21 BETWEEN COPY AND COGNATE:
THE ORIGIN OF ABSOLUTES IN OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH
Nikki van de Pol
This paper addresses the absolute construction in Old English (OE) (and to some
extent Middle English), with special focus on its origin.1 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) or a lexical loan
(Timofeeva 2010), or it is regarded as a native, Germanic construction (Bauer
2000). Preference has generally been with the former. I will try to reconcile the
earlier accounts while doing away with their respective shortcomings. I will
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, but was
kept alive by the practice of Latin translation. As such, using Johanson’s code
copying framework (2002), I defend the claim that the OE absolute is a clear case
of ‘selective frequential copying’.
1 Introduction
For decades scholars have been wondering about the occurrence of the absolute,
a typically Latinate construction, in Old English text material. The presence of
this construction is usually accounted for in the literature either as a clear case of
Latin influence involving some kind of borrowing, or as a construction of
Germanic, and thus of native, origin. Both of these accounts seem to offer
plausible as well as less plausible arguments. The goal of this article is to try and
find a way to reconcile those earlier explanations while at the same time doing
away with their respective shortcomings. This paper is structured as follows.
Section 2 will provide a definition of the absolute construction, and section 3 will
briefly discuss methodology. I will then concisely present earlier accounts of the
presence of the Old English absolute (section 4). Sections 5, 6 and 7 will discuss
The research reported in this article was partly supported by the Interuniversity Attraction
Pole (IAP) P6/44 of the Belgian Science Policy on “Grammaticalization and (Inter)subjectification". My sincere thanks to Javier Martin, Hubert Cuyckens, Martine Robbeets and
two anonymous reviewers for comments and feedback on earlier versions. Needless to say, I am
solely responsible for remaining errors of thought in the final version.
1
the plausibility of each of those accounts on the basis of my personal corpus
research. Finally, I will present my own, alternative account for the presence of
the absolute in Old English. As the proposed solution will find itself on the border
between copy and cognate, it may form an interesting contribution to this
particular book even though the main focus is on an entire construction instead
of on morphology.
2 Defining the absolute
2.1 The absolute in general
The absolute construction is a non-finite construction that typically consists of a
participle as predicate and a (pro)nominal subject in an oblique case. An
example from Present-day English is sentence (1).
(1) Rivens and I had a great trial of strength at the beginning of this year,
everybody else having gone except me... (Kortmann 1995, 193)
The construction needs to have an overt subject which is typically, but not
necessarily, non-coreferential with elements in the matrix clause. Syntactically,
the construction is not overtly connected to the rest of the sentence (hence its
name ‘absolute’ which is derived from the Latin verb absolvere ‘to untie, to
loosen’) but it is not semantically isolated from it. The absolute construction
functions as an adverbial clause and expresses meanings such as time, cause,
concession and accompanying circumstance.
It has been pointed out that absolute constructions were widespread in
the early Indo-European languages (Bauer 2000, 285; see also Table 4 below). In
most of these languages, two different types of absolutes are attested at some
point in their development. The primary absolute is the oldest type, it is most
frequently used and has the widest variety in meaning. The secondary absolute,
on the other hand, is younger, less frequent and is more restricted in its range of
use and meaning. For example, Latin uses the ablative absolute (cf. 8-9) as its
primary construction and the nominative (cf.10) and accusative absolutes (cf.11)
as secondary constructions.
The absolute is also a highly genre-specific construction. It is widely used
in historical texts, for instance, whereas it is all but absent in poetry. This is
important in order to understand the sometimes striking differences in the
distribution of absolutes across texts of the same period.
2.2 The absolute in Old English
The primary absolute of Old English is the dative (2) / instrumental (3) absolute.
The two cases can be considered as a single category here, because they were
already steadily merging during the earliest phases of Old English.
(2) Ðæt Mercna mægð, ofslegenum Pendan hyra cyninge, Cristes geleafan
onfengon. (OEBede, Index 3.34)
ofsleg-en-um
Pendan
hyra
cyning-e
slay-PST.PTCP-DAT.SG
Pendan-DAT.SG
they-GEN.PL king-
DAT.SG
The Mercians received Christ’s faith, when their king Pendan was slain.
(3) & ymne acwædene eodun ut on oelebearwes dune. (Rushworth,
Matthew, 26.30)
ymn-e
acwæd-en-e
hymn-INS.SG
sing-PST.PTCP-INS.SG
‘And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.’
The secondary absolutes of Old English are the nominative (4) and accusative (5)
absolute.
(4) Ðas soðlice ðe he ðencende ða cuom heno engel drihtnes in slepe
ætdeaude him cueð ðus ðu ioseph sunu dauides nelle ðu ðe ondrede to
onfoanne maria geoc ðin þæt forðonn in ðæm acenned is of gast halig is.
(Lindisfarne, Matthew, 1.20)
Ðas
soðlic-e
ðe
this.DEM.ACC.PL indeed-ADV after
he
ðenc-en-de
he.NOM.SG
consider-PRS.PTCP-
NOM.SG
‘But after he had indeed considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to
him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take
Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the
Holy Spirit”.’
(5) & ofstigende hine in lytlum scipe efylgdon hine ðegnas his (Lindisfarne,
Matthew, 8.23)
ofstig-end-e
hine
embark-PRS.PTCP-ACC.SG he-ACC.SG
in
lytl-um
scip-e
in
little-DAT.SG boat-
DAT.SG
‘And when he got into the little boat, his disciples followed him.'
