Puer illud e mensa tollit et matri ostendit.

the boy

Breakdown of Puer illud e mensa tollit et matri ostendit.

• et: and
• mater: to the mother
• mensa: the table

Questions & Answers about Puer illud e mensa tollit et matri ostendit.

What is the grammatical subject of the sentence?

The subject is puer, which is nominative singular and means boy. It is the one doing both actions: tollit and ostendit.

What case is puer, and how can I tell?

Puer is in the nominative singular, which is the case normally used for the subject of a finite verb.

This is one of those second-declension masculine nouns whose nominative singular does not end in -us. Its forms are:

• nominative: puer
• genitive: pueri

So even though it looks a little unusual at first, puer is simply the normal nominative form.

Why is illud used here, and what does it mean grammatically?

Illud is the neuter singular accusative form of ille, illa, illud, meaning that.

Here it is being used by itself rather than with a noun, so it means something like that thing or that one.

It is accusative because it is the direct object of tollit:

• the boy takes that

And it is also understood as the object of ostendit:

• the boy shows that to his mother