🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec17.233249.4681@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
> In article <1992Dec17.085109.45712@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:

[...]

>>> 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?

Oops.  Right, we don't.  It's Harrington's only example and I can't
find any more, at least not today...(:> 

>> 	quem peremptum
>> 	who having been destroyed

[...]

> When our school grammars were developed, medieval
> Latin was regarded as barbarity itself, which is perhaps why I've always
> liked it.

Me too.  (Alas, our ancestors had an international language, and they
blew it...)

> Yet I must confess I can't ever recall seeing a nominative
> or accusative absolute in the flesh in medieval texts.

I am looking.  BTW in Ecclesiatical Latin, e.g., in the Vulgate, we
even have genitive absolutes, in immitation of Greek:

	Qui ostendunt opus legis scriptum in cordibus suis,
	testimonium reddente illis conscientia ipsorum, et inter
	se invicem cogitationum accusantium, aut etiam defendentium.

	Who show the work of the law written in their hearts,
	their own conscience bearing testimony to them, and
	their thoughts accusing them, or even defending them
	to themselves.

			- Rom. ii, 15.

Nunn gives this one and cites also Acts i, 8 and II Cor. x, 15.
 
> --Leo Connolly
-- 
miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu | Graecis ac barbaris, sapientibus et
opinions are my own      | insipientibus debitor sum