Third declension adjectives > adverbs in "-ē"?

Michael Zwingli

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I ask this, because I was recently told by a friend, that iūgē is a proper adverbial form from iūgis, and I did not think that third declension adjectives could yeild adverbs in "-ē ", but rather, took "-iter" only. I have only been familiar with iūgiter as an adverb.
 
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Bitmap

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I assume that the e is short and that it is an accusative neuter singular used as an adverb. That can happen with some 3rd declension adjectives. Cf. the adverbs facile or dulce (coexisting with faciliter and dulciter).
 

Serenus

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The entire PHI Latin Texts corpus of Classical Latin does not include a single instance of iūge. The Lewis & Short dictionary correctly identify it as post-classical, citing a poem of Prudentius. I don't know whether the poem is in any sort of classical-style metre to help us know the length of the -e.

Audite cuncti, clamo longe ac praedico,
emitto uocem de catasta celsior:
Christus paternae gloriae splendor, deus,
rerum creator, noster idem particeps
spondet salutem perpetem credentibus,

animae salutem, sola quae non occidit,
sed iuge durans dispares casus subit:
aut luce fulget aut tenebris mergitur,
Christum secuta patris intrat gloriam,
disiuncta Christo mancipatur tartaro.

(Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, Liber Peristephanon, Carmen X: Sancti Romani Martyris Contra Gentiles Dicta)

The PHI corpus gives six instances of iūgiter in classical texts though. It also gives ten more in its few Late Latin texts, but mind you that it only has very, very few of those, so the word is surely a lot more common than that in Late Latin. I just checked Jerome's Vulgate Bible (not on PHI), and that has nine instances of iūge and 27 of iūgiter.
 

Michael Zwingli

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Thanks much! Bitmap has demonstrated the etymology, and Serenus has provided the provenance for this. Surely a later Latin development, perhaps made in order to maintain the meter in verse??? I found myself wondering if the other examples cited by Bitmap, adverbial dulce and facile (I didn't even think of these examples of what I would call "irregular" third declension adverbs), have a similar post-classical origin. Also, the rationale behind using an accusative neuter singular for an adverbial form appears obscure to me, unless such was done in simple mimicry of the appearance of adverbs derived from first and second declension adjectives.

The PHI Latin Texts website seems a very useful resource, one of which I have been ignorant until now (thanks, Serenus!)
 
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Bitmap

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I found myself wondering if the other examples cited by Bitmap, adverbial dulce and facile (I didn't even think of these examples of what I would call "irregular" third declension adverbs), have a similar post-classical origin.
More like pre-classical I suppose. It's called a "frozen accusative" in German ... I don't know what exactly it is called in English.

Words like tantum or solum ("only") follow the same routine.
 

Serenus

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Thanks much! Bitmap has demonstrated the etymology, and Serenus has provided the provenance for this. Surely a later Latin development, perhaps made in order to maintain the meter in verse??? I found myself wondering if the other examples cited by Bitmap, adverbial dulce and facile (I didn't even think of these examples of what I would call "irregular" third declension adverbs), have a similar post-classical origin. Also, the rationale behind using an accusative neuter singular for an adverbial form appears obscure to me, unless such was done in simple mimicry of the appearance of adverbs derived from first and second declension adjectives.
Both dulce and facile are perfectly Classical adverbs. I'm not quite sure if they're both pre-classical as well (found in Plautus, Cato or a fragment of that era), maybe they are. EDIT: Actually, Lewis & Short do give two examples of facile in Plautus.

The application of this adverbial -e to fit a meter is unlikely, as Jerome also uses it (his translation of the Bible is not metrical in the classical sense). I'd venture it's an analogy of adverbs like facile and dulce. It is possible that making it resemble the -ē of 1st/2nd declension adverbs also played a role, especially as -e and -ē would be pronounced the same by the Late Latin period (in the natural spoken dialects, that is). Notice how Classical Latin also uses a neuter-gender accusative in comparative adverbs: minus 'less', acrius 'more/rather bitterly, more/rather violently'.
 
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Michael Zwingli

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Both dulce and facile are perfectly Classical adverbs...Notice how Classical Latin also uses a neuter-gender accusative in comparative adverbs: minus 'less', acrius 'more/rather bitterly, more/rather violently'.
An apt point, certainly.
The application of this adverbial -e to fit a meter is unlikely, as Jerome also uses it (his translation of the Bible is not metrical in the classical sense). I'd venture it's an analogy of adverbs like facile and dulce.
I am left wondering why facile and dulce would appear in the face of faciliter and dulciter...might it possibly be that dulce and facile are the older forms, examples of "frozen accusatives", maybe from Proto-Italic, and already existed when -iter became universal for the third declension? That is a question for a better historian than myself, and, indeed, might represent a question that's impossible to answer (I am great at asking such weird questions).

