Ablatives are to Latin grammar what black holes are to space: they suck in all matter and energy.
The ablative
case … is a kind of catchall. You can do almost anything with the ablative
case.
The ablative
case has been called the “junk case” by students over the years.
The ablative
case is sometimes called the “everything case”, since it seems to do a bit of,
well, everything.
All of these
light-hearted but nonetheless unhelpful online introductions certainly
emphasise that the ablative case has many uses. However, it isn’t a question of
the ablative doing all the jobs that other cases don’t want to do, it isn’t
“catching all”, nor does it do a bit of, well, everything.
We need to be more
specific.
The uses of the
ablative case can almost exclusively be found under the umbrella term adverbial.
[1] [i] At six
o’clock John was waiting [ii] at the railway station:
[i] “at six
o’clock” is an adverbial phrase; it gives additional information
pertaining to when the action was performed i.e. it refers to circumstances
(< La. circumstāns: standing around).
[ii] “at the
railway station” is also an adverbial phrase giving more details as to where
the action was performed.
Even though
English uses “at” to express both ideas, those two ideas i.e. time and place are
expressed differently in Latin.
[3] A little boy,
who was standing [i] with his mother, hit John [ii] with a stone.
[i] “with his
mother”; this adverbial phrase again explains circumstances i.e. who the little
boy was with when he performed the action
[ii] “with a
stone”; this time – even though the same word “with” is used – the phrase gives
details as to what object the boy used to perform the action
Similarly, both of
those i.e. with whom and with what (object) are expressed differently in Latin.
We call all of
these adverbial and most often adverbial phrases because they are
constructed from two or more words that are not in themselves adverbs but, when
combined, perform an adverbial function:
with: preposition
+ mother: noun > He was waiting with his mother = adverbial phrase
Latin, too, uses
adverbial phrases with prepositions but it can also use its case system without
a preposition to express an idea which, in English, needs more than one word
e.g. nocte │ at night
Those examples - at
the station, at six o’clock, with his mother, with a stone – are all
expressed in Latin using the ablative case some of which use a preposition and
some of which do not.
The grammar books
consistently use a series of terms that specifically describe the type of
ablative being used; when reading the language, it is not essential to know
these terms because the meaning is generally clear without needing to analyse
what that use is. Nevertheless, those terms will come up again and again in any
discussion about grammar and so, step-by-step, we’ll review all the different
uses. Every ablative use has come up in the posts and has been referred to –
mostly briefly – at each stage. Therefore, the following posts are simply going
to give a summary of each one together with a few examples as
illustration.
The very
important point to note when operating at this level of Latin is that there
is not 100% consistency in a literature that spans centuries. What is given in
these posts are the main features of the ablative and the main ways in which
those features are expressed. There will be exceptions and different
possibilities but it is far better to have an overview rather than become
embroiled in fine detail.
