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What is Parsing? |
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To fully understand the grammatical structure of a piece of poetry or prose, it is a good idea to
occasionally parse the literature.
- Read through each sentence in the paragraph and identify each word as noun, verb, adjective, etc.
- Describe the role of each word in the sentence.
E.G.: Puella parva in alta arbore sedebat ubi pater eius eam vocavit.
- Puella: puella, ae f. 'girl'- noun
nominative singulary feminine and subject of sedebat.
- Parva: parvus, a, um 'small'- adjective
modifies puella -nominative singular and feminine
- in: preposition
- followed by a noun in the ablative case, in means 'in' or 'on'
- followed by a noun in the accusative case, in means 'into'
- arbore: arbor, arboris f. 'tree'- noun
tree is in ablative case, so it means 'in the tree.'
tree is ablative, singular and feminine
- alta: altus, alta, altum 'high'- adjective
modifies arbore in case (ablative), number (singular), and gender (feminine).
It is placed before arbore in this sentence because it is an adjective of size. Most adjectives will follow a noun.
For parsing purposes,it is useful to look for the noun in a sentence and then consider which adjective might modify each noun.
- sedebat: sedeo, -ere, sedi, sessurus 'sit'- verb
imperfect active indicative, 3rd person singular
translated as 'was sitting.'
shows an unfinished action (he may still be sitting)
- ubi: 'when'-conjunction
introduces the second part of this compound sentence.
- pater: pater, patris, m. 'father'- noun
Subject of the clause, nominative singular.
- eius: personal pronoun, genitive case - her
genitive forms usually indicate a possessive nature - 'the father of her'. -refers to 'puella'.
- eam: personal pronoun, accusative case, fem.- 'her',
direct object of vocavit and refers to 'puella'.
- vocavit: voco, vocare, vocavi, vocatus 'to call' -verb
perfect active indicative, 3rd person singular with 'pater' as the subject
translated as: 'called, did call, or has called.'
shows a finished action (he is to the best of our knowledge no longer calling)
After doing this, what may have seemed a difficult sentence becomes much more workable.
The example shown here is explicated in much more detail than I expect from students. I exaggerated the information to demonstrate how much we can learn from the form of each word in a Latin sentence.
J.Jahnige, October 2000