Getting started on Classical Latin

4.3 Sentences: subject and object

A sentence consists of a number of words which, to make sense, must include a verb. Unless this is the only word in the sentence (as in ‘Run!’), there will normally be a word telling us who or what is doing the action. This doer, whether noun or pronoun, is called the subject of the verb.

Consider these sentences:

The players ran onto the pitch. The referee blew his whistle, and the centre-forward kicked off.

This short passage has three separate statements (in the two sentences), each determined by a different action expressed by a verb – ran, blew and kicked. There are also three separate doers or subjects of the actions: the players, the referee and the centre-forward.

Activity 8

Identify the subjects and verbs in the following sentences.

  • I like chocolate.

  • The boys ran as fast as they could.

  • Tomorrow Jane and I are going to Paris.

  • She was sitting beside her friend on the bus and they were talking loudly.

  • Chris and Robbie climbed the largest tree.

Answer

Subject Verb
I like
The boys ran
They could
Jane and I are going
She was sitting
they were talking
Chris and Robbie climbed

Sometimes a sentence also contains a noun (or pronoun), indicating to whom or what the action is being done. In the sentence The referee blew his whistle, the subject is the referee, the verb is blew, and his whistle is the thing to which the action is done. This ‘receiver’ of the action is called the ‘object’ of the verb. Another way to think of this is to ask a question of the subject and verb; for example, ‘The referee blew – what?’ The answer to the question, ‘his whistle’, is the object. Two of the sentences in Activity 8 have objects. Which ones are they?

Activity 9

Identify the subject, verb and object in the following sentences.

  • The dog fetched the ball.

  • The girls were quietly reading their books.

  • We don't like hard work.

  • In AD 60 Boudicca destroyed Colchester, London and St Albans.

  • The Romans could not forgive her.

  • People will be watching you.

Answer

Subject Verb Object
The dog fetched the ball
The girls were reading their books
We do + like hard work
Boudicca destroyed Colchester, London, St Albans
The Romans could + forgive her
People will be watching you

As you can see from the examples in Activity 9, in English the subject usually comes before the verb and the object after it, so the order of components is s-v-o. This is not always so, however: the object may come first in English, perhaps for the sake of emphasis; and it is possible to say:

  • Hard work we don't like,

or

  • ‘Get lost!’ shouted the man angrily.

As the subject–verb–object order is normal in English, the difference between a word as subject and the same word as object is not shown by inflexion; this is unnecessary. Some of our pronouns form an exception, nevertheless:

Subject (in the subjective case) Object (in the objective case)
I me
he him
she her
we us
they them

This change of form is a vital point to bear in mind when learning Latin, because Latin nouns and pronouns (and adjectives) change their form according to whether they are the subject or object in their sentence: it is the form of the word, or ‘case’ as it is usually known, that determines whether it is the subject or the object.

This is a particularly important point, as English usually relies on word order to distinguish between subject and object, as we have already noted: ‘All nice girls love sailors’ is in the conventional order of subject–verb–object, but changing the order of words to ‘Sailors love all nice girls’ substantially alters the meaning of the sentence.

This would not be so in Latin, because the different case-endings on the nouns (etc.) indicate which is the subject and which the object, even if the order of the words is unexpected: object–subject–verb, for example. All the same, there is a word order in Latin which is more usual than others, and this is subject-object-verb. Because of this, the Latin reader has to wait until the end of the sentence with great anticipation to find out what the action (the verb) is!