Re: Absolute constructions

On Friday, April 15, 2005, at 04:00 , caeruleancentaur wrote:

> In the most recent issue of "The Journal of Indo-European Studies" is
> an article entitled "Absolute Constructions in Slavic: Case Diversity
> and Orginality" by Daniela S. Hristova.
>
> It was fascinating to learn that different IE languages use different
> cases for their absolutes.  Slavic uses the dative, Latin uses the
> ablative, Sanskrit uses the locative, and Greek the genitive.
Ancient Greek also used the accusative case, particularly - tho not
exclusively - with impersonal verbs.

[snip]
> With this in mind, I want to add absolute constructions to Senyecan.
> And since these constructions occur in different cases in the
> daughter languages, I feel I can have several different forms of the
> absolute construction to express nuances.
I think this is absolutely correct   :)

It would seem that these were not originally 'absolute' phrases, but
participle phrases where the participle agreed with some noun or pronoun
in the sentence; when that noun or pronoun was not the subject, the
participle phrase would often function adverbially and hence more like an
absolute phrase. Different IE langs obviously regularized absolute phrases
in different ways (the Greeks being undecided  :)

> I have three pairs of parameters with which to work: present and past
> tenses, perfective and imperfective aspects, and stative and motive
> cases.
I am not sure that tense in its strict sense, i.e. denoting time
distinction, really makes sense with anything except the indicative mood.
The trouble is that, as Trask observed: "Note: traditional grammar often
uses the term 'tense' in a very loose manner that covers not only
distinction of tense but also those of aspect and sometimes even further
distinctions..."

> Any suggestions on how to realize these in my conlang would
> be greatly appreciated.  For example, an imperfective participle in
> the construction could indicate that the action is going on at the
> same time as the verb in the main clause, while the perfective would
> indicate that it was completed before the time of the main verb.
Which is precisely what I would understand also. These two are often
called present participle and past or perfect participle respectively in
traditional grammar. This is, for example, precisely what the so-called
present and perfect particples of Latin do (with the restriction that the
'present' is always active and the 'perfect' is usually, tho not always,
passive). The so-called present and past participles of Esperanto express
such meanings also.

I note that Trask has the entry:
"*present participle* _n_ In english and some other languages, the
traditional name for what is more properly called the 8imperfective
participle*, such as _writing_ in _Lisa is/was writing letters_."

The Latin and Esperanto 'future' participles also IMO express aspect, that
the action has not started at the time of the main verb but is expected to
start in the near future:
Lisa epistulas scriptura est/erat
Lisa leterojn skribonta estas/estis
Lisa is/was going to write letters/ Lisa is/was about to write letters

Ray
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