Download is case a functional unit: latin genitive

On the Latin genitive. Is case a functional unit?1
When we want to describe case, we may take at least two different stances. We
could consider all the group of cases as a system of functional units comprising as
many elements as there are cases and where each element has a single value. It would
also be possible to list all of the uses of each case, insisting on their variety and
refusing to artificially reduce uses apparently so divergent and many-sided to a single
one. The former attitude is that of the linguist whose ambition is to understand facts
and to put the apparent multiplicity of data in a theoretical order. The latter one is that
of the grammarian who tries to describe usage faithfully and exhaustively. Both views
are quite legitimate: one submits to reason, the other to experience. But each of these
thought processes may be questionable in a way. The grammarian is indeed right to
criticize linguistic theory for failing in its attempts to account for a good number of
facts. As for the linguist, he is right to criticize grammarians’ lists of uses for lacking
logic and theoretical coherence. In fact, it would be interesting to combine both views
and add some logic to the theory of case, as linguists wish to do, while taking into
account all of the attested uses, as is scrupulously done by grammarians.
But what has made this praiseworthy compromise impossible, until then, perhaps
comes from the fact that a theory of case more or less implies, as is often said, that
each case is a minimal significant unit and must then correspond, in all of its uses, to a
single content (or signified). However can we be so sure that a morphemic analysis
based on the functioning of case endings and which makes the use of commutation,
could allow to establish that each case is really the expression (signifier) of a single
morpheme? This is not so obvious.
We have previously tried to show that if one accepts to distance oneself from
morphology, following Kuryłowicz (cf. Kuryłowicz, 1949 or 1973 and Kuryłowicz
1964, 179-197) and Jean Perrot (cf. Perrot, 1966), the first to try to theorize the very
functioning of cases, one is lead to consider cases as units below the level of the first
articulation. In other words it amounts to considering them as morphological units that
language uses alone or combined with other morphological units in order to compose
the expression of its morphemes (cf. Touratier, 1978 and 1979). This means: on the one
hand that cases are not themselves morphemes, and thus cannot correspond to a single
content; on the other, that the various uses of a single case can only be linguistically
This text is the translation of my paper “Le cas est-il une unité fonctionnelle?: Le génitif latin”, in :
DE VSV. Etudes de syntaxe latine offertes en hommage à Marius Lavency, 1995, Louvain-La-Neuve,
Peeters, Bibliothèque des Cahiers de Linguistique de Louvain, n° 70, 307-327. The paper has been
translated by Rachel Spiess, and read by Oriana Reid Collins.
1
-1-
classified and organized according to the morphemes whose expression the case
belongs to.
The Latin genitive is a perfect example to confirm this general hypothesis, insofar
as this case presents a great number of uses the diversity of which, as Jean Perrot says,
has always bothered Latinists, and insofar as linguists all the same tried to reduce these
various uses to a single one. It would thus be interesting to sum up these unitary
attempts, then to try to know whether the Latin genitive actually corresponds to distinct
functional units.
1. CONDITIONS FOR A UNITARY THEORY
To consider a case such as the genitive as a single functional unit, we must not
give a unitary definition after eliminating some uses under the pretext that they are
irrelevant. Kuryłowicz for instance thinks that the prepositional case is very different
from the free case. He believes that the accusative in extra urbem is not a functional
morpheme of accusative of object, but just a part of the morpheme with a discontinuous
content /extra…em/. He calls this ending “a sub-morpheme […] of the compound
morpheme” formed by the preposition and case endings (Kuryłowicz, 1949, 24). When
he describes the functions of the genitive he thus does not mention the genitive
governed by causa or gratia, which are admittedly old nouns in the ablative of manner,
but which, in the classical Latin no longer function as postponed prepositions.
Similarly, Benveniste does not recognize a genitive value in the so-called “genitive of
exclamation” such as:
di immortales; mercimoni lepidi (Plaut., Most., 912) “Good heavens! What an excellent
bargain!
