Puella caudam vaccae spectat, quam vitulus sequi conatur.

Puella is nominative singular, so it is the subject of spectat.

• puella = girl
• nominative = the person or thing doing the action

So puella spectat means the girl looks at ...

Because caudam is the direct object of spectat.

• cauda = nominative singular, tail
• caudam = accusative singular, tail as the thing being looked at

Since the girl is looking at the tail, Latin puts cauda into the accusative:

• puella caudam spectat = the girl looks at the tail

Here vaccae is genitive singular: of the cow.

So:

• caudam vaccae = the cow’s tail or the tail of the cow

This is a very common Latin pattern:

• noun + genitive noun
• cauda vaccae = tail of the cow
• filius agricolae = son of the farmer

A learner may notice that vaccae could also be dative singular or nominative plural in other contexts, but here the meaning and structure show that it is genitive singular.

Latin usually has no articles, so it does not have separate words for the or a/an.

That means:

• puella can mean girl, a girl, or the girl
• caudam vaccae can mean a cow’s tail, the cow’s tail, or simply cow’s tail

You figure out which English article to use from the context.

Quam refers to caudam.

So the sentence is structured like this:

• Puella caudam vaccae spectat
• quam vitulus sequi conatur

Literally: The girl looks at the tail of the cow, which the calf tries to follow.

The relative pronoun quam agrees with its antecedent (caudam) in:

• gender: feminine
• number: singular

So quam = which referring to tail.

Because quam is the form needed for the job it does inside its own clause.

In quam vitulus sequi conatur, quam is the thing the calf tries to follow, so it is the object of sequi. That means it must be accusative singular feminine:

• quae would be nominative singular feminine
• cuius would be genitive singular
• quam is accusative singular feminine

A very important rule is:

A relative pronoun agrees with its antecedent in gender and number, but its case depends on its function in the relative clause.

So quam is feminine singular because of caudam, but accusative because it is the object of sequi.

Grammatically, the nearest likely antecedent is caudam, and that is how the sentence is normally understood.

Both caudam and vaccae are feminine singular forms, so the form quam could in theory match either one in gender and number. But the sentence naturally means:

• The girl looks at the cow’s tail, which the calf tries to follow

That makes good sense, because a calf following a cow’s tail is a natural image.

Also, caudam is the more direct and natural antecedent here.

Because vitulus is the subject of conatur.

In the second clause:

• vitulus = the calf
• conatur = tries
• sequi = to follow
• quam = which

So:

• vitulus sequi conatur = the calf tries to follow

Even though quam comes first in that clause, vitulus is still the one doing the trying.

Because it depends on conatur.

Conor means try, and it is commonly followed by an infinitive:

• conatur sequi = tries to follow
• conatur currere = tries to run

So sequi is a complementary infinitive after conatur.

Because after conatur, Latin uses the infinitive, not another finite verb and not an imperative.

• sequitur = he/she/it follows
• sequere = follow! (command)
• sequi = to follow

Here the meaning is tries to follow, so the infinitive sequi is exactly what Latin needs.

Because both come from deponent verbs.

A deponent verb has:

• passive-looking forms
• but an active meaning

So:

• conatur looks passive in form, but means tries
• sequi looks passive in form, but means to follow

Their dictionary forms are:

• conor, conari, conatus sum = try
• sequor, sequi, secutus sum = follow

This is a very common thing in Latin, and it often surprises English-speaking learners at first.

It has a main clause and a relative clause.

Main clause

Puella caudam vaccae spectat

• puella = subject
• caudam vaccae = object phrase
• spectat = verb

Relative clause

quam vitulus sequi conatur

• quam = relative pronoun, referring back to caudam
• vitulus = subject
• sequi = infinitive
• conatur = main verb of the relative clause

So the structure is:

• The girl looks at the cow’s tail
• which the calf tries to follow

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

English depends heavily on position:

• The girl sees the tail is different from
• The tail sees the girl

Latin can move words around more freely because the endings show who is doing what.

In this sentence:

• puella is nominative, so it is the subject
• caudam is accusative, so it is the object
• vaccae is genitive, so it means of the cow

That is why Latin can say:

• Puella caudam vaccae spectat

instead of needing a rigid English-style order.

Not very, at least not in the same way as in English.

Modern printed Latin often uses punctuation to help the reader, so the comma here simply marks off the relative clause neatly. But classical Latin manuscripts originally had much less punctuation, and sometimes none at all in the way modern languages use it.

So the comma is helpful, but the grammar of the sentence does not depend on it.