Old English can form its absolutes with either present (6) or past (7) participles;
future participles did not exist in Old English and hence could not be used as a
predicate type.
(6) æfterfylg-end-re
tid-e (OE Bede, 3.12)
follow-PRS.PTCP-DAT.SG
time-DAT.SG
‘afterwards’
(7) ge-end-ed-um
gebed-e (Aelfric Lives of Saints
(Martin))
PST.PTCP-end-PST.PTCP-DAT.SG prayer-DAT.SG
‘the prayer having been ended’
2.3 The absolute in Latin
Latin also distinguishes between primary absolutes (encoded by the ablative; (89)) and secondary absolutes (encoded by the nominative (10) and accusative
(11)).
(8) Nam mox redeuntibus domum nuntiis, exercitum ad debellandum
Aedilfridum colligit copiosum,… (Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, 2.12)
rede-u-nt-ibus
dom-um
nunti-is
return-…-PRS.PTCP-ABL.PL
house-ACC.SG
ambassador-
ABL.PL
‘For soon while the ambassadors were returning home, he raised a mighty
army to make war on Ethelfrid...’
(9) …cum gentes Halanorum, Sueuorum, Uandalorum, multaeque cum his
aliae, protritis Francis, transito Hreno, totas per Gallias saeuirent… (Bede,
Historia Ecclesiastica, 1.11)
protri-t-is
Franc-is,
transi-t-o
defeat-PST.PTCP-ABL.PL
Frank-ABL.PL cross-PST.PTCP-ABL.SG
Hren-o
Rhine-ABL.SG
‘…when the people of the Alani, Suevi, Vandals and many others with
these, the Frank s having been defeated, and the Rhine having been
crossed, ravaged all Gaul…’
(10) Benedicens nos episcopus, profecti sumus. (Per. 16.7, Bauer 2000,
315)
Benedic-e-ns
nos
episcop-us,
bless-…-PRS.PTCP.NOM.SG
we-ACC.PL
bishop-NOM.SG
‘When the bishop had blessed us, we left.’
(11) Venas intercisas quomodo demonstravi, … (Per. 24. 3, Bauer 2000,
312)
Ven-as
interci-s-as
vein-ACC.PL cut-PST.PTCP.-ACC.PL
‘The veins being cut, I showed how…’
As in Old English, Latin employs both present (8) and past participles (9) in its
absolute constructions. In addition, Latin also uses future participles; they are,
however, quite rare and mostly occur in order to express purpose.
Aside from the regular participial absolute Latin has two additional kinds
of absolutes which have not been attested in Old English. The first is the
nominal/adjectival absolute, which, rather than a noun plus participle, contains
either a noun plus (pro)noun (12) or a noun plus an adjective (13), and is usually
encoded in the ablative.
(12) e-o
consul-e (Panhuis 2005, 167-169)
he-ABL.SG
consul-ABL.SG.
‘during his consulate’
(13) Hannibal-e
viv-o (Panhuis 2005, 167-169)
Hannibal-ABL.SG
alive-ABL.SG
‘during Hannibal’s lifetime’
The second is the so-called ‘participle-only’ absolute (14). As the name suggests,
this type of absolute consists only of a participle in the ablative case. This
construction will be of no further interest to this article, as it was already
considered to be archaic in Classic Latin and was not productive anymore at that
time.
(14) auspica-t-o (Panhuis 2005, 167-169)
observe.omens-PST.PTCP-ABL.SG
‘after the observation of the omens’
3 Methodology
The research results are corpus-based and make use of data culled from the texts
in Table 1 as well as data from earlier research by Timofeeva (2010) and Segura
& Gallardo (2007) (Table 2). It is important to note that both Timofeeva and
Segura & Gallardo only considered dative absolutes in their research, whereas in
my personal data, I also took nominative and accusative absolutes into account.
In the case of Gregory's Dialogues (C) and (H) I combined Timofeeva's findings
with a search in the YCOE corpus.
Early Old English
Translated
The Old English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History
41,166 words
Books I-III
The Old English version of Gregory's Pastoral Care
68,556 words
Native
The Blickling Homilies
42,506 words
The Vercelli Homilies
45,674 words
Late Old English
Gloss
The Rushworth Glosses (The Gospel of Matthew)
19,567 words
The Lindisfarne Glosses (The Gospel of Matthew)
21,292 words
Translated
The West Saxon Gospel (The Gospel of Matthew)
23,675 words
Native
Mary of Egypt
8,181 words
Ӕlfric's Lives of Saints
100,193 words
Ӕlfric's Homilies Supplemental
62,669 words
Early Middle English
Native
The Ancrene Wisse
50,936 words
Saint Juliana
7,257 words
Saint Katherine
9,171 words
Saint Margareth
8,669 words
Latin originals
Beda Venerabilis: Historia Ecclesiastica Libri I-III
44,128 words
Gregorius Magnus: Cura Pastoralis
41,938 words
Old English editions along with the Rushworth
glosses and Lindisfarne glosses
Rushworth gospel
16,676 words
Lindisfarne gospel
16,476 words
Table 1: Old & Middle English texts and Latin originals investigated in corpus
research
Timofeeva
Early Old English
Gloss
The Vespasian Psalter
44,746 words
Translated
Gregory's Dialogues (C)
91,553 words
Bede's Ecclesiastical History book IV
24,886 words
The Life of Saint Chad
2,970 words
Native
Charters and Wills O2/O3
679 words
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A (Parker Chronicles)
14,583 words
Late Old English
Gloss
The Regularis Concordia glosses
3,942 words
Translated
The Old English Genesis
25,175 words
Gregory's Dialogues (H)
25,593 words
Native
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle E (Peterborough Chronicle)
40,641 words
Ӕlfric's Catholic Homilies I
106,173 words
Ӕlfric's Epilogue to Judges
965 words
Ӕlfric's Letter to Sigewaerd Z
10,420 words
Segura & Gallardo
Late Old English
Translated
The West Saxon Gospels (John)
17,094 words
The West Saxon Gospels (Luke)
20,989 words
The West Saxon Gospels (Mark)
12,350 words
Table 2: Incorporated corpus research by Timofeeva and Segura & Gallardo
I divided the texts in three subgroups: native texts, translations and glosses.
