Re: Adverbials in the Acc Neut Sing

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Oct 03 1998 - 18:09:11 EDT


At 1:48 PM -0500 10/3/98, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>While I was pondering the function of TI in Acts 15:10 I began to speculate
>about why a number of adjectives and pronouns in the accusative neuter
>singular function as adverbs in their context.
>
>Is there some history behind this phenomenon? Do Sanskrit and other languages
>of this family show a similar pattern?
>
>Is this adverbial function considered part of the functional domain of the
>accusative? If so how do we account for it being primarily manifest in the
>Neuter?

It was ever so, as you could readily ascertain, I believe, by doing a word
search for neuter adjectives in the text of Homer and seeing how many of
them are functioning as adverbs. I recollect Joshua Whatmough asserting
apodictically that the accusative is "the adverbial case par excellence." I
think this is also the reason that the absolute of an impersonal verb, e.g.
EXON from EXESTI, is always in the neuter.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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