Inflected Language

An Inflected Language Latin is an inflected language, while English is not. In order to progress in your mastery of Latin it is crucial for you to understand what this means. An "inflected language" is a language in which the syntax of a sentence is determined more by endings than by word order. The term "inflection" means ending. Latin endings on nouns and verbs tell us the majority of what we need to know about the syntax of a sentence. In English word order determines the syntax for the most part. In English when we read: "the poet gives the girl a rose" the word order gives us the clue we need in order to figure out who is giving what to whom. We assume the poet is the subject, the girl is the indirect object, and the rose is the direct object. Simply because of the order of the words. If we change the order of the words, "a rose the poet the girl gives" we wouldn't know what was going on. And-- if it was arranged this way: "the girl gives the poet a rose" it would mean something totally different. Now lets look at the the same sentence in Latin: "poeta puellae rosam dat" (poet) (girl) (rose) (gives) puellae rosam dat poeta or rosam dat puellae poeta English pronouns --an example of the use of case endings: Nominative (Subjective) he she they Genitive (Possessive) __________________________ __________________________ Accusative (Objective) __________________________