LA 1100 · Trivium: The School of Grammar — Module 1: The Eight Parts of Speech

Led by Aelius Donatus Simulacrum

The Ars minor of Donatus delivered whole — the eight parts of speech and their accidents, taught as the fourth-century schoolroom taught them, by question and answer.

1. Module 1

   The Eight Parts of Speech

   Led by Aelius Donatus Simulacrum

   The question

   The whole of Donatus's *Ars minor* in nine sittings, in its own

   Outcome

   The student can state the eight parts of speech in Donatus's order

   Sub-units

   1. ○ 1.1 The Eight, and Why Eight Open this unit → ✓ ↻
   2. ○ 1.2 Nomen: The Six Accidents Open this unit → ✓ ↻
   3. ○ 1.3 Nomen: The Declensions and the Genitive-Plural Rules Open this unit → ✓ ↻
   4. ○ 1.4 Pronomen Open this unit → ✓ ↻
   5. ○ 1.5 Verbum: Quality, Conjugation, and the Five Genera Open this unit → ✓ ↻
   6. ○ 1.6 Verbum: Tense, Person, and the Full Declension Open this unit → ✓ ↻
   7. ○ 1.7 Participium Open this unit → ✓ ↻
   8. ○ 1.8 The Four Remaining Parts Open this unit → ✓ ↻
   9. ○ 1.9 The Parsing Drill Open this unit → ✓ ↻
   Begin the course → Print certificate of completion

   Practice scenarios

   The Grammaticus's Bench

   A pupil is sent to you with a page of Virgil and a complaint: he can translate the passage fluently and cannot parse a word of it. He has learned by reading and by guessing, and his guesses are usually right — which is the difficulty. He resents the exercise and says, not unreasonably, that he already understands the lines.

   Your goals

   • Establish in three questions that the fluency is unsupported
   • Parse one line word by word from the left, each word finished before the next
   • Find the place where guessing breaks — a form construed rightly by context
   • and unidentifiable by form
   • Make the case for the apparatus without appealing to tradition or authority
   • Decline to discuss the meaning of the passage until the parsing is done

   Practise this scenario →