Re: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)

I've got a bit behind with this list in the last three days, so possibly I
may be repeating points already made - if so, sorry.

At 12:14 am -0400 7/6/00, Roger Mills wrote:
[....]
>    As you may know, Latin used only two of its 5 cases with preps.--
>accusative where the prep. indicated "motion to, toward, in, into, on, "
>ablative where it was "motion from, out of, away from" as well as
>instrumental. A few preps. could take either case, with change of meaning.
>Some govern one case or another without any apparent semantic basis-- sub
>'under' + abl.
'sub' in fact is one of the _four_ which may govern either acc. or abl. and
_does_ show a difference of meaning.  The four preps. are:

         ACC.                       ABL.
IN      into, to, till             in, among, on [no motion]

SVB     under, (to) beneath        below, under, at the foot of,
         [movement towards]        from below, subject to

SVBTER   [rare, but classical - similar meanings to SUB]

SVPER    over [movement], to       over [no motion], on top of,
         the top of, upon             concerning

Ten, of which two were rare, prepositions govern the ablative only:
A/ AB - away from
ABSQVE - without [pre-Classical, surving in Classical Latin only in a few
set phrases of a legal nature]
CORAM - in the presence of
CVM - with
DE - down from, from; concerning
E/ EX - out of
PALAM - in the presence of [poetic]
PRAE - before, in front of, compared with
PRO - for, on behalf of, instead of, in proportion to
SINE - without

All the rest (27 IIRC) govern the acc.  Many of these have no idea of
'movement towards'; indeed some. e.g. APUD, IUXTA, are 'local'.  One very
common preposition, AD, always governs the acc.   Only context can tell us
whether, e.g. 'ad urbem' means "to the city" or "near the city".

>Plus a few plain acc. forms with locative meaning-- Romam,
>domum.
No, no!  These show 'motion _towards_' - Romam = to Rome; domum = home(wards).

The locative is shown by the locative case!  Romae = in Rome; domi = at home.

I agree with Roger in numbering only 5 cases, rather than the 6 of
traditional Latin grammars - the five being: nominative, accusative,
genitive, dative & ablative.

The 'vocative', traditionally included, is normally the same as the nom.,
and differs only for 2nd. decl. masculines ending in -us.  I think it is
better treated, like the locative, as a 'vestigial' case, i.e. not quite
dead, but surviving only with a limited set of nouns.

The locative is found only with names of towns, cities 'small' islands &
the two common nouns: ru:s (country, countryside), domus (home).  It is
never governed by any preposition.  Indeed, with all these nouns motion to
& from is also expressed without a preposition, thus:

ACC. Romam (to Rome); Carthaginem (to Carthage); rus (to the country);
domum (home[wards])

ABL. Roma (from Rome); Carthagine (from Carthage); rure (from the country);
domo (from home)

LOC. Romae (in Rome); Carthagini (in Carthage); ruri (in the country); domi
(at home)

This means that 'ad Romam' can mean only "near Rome"  :)
------------------------------------------------------------------
Ancient Greek allowed prepositions to govern accusative, genitive or dative
cases (there was no ablative).  Some prepositions could govern all three,
e.g.
para + acc. = to the side of
para + gen. = from the side of
para + dat. = at the side of

But, being a natlang & not a conlang, it didn't carry this neat system
through with 100% consistency  :=(

Modern Greek has lost the dative and all prepositions now govern the
accusative.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
At 12:58 pm +0200 7/6/00, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
[....]
>
>Well, in Latin, prepositions could be followed only by the accusative or
>the ablative, while the very few postpositions asked for the genitive.
Eh? Are you thinking of things like:
exempli gratia (e.g.) - for the sake of an example
honoris tui causa - on account of your honor

But 'gratia' & 'causa' are merely the _ablatives of nouns_; and the
genitive is the case used to make one noun with another.  Also, although
the ablatives are usually placed after their dependant genitives, this is
not invariably so and instances of 'causa' and 'gratia' preceeding the
genitive are found.  It is, therefore, IMHO stretching things a bit to call
'gratia' & 'causa' postpositions - tho I have seen them so called.

The only words which AFAIK could truly be classed as postpositions are used
either with the accusative or ablative (there's one exception).  They are:

CVM when used with personal pronouns.  In this case it is normal to write
them as proclitics suffixed to the ablative, e.g.
tecum (with thee/ with you); nobiscum /no:'bi:skU/ (with us)

VERSVS - used after the accusative of towns/cities, small islands, domus
etc, showing 'motion towards', e.g.
Romam uersus (in the direction of Rome); domum uersus (towards home).
But this is probably better treated as an adverb, attached to the 'motion
towards' phrase, since it is also similarly used after:
AD + acc., e.g.
ad Oceanum uersus - towards the (Atlantic) Ocean
ad Alpes uersus
[both exanples found in Caesar]
and
IN + acc. e.g.
in agrum uersus   [Varro]
in forum uersus   [Cicero]
in Auernos uersus  [Caesar]   (towards the Averni [people])

TENVS = as far as, up to, down to
In both prose & verse, normally placed after the _ablative_. e.g.
Antio tenus (as far as Antium)  [Cicero]
Aethiopia tenus [Caesar]
pube tenus (right up to puberty) [Vergil]
collo tenus (up to the neck) [Ovid]
uerbo tenus (in name, nominally) - Ciceronian phrase
etc.
It is also less commonly found after the genitive plural ; this is confined
almost entirely to verse and writers, like the historians, who are apt to
use poetic forms.  It's never found in the prose writings of Cicero.  E.g.
labrorum tenus (along the lips) [Lucretius]
crurum tenus (as far as the legs) [Vergil]
urbium Corcyrae tenus (as far as the cities of Corcyra) [Livy]

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
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