I am wondering which cases govern inclusion of the preposition with nouns in the ablative. I can only think of one situation which recommends this: when the ablative form of the noun, in the absence of diacritical marks, is identical to another case form of the noun (for instance, abstract nouns in -ia, where the ablative -iā is identical to the nominative -ia if the macron is not used), but I am sure that there are more formal instances, and I am wondering what they might be.
When is a preposition required with nouns in the ablative?
- Thread starter Michael Zwingli
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When the preposition is constructed with the ablative.
Ablatives of means, ablative absolutes, ablatives of quality, ablatives of comparison and ablatives of time at and within which (I think I've got most of them but I could be forgetting something) typically don't take prepositions. Other sorts of ablatives — those denoting accompaniment or lack thereof ("with" or "without"), location ("in"), separation ("from" or "out of") and other things that typically involve prepositions in English — usually take prepositions in Latin too.
Now, the above is a generalization and there are exceptions and particulars.
Now, the above is a generalization and there are exceptions and particulars.
As far as I'm aware this is not a thing. First-declension nouns are just as likely to have abl. without prepositions as any other declension, and it's clear from the context.
But, means is always indicated by a preposition in English: "by", "through", or even more overtly, the prepositional phrase "by means of". In addition, I have just read that the ablative of agent, which would seem to be very closely related to means, is always accompanied by ā/ab. I'm curious: why does means go without the preposition, and does it ever represent one of the exceptions that you noted?
Yes, now I understand. I was misreading your answer a bit. Thank you for the clarification.
Agent and means are definitely similar, but in most cases there's a very clear distinction. Means is the thing you use to do something, and agent is the person who does it. In a sentence like Sychaeus magna cum crudelitate a Pygmalione ferro interficitur, the 3 ablative phrases are clearly doing different things in the sentence.
There's a couple instances where they can become harder to distinguish, like "haec eadem noctu excubitoribus ac firmis praesidiis tenebantur" (from Caesar), where excubitoribus is an ablative of means even though it's technically a personal agent, but those are rare and in that circumstance I think it's fairly intuitive why Caesar would conceive of them as a means of holding whatever haec refers to rather than the agent that held them.
There's a couple instances where they can become harder to distinguish, like "haec eadem noctu excubitoribus ac firmis praesidiis tenebantur" (from Caesar), where excubitoribus is an ablative of means even though it's technically a personal agent, but those are rare and in that circumstance I think it's fairly intuitive why Caesar would conceive of them as a means of holding whatever haec refers to rather than the agent that held them.
Maybe I worded things a tad confusingly. Sorry about that.
Haha, that's certainly understandable, given the number of questions that you answer on here!
I read somewhere that the ablative is like "the black hole" of Latin grammar, sucking in all kinds of purposes. Now I can see why!
Well, who was it that wrote that Caesar was easy?