam, or Marīam dūcit Iūlia.

The verb volō (‘wish’, ‘want’: see chapter 25.3) has two compounds. Nōlō is formed from nōn + volō and means ‘I do not want’, and mālō is formed from magis ‘more’ + volō and means ‘I prefer’ (i.e. ‘I want more’).

In addition to the participles, another kind of adjective can be formed from a verb. This is the gerundive, a form that expresses obligation. Gerundives are formed by adding -ndus, -nda, -ndum to the stem of the verb (the same base as is used to form the imperfect indicative: see chapter 39.1); they are regular first/second-declension adjectives and therefore decline like bonus.