--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:
> > Latin has a "double ablative", a dependent construction where a
> > subject and a past pasticiple (*-tó-) of its verb are given
ablative
> > endings. Similar constructions exist in OCS (with dative) and
> Sanskrit
> > (several cases). Perhaps such a dependent construction is the
origin
> > of the mi-conjugation?
> >
>
> Since the subject of active, primary *-i is in the locative, pre-
PIE
> at that time must have been ergative (as Alscher notes). That
helps
> explain why there's both a construction with subject + verbal noun
> (Latin ablative absolute) and object + verbal noun (Vedic): they
would
> both have been verbal noun + absolutive; therefore the two
> constructions are identical. The absolutive typically isn't
marked;
> that's why we find no trace of a nominative suffix embedded in the
> noun of the ablative absolute and no sign of an accusative suffix
> embedded in the Vedic object + verbal noun (infinitive)
construction.
If I understand this correctly, it may have got off on the wrong
foot. The ablative absolute (double ablative) involving the to-
participle does not include the *subject* of the action. A typical
example is <His rebus cognitis Caesar legiones equitatumque revocari
atque in itinere resistere iubet> (BG 5.11) "Having heard about
this, Caesar orders the legions and the cavalry to be called back
and make halt in the march". The one who understood something was
Caesar, not "these things" which are pragmatically the object of the
participle, the original construction meaning "when these things had
been understood".
This, then, offers no basis for an analysis of the IE s-nominative
subject of mi-conjugation verbs as an original ablative, for the two
constructions do not mean the same. It also seems to me that you
depart from a problematizing attitude to things that are in reality
well understood. The absolute constructions are really not
problematic. If a noun and a participle are combined in concord in
an adverbial case, we get an adverbial sentence constituent. The
original situation must have involved a choice: In the locative it
would mean "while ...", with the instrumental "because ...", and
with the ablative "after ...". Gothic has an absolute accusative
which must have originally meant something like "as long as ...".
These meanings are all fully understandable from the general
functions of the cases involved. It must be ascribed to a secondary
development that the individual languages generalize one of the old
cases that could be so construed.
The verb accords with its subject in IE; if there are more subjects
than one, the verb is put in the dual or plural. The same is seen in
the related families outside IE. Therefore, if this represents a
change from a presumed older ergative structure, that change is
itself very old indeed and so of questionable use in an analysis of
the IE facts.
Jens