Lesson 13 · Review
Fourteen new words. The headline group is the second-declension masculines whose nominative ends in a bare -r: ager (field), puer (boy), and vir (man) — joined by two -er adjectives, līber (free) and pulcher (pretty). Then four more nouns — cōpia (plenty; plural, troops), lōrīca (coat of mail), praemium (reward), scūtum (shield) — the proper names Cornēlius and Rōma, the adjective legiōnārius, the preposition apud (among, with the accusative), and the conjunction sed (but).
A small family of second-declension masculines — puer, ager, vir — ends the nominative singular in a bare -r, with no -us at all. Everywhere else they are perfectly regular. The one thing to watch is whether a word keeps its e through the cases (like puer) or drops it (like ager) — and the same split governs adjectives in -er.
The old masculine ending -os became -us in words like servus, but it dropped away entirely when the base ended in -r. So puer (boy), ager (field), and vir (man) stand in the nominative singular with a bare -r and no ending at all.
servus carries its ending; puer, ager, and vir do not.
Apart from that bare nominative, these words take the ordinary second-declension endings (gen. -ī, dat. -ō, acc. -um, abl. -ō; plural -ī, -ōrum, -īs, -ōs, -īs). They differ from servus only in the nominative and vocative singular — and the vocative is simply the same as the nominative.
vir → (gen.) virī, (acc.) virum; you address a man as vir, never vire.
In puer the e belongs to the base (puer-), so it survives in every case: puerī, puerō, puerum. In ager the e is only a helper inserted in the nominative; the real base is agr-, so the e vanishes everywhere else: agrī, agrō, agrum. Most -er words follow ager. The genitive tells you which: puerī keeps the e, agrī does not.
puer, puerī (e stays) vs. ager, agrī (e gone).
A masculine adjective in -er declines exactly like a noun in -er. līber, lībera, līberum keeps its e (like puer); pulcher, pulchra, pulchrum drops it (like ager). The feminine and neuter nominatives reveal which pattern to follow: lībera shows a surviving e, pulchra shows it already gone.
vir līber → acc. virum līberum; vir pulcher → acc. virum pulchrum.
The preposition apud, "among, with," is always followed by the accusative case.
apud virōs — "among the men"; est apud legiōnāriōs — "he is with the legionary soldiers."
Six out of six before you start the exercises.
Question 1
The nominative singular of the word for "field" is —
Right. A masculine -er noun drops the -us in the nominative, leaving a bare -r (Rule 1): ager. agrī is the genitive.
Not quite — these nouns do not show -us in the nominative. What is left when it falls away?
Question 2
The accusative singular of ager ("field") is —
Right. ager is the ager-type: its base is agr- and the e appears only in the nominative (Rule 3). So the accusative is agrum, with no e. agrōrum is the genitive plural.
Not quite — recall that in ager the e is only a nominative helper. Does it survive into the accusative?
Question 3
The accusative singular of puer ("boy") is —
Right. In puer the e belongs to the base puer-, so it stays in every case (Rule 3): accusative puerum. puerōs is the accusative plural.
Not quite — unlike ager, puer keeps its e all the way through. The accusative singular ends in -um.
Question 4
You call out to a man directly. The vocative of vir ("man") is —
Right. For -er and -ir nouns the vocative is identical to the nominative (Rule 2): vir. The -e vocative belongs to -us nouns like servus → serve. virī is the genitive.
Not quite — these nouns do not take the -e vocative. What case does the vocative copy here?
Question 5
The adjective pulcher declines like ager. Agreeing with virum, the masculine accusative singular is —
Right. pulcher follows ager — the feminine pulchra shows the e is already gone (Rule 4), so the masculine accusative is pulchrum: virum pulchrum. pulchra is feminine.
Not quite — like ager, pulcher drops its e outside the nominative. The masculine accusative ends in -um.
Question 6
The preposition apud ("among, with") is followed by which case?
Right. apud always governs the accusative (Rule 5): apud virōs, "among the men"; est apud legiōnāriōs, "he is with the legionary soldiers."
Not quite — recall the note in the vocabulary: apud takes one particular case for its object.
Answered correctly: 0 / 6