Glossary of Key Terms for the Study of Latin
| Clause | a unit of grammatical organization that consists of a subject and predicate—and often other words and phrases. |
| Commentary | a collection of notes, glosses, and other support that explicate the meaning, context, and/or interpretation of a text. Commentaries might be facing the text on which they comment or in separate editions. A commentary may be directed at the emerging reader—and so be focused primarily on helping the reader understand the sense of the text and how the Latin forms that sense—or at the scholarly in which case it would gloss only the most challenging of words and phrases but will instead focus on matters textual, stylistic, contextual, and interpretative. Most commentaries feature a mixture of these elements, depending on their target audience.
e.g., “Be sure to consult your commentary on the passage as part of your pre-class reading.” |
| Conjugation | (1) the variation of the form of a verb in an inflected language by which are identified the person, number, tense, voice, mood, tense, number, and person.
e.g., “The conjugation of amō in the present active indicative is amō, amās, amat, amāmus…” or (2) the category in which a verb is put according to the manner of this variation. e.g., amāre is a present active infinitive of the first conjugation. |
| Declension | (1) the variation of the form of a noun, pronoun, or adjective, by which its grammatical case, number, and gender are identified.
or (2) the class to which a noun or adjective is assigned according to the manner of this variation. |
| Gloss | a brief explanation, which may take the form of a metaphrase or paraphrase, or a brief note about the cultural context necessary to understand the glossed words.
e.g., “A commentary could be said to be a collection of glosses.” “Gloss this phrase” [you provide a translation or note to explain the phrase] |
| Inflection | the changing of the form of a word’s morphology to convey different syntactic information. When considering inflection, we might also consider:
stem: the basic part of the word to which endings are attached, e.g., amā- ending: the part that conveys information about the verbs person and number, or a noun’s or adjective’s case, number, and gender theme: the immutable root of the word that doesn’t change; e.g., am- distinguisher: the part of a word that inflects; e.g., amat; amābāmus. |
| Morphology | the form of a word; in Latin this usually refers to combination of stem and ending that determine the syntax in an inflected word.
e.g., “Describe the morphology of “mater” and “amat” in this sentence: mater filiam amat.” “The morphology of mater is nominative singular feminine; of amat it is 3rd singular present active indicative.” |
| Parse | to provide the morphology and syntax of a word or phrase.
e.g., “Parse “mater” in this sentence: mater filiam amat.” “nominative singular feminine; subject of the main verb, amat” |
| Phrase | a small group of words standing together as a conceptual unit, typically forming a component of a clause; for example a noun-adjective phrase, a prepositional phrase, etc. |
| Scan Scansion |
to represent, often graphically, the metrical pattern of a poem. [see “The Rhythm of Latin Poetry”] |
| Syntax | the role that a word plays in a clause; for inflected words, their syntax will be determined in large part by the morphology, as well as the other elements of their phrase and/or clause.
e.g., “Describe the syntax of “mater” in this sentence: mater filiam amat.” “Mater is the subject its clause [or] the subject of the finite verb, amat,” |
| Translate | [see “Typology of Translation”] |
