Every word in a Latin sentence with the exception of
interjections has a syntactic function. There are three
general syntactic functions (see Big Picture):
Consider the following English sentence: "The sun was shining brightly in the blue sky." In this sentence, "the sun was shining" is the skeleton. Everything else can be left out and you would still be left with a complete thought. The skeleton thus contains a subject and a verb. "Shining" could be an adjective, but in the context, it works with "was" to create a single verbal notion. "brightly" is an adverbial modifier (an adverb) which modifies "was shining". It describes how the sun was shining. "in the blue sky" is another adverbial modifier (a prepositional phrase) which again modifies "was shining" because it tells us where the shining was taking place. "blue" inside of the prepositional phrase is also a modifier (even within another adverbial modifier). It is an adjectival modifier (an adjective) which describes sky because it describes the kind of sky. |
Other Sentence Structure Topics
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Last Updated March 18, 2003 Questions, comments and corrections should be sent to Brian K. Harvey, Kent State University |