Native texts are texts written in Old English that may be influenced to some
degree by Latin texts but that are not equivalents of any Latin original.
Translations are those texts of Old English that indeed attempt to be the exact
counterpart of a specific Latin original. Glosses, in the case of my research
interlinear glosses, are word for word translations of a Latin manuscript
between the lines of this original manuscript. This means that under each Latin
word the Old English equivalent is written in the corresponding case.
4 Earlier accounts
Earlier accounts of the presence of absolutes in Old English revolve around the
concept of borrowing (syntactic as well as lexical borrowing) or regard absolutes
as a native Germanic construction. First, on the syntactic loan theory, which is
advocated by scholars such as Callaway (1889), Kisbye (1972, 27 and 72), Sato
(2009, 9), Sørensen (1957, 133) and Ross (1893, 251-252), the absolute
construction is claimed to have entered the language through intensive
translation, especially, as some add, in the case of close biblical translations.
From the perspective of Johanson’s code-copying framework (2002; cf.infra) the
absolute, as a syntactic loan, would be viewed as a selective combinational copy.
Second, according to Timofeeva’s (2010) ‘lexical borrowing’2 account, the
absolute construction was not borrowed as a construction; rather, each Latin
absolute expression was borrowed individually into Old English, almost as if it
were a single word. In Timofeeva's view the trigger of this borrowing process is
the act of glossing which she claims only happened in the case of very frequent
(or as she calls them ‘idiomatic’3) Latin expressions (17-18). As a result, the
absolute construction is considered to be non-productive in Old English, in that it
is impossible to find an Old English absolute that does not have a counterpart in
Latin.
I use scare-quotes because Timofeeva uses this term in a way somewhat different from the
usual interpretation.
3 Again I use scare-quotes, because I will use the concept of idiomaticity in this article in the
specific sense Timofeeva (2010) uses it in her research on absolutes, in order to adequately react
to one of her arguments. It must be mentioned though that her definition is centered more
strongly on the frequency of the expression under consideration than is usually the case.
2
(17) ill-o
he-ABL.SG
regna-nt-e
rule-PRS.PTCP-ABL.SG
‘he reigning = during his reign’
risci-end-um
Gratian-o (OE Bede, Index, 1.9)
reign-PRS.PTCP-DAT.SG Gratianus-ABL.SG4
‘Gratianus reigning’
(18) hoc
this-ABL.SG
fac-t-o
do-PST.PTCP-ABL.SG
‘this done’
Điss-um
this-DAT.SG
ge-don-e
PST.PTCP-do-DAT.SG
‘this done’
Finally, a number of accounts hold that the absolute construction is a
construction of Germanic/Indo-European origin. This theory is supported mainly
by Indo-European scholars such as Bauer (2000), Costello (1982) and Holland
(1986). As the absolute construction was present in Indo-European and widely
represented in its various daughter languages, these scholars consider it
plausible that Old English simply inherited the absolute construction from
Germanic.
5 Arguments in favour of Germanic origin and against both kinds of borrowing
While each of these earlier accounts has a number of merits, they are also subject
to criticism. In the following sections, I will, on the basis of my own corpus
research, assess each of these accounts and discuss their respective qualities and
shortcomings. I will first be concerned with those arguments that plead against
borrowing (syntactic or lexical) and thus offer corroborating evidence for the
Germanic origin of absolutes.
To start with, the absolute constructions not only occurred in translations and
glosses but they could also be found in native Old English and Early Middle
The ablative case does not exist in Old English, therefore we may assume that the form
‘Gratiano’ has simply been taken over into Old English with the Latin case ending from the
original. The readers of the Old English version must have considered this a dative singular,
hence the analysis as dative.
4
English texts. As Figure 1 shows, the absolute frequency of absolutes in native
texts is also high enough to rule out mere accident as the reason behind their
occurrence.
Figure 1: Absolute frequency of absolutes in native texts
More significantly, the overall (normalized) frequency pattern of absolutes in Old
and Early Middle English native texts, translated texts and glosses (Table 3,
Figure 25) is not suggestive of a typical borrowing pattern either. Clearly, the
sources show a construction that was at its highest frequency in Early Old
English and that steadily dropped from that moment onwards. A graph
representing a typical case of borrowing would show a development starting
from zero at a certain moment, then exhibiting increasing frequency, and then
leveling off in the case of successful borrowing or gradually declining again in the
case of unsuccessful borrowing. The immediate, steep decline that can be
observed here for the absolute is not consistent with this pattern. Rather, it is
indicative of the natural tendency of the Indo-European languages to lose their
absolutes over time.
I have presented two line graphs in Figure 2, one including glosses and the other excluding
glosses, mainly because Timofeeva’s glosses, which I included, had an extremely high
translational rate of absolutes as absolutes. This had an important influence on the overall
outlook of the graph. Note, though, that the main trend remains the same either way.
