Serva fasciam mundam affert, et mater cubitum eius iterum ligat.

You can tell from the nominative nouns and from the sentence structure.

• Serva is the subject of affert: The maidservant brings...
• mater is the subject of ligat: and the mother ties...

The word et joins two clauses:

• Serva fasciam mundam affert
• et mater cubitum eius iterum ligat

Both verbs, affert and ligat, are 3rd person singular, so each clause has one singular subject.

Because mundam is an adjective describing fasciam, and in Latin adjectives must agree with the nouns they describe in:

• gender
• number
• case

Here:

• fasciam = accusative singular feminine
• mundam = accusative singular feminine

So they match.

This tells you that fasciam mundam means a/the clean bandage, and that the whole phrase is the direct object of affert.

Affert comes from afferre, which means to bring.

It is:

• present tense
• active voice
• indicative mood
• 3rd person singular

So affert means he/she/it brings.

A useful thing to notice is that afferre is a compound of ad + ferre. Because ferre is an irregular verb, its compounds are irregular too. So affert is not built like a regular 3rd-conjugation verb.

Because cubitum is the accusative singular form, used for the direct object of ligat.

• nominative: cubitus = elbow
• accusative: cubitum = elbow as the thing being acted on

So in mater cubitum eius iterum ligat, the mother is tying his/her elbow, which makes cubitum the object.

Eius means his, her, or its, depending on context.

Grammatically, it is the genitive singular of is, ea, id, and it means of him, of her, or of it.

It is used here because the possessor is not the subject of the clause.

• mater cubitum eius ligat = the mother ties his/her elbow
• mater cubitum suum ligat would mean the mother ties her own elbow

That is a very important Latin distinction:

• eius = someone else’s
• suus, sua, suum = the subject’s own

Iterum means again.

It is an adverb, so it modifies the verb ligat: the mother ties again.

Latin adverbs often have fairly flexible placement, so iterum can appear in different spots without changing the basic meaning very much. Here it sits before the verb:

• mater cubitum eius iterum ligat

That is perfectly normal Latin.

Because Latin does not have articles like English.

So a noun like serva can mean:

• a maidservant
• the maidservant

and fasciam mundam can mean:

• a clean bandage
• the clean bandage

English has to choose a or the from the context, but Latin usually leaves that unstated.

No. Latin word order is much more flexible than English word order, because the endings show what each word is doing.

For example:

• serva is the subject because it is nominative
• fasciam mundam is the object because it is accusative
• cubitum is the object of ligat
• eius shows possession

So Latin does not rely as heavily on word position to show meaning.

That said, the order in this sentence is very natural:

• subject + object + verb
• then another clause with et

Also, Latin often places:

• adjectives after nouns, as in fasciam mundam
• possessive genitives after nouns, as in cubitum eius

So the sentence sounds quite normal as written.