I've searched online, and haven't been able to find anything on the "frozen accusative" apart from discussions within doctoral theses, and other academic papers (I'm surprised that Wikipedia doesn't have an article). It seems to have influenced grammar in Indo-European, Semitic, and Altaic and Tungusic Languages, anyway. I will have to check out my public library, when it reopens after the Covid-19 scare, to see if there is any reading material there.
 
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Bitmap

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I am left wondering why facile and dulce would appear in the face of faciliter and dulciter...might it possibly be that dulce and facile are the older forms, examples of "frozen accusatives", maybe from Proto-Italic, and already existed when -iter became universal for the third declension? That is a question for a better historian than myself, and, indeed, might represent a question that's impossible to answer (I am great at asking such weird questions).
My guess is that the "frozen accusatives" predate the -(i)ter endings because you also have that phenomenon in Ancient Greek. This kind of word formation for adverbs was probably not productive anymore by classical times (and the example of iuge above may be more of a poetical license), but a great deal of these forms was retained. I mentioned tantum and solum above, Serenus mentioned the comparative of adverbs. There are many more examples.

I don't know the exact development, though. Usually, @Hemo Rusticus knows such stuff. Maybe also @Issacus Divus

I've searched online, and haven't been able to find anything on the "frozen accusative" apart from discussions within doctoral theses, and other academic papers (I'm surprised that Wikipedia doesn't have an article). It seems to have influenced grammar in Indo-European, Semitic, and Altaic and Tungusic Languages, anyway. I will have to check out my public library, when it reopens after the Covid-19 scare, to see if there is any reading material there.
As I said, I have no real idea about the terminology in English, there. The German term is "erstarrter Akkusativ", and I simply created a direct translation.
 

Serenus

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I am left wondering why facile and dulce would appear in the face of faciliter and dulciter...might it possibly be that dulce and facile are the older forms, examples of "frozen accusatives", maybe from Proto-Italic, and already existed when -iter became universal for the third declension? That is a question for a better historian than myself, and, indeed, might represent a question that's impossible to answer (I am great at asking such weird questions).
You may want to check out the section Derivation of Adverbs in Allen and Greenough's grammar. They give more examples of accusatives as adverbs (saepe, quid 'why', dēmum, partim, statim, saltem, aliās, forās, iam, the -dum adverbs dūdum and nōndum). There's also ablatives used as adverbs there (falsō, forte...). Many of these need some awareness of historical grammar to be recognized though.

I've searched online, and haven't been able to find anything on the "frozen accusative" apart from discussions within doctoral theses, and other academic papers (I'm surprised that Wikipedia doesn't have an article). It seems to have influenced grammar in Indo-European, Semitic, and Altaic and Tungusic Languages, anyway. I will have to check out my public library, when it reopens after the Covid-19 scare, to see if there is any reading material there.
Personally I'm surprised you found anything with that literally translated term at all. :-D

In Latin American Spanish and German, adjectives are very often used in the masculine singular form (which is basically the basic neutral form in Spanish) or the bare uninflected form (i.e. the predicative form, in German) to serve as adverbs. It has always been a "marked", non-default way of forming adverbs in Latin and even many Romance languages today though. English is also generally allergic to this strategy, with infrequent exceptions like the adverb "fast", which I guess partly explains your surprise.
 

Issacus Divus

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An apt point, certainly.

I am left wondering why facile and dulce would appear in the face of faciliter and dulciter...might it possibly be that dulce and facile are the older forms, examples of "frozen accusatives", maybe from Proto-Italic, and already existed when -iter became universal for the third declension? That is a question for a better historian than myself, and, indeed, might represent a question that's impossible to answer (I am great at asking such weird questions).
I'd say it was from the ablative. It's worth mentioning that -iter itself is probably pretty old though, from the Italic *-teros, from PIE *-teros, with the alternative *-eros; I don't see a reason why it would have to be younger.



"BTW, there are ‘contrastive’ adjectives, which are much like comparatives (and in some IE descendants overlap with them in function exactly), but emphasize contrast or distance. This can be roughly translated as “in contrast [to…]”, but it's best to get a feel for them individually. In fact the most common words with the contrastive formation are not semantically contrastive at all, but connote some information about location in space or time. (The result can also be used as an adverb.) And the suffix for contrastives is *-tero- (n.m.s. *-teros)."



The mention of the accusative by Ser also is worthwhile; seeing as there is enough evidence to support Proto Indo-European being able to form adverbs and absolutes with it.
 
