Dativus absolutus
The dative absolutus is an absolute sentence construction in Old Church Slavonic and East Baltic , which corresponds to the Latin ablative absolutus .
In Old Church Slavonic one uses a conjugated short form of the active participles , in East Baltic the non-inflectable quasi- participle is used nowadays . In contrast to Latin, a verb form must always appear in the semi-essential phrase.
Examples
- Lit .: Laikui bėgant Jonas viską užmiršo. "In the course of time, Jan has forgotten everything" (literally: "Time is running ...")
- Lett .: man nezinams "without my [knowing]" (literally: "not knowing")
- AKS: И абье молитвѭ сътворьшу ѥму съниде огнь съ небесе "And no sooner had he said a prayer than fire came from heaven"
In Old Church Slavonic some absolute dative constructions have solidified into fixed idioms, e.g. B. поздѣбывъши “when it got late”, вечеру бывъшу “when it got evening”, вечеръ сѭщу “for the night”. In the latter example, the agent is exceptionally not in the dative.
This construction can be paraphrased through coordinated subordinate clauses or noun phrases.