5
TOTAL
Early Old
Late Old
Early
RESULTS
English
English
Middle
normalized
normalized
English
normalized
absolute
(100,000)
absolute
(100,000)
absolute
(100,000)
13
12.6
59
17.9
6
7.9
250
109.1
106
84.9
\
\
263
79.1
165
36.3
6
7.9
3
6.7
118
263.4
\
\
266
70.5
283
56.7
6
7.9
Native
texts
(103,442;
329,242;
76,023)
Translated
texts
(229,131;
124,876)
SUBTOTAL
(332,573;
454,118;
76,023)
Glosses
(44,746;
44,801)
TOTAL
(377,319;
498,919;
76,023)
Table 3: Absolute and normalized frequencies of absolutes in Old and Early
Middle English
Figure 2: Normalized frequency of absolutes in Old and Early Middle English
A second factor that pleads against borrowing is the consistent use of the dative
case in Old English. As Figure 3 indicates, there was less case variation among
absolutes in Early Old English than in Late Old English, a pattern which is not
consistent with the idea of borrowing. Indeed, if the absolute was borrowed from
Latin, one would have expected more case variation in earlier than in later stages
of the language, because translators would have been somewhat hesitant at first
which case to use in the Old English equivalent of the Latin absolute. In other
words, the fact that translators did not have an exact equivalent for the ablative
case, the case used with the most frequent, primary Latin absolute, would
initially have caused doubt. This doubt might have been further increased
because they did possess the equivalent case for the secondary absolutes of
Latin, the nominative and accusative absolutes, which were, however, far less
frequent in the Latin sources and hence less inviting as a model. It thus seems
natural to assume that case choice would only have become consistent later on
(for instance, when scholars would have come to an agreement in this matter).
The graph in Figure 3, however, does not show this typical borrowing pattern;
rather, it is indicative of a natural (innate) evolution of a language characterized
by a single primary absolute at first and secondary absolutes later on (cf. supra) a development Old English shares with other Germanic/Indo-European
languages (cf. supra).
Figure 3: Case variation in Old English absolutes (absolute frequency)
On the other hand, scholars advocating borrowing (cf. section 4) take the
immediate consistent use of the dative precisely as an argument in favour of
borrowing (rather than against it), maintaining that the dative was the most
'self-evident' equivalent to the Latin ablative. Admittedly, after the dative and
instrumental cases merged in Old English, the Old English dative case shared
many of its usages with the Latin ablative. But, if the Old English dative is seen as
the most natural analogue of the Latin ablative, one might wonder why in Gothic,
it was the dative absolute as well (and not the genitive) which was modelled on
the Greek genitive absolute. Indeed, Gothic possessed a genitive case, so if the
construction was borrowed from Greek and case equivalence was sought after
by the translators, the genitive would have been the expected case and not the
dative. The fact, then, that all Germanic daughter languages exhibiting the
absolute construction consistently use the dative case, regardless of whether
they are under influence of Latin or Greek, lends further credence to the view
that the dative case was inherited instead of borrowed.
What furthermore goes against the view that Old English absolutes
constitute a borrowed structure is that one cannot really speak of a true
'borrowing need' in Old English, and thus that any Old English absolute may
reasonably be claimed to have been of native Germanic origin. Indeed, in order
to translate Latin absolutes, Old English translators had a wide variety of native
syntactic means, other than absolutes, at their disposal. In the Old English
translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History main clauses, finite subordinate
clauses, prepositional phrases and conjunct participles are some of the most
frequently used equivalents of the Latin absolute.
Sometimes the argument of syntactic borrowing is defended with specific
reference to biblical translation. Underlying this contention is the idea that Old
English scholars considered bible translations to be of sacrosanct value and
therefore tried to be as faithful as possible to the source text. In this context the
borrowing of the absolute construction seems plausible, because it would allow
the translator to retain the word order of the Latin original, whereas the wide
variety of native syntactic means (cf. supra) would not. This argument is not
convincing either, because even in biblical translations the number of Old
English absolute equivalents of original Latin absolutes is low, as it stays well
below the 50% mark (cf. Figure 4). Note that the Old English Genesis translation
scores a remarkable zero instances. If the absolute was indeed borrowed for the
specific reason of being able to stay true to the source text, one would expect
translators to use this construction in almost every instance, not just once in a
while. What the domain of biblical translations shows again, then, is that there
was no true 'borrowing need'.
Figure 4: Absolutes translated as absolutes or otherwise in Old English biblical
translations
The very fact, then, that a scholar such as Ælfric did not translate a single
absolute from the Latin original into his, supposedly very faithful, biblical Genesis
translation (cf. Figure 4), while at the same time freely using absolutes without a
Latin counterpart in his 'native' work (e.g. 19) argues strongly in favour of their
native origin. In other words, the absolute could arguably be used too freely by
speakers of Old English to be explained as a case of rather unsuccessful syntactic
borrowing.
(19) bescor-n-um
shave-PST.PTCP-DAT.SG
feax-e ‘his hair being shaved off’
hair-DAT.SG
(Ælfric Homilies I, 32.457.184.6499)
Moreover, the degree of language contact between Old English and Latin was
probably not strong enough for writers to introduce typologically distant
structures (and thus harder to understand) into texts that were not meant for
scholars (Bauer 2000, 288-289). Only a very small group of intellectuals was
proficient in Latin at the time; therefore it is very unlikely that translators such
as Ælfric who specifically state that they want to write in the ‘language of the
people’6 should use a construction in their translations that the vast majority of
their audience would not understand. A foreign construction that can easily be
avoided by using other native means of translation simply has no place in
translations for commoners. Visser (1973, 1261) also supports this argument,
when he remarks that: "[It is improbable that] translations, which were
evidently in the first place, if not exclusively, meant for people who could not
read Latin, should use a language profusely sprinkled with constructions
unintelligible for their readers".
