🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec17.085109.45712@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
> 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.
>> ...
>> 
>> 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

With all due respect, how do we know that this is not accusative?

> 	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?"

Or "objective", the term they used in my schooldays?  It hardly matters.

>> 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.

I rather doubt it.  When our school grammars were developed, medieval
Latin was regarded as barbarity itself, which is perhaps why I've always
liked it.  Yet I must confess I can't ever recall seeing a nominative
or accusative absolute in the flesh in medieval texts.

--Leo Connolly