Re: Question about supines, gerunds, and the like

My 2 cents, hopfully I'm not adding mud to the puddle!

On Sat, 15 May 2004 19:14:35 -0700, Garth Wallace <gwalla@...>
wrote:

>Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
>> En réponse à Garth Wallace :
>>
>>> Yeah, the Wikipedia says something similar (although it disagrees on the
>>> form of the ablative).
>>
>> According to my Latin grammar, the ablative form of the supine ended in
>> "u" (just get rid of the m :) ) and was uncommon, exiting only for a few
>> verbs and used only as complement of some adjectives. The example it
>> gives is: res jucunda auditu: something nice to hear. "Auditu" completes
>> "jucunda": agreeable, nice.
I don't know what Wikipedia says, but I've seen only long |u| in books
(however, length marking doesn't seem to be part of everyday Latin
orthography).

>>>  But that still doesn't tell me what a supine
>>> does, semantically.
>>
>> Adverbial use, goal, used only after verbs of movement (again according
>> to my Latin grammar). Example: eo lusum: I come to play (the book did
>> the translation from "go" to "come").
>
>Ah, that makes sense.
>
>So, supines are sort of adverbial, and the ablative supine is only used
>with a few verbs and adjectives? Do you know if there's any particular
>reason why the two forms are considered "accusative" and "ablative"?
Morphology -- the forms are identical to regular 4th declension forms.

>Or why it's considered a verbal noun at all...seems more like a verbal
>adverb with a couple of forms that look nominal.
>
>>>  Why would you use a supine instead of the accusative
>>> or ablative gerund?
>>
>> Each language has its quirks. Latin just didn't use ablative gerunds for
>> goal complements after movement verbs. As for the Swedish "supine", it
>> seems to have quite a different use and origin from the Latin supine. I
>> wonder why it's called that way...
Typical Romance language sound changes would make the supine end up being
the same as the past participle, except that it wouldn't change for gender
or number. Apparently, someone writing, say, a Spanish grammar decided that
the past participle in the compound tenses was really a "supine", and this
terminology was carried over to Swedish. At least that's my theory!

>>>  What does it mean to have a supine form distinct
>>> from the gerund and the infinitive?
>>
>> Once again, each language has its quirks. Asking that is like asking
>> what it means for French to make gender distinctions in nouns.
>
>Yeah. It just wasn't clear to me before how it was used.
>
>>> Going by the examples in the Wikipedia article on Slovene grammar, it
>>> seems to express purpose there. But that doesn't seem to be what it does
>>> in Swedish, according to Andreas. And I can't remember even talking
>>> about it in my high school Latin class.
>>
>> It seems the term "supine" just means "some invariable verbal derivative
>> form that we can't really classify as anything else".
>
>I'll have to remember that tactic. ;)
>
>>> I don't know. :( Some sort of verbal adjective. I could be totally
>>> misremembering, though.
>>
>> If I'm not confusing gerunds and gerundives (since French calls the
>> gerund "gérondif" - at least if I'm not mistaken :)) - confusion arises
>> easily), in Latin, while the gerund was an *active* *nominal* form used
>> to give a complete declension to the infinitive (which existed only in
>> the nominative and accusative), the gerundive was a *passive*
>> *adjectival* form, expressing obligation: amandus: which must be loved.
>
>I seem to remember my Latin teacher and textbook referring to the
>"-ndus" form as the "future passive participle". Is "gerundive" just
>another word for that?
Here's my understanding: Originally there was simply the future passive
participle. e.g. studium libro:rum legendo:rum -- "fondness of books which
are to be read". This was then reinterpreted semantically as "fondness of
reading books", that is, the gender, number, and case remains the same, but
the tense and voice were taken to be present and active. This usage is
called the gerundive. After that, gender and number agreement could be
dropped (which is why the gerund is called a verbal _noun_ rather than an
_adjective_) while keeping the case. The noun which the participle or
gerundive modified becomes the object of the gerund: studium legendi:
libro:s (same meaning as with the gerundive). This parallels the use of the
infinitive. However, the Romans seemed to prefer the gerundive.

>> Problem: in the masculine and neuter non-nominative forms, it was
>> identical to the gerund, and my book even shows examples where the
>> gerundive replaced the gerund, when the gerund received an accusative
>> complement. I guess the Romans were just as confused as us with those
>> two near-identical forms expressing such divergent meanings :)) .
>
>Oy. I can't really blame them. :P
>
>> So, someone still wanting to beleive that Latin is a "logical" language?
>> ;)))
>
>Heh heh heh. I started conlanging because it *wasn't*. My first attempt
>at a conlang was a modified, "regularized" Latin that added some
>features I found in my encyclopedia that sounded interesting.
I had a similar motivation -- natural languages are so messy, I figured
it's faster just to create a new language than learn an existing one!

Jeff

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