On the other hand, absolutes without a Latin counterpart are indeed
relatively infrequent in translated texts, but they certainly exist. The following
example (20) is one of those from my own research.
(20) In illo die exiens iesus de domu sedebat… (Matthew, 13.1)
festinauimus hunc sequentem librum sicuti omnipotentis dei gratia nobis dictauit interpretare.
Non garrula verbositate. Aut ignotis sermonibus. Sed puris et apertis verbis linguae huius gentis ‘I
have hastened to translate the following book as the grace of the almighty God dictated to us. Not
with loquacious wordiness or unknown kinds of speech, but in the pure and open words of the
language of this people’. (Ælfric, preface to the Catholic Homilies)
6
In
ill-o
di-e
on
that-ABL.SG day-ABL.SG
exi-ens
ies-us
leave-PRS.PTCP.NOM.SG
Jesus-
NOM.SG
de
dom-o
sede-ba-t
out of house-ABL.SG
sit-PST-3.SG
‘On that day, Jesus, leaving his house, sat down…’
On þam dæge þam hælende utgangendum of huse he sæt… (WSC, Matthew,
13.1)
On
þam
dæg-e
þam
on
that.DAT.SG. day-DAT.SG the-DAT.SG
hælend-e
savior-DAT.SG
utgang-end-um
of
hus-e
he
sæt
go out-PRS.PTCP-DAT.SG
of
house-DAT.SG
he.NOM.SG sit-
PST.3.SG
‘On that day, the savior going out of the house, he sat down…’
While the previous arguments were critical of the borrowing hypothesis, and in
that sense provided (indirect) evidence in favour of the 'Germanic origin'
hypothesis, the following arguments are meant to provide direct support for the
absolutes' Germanic origin. It has been pointed out by Indo-European scholars
that the absolute is first of all widely spread among earlier Indo-European
daughter languages (cf. Table 4); this provides support for the idea that the
construction was attested at least in Germanic and thus that it could have been
inherited by Old English in turn (Bauer 2000, Costello 1982, Holland 1986).
I (primary)
II (secondary)
(Indo-Iranian) Sanskrit
Locative
Genitive
(Indo-Iranian) Avestan
Locative
[Genitive (possibly)]
Genitive
Accusative
(with the exception of
the Gathas)
Greek
Nominative
Germanic
Dative
Prepositional phrase
Latin
Ablative
Accusative
Nominative
Tocharian
Genitive
Slavic
Dative
Gerund
Lithuanian
Dative
Gerund
Accusative
Armenian
Genitive
Ossetic
Not attested
Hittite (hypothetical)
Nominative
Table 4: Absolutes in Indo-European daughter languages (Bauer 2000, 285-286)
Participial constructions in general were not uncommon in Germanic either,
which makes it again more plausible for the absolute to have been present in the
language. Ab urbe condita constructions, for example, could be found (Bauer
2000, 289) in several Germanic languages. This is a construction in which a
participle is grammatically governed by a noun, whereas semantically the
meaning of the participle prevails. The textbook example from Latin that gave
the construction its nickname is (21).
(21) ab
from
urb-e
cond-i-t-a
city-ABL.SG
found-…- PST.PTCP-ABL.SG
from the founding of the city
If the construction was a conjunct participle, functioning as modifier, it would
have translated ‘from the city that was founded’ and this is the governing
relation that is expressed grammatically. Semantically however, the roles are
reversed, such that the only right translation is ‘from the founding of the city’.
In addition, no periods could be found in the attested literature in which
no Old English absolutes were attested. Indeed, as Visser (1973, 1261) remarks,
”[t]he absolute construction […] already occurs in the earliest part of the
originally native O.E. Chronicle: anno 560, Idan forðgefarenum”. This means that
the existence of the pre-borrowing stage which is presupposed by supporters of
the borrowing theory (i.e. that moment before borrowing during which the
construction did not yet exist in the language) cannot be adequately proven.
Finally, Bauer (2000, 279) claims that absolutes also occur in Germanic
languages and/or dialects that have not been in contact with Latin or Greek.
However, since she does not elaborate on this claim it is difficult to judge its
validity. Therefore, I restrict myself to mentioning that if true, this is a strong
additional argument for the native origin of the absolute.
6 Arguments specifically directed against ‘lexical borrowing’
In the previous section, arguments were presented against a borrowing account
of absolutes (be it syntactic or lexical borrowing), which at the same time
provided (indirect) evidence for the absolutes' Germanic origin. In this section, I
will focus on points of criticism that can be levelled against lexical borrowing in
particular.
On Timofeeva's (2010) lexical borrowing view, each Old English absolute
is borrowed individually as if it were a loan word and thus the absolute as a
construction type is not productive in Old English. This requires that for each Old
English absolute a frequent (or idiomatic; cf. footnote 3) Latin example needs to
be found. For instance, Timofeeva plausibly attributes cweþendum drihtne ‘the
Lord saying’ from the homily on the Nativity of St Paul by Ælfric to the influence
of the Latin source material, because phrases such as dicente Domino ‘The Lord
saying’ or loquente Deo ‘God speaking’ are incredibly frequent in Latin religious
texts (Timofeeva 2010, 78-79)7. However, it is not always the case that there is a
well-known and frequent Latin counterpart for each Old English absolute (cf.
