Predicate Nominatives and Adjectives

Nouns and their uses In English nouns have essentially three uses: –The subject –The object –The possessive –The Romans were a little more specific about noun usage and had different names for those uses

Roman noun uses –The SUBJECT is called the NOMINATIVE –The Possessive is called the GENITIVE –The Indirect Object is called the DATIVE –The Direct Object is called the ACCUSATIVE –The Obj. of a Preposition is the ABLATIVE Notice how the Romans broke the object use into three different cases

That’s a LOT of information Don’t worry: all we are worried about right now is the SUBJECT case, which the Romans called the NOMINATIVE case.

What is a NOMINATIVE? The nominative is the SUBJECT of a sentence. Lester is a friend of mine LESTER is the subject of the sentence. In Latin the subject is called the NOMINATIVE

How do I find the nominative? In English the nominative is normally at the beginning of the sentence: Lester is eating a cookie crustulam Lester consumat In Latin word order is less important, so the SUBJECT can be almost ANYWHERE

Predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives rename or describe the SUBJECT. Example: Lester is a friend of mine. PN “friend” renames the subject, “Lester” “Friend” is a predicate nominative