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In article <1992Dec16.002418.4636@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
> English school grammar teaches that English possesses a construction
> known as the "nominative absolute".  Examples:
> 
> 	The war being over, he returned home.
> 	Gaul having been conquered, Caesar returned to Rome.
> 
> The latter type is familiar mainly from overly literal translations in
> the days when schoolboys (and some girls) regularly read Caesar's _Gallic
> Wars_, where we find sentences of the type
> 
> 	Gallia: victa:, Caesar Ro:mam rediit.
> 
> In Latin, and all other languages where I have found such a construction,
> the case of the absolute is precisely *not* nominative.  Latin, as all
> linguists would once have known, used the ablative, and Old English
> used the dative.

Medieval Latin however used both the nominative and accusative
absolutes.  An example of each from Harrington's _Mediaeval Latin_:

	omnia genera tormentorum adhibita
	all kinds of torments being applied

	quem peremptum
	who having been destroyed

> The question then arises: on what basis do we say that the English
> absolute construction contains a "nominative"?  Pronouns are quite
> rare, but for me the only natural case with an occasional pronominal
> absolute would be precisely accusative.
> 
> 	Him being such a fool, of course she went off with another man.

Why not just "oblique?"

> Furthermore, a nominative would be unparalleled in English, since the
> nominative is otherwise found only before *finite* verbs, which
> _being_ is not
> 
> So, people: Does anyone have an idea how the *nominative* absolute
> made its way into our school grammars?  

The term, along with "accusative absolute," could have come from work
on Medieval Latin.

> Do you find my last example
> acceptable, or would you prefer
> 
> 	??He being such a fool, of course she ...

I hear both with about equal frequency, but use neither, in English.
-- 
miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu | Graecis ac barbaris, sapientibus et
opinions are my own      | insipientibus debitor sum