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 plausibility of each of those accounts on the basis of my personal corpus

1 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.

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) Ð as 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 he ðenc-en-de

this.DEM.ACC.PL indeed-ADV after 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 in lytl-um scip-e

embark-PRS.PTCP-ACC.SG he-ACC.SG 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; (8-

9)) 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

lfric's Lives of SaintsӔ 100,193 words

lfric's Homilies SupplementalӔ 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

lfric's Epilogue to JudgesӔ 965 words

lfric's Letter to Sigewaerd ZӔ 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.

(17) ill-o regna-nt-e

he-ABL.SG rule-PRS.PTCP-ABL.SG

2 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.

‘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 fac-t-o

this-ABL.SG do-PST.PTCP-ABL.SG

‘this done’

Điss-um ge-don-e

this-DAT.SG 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

English texts. As Figure 1 shows, the absolute frequency of absolutes in native

4 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.

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.

TOTAL

RESULTS

Early Old

English

Late Old

English

Early

Middle

5 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.

absolute

normalized

(100,000) absolute

normalized

(100,000)

English

absolute

normalized

(100,000)

Native

texts

(103,442;

329,242;

76,023)

13 12.6 59 17.9 6 7.9

Translate

d texts

(229,131;

124,876)

250 109.1 106 84.9 \ \

SUBTOTAL

(332,573;

454,118;

76,023)

263 79.1 165 36.3 6 7.9

Glosses

(44,746;

44,801)

3 6.7 118 263.4 \ \

TOTAL

(377,319;

498,919;

76,023)

266 70.5 283 56.7 6 7.9

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 feax-e ‘his hair being shaved off’

shave-PST.PTCP-DAT.SG 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)

In ill-o di-e exi-ens ies-us

on that-ABL.SG day-ABL.SG leave-PRS.PTCP.NOM.SG Jesus-

6 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)

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 hælend-e

on that.DAT.SG. day-DAT.SG the-DAT.SG 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

(with the exception of

the Gathas)

Locative [Genitive (possibly)]

Greek Genitive Accusative

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 urb-e cond-i-t-a

from 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 pest-is

revive-PRS.PTCP-ABL.PL twig-ABL.PL Pelagian-GEN.SG heresy-

GEN.SG ‘the twigs of Pelagian heresy again reviving’

sprytte-nd-um þam twig-um ðæs

sprout-PRS.PTCP-DAT.PL that.DAT.PL twig-DAT.PL 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 noun+

(pro)noun/adjective was not. I would like to suggest that this discrepancy is 8 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.

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.

Figure 6: Absolutes translated as absolutes or otherwise in Old English glosses

9 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.

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 riic-e

in Ecgfrith-GEN.SG reign-DAT.SG

‘in Ecgfrith’s reign’ (Bede, 3.28)

(24) regna-nt-e Osuald-o

reign-PRS.PTCP-ABL.SG 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: Indo-

European had an absolute construction which was inherited by Old English

through the intermediate stage of Germanic. During this early stage of Old

10 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.

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

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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