Latin grammar
The vocative
cāsus vocātīvus
The vocative names the person spoken to. It stands outside the grammar of the sentence, usually between commas: Ita fac, mi Lucili, “do so, my Lucilius”.
How it differs from the nominative
In most words it doesn’t. It has its own form in only two places:
- 2nd declension nouns in -us end in -e: lupus, lupe; Mārcus, Mārce.
- Nouns in -ius end in -ī: Lūcīlius, Lūcīlī; fīlius, fīlī. And meus becomes mī.
Everything else, the plurals included, looks like the nominative: Lesbia, Catilina, Musa. The commas and a verb in the second person show that someone is being spoken to. Poets often open this way: Musa, mihi causas memora, “Muse, tell me the causes”.
In the texts
Real lines from the graded passages, as the reader shows them: the vocative stands out in its colour, and an arc joins the word to what it goes with.
Ita fac, mi Lucili;
Do so, my Lucilius;
Lucili, from Lucilius: -ius becomes -i. Mi, from meus, agrees with it.
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus, rumoresque senum severiorum omnes unius aestimemus assis.
Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and let us value all the rumors of stricter old men as worth but a single penny.
Lesbia looks like a nominative; the commas around mea Lesbia, “my Lesbia”, show she is the one spoken to.
“Qui possum, quaeso, facere, quod quereris, lupe?
Who can I do, please, what you complain about, wolf?
Lupe is lupus addressed: the lamb answers the wolf.
Words read in the vocative
Words from the library’s analysed texts, with the forms they took in the vocative.