Bos ante stabulum ligatus magnum cornu habet.

Because bos is in the nominative singular, and habet is a 3rd person singular verb, so they match naturally as subject and verb.

So the basic skeleton is:

• bos = the ox
• habet = has

Everything else adds description.

Ligatus is a perfect passive participle of ligare, meaning tied or having been tied.

It is not the main verb here. The main verb is habet = has.

So:

• bos ... habet = the ox has ...
• ligatus = describes the ox: the ox, tied ...

In smoother English, this works like a reduced relative clause:

• bos ligatus = the ox that is tied / the tied ox

Because ligatus agrees with bos, not with stabulum or cornu.

Bos is:

• nominative
• singular
• here treated as masculine

So the participle must also be:

• nominative singular masculine → ligatus

It is a very common beginner mistake to expect agreement with the nearest noun, but Latin does not work that way. It agrees with the noun it actually describes.

If the animal were feminine, you would expect ligata instead.

Because ante as a preposition takes the accusative.

So:

• ante stabulum = in front of the stable / before the stable

This is just something you learn with the preposition:

• ante + accusative

Latin word order is much more flexible than English word order because Latin uses endings to show grammatical function.

English depends heavily on position:

• The ox has a horn is not the same as A horn has the ox

Latin can move words around more freely because forms like bos, ligatus, and cornu show how they fit into the sentence.

So Bos ante stabulum ligatus magnum cornu habet is perfectly normal Latin, even though English would usually arrange it more rigidly.

Because Latin often places descriptive material between the subject and the verb.

Here the sentence is structured like this:

• Bos = subject
• ante stabulum ligatus = extra description of the subject
• magnum cornu = object
• habet = verb

So Latin is doing something like:

• The ox, tied in front of the stable, has a large horn.

This kind of inserted descriptive phrase is very common.

Because cornu is a 4th-declension neuter noun, and its nominative/accusative singular form is cornu, not cornum.

So:

• nominative singular: cornu
• accusative singular: cornu

This is one of those forms that beginners have to memorize, because it does not look like a 2nd-declension neuter such as bellum.

Because adjectives do not have to use the same ending as the noun they modify. They only have to agree in:

• gender
• number
• case

Here cornu is:

• neuter
• singular
• accusative (direct object of habet)

So the adjective must also be neuter singular accusative, which for magnus, -a, -um is magnum.

So magnum cornu is correct, even though the endings are different.

It is accusative singular because it is the direct object of habet.

Ask: What does the ox have?

Answer: magnum cornu = a large horn

That makes it the object of the verb.

With cornu, the nominative and accusative singular look the same, so you identify the case from the sentence function.

Yes.

The only finite verb is habet = has.

Ligatus is verbal in origin, but it is a participle, not a finite verb. It behaves more like an adjective here, describing bos.

So the sentence has one main action:

• has

and one descriptive participle:

• tied

No. Classical Latin has no articles like English the and a/an.

So bos can mean:

• the ox
• an ox

and magnum cornu can mean:

• a large horn
• the large horn

The exact choice depends on context and on what sounds natural in English.

Bos can be masculine or feminine, depending on whether the animal is male or female.

In this sentence, ligatus is masculine, so the sentence is treating bos as masculine.

If it were feminine, the participle would normally be:

• ligata

So the agreement of the participle helps you see the intended gender here.

Latin singular usually means singular. So cornu here means one horn.

The sentence is simply saying that the ox has a large horn. It is not making a general statement about how many horns oxen normally have.

If the sentence wanted to say large horns, it would use the plural cornua.