For him, this is a “stylistic variant of the accusative” (Benveniste, 1966, 143),
corresponding to an imitation of the Greek. He disregards all of the uses of the
genitive, which de Groot calls “the irregular grammatical genitives”, such as the
genitive in:
uiuorum memini (Cic., fin. 5,3) “I remember the living”
eum te accusas auaritiae (Cic., Flacc., 38) “you accuse him of cupidity”
cupidus pecuniae (Cic., Verr. 1,8) “desirous of money”
or in:
honoris mei causa (Cic., Att., 11, 9, 2) “out of respect for me”.
It is true that these uses, as de Groot said, “do not belong, so to speak, to the
framework of Latin grammar, but to its periphery. They are important, howewer, in the
actual use of the language” (de Groot, 1956, 57) and a valid theory for the genitive
cannot ignore them. A valid theory must thus consider them as another system than that
of “the regular grammatical genitives” and consequently postulate that the Latin
-2-
genitive corresponds to at least two different functional units. In any event, suppressing
or disregarding some of the uses of the genitive amounts to admitting that there are real
genitives and false genitives, or that some genitives perform the function of genitive
and others do not. It thus amounts to implicitly recognizing that each element with a
genitive form does not represent a single morpheme since it is not always possible to
associate it with the same grammatical content.
Nor can the unity of various uses of case be proved when one merely establishes a
simple point of contact between the values of its uses. To really reduce these two
apparently different values to one, they must be considered as two contextual variants
of a single value. For instance, it is quite possible to consider the so-called genitive of
relation (cf. Ernout-Thomas, 1953, 267) in:
cetera in XII minuendi sumptus sunt (Cic., leg., 59) “ the other prescriptions of the XII
tables concern cuts in expenditure”
as a special case of the genitive of quality with the verb esse – Benveniste prefers to
call it, wrongly in our opinion, a “genitive of property” (adapted from Benveniste,
1966, 143) – the purpose value of this construction being due to the fact that the
attributive adjective of the noun phrase in the genitive of quality is a gerundive and
thus normally expresses obligation. But we do not see how the genitive of purpose in:
Britannicus Aegyptum proficiscur cognoscendae antiquitatis (Tac., ann., 2, 59, 1)
“Britannicus is leaving for Egypt in order to become familiar with antiquity”
might be reduced to the genitive in cetera minuendi sumptus sunt (as Benveniste
admits). They indeed have something in common: they both consist of the gerundive
and thus signify obligation or intention, but they are radically different since they have
nothing to do with a phrase in the genitive of quality with or without esse. If the
semantic proximity between two uses of a case is not enough to establish their unity,
the semantic identity itself is not enough when we postulate a “purely syntactic” value
(adapted from Benveniste, 1966, 147) for this case, as does Benveniste. After admitting
for instance that the genitive corresponds to the “transposition of a verb phrase into a
noun phrase” (adapted from Benveniste, 1966, 148) or more exactly to the reduction of
a sentence into a noun phrase (cf. Kuryłowicz, 1964, 183), we cannot rely on the sole
identity of meaning between the possessive genitive in:
aedes regis “the King’s house”
and the genitive of belonging in:
haec aedes regis est “this house is the king’s”
in order to reduce these two uses to a single one. In addition to this, the genitive of the
phrase regis est would have to be considered as the transposition of a sentence into a
-3-
noun phrase, which is obviously impossible. In brief to set up a unitary theory, we must
not implicitly change criteria and surreptitiously switch from a syntactic relationship to
a semantic relationship. If Benveniste is right to say that “the relationship set up
between aedes and regis remains unchanged when we switch from the determinative
phrase aedes regis to the declarative sentence haec aedes regis est” (adapted from
Benveniste, 1966, 145), we must see that it is indeed a semantic or referential
relationship, which is thus not at the same level as the “basic relationship” of the
genitive. The latter is, according to the very words of Benveniste, “of a purely syntactic
nature” (adapted from Benveniste, 1966, 147).
