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For example in the following sentence should the adjective 'magnus' also take 'que' to agree with the noun 'puer'?

Puella puerque magnus.

William
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  • Think of Senatus Populusque Romanus (SPQR). – Sebastian Koppehel Jun 20 '22 at 06:11
  • Yes. -que is what modern grammarians call a clitic: it attaches to whichever word is in its favoured position, irrespective of the grammatical function of the word. An example in English is the possessive 's, which attaches to the last word in a noun phrase. Typically this will be a noun (the man's hat), but it can be a noun which is not the possessor (the king of Spain's daughter) and at least for some speakers it can be a word in the phrase which is not a noun (the guy I used to work with's hat - awkward in writing, but people say it) – Colin Fine Jun 20 '22 at 22:32

1 Answers1

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No. Treat it not like a form of the noun, but a separate word that gets attached at the end. It functions just like et except it goes after, not before the word.

See this thread for more information.

Note that -que gets attached to the next word it conjoins. You could have also written puella magnusque puer and it would have been correct still. Thus in Cato we read:

de omnibus agris optimoque loco...
Concerning all the fields and the best place...

cmw
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