Syntax Anticipation: Accusative First

Syntax Praxis Index

Correctly anticipating meaning in a sentence helps you to understand quickly and easily.

An anticipation is an intelligent feeling about what is about to occur. You can learn how to analyze how a sentence is built, but you also need to develop the ability to get an instantaneous intelligent feeling for how each part adds to the development of the meaning. Such an ability is closer to intuition than it is to analysis.

Now some analysis could help us to understand what kind of intuition we need to have. So let us analyze what happens when the object is placed first in Latin sentences.

In English, we usually expect the following order, with the (direct) object at the end:

Therefore if we hear the object first, we need to "leave a blank space in our understanding" for the subject. We usually know that the object is first if we find an accusative at the start. (You obviously have to learn how to recognize the accusative endings.)

So if you hear the accusative forms rosâs or nautam at the start of a sentence, you should have a feeling that some subject is needed. You should instinctively feel what you feel about roses in the first English sentence or sailor in the second, namely that something else is acting on it (or him, or her, or them) and that the first person, place, or thing just mentioned is not being highlighted as the subject of the action in the idea being expressed.

That is, if you hear rosâs or nautam starting a sentence, you should feel what the following table indicates:

That is after an initial rosâs or nautam, you should have the kind of anticipation that is expressed by the following questions:

"Well, what happens to the roses? Who does what to them?"

"Well, what happens to the sailor? Who does what to him?"

The structure of the meaning is something like what we feel when we hear someone saying: "Him...I just don´t like." The word Him is the (direct) object even though it is unusual for English to put the direct object first in the sentence. We all instinctively know that the word Him cannot serve as a subject and that someone or something else has to be the agent.  We are ready to interpret "I" as the subject.

When you get this feeling for the Latin objects that are given first, you are then prepared to interpret the rest of the sentence more quickly:

Rosâs ... videt puella. = The girl sees the roses.

Nautam ... puer vocat. = The boy calls the sailor.

Notice that the subject may or may not come second. The verb may or may not come at the end. These are other patterns for you to "get a feel for." And Latin might not even express the subject with an entire word, but only with a personal verb-ending, presented here in red:

Rosâs vident . = They see the roses.

Nautam vocâmus. = We call the sailor.

Your task, then, is to read and say aloud and hear yourself saying the Latin, while understanding the meaning, until you feel very familiar with a particular pattern of words as an expression of the particular meaning of the sentence.

Practice comprehension!

Time spent doing this even with simple and obvious sentences will reward you later with many hours saved as you attain the ability to understand Latin sentences much more quickly and easily.

Anticipating meaning in the right way makes all the difference. Start with small units of meaning and practice them until they become automatic.

Latin Teaching Materials at Saint Louis University: © Claude Pavur 1997 - 2009.  This material is being made freely available for non-commercial educational use.