Figure 5 and Table 5). An example of a non-idiomatic Latin source expression is
(22). The example is cited here with its Old English translation.
7
Even though this particular text was no real translation, this remains a reasonable claim.
Figure 5: Old English absolutes with and without frequent ‘idiomatic’ Latin
expressions as source
All periods (my data)
Absolute
Relative
Idiomatic
118
83.69 %
Non-idiomatic
23
16.31 %
Table 5: Percentage of frequent ‘idiomatic’ versus infrequent ‘non-idiomatic’
Latin source expressions
(22) renasc-ent-ibus
virgult-is
Pelagian-ae
revive-PRS.PTCP-ABL.PL twig-ABL.PL Pelagian-GEN.SG
GEN.SG
pest-is
heresy-
‘the twigs of Pelagian heresy again reviving’
sprytte-nd-um
þam
twig-um
sprout-PRS.PTCP-DAT.PL
that.DAT.PL twig-DAT.PL
ðæs
that.GEN.
SG
Pelagianisc-an
wol-es
Pelagian-GEN.SG
heresy-GEN.SG
‘the twigs of Pelagian heresy again sprouting’ (Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica
Index 1.21)
Sometimes, Timofeeva's requirement to provide a frequent Latin example for
each Old English absolute tends to result in rather far-fetched analyses. As such,
her account of the occurrence of bescornum feaxe ‘his hair being shaved off’ (cf.
supra 19) in Ælfric’s homily on the Decollation of St John the Baptist as triggered
by the participial phrase novacula rasum ‘shaved with a razor’ seems less
felicitous. First, the Latin example is not an absolute but a participium
coniunctum, which could have easily been translated by an exact Old English
equivalent, namely a conjunct participle. So to say that the Latin source in this
case incited the use of an absolute seems unlikely. Second, absolute phrases like
raso capite ‘the head having been shaved’, which could have been a likely source,
are by no means as frequent as the phrases dicente Domino or loquente Deo that
she cited as proof for the previous example8.
A final reason why it may be problematic to view the frequency of each
individual Latin source expression as the main requirement of the borrowing
process lies with expressions such as eo consule (12) and Hannibale vivo (13).
Indeed, it appears that, unlike the typical absolute constructions
(noun+participle), these noun+(pro)noun and noun+adjective constructions
were not borrowed into Old English. Still, it can be argued that the conditions in
which borrowing could take place were similar for the
noun+(pro)noun/adjective constructions and for the typical noun+participle
constructions: (i) with the dative, Old English had a case analogue for the Latin
ablative, the prototypical case for both types of absolute; (ii) the constructional
elements needed to form both constructions (nouns, pronouns, adjectives and
participles) were present in the basic language and (iii) the most frequently used
expressions of each type display about the same frequency in the Latin sources.
As such, despite the fact that initial borrowing conditions were similar for both
constructions, the participle absolute was borrowed whereas the type
A similar example of an unlikely analysis is Timofeeva’s proposal that Ælfric’s use of the
absolute construction geeendedum dagum þære freolstide ‘when the days of the festival were
ended’ in the homily on the Nativity of St Clement was triggered by the semantically similar
construction post actum solemnitatem ‘after the solemn rituals had been performed’ (Timofeeva
2010, 84). Even if Ælfric’s text had been an actual translation, it would already have been difficult
to accept that such a vague resemblance had an effect on the choice of translational method, but
the text is only freely based on a Latin original, which makes the proposed source even harder to
accept. The choice for a prepositional phrase with a possessive such as ‘after the performance of
the rituals’ would have been just as likely, probably even more likely, in this case.
8
noun+(pro)noun/adjective was not. I would like to suggest that this discrepancy
is much better explained if one argues the participle absolute was native to Old
English, whereas the double noun or noun plus adjective absolutes never were
(Mitchell 1985, 918).
A crucial trigger in Timofeeva's (2010) borrowing account is the process
of glossing. In interlinear glosses, which are usually word-for-word translations
that are not meant to be read independently from their source text, almost every
Latin absolute was translated as an Old English absolute. This resulted in a sort
of translational automatism: if a scholar while glossing came across a Latin
absolute, he would translate it automatically with a set Old English absolute
without even being very consciously aware of it. Nor would he be considering
whether other translational methods could perhaps be more clear or adequate in
a particular context. This practice would then have been adopted in regular
translations. At first, this seems to be a reasonable hypothesis, but the
faithfulness to the absolute constructions of the original in glosses is not always
as extreme as Timofeeva argues. Her account is based on two glosses: showing a
96.94% translational rate for absolutes (the Vespasian Psalter glosses and the
Regularis Concordia glosses9; cf. Figure 6). My investigation of two additional
glosses, the Lindisfarne and Rushworth glosses (cf. Figure 6) revealed that,
despite being Biblical texts, they were far less faithful to their Latin source than
Timofeeva’s glosses. This certainly makes Timofeeva's claim of a real
translational automatism less plausible.
One of the two glosses is not very reliable though, as the 100% translational rate of the
Vespasian Psalter was only based on three absolutes in the Latin original which were all of the
same type.
9
Figure 6: Absolutes translated as absolutes or otherwise in Old English glosses
Furthermore, if glosses do trigger the borrowing of absolutes, the number of
literal renderings in regular translations can be expected to gradually rise.
