Re: Question about supines, gerunds, and the like

On Sunday, May 16, 2004, at 10:41 AM, Jeff Jones wrote:
[snip]
> I don't know what Wikipedia says, but I've seen only long |u| in books
Yep - the final -u was long, whatever Wikipedia says. The 'u' in -um & -u
were different vowels both in quantity and quality.

[snip]
>> 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.
What is your evidence? I know of no evidence whatever for this. As far as
I can tell, the description "future passive participle" is an invention of
latter-day western prescriptive grammarians, possibly originating from its
occasional use as such in _late_ Latin (see below).

If the gerundive had, indeed, been such a participle we would expect forms
such as 'capiendus esse' to supply the needed 'future passive infinitive'
in the commonly used 'accusative and infinitive construction'. We do not.
Instead we find either 'captum iri' (supine + impersonal infinitive of "to
go") or, more commonly, 'fore ut' + subjunctive.

It is surely not credible that the Romans would've used these
circumlocutions for the future passive infinitive, if a simpler, more
straightforward construction were available.

As far as I'm aware, no satisfactory explanation has been given for the
origin of the Latin gerundive. It appears to be derived from a form -(o)n-
+ the adjectival formative -do- (cf. timidus, frigidus etc. for the latter)
. The earliest examples do not show any future meaning; they appear to be
adjectives which vaguely mean "involved in the action of.....", and to
have had an active meaning with intransitive verbs, e.g. oriundus ("born
from, originating from"), secundus ("following, favorable [of wind],
following [the first], second"), and a passive meaning with transitives, e.
g. caedundus 'involved in being killed'.

The active forms above lost their verbal functions and survive as plain
adjectives in the later Classical language.

It's not difficult to see how 'agnus caedundus' evolved from a vague 'a
lamb involved in being killed' to a more precise 'a lamb fit to be killed'
  and thence the familiar Classical Latin 'gerundive of obligation'.

BTW, it will be noticed that the original ending for 3rd & 4th conj. verbs
was -undus. The familiar -endus of Classical & later Latin is doubtless
due to analogy with the present participle (-ens, -entis); only 'ire'
retained the older form in later Latin: eundum.

> e.g. studium libro:rum legendo:rum -- "fondness of books which
> are to be read".
Evidence? As far as I know, it originally meant: "a fondness of books
involved in being read" --> a fondness of books being 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.
Oooh - it's reinterpreted by _us_ semantically like that in _English_.
What evidence do you have of such reinterpretation in _Latin_? For a start,
  as I've argued already, I know of no evidence that the tense was ever
future in either early or classical Latin - so no shift there. And what
evidence do you have to suggest that the Romans wrote a passive "librorum
legendorum" but interpreted it as active? Indeed, that seems exceedingly
strange to me.

> This usage is called the gerundive.
Called, rather misleadingly IMHO, by the prescriptivists "gerundive of
attraction".

> 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).
Again, what is your evidence? As far as I understand, this usage seems to
have developed from the use of the neuter of the gerundive being used in
impersonal constructions with intransitive verbs. This neuter 'impersonal'
  gerundive readily came to used substantively with an active meaning. And
we occasionally find the neuter of transitive verbs used this way with a
direct object in early Latin, e.g. agitandumst uigilias "(we) must keep
watch" [Plautus = Classical: 'agitandae sunt uigiliae' "watches must be
made".

> This parallels the use of the
> infinitive. However, the Romans seemed to prefer the gerundive.
Indeed - the evidence of the early writers suggests that as far as
transitive verbs were concerned, there were two possibilities, whether the
gerund(ive) was being used to show obligation or being used to supply the
'missing cases' of the infinitive, namely: the passive gerundive
(agitandae sunt uigiliae) or the 'new fangled' neuter of the gerundive
used substantively (i.e. 'gerund') with a direct object (agitandum est
uigilias). That's untidy for the Classical prescriptivists who maintained
the passive gerundive construction; the only exceptions allowed are:
(a) genitive case when some writers, e.g. Caesar, used 'libros legendi' to
avoid what they seem to have thought the ugly repetition of 'librorum
legendorum'.
(b) the ablative case, no doubt reflecting what was becoming the norm in
the _spoken_ language. the evidence of the Romancelangs show that the
Classical present participle survived only as a pure adjective (if it
survived at all for a particular verb). The participle use was expressed
by the ablative of the gerund (i.e. the neuter of the gerundive used
substantivally) + direct object and other complements, i.e. the old
ablative became an 'indeclinable present participle'.

Some late writers tried to keep the almost dead gerundive alive; and we do
find some late writers use it just as a future passive participle. But we
also find 'moriendi' used with the active meaning of Classical 'morituri'
(going to die). Indeed, we also find the converse: the moribund future
active participle of Classical Latin used like the passive gerundive to
express obligation. There was clearly confusion among some with these two
forms which had become dead in the spoken language.

We even find in Oribasius 'iubandi sunt' = "are helpful" as a periphrastic
present active = 'iuuant'!

Ray
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