Ablative

Revision as of 11:21, 13 August 2008

The ablative case in Latin is an inflection^[1] that applies to nouns, adjectives and participles. The ablative case is sometimes known as the "case of adverbial relation"^[2] and the function of the ablative case is sometimes performed in English by adverbial phrases. Noun phrases in the ablative case are used as the objects of some pronouns. Certain verbs take objects in the ablative as well.

Bennett^[3] states that the ablative case represents the merger of three cases and identifies three broad classes of meaning:

1. "Genuine" uses
2. Instrumental
3. Locative (related to place)

The Latin ablative case originally marked motion away from something, but later it became a very general adverbial case modifying or limiting nouns by ideas of place, time, manner, cause, instrument, accompaniment etc. Ablative usually, but not always, stands with prepositions (ab, ex, de, cum, in, sub).

Here are the basic and very general rules for making a singular ablative:

• If a word ends in "-us" then the ablative ends in "-o". "Tullius" becomes "Tullio".
• If a word ends in "-a", then the ablative ends in long "-á". "Livia" becomes "Liviá".
• If a word ends in "-o", then the ablative ends in "-one". "Cicero" becomes "Cicerone".
• Many other nouns change their ending to "-e" and some change to "-u", but their rules are more difficult and are not detailed here. Here are some just for example:

"Audens" in ablative becomes "Audente",

"Laenas" in ablative is "Laenate",

"homo" in ablative is "homine",

"consul" in ablative is "consule",

"Senatus" in ablative is "Senatu",

"exercitus" in ablative is "exercitui" and so on.

Usage in practice

An average Nova Roman citizen uses the ablative case in the consular dating. Learn more about Roman dates.

References

1. ↑ Crystal, D. (1985) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Blackwell.
2. ↑ Gildersleve, B. and G. Lodge (1895) Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar, Macmillan.
3. ↑ Bennett, C. (1895) New Latin Grammar, Allyn and Bacon