Indeed, if the practice of borrowing absolutes started in the glosses and only
gradually seeped through to actual translational practice, one would initially
expect to see a high number of absolutes in glosses and a low one in translations,
and only later on would the number of absolutes in translations gradually start
to rise under influence of the high rate of literal translations in glosses. What we
actually find in the combined data for translations though, is an immediate drop
in the normalized frequency of absolutes in translations from the earliest texts
onwards, which is not consistent with Timofeeva’s hypothesis (cf. Figure 7).
Figure 7: Normalized frequency (100,000) of absolutes in translations
Even for highly frequent Latin expressions encoded by the absolute, which have
an Old English dative absolute expression as their equivalent, a literal translation
with an absolute is neither a necessity nor a mechanical practice. In other words,
Timofeeva’s proposed translational automatism is questionable. This may be
illustrated by Timofeeva’s discussion of manuscript E of the Peterborough
Chronicle, which ranks among the native texts.
For the annal of the year 616 Timofeeva finds rixiendum Eadbaldum ‘in
Eadbald’s reign’; she explains this occurrence by the frequency in Latin texts of
the period of the form illo regnante or illo imperante ‘he reigning’ (Timofeeva
2010, 74). In the Old English translation of the first three books of the
Ecclesiastical History, I have often encountered the same construction (10 times)
but the translational automatism Timofeeva advocates and uses to explain the
occurrence of the expression in the Peterborough Chronicle seems absent in the
Ecclesiastical History. Indeed, it can be observed that the translational method
used in the main body of the text (6 instances) is always either a prepositional
phrase as in (23) or a subordinate adverbial clause as in (24).
(23) regna-nt-e
Ecgfrid-o
reign-PRS.PTCP-ABL.SG
Ecgfrith-ABL.SG
‘Ecgfrith reigning’
in
Ecgferþ-es
in
Ecgfrith-GEN.SG
riic-e
reign-DAT.SG
‘in Ecgfrith’s reign’ (Bede, 3.28)
(24) regna-nt-e
reign-PRS.PTCP-ABL.SG
Osuald-o
Oswald-ABL.SG
‘Oswald reigning’
þa
Oswald
cyning
wæs
when
Oswald.NOM.SG
king.NOM.SG
be.PST.3.SG
when Oswald was king’ (Bede, 2.20)
It is only in the index, which gives a short, one-sentence overview of the
content of all the chapters of all the books of the Ecclesiastical History, that we
encounter absolutes (e.g. 17, 4 instances). This is not surprising as in an index a
writer wants to be short and to the point, a requirement that is perfectly met by
the absolute construction. This gives the absolute in this particular environment
a primacy over other translational possibilities, which it does not have, or at least
less so, in the full text. In other words, it is not because this construction is a
common expression in Latin and because it has an Old English equivalent
available, that it is necessarily always translated as an absolute.
In addition, the examples above (23 and 24) have been taken from a real
translation whereas The Peterborough Chronicle discussed by Timofeeva has
merely used the Historia Ecclesiastica as its source of information and is in
essence a native work, in which an author would be more reluctant to adopt a
foreign construction. In view of this, one might rightly wonder whether a
frequent absolute expression in Latin such as illo regnante, which is not even
strong enough to enforce the use of an absolute at all times in a real translation,
is truly influential enough to have directly incited the occurrence of the absolute
in a native text.
7 Arguments in favour of borrowing/against Germanic origin
There are, of course, also arguments in favour of borrowing that make the claim
of a Germanic origin more problematic. First of all, absolutes without a Latin
counterpart are indeed relatively infrequent (cf. section 5) and the absolute
construction occurs much more often in translations than in native texts (Figure
8). And while absolutes are attested in native text material, these texts were
often written by scholars with a thorough knowledge of Latin, who used Latin
sources as an inspiration for their work. Consequently, it is nearly impossible to
find Old English texts that are truly free of Latin influence.
Figure 8: Absolute frequency of absolutes in native texts and translations
There are also a number of language-internal reasons for borrowing, although it
seems to me that they are too weak to have triggered the borrowing of absolutes
into Old English; as such, they might perhaps better be considered as reasons to
use an archaic, but native construction more often again.
First, Old English has no exact finite equivalent (in terms of a subordinate
adverbial clause) for the ablative absolute of attendant circumstance. This leads
to a higher number of literal translations (in terms of the non-finite absolute
construction) in this case (Timofeeva 2010, 53), although a non-literal
translation does not alter the meaning all that much.
The second, more subjective reason, is that the absolute in itself is a
rather vague construction, as its relation with the rest of the discourse is never
explicitly made clear. One might say that its function is yet undecided and that it
therefore admits of various possible interpretations (Matsunami 1966, 320). As
such, it is very tempting for translators to use the Old English absolute whenever
they are not quite sure how to interpret the absolute construction in the source
text. Indeed, by translating an absolute by the same construction in Old English
they do not need to make its meaning any more explicit than in the unclear
original. This reason for the use of the absolute in Old English translations plays
a significant role in the Old English version of Gregory’s Dialogues since this was
a text notorious for its long and intricate sentences and troublesome syntax
(Timofeeva 2008: Late Old English Idiom 228).
A third reason is of a more stylistic nature. As Visser (1973, 1264) points
out, the absolute may be used to make an utterance more compact or to
somewhat relieve the monotonous recurrence of co-ordinate and subordinate
patterns, which may explain why translators were tempted to follow their Latin
originals in certain places. An example I have given above is the comparatively
higher frequency of dative absolutes in the index of the Ecclesiastical History, an
environment in which statements are preferably short and to the point (cf.
section 6).
