Curator aquarium vocat.

to call

Breakdown of Curator aquarium vocat.

• aquarius: the water carrier; water worker
• curator: the overseer; superintendent

Questions & Answers about Curator aquarium vocat.

How do we know curator is the subject?

Because curator is in the nominative singular, the form normally used for the subject of the sentence.

If curator were the direct object, it would usually be curatorem, not curator. So the form itself tells you that curator is the one doing the action.

Why is aquarium the object?

Aquarium is the direct object of vocat.

A useful thing to know is that aquarium is a neuter second-declension noun, and neuter nouns have the same form in the nominative singular and accusative singular. So aquarium could, in principle, be either subject or object just from its ending alone.

But in this sentence, curator is already clearly the subject, so aquarium must be the object.

What does vocat mean grammatically?

Vocat is:

• present tense
• active voice
• indicative mood
• third person singular

It comes from vocare, meaning to call.

So grammatically it means he/she/it calls or, depending on context, he/she/it is calling.