Case: A matter of form or function?

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Talmid
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Case: A matter of form or function?

Post by Talmid »

After A.T. Robertson studied Indo-European linguistics, and Sanskrit in particular, he became convinced that case was a matter of function and not of form. Thus, he broke ranks with the tradition of classical Greek grammarians in identifying eight cases (if the vocative is assumed to be a true case) instead of five. His influence continued on among some of the New Testament grammarians, though the classical grammarians--then and still now--largely ingnored the results of his research. For example, Smyth's excellent Greek Grammar, first published in 1918 and then revised by Gordon Messing in 1956, makes no reference to Robertson's Large Grammar, a stupendous volume of 1,454 pages with cutting-edge research.

To illustrate how Robertson discovered that the inflections of Sanskrit indicate the priority of function over form in the Indo-European family, consider the declension for asvas in the singular, with eight different forms, vs. the dual, with only four different forms:

SINGULAR - Nom. = asvas; Gen. = asvasya; Abl. = asvad; Dat. = asvaya; Inst. = asva; Loc. = asve; Acc. = asvam; Voc. = asva.

DUAL - Nom., Voc., & Acc. = asvau; Inst. = asvabbham; Dat. & Abl. = asvabhyam; Gen. & Loc. = asvayos.

Clearly in this example a noun's function has the preeminence over its form to determine its case. One can observe that a single form in the dual can carry different cases without altering the number of cases. Likewise, even beginning students can observe that the declension of anthropos has five forms, but the declension of doron merely has three--the nominative, accusative, and vocative all being the same.

Further support for the primacy of function over form was given by Robertson from discovering strong evidence to suggest that prepositions did not govern cases. This he realized by a diachronic study of Greek in which he found that prepositions were added to the language for clarification long after the cases and inflectional endings already existed independently. The ramifications of this led Robertson to conclude that prepositions did not change the function of cases, as contrary to what Daniel Wallace would suggest today.

Anyway, I am at the very beginnng of my Latin studies, but already I am sensing some tension that Latin grammarians probably experience in identifying the true nature of the Latin ablative. According the the 6th edition of Wheelock's grammar, "There is no simple rule of thumb for translating this complex case [the ablative]....The more complex uses will be taken up at convenient points in the following chapters" (10-11). Whereas the other cases were given simple instructions for translations, the ablative could mean "by, with, from, in, on, at," carrying the functions of "means," "agent," "accompaniement," "manner," "place," and "time" (10-11).

Even in the elementary stages of learning the first declension, I am seeing that, in the singular, the genitive and dative have identifcal forms. But, in the plural, it's the ablative and dative which have identical forms. At least in this situation, function triumphs over form again.

With all my mumbo-jumbo stated thus far, finally my question is this: Does anybody know of a Latin grammarian who has divided the traditional ablative into three different cases based upon function rather than form much like Robertson did with Greek? Or, to state it another way: Are there any grammars which hold to separate cases for the instrumental and locative functions to settle the confusion created in attempting to have the traditional ablative carry all this luggage?

I am not trying to stir a commotion. By "confusion" I mean the confusion common to beginners like myself.

Does anyone have comments to share? Thanks for your help if so.

-Talmid

mraig
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Re: Case: A matter of form or function?

Post by mraig »

This is a pretty complex question - well, the actual part is not that complex:
Talmid wrote: Does anybody know of a Latin grammarian who has divided the traditional ablative into three different cases much like Robertson did with Greek?
-Talmid
Answer: No, I don't know of a grammarian who did this.

But your real question, I think, is more about how to build a conceptual framework of Latin grammar in your head as you learn it. Obviously, in term of form versus function, there are circumstances in Latin where the form of a word by itself does not give you sufficient information to understand the way the word is being used. For example, if you were presented with the form "amicae" in a vacuum, you would have no way of knowing whether the word was singular or plural, or whether it was nominative, genitive, dative or vocative. (The same is true in English; if presented with the form "loves," we have no way of knowing whether it's a noun or a verb without context.)

Likewise, when presented, in a vacuum, with a form which is not ambiguous as to case - "amica" with a long final vowel, for instance, which is clearly what we all the ablative case, it is still uncertain what the syntactical function of that word will be in context.

Allen & Greenough's Latin Grammar divides the ablative case into three broad categories: Ablative of Separation (ablative proper), Instrumental Ablative, and Locative Ablative. My understanding is that this corresponds to three distinct Indo-European cases which were grouped together as the language shed its cases (note that the same thing happened as the Greek IE branch shed its cases; the ablative proper was grouped with the genitive, the instrumental and locative cases were grouped with the dative. I assume this is what Robertson means when he identifies 8 Greek cases instead of five)

So, if you wanted, you could regard Latin as having an ablative case, an instrumental case, and a locative case. In fact, the IE locative case was not completely absorbed into the ablative; the ablative is used as a locative case with a preposition, but there are separate forms for the bare locative, which you'll pick up later. They match the genitive for 1st and 2nd declensions, and the dative or ablative for the 3rd declension. This use is confined to town names and a group of specific words: Romae (from Roma, -ae, f.) means "at Rome"; "belli" (from bellum, -i, n.) means "at war."

However, I'm not sure how useful it is to consider these different ablative uses to be, in fact, different cases. The ultimate 'truth' of a language is the way that it is understood by its speakers, and I don't think the Roman mind would have held these as separate cases. Evidence of this comes from the fact that there is sometimes not a clear distinction between the different uses; the Ablative of Cause could be assigned to the Separation family or the Instrument family, for instance.

So, my answer would be that while looking at historical linguistic forces can tell you WHY different uses came to be grouped under the same grammatical case, that doesn't necessarily give you the reality of how our ancient authors saw their language as they used it.

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Lucus Eques
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Post by Lucus Eques »

I would generally agree with mraig's comments.

Your comment on the "Roman mind" caught my attention. One night here in Florence at dinner with my host parents, I asked what the word is for "gender" in Italian. The response was mainly perplexion. Continuing in Italian, I explained that I was looking for the word that describes if a word is masculine or feminine. Gesticulating clearly, they made it evident that there was no answer to my question. "It's just masculine or feminine," was the response.

This strikes me as the same sort of mentality a Roman might have when confronted with the finer complexities we modern barbarians have applied to his language in order to comprehend it. As Anglophones, we have no innate concept of gender until we truly learn a foreign language which possesses it. And even then, it's a comical thing; from the earliest that we learn French or Spanish or Italian or German, among others, we learn that all nouns have a "gender." However, not only when, say, an Italian learns Italian as a baby, he has no need of a concept of gender, the word itself never exists in the comprehension of his own language later in life. "It's just masculine or feminine." Makes perfect sense.

Recall the ancient agricola, the farmer in the fields. Illitterate, he speaks fine Latin, as fine as anyone, as do his children, the only language any of them has ever known. He says "amicae" and he's understood by what he means when he says it, and uses cases of every conceivable type and form with all the complexity of Virgil and Cicero. Though he's never had to think about the concept of a "case," much less "gender." He just has things to express, and utilizes certain functions of speech, the words and their forms, invented or discarded as needed to accomplish the singular goal of communication.

I am unfamiliar with the debate of linguistic form versus function, but Robertson's arguments combined with my own little musings above compell me to concur that case is a matter of pure function, whose forms change in order to express it more efficiently. I find it very hard to conceive or even imagine the argument to the contrary.
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