The Absolute Construction in Old and Middle English: A Case of Latin Influence?

This paper addresses the absolute construction in OE (Old English) (and to some extent Middle English), with special focus on its origin. This non-finite construction consists of a participle and a nominal subject, usually both in the dative, and functions as an adverbial clause. An example is ofslegenum Pendan hyra cyninge in t Mercna mg, ofslegenum Pendan hyra cyninge, Cristes geleafan onfengon (The Mercians received Christs faith, when their king Pendan was slain). Earlier research on this topic provides two opposite views: either the construction is considered Latin in origin and is treated as a syntactic loan (Kisbye, 1971; Visser, 1973), recently sometimes as a lexical loan (Timofeeva, 2009), or it is regarded as a native, Germanic construction (Bauer, 2000). Preference has generally been with the former. My position is situated in between: taking my cue from Matsunami (1966), who states that Generally the use of the [] participle was declining in all the G[er]m[ani]c dialects but that the classical languages reinforced its functions, I argue that absolutes constitute a native OE construction that was on the brink of disappearing, as is shown by its low frequency in native text material (cf. Timofeeva, 2009), but was kept alive by the practice of Latin translation (cf. Johansons 2002 selective frequential copying). Recent investigation indeed favours the idea of absolutes as an Indo-European construction (Costello, 1982; Bauer, 2000). As such it is likely for Germanic, and in a later stage OE to have inherited this structure from the proto-language. Evidence is provided by the fact that most Germanic languages at some point used this construction and shared the dative as preferred case (Gothic: Costello, 1980). Further arguments against viewing OE absolutes as loans come from a quantitative and qualitative corpus investigation of OE texts (cf. appendix): (i) Latin ablative absolutes, when indeed translated in OE as absolutes, are consistently put in the dative case, from the earliest OE records onwards, both in glosses and real translations. If these translations were to be regarded as loans, a more diversified case choice (genitive, accusative) reflecting the translators hesitation could be expected, at least in the early records, as the ablative itself is not available in OE. (ii) The absolute construction, as a translational equivalent of the Latin absolute, is seen to be in decline towards the early Middle Ages (30% 10%) and is reluctantly used during the whole OE period (15%-20%), except in glosses (95%). If borrowing were at stake, one would anticipate the reverse: cautious use in the beginning and gradual increase when the construction becomes more familiar. The divergence in translational options (e.g. by finite adverbial clauses) also shows there was no especially urgent need for this construction in the OE language that would justify a loan in the first place. (iii) It is sometimes argued that absolutes were borrowed to be able to stay as true as possible to the divine Latin word order and syntactic structure when translating religious material. But if this was sufficient reason to incite borrowing, again one would suppose frequencies to be much higher than what my analysis reveals (from 0% to 35% across the various texts). More generally, this study is part of a more extensive investigation which via the discussion of the origin of absolutes in general, their use both in translated and native OE texts, as well as general translational theory in Anglo-Saxon culture, wishes to shed a new light on the presence of dative absolutes in Old and Middle English.

References Bauer, Brigitte. 2000. Archaic Syntax in Indo-European. The Spread of Transitivity in Latin and French. Berlin New York: Mouton de Gruyter; Costello, John R. 1980. The absolute construction in Gothic. Word 31.1. 91-104; Costello, John R. 1982. The Absolute Construction in Indo-European: a Syntagmemic Reconstruction. Journal of Indo-European Studies 10.3-4. 235-252; Johanson, Lars. 2002. Contact-induced change in a code-copying framework. In Mari C. Jones & Edith Esch (eds.) 2002. Language change. The interplay of internal, external and extra-linguistic factors. Contributions to the sociology of language 86. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 285-313; Kisbye, Torben. 1971. An historical outline of English syntax. Aarhus, Denmark: Akademisk Boghandel; Matsunami, Tamotsu. 1966. Functional Development of the Present Participle in English: Native Syntactic Functions of the OE Present Participle (I). In Department of Literature in Kyushu University (eds.) 1966. Studies in Commemoration of the Fortieth anniversary of the Department of Literature in Kyushu University. Fukuoka: Department of Literature in Kyushu University. 315-348; Timofeeva, Olga. 2009. Translating the Texts where et verborum ordo mysterium est: Late Old English Idiom vs. ablatives absolutus. The Journal of Medieval Latin 19; Visser, Frederikus Theodorus. 1973. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Leiden: Brill. Corpus The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE). 2003. Compiled by Ann Taylor, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Frank Beths. University of York: (http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/YCOE/YcoeHome.htm). Texts analysed include: Bedes Ecclesiastical History, Gregorys Pastoral Care, Gregorys Dialogues, the Blickling Homilies, The Gospel according Saint Matthew from the West-Saxon Gospels, the Regularis Concordia glosses, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle E, lfrics Lives of Saints, lfric's Homilies Supplemental and Mary of Egypt.