Ablatives are to Latin grammar what black holes are to space: they suck in all matter and energy.
The ablative case … is a kind of catchall. You can do almost anything with the ablative case.
The ablative case has been called the “junk case” by students over the years.
The ablative case is sometimes called the “everything case”, since it seems to do a bit of, well, everything.
All of these light-hearted but nonetheless unhelpful online introductions certainly emphasise that the ablative case has many uses. However, it isn’t a question of the ablative doing all the jobs that other cases don’t want to do, it isn’t “catching all”, nor does it do a bit of, well, everything.
We need to be more specific.
The uses of the ablative case can almost exclusively be found under the umbrella term adverbial.
[1] [i] At six o’clock John was waiting [ii] at the railway station:
[i] “at six o’clock” is an adverbial phrase; it gives additional information pertaining to when the action was performed i.e. it refers to circumstances (< La. circumstāns: standing around).
[ii] “at the railway station” is also an adverbial phrase giving more details as to where the action was performed.
Even though English uses “at” to express both ideas, those two ideas i.e. time and place are expressed differently in Latin.
[3] A little boy, who was standing [i] with his mother, hit John [ii] with a stone.
[i] “with his mother”; this adverbial phrase again explains circumstances i.e. who the little boy was with when he performed the action
[ii] “with a stone”; this time – even though the same word “with” is used – the phrase gives details as to what object the boy used to perform the action
Similarly, both of those i.e. with whom and with what (object) are expressed differently in Latin.
We call all of these adverbial and most often adverbial phrases because they are constructed from two or more words that are not in themselves adverbs but, when combined, perform an adverbial function:
with: preposition + mother: noun > He was waiting with his mother = adverbial phrase
Latin, too, uses adverbial phrases with prepositions but it can also use its case system without a preposition to express an idea which, in English, needs more than one word e.g. nocte │ at night
Those examples - at the station, at six o’clock, with his mother, with a stone – are all expressed in Latin using the ablative case some of which use a preposition and some of which do not.
The grammar books consistently use a series of terms that specifically describe the type of ablative being used; when reading the language, it is not essential to know these terms because the meaning is generally clear without needing to analyse what that use is. Nevertheless, those terms will come up again and again in any discussion about grammar and so, step-by-step, we’ll review all the different uses. Every ablative use has come up in the posts and has been referred to – mostly briefly – at each stage. Therefore, the following posts are simply going to give a summary of each one together with a few examples as illustration.
The very important point to note when operating at this level of Latin is that there is not 100% consistency in a literature that spans centuries. What is given in these posts are the main features of the ablative and the main ways in which those features are expressed. There will be exceptions and different possibilities but it is far better to have an overview rather than become embroiled in fine detail.
No comments:
Post a Comment