8 An alternative account: selective frequential copying
The alternative account that I would like to present for the absolute construction
can be captured by the notion ‘selective frequential copying’ which is part of
Johanson’s (2002) code-copying framework for language contact. What is
involved in selective frequential copying is that only the frequency of use of a
particular word or expression is borrowed and that material (phonological),
combinational and semantic properties remain unaffected.
Although this is a new way of explaining the occurrence of the absolute in
Old English, there are some scholars who have made assumptions in a similar
direction, notably Blatt (1957) and Matsunami (1966). Matsunami (1966, 346)
maintained that "Generally the use of the […] participle was declining in all the
Germanic dialects but […] the classical languages reinforced its functions"
(Matsunami 1966, 328). Blatt remarks something quite similar when he states
that "When an expression is common both to the classical and to one European
language or more, […] the agreement may be only partly due to classical
influence, namely when the expression involved is inspired by Latin (Greek)
usage without being quite contrary to the linguistic tradition of the European
language, e.g. extended use of the participle" (Blatt 1957, 35).
A prototypical example of selective frequential copying is that of Japanese kare
and kanojo. Before the Edo-period (ca.1600), Japanese usually avoided the use of
personal pronouns; however, it could already express them by using the forms of
the demonstrative pronoun: kare ‘he’ and kanojo ‘she’. This makes the personal
pronoun in Japanese a native but relatively infrequent grammatical item
(Robbeets 2009). When, in the 17th and 18th century, the Japanese established
commercial ties with the Dutch, this inevitably led to translational practices.
Given that Dutch is a language in which personal pronouns are extremely
common, the frequency of kare and kanojo in Japanese rose exponentially under
the influence of glossal interlinear translations of Dutch texts in which they were
used abundantly as the alternative for the Dutch personal pronouns. This is a
clear example of selective frequential copying as neither the phonological form,
nor the meaning or combinational properties of kare and kanojo changed and/or
were introduced in the language as a result of Dutch influence, but in that only its
frequency of use was affected10 (Robbeets 2009).
When applied then to the case of the Old English absolute, selective frequential
copying can be hypothesized to have worked in the following way: IndoEuropean had an absolute construction which was inherited by Old English
through the intermediate stage of Germanic. During this early stage of Old
English already, the absolute was on the brink of disappearing, which is a natural
development that can be observed in most of the Indo-European daughter
languages. In translations, though, the sheer frequency of the absolute
construction in Latin original texts made the Old English absolute more frequent
again, to such an extent that the absolute turned up once more in native Old
English texts, usually to a degree more or less proportionate to the author’s
familiarity with Latin. Finally, the decline of the absolute construction gradually
set in once more.
The reason why I have opted for an explanation of the Old English dative
absolute in terms of selective frequential copying is that it appears to combine
the most useful insights from the native Germanic as well as the borrowing
approach, while at the same time offering an answer to their most obvious
weaknesses. In this way, selective frequential copying can account for all the
observations made in the previous sections. The fact that selective frequential
It is important to note that this does not mean that kare and kanojo are always used in exactly
the same way as Dutch personal pronouns. The only aspect important for my argumentation is
that the frequency of kare and kanojo rose under the influence of Dutch, because they were,
regardless of their other possible uses, the elements used in translations as the equivalent of
Dutch personal pronouns.
10
copying retains the element of an ultimately Germanic, native origin explains the
use of absolutes in non-translated texts (Figure 1), the resolute choice in favour
of the dative case (Figure 3), the cline of the frequency of use (suddenly high, to
gradually start dropping again almost immediately) (Figure 2 and Table 3), the
lack of any translational automatism (Figures 4 & 6), the fact that absolutes may
occur in translations without a direct Latin counterpart in the source text (20),
and the fact that double noun absolutes and noun plus adjective absolutes do not
occur in Old English (section 6) . On the other hand, selective frequential copying
allows for the acknowledgement of Latin influence and also specifies the specific
kind of influence at work here. It explains the higher frequency of absolutes in
translations from Latin and in glosses, the slight rise in frequency between Early
and Late Old English native texts (Table 3) and the sudden increase in frequency
once translational practices started (Figure 8). Finally, it also offers a
justification for the ‘idiomatic’ nature of a large majority of the Old English
absolutes (Figure 5, Table 5).
9 Conclusion
In this article I have tried to provide a satisfactory account of the origin of the
absolute construction in Old and Early Middle English and the degree of Latin
influence on its presence. In order to do so I have conducted a corpus-based
analysis of native texts, translations and glosses for Early and Late Old English
and Early Middle English. In my discussion of these results I hope to have shown
that absolute participles in Old English need not be the problem area they have
often been treated as. Rather than defending either one of the two previous
solutions to its origin, namely native as handed down from Germanic, or
borrowed from Latin, I have tried to find a way to combine the valid arguments
of both accounts. In treating the absolute participle of Old English as a case of
selective frequential copying, I believe I have found such a way. Selective
frequential copying joins most Indo-Europeanists in their claim that the
existence of an absolute in Old English is quite natural, because participle
structures of any kind abound in Old English, and because the construction could
have been handed down from Indo-European through Germanic, as can be
observed from the reconstruction of the Germanic absolute. On the other hand,
this view also grants Latin its obvious claim of having affected the use of the
absolute in Old English. It is reasonable, then, to assume that the dative absolute
used to be a native construction in Old English, which had all but disappeared
from the language at the moment when translational practices from Latin caused
a sudden, albeit temporary, reversal of this trend owing to the sheer abundance
of absolutes in the source texts it provided.
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