Nor do we establish the synchronic unity of the adnominal uses of the genitive, by
postulating a more or less analogical extension and making diachrony intervene more
or less explicitly. It is in fact only at the diachronic level that it is possible to
acknowledge that “once the schema of internominal determination ludus pueri is
formed” (adapted from Benveniste, 1966, 147) from the sentence puer ludit, the
language created from this pattern “first somnus pueri, then mos pueri and finally liber
pueri” (adapted from Benveniste, 1966, 147), which, for their part, do not correspond
to any transposition. At the synchronic level, such a description either means that the
genitive no longer corresponds to the transposition of a sentence to a noun phrase , or
that in addition to the genitive of transposition to a noun phrase a genitive case
appeared which does not correspond to such a transposition. The description of
Kuryłowicz presents the same difficulty, apparently without mixing up the diachronic
with the synchronic viewpoints, however. Kuryłowicz indeed ascribes to the IndoEuropean genitive the primary function of transposing the relationships between the
subject and the predicate of a sentence to a noun phrase: the genitive of occisio hostis
“the murder of the enemy” for instance corresponds to the subject of hostis occidit “the
enemy kills” when it is called subjective, and to the subject of hostis occiditur “the
enemy is killed” when it is called objective. He also ranks all the other adnominal uses
of the genitive among the secondary functions (see Kuryłowicz, 1964, 181) notably
mos pueri or liber pueri. But he carefully avoided mentioning what is common between
these secondary functions and the primary function and specifying the “fundamental
function” whose primary function and secondary functions of the genitive should,
according his very theory, be particular manifestations of a single phoneme*** (cf.
Touratier, 1978, 99). This basically amounts to acknowledging, in spite of the apparent
unifying terminology of primary function and secondary function, that there are two
separate and irreducible uses, and consequently two separate and irreducible values of
the adnominal genitive. As a result, the unitary thesis at the synchronic level falls apart,
since there are consequently two types of genitive at least, which may not be reduced to
one or the other.
One of the major difficulties of the Latin genitive consists, as Jacques Perret
recalls, “in recognizing the link of the adnominal use with all the other uses” (adapted
from Perret, 1965, 456-467). Even if diachrony specialists all tempted to consider that
-4-
the adnominal genitive had a secondary and late development, it seems difficult and
questionable to synchronically describe the adverbal genitive as an adnominal genitive
whose determined noun has been removed, just as Kuryłowicz believes. It is indeed
arbitrary and too ingenuous to consider that the genitive taken by verbs of memory is
the possessive phrase of an implied accusative of object and to explain memini uiuorum
as being the summary of
memini aliquid uiuirum “I remember something about the living”.
It is just as much specious to analyze the genitive of the charge as the reduction (cf.
Kuryłowicz, 1964, 186) of a phrase to the “instrumental” and to make eum accusas
auaritiae correspond to:
eum accusas crimine auaritiae “you accuse him of cupidity”.
Jacques Perret has already rightly showed how such explanations are quite
unsatisfactory and not explanatory (cf. Perret, 1965, 471- 472).
All of the critical observations we have made till then show that Kuryłowicz and
Benveniste are far from succeeding indescribing all of the uses of the Latin genitive as
special cases of a single syntactic value, even having resorted to a new and
questionable conception of syntax which, in a certain way, is related to that o f
generative and transformational grammar. Should we follow another path and try to
establish the unity of the genitive by ascribing it a value that is not syntactic but
semantic, which is bound to be abstract and “very extensive” (adapted from Perret,
1965, 473)? This is what Jacques Perret attempted to do, notably using Hjelmslev and
Brøndal as his authority. He proposed to define the genitive “as the case of lax
determination” (adapted from Perret, 1965, 477), as opposed to the accusative, which
would be the case of strict determination. This hypothesis allows us to understand the
fact that the genitive could be added to a noun or to an adjective, insofar as “the
relation of a noun to a noun is generally more lax than that which occurs between a
noun and a verb” (adapted from Perret, 1965, 474), and insofar as the determinations of
the adjective “are only accessory information added to quality” (adapted from Perret,
1965, 476) expressed by the adjective. The construction consisting of a noun plus a
possessive phrase in the genitive and that consisting of a noun plus an adjectival
complement in the genitive are indeed endocentric*** constructions, whereas one
consisting of a verb and a verb complement in the accusative is an exocentric***
construction. However, this hypothesis does not seem to suitable for explaining the
other uses of the genitive: we do not see how the relation between the complement and
the verb would be, semantically and syntactically, less close in uiuorum memini than
in:
Cinnam memini (Cic., Phil., 5, 17) “I remember Cinna”
-5-
or in :
totius Galliae potiri (Caes., Gall., 1, 3, 8) “to seize the whole of Gaul”
as in
urbem nostram potiri (Cic., Tusc., 1, 90) “to seize our capital”
or
totius Galliae imperio potiri (Caes., Gall., 1, 2, 2) “to take the command of the whole of
Gaul”
because the genitive and the accusative (as well as the ablative) of these constructions
seem to be allomorphs of a single functional morpheme of the complement of a verb.