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Michael Zwingli

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You all have provided a lot of food for thought. I have gotten more traction in online searches using "adverbial accusative", rather than "frozen accusative". Apparently, the use of a noun or adjective in the accusative case as an adverb has been widespread in Semitic linguistic history, and was well accepted in Ancient Greek. As pertains to Latin, Allen and Geenough seem to include adverbial accusatives under the heading of "idiomatic accusatives". It seems equally apparent to me, that throughout IE linguistic history, all the various cases of nouns and adjectives have been used adverbially: the nominative (Latin versus, etc.), the genitive (in Old and Middle English), the dative (in Latin: ethical datives and datives of reference, purpose and possessor), the accusative (our subject here, used under different circumstances than adverbial datives), the ablative (in Latin and elsewhere). In Latin, then, nouns and adjectives in four of the six cases have been used adverbially under differentiating circumstances. I guess all of this seems strange because it defies the agglutinative process, and the principles controlling the various uses of such "case-adverbials" are unclear to me. Seeking to understand all of these differences and the underlying rationales seems like it will take me some time. I feel a bit like I am at the end of the high board, looking down into the deep end of the linguistic history pool, and I have to decide whether or not to jump... "yikes!"
 
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Bitmap

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the dative (in Latin: ethical datives and datives of reference, purpose and possessor)
These aren't adverbials.

You can, however, make the case that the genetivus pretii is an adverbial use of the genitive in Latin.

I guess all of this seems strange because it defies the agglutinative process, and the principles controlling the various uses of such "case-adverbials" are unclear to me.
None of that seems really strange. All of the examples discussed here are pretty simple examples of grammaticalisation as far as I can see.
 

Pacifica

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I don't know if a dative is ever technically called an adverbial, that's why I said "kind of", yet datives do feel somewhat adverbial to me, because they're closely associated with the verb, in a manner not so different from prepositional phrases or (in the case of datives of purpose) purpose clauses (you would agree that prepositional phrases and purpose clauses are adverbial, wouldn't you?). Compare mihi multi libri sunt and in cubiculo meo multi libri sunt or auxilio venerunt and ut auxiliarentur venerunt.
 

Serenus

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It seems equally apparent to me, that throughout IE linguistic history, all the various cases of nouns and adjectives have been used adverbially: the nominative (Latin versus, etc.), the genitive (in Old and Middle English), the dative (in Latin: ethical datives and datives of reference, purpose and possessor), the accusative (our subject here, used under different circumstances than adverbial datives), the ablative (in Latin and elsewhere).
The genitive of price, mentioned above, is pretty much another adverbial (magnī meā interest 'I'm interested in it a lot'; rūmōrēs ūnīus aestimēmus assis 'let's value the rumours at a penny').

Like Bitmap and Pacifica I wonder whether those datives should be considered adverbials. They seem much closer to some kind of indirect object to me semantically, just slightly more indirect, especially to the extent that ethical datives and datives of reference/separation express a benefit or loss/harm (datives of purpose and possession tend to be more benefit/loss-neutral and more clearly adverbial, I think, like in Pacifica's examples indeed). I guess it depends on how you define "adverbials" beyond the basic place/manner/time/reason/concessive/conditional (and final clause) uses.

But I want to note languages sometimes have in-between categories of this sort: I was told recently that Ojibwe has marking for something in between a transitive voice and an applicative voice, marking some kind of not-quite-core but not-quite-adverbial roles that have been raised to direct object status. You can also find many textbooks on syntax that mention the location prepositional phrase of English "to put" is an indirect object ("to put a book on the shelf"), due to its mandatory presence.



By the way, Standard Arabic has a few seemingly-genitive adverbials, e.g. أمس ʔamsi 'yesterday' (although here the bare -i ending in a free word is weird). There are also similar seemingly-nominative location adverbials in -u, e.g. تحت taħtu 'below', which have been argued to be nominatives-turned-adverbials or alternatively a fossilized locative case ending (who knows?).

You may also want to look into the use of adjectives to express manner (specifically the state/condition of noun entities) in Latin and other IE languages where English would use an adverb or an adverbial subclause. "She said sadly" can be maesta dīxit or trīstis dīxit, with nominative feminine adjectives used in an adverbial-ish way. "Gods, breathe supporting [our ships]!" can be "Dī, spīrāte secundī!", nominative plural. Famously, the genitive adjective modifying genitive proper noun "Jūnō" in "..., saevae memorem Jūnōnis ob īram" --is Juno always harsh/violent/cruel, or does Aeneas have to deal with a temporary rage of hers? If it's temporary, is it not an adverbial of the manner of her state? "..., due to the memory-laden wrath of Juno as she raged".

English does this kind of thing sometimes: "We arrived at the town completely tired" (also a nominative adjective in Latin: dēfessī ad oppidum advēnimus), "I painted the wall white" (even if this approximates a classic causative, cf. "I made the wall white").
 
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