Here's some help with the ablative of manner/means

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nostos
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Here's some help with the ablative of manner/means

Post by nostos »

If anyone else had any trouble seeing the difference between the two, this might help. Plus it took me a long time to come up with this difference and I wanna share with people who care about this!:

Means (noun): This ablative noun retains its nounship. This ablative is used as a tangible instrument, in which case the ablative becomes the ‘subject’ of the verb, and the actual subject is secondary:

manu sua id scripsit: ‘He wrote it with his own hand’, or ‘The hand (of him) wrote it.’

His hand did the actual writing! He was just the agent behind the hand.


Manner (cum+noun=adverb): The ablative noun of Manner loses its nounship, becoming an adverb, a quality of the verb which is usually immeasurable. In the case that ablative of Manner is used, the emphasis is placed on the actual subject of the verb, and the ablative noun is used to further describe not the subject, but how the verb itself is performed:

magna cura id scripsit: She wrote it, with great care (very carefully)

You can't (or at least shouldn't in the usual way of expressing things) say 'The care (of her) wrote', because 'care' isn't tangible.

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