Nor do we see how the genitive of exclamation in mercimoni lepidi would correspond
to a less restricted relation than the accusative of exclamation
nugas! (Plaut., Pers., 718) “songs!” ;
for the genitive of exclamation (as well as the accusative of exclamation) is perfectly
independent, unless we imply some introductory verbal or nominal morpheme. If we
agree to acknowledge that the genitive of the second verb complement in eum accusas
auaritiae presents a less close relation than that of the accusative of the object or of the
first verb complement of a verb, we wonder why the second complements of:
do uestem pauperi “I give a garment to a poor man”
anteponere neminem Catoni (Cic., Brut., 68) “to not prefer anybody to Caton”
uinclis, uerberibus, exsiliis, morte multare aliquem (Cic., de orat., 1, 194) to sentence
someone to prison, to blows, to exile, to death”
would not also occur in the genitive of the less close relation. Here we are faced with
the major difficulty arising from abstract unitary or extensive definitions of a case: they
are too broad to only take into account of uses of the case, and not precise enough to
distinguish the case from other cases. The notion of “less close relation” for instance
does not allow distinguishing the genitive from other less strict relations that cases such
as the dative or the ablative may refer to.
These very general semantic definitions of cases can also be criticized for not
really meaning anything, since they allow everything to be said. This is probably what
led Ernout and Thomas to dismiss the temptation to describe all of the uses of the
genitive by what is sometimes termed “genitive of relation”, namely the genitive of
“the thing involved”. As they say, we could indeed describe liber Petri “the book
relating to Peter” as me pudet tui “I am ashamed with respect to you”. “But this
possibility is above all theoretical” (adapted from Ernout and Thomas, 1953, 39) and
corresponds more to a purely theoretical view, which is rather superficial and
unwarranted than to a faithful image of the linguistic reality. We could gloss liber Petri
by “the book that relates to Peter”, but it is more in accordance with the practice of
Latin to admit that liber Petri means very precisely “book that belongs to Peter, book
-6-
possessed by Peter”, as Ernout and Thomas (1953, 39) rightly say. It is of course
possible to tack on to this precise definition of possession the general value of “relation
to”, but although such a general definition is not wrong, it cannot be considered it
adequate and exact. It is even less accurate because we generally explain the accusative
following the impersonal verb pudet as an accusative of relation, me pudet tui being
supposed to correspond to “as for me there is shame with respect to you”. We can thus
see that the general definition, which is inadequate for the genitive of liber Petri can be
applied to uses of the accusative and consequently does not, strictly speaking, explain
anything at all.
General semantic definitions also cannot be used to gloss all the uses of a case,
even in an unwarranted way. We could, for instance, apply the semantic definition
Jakobson proposed for the Russian genitive to the Latin genitive, as Jean Humbert did
with the Greek genitive, and note a limitation of the designate object and thus a
basically partitive value in the genitive. We could thus say for example that the
determined noun takes from the object designated by the genitive one of its qualities in
pulchritudo puellae “the girl’s beauty”, one of its words in uerbum oratoris “the
orator’s word”, one of its states in clades exercitus “the defeat of the army”, or one of
its treasures in fortuna fabri “the craftsman’s fortune” (cf. Jakobson, 1936, 258-289).
These glosses which may be “logically very tenable”, as Jacques Perret says (1965,
468), do seem to be rather far from what the language user thinks he understands
insofar as they semantically subordinate the head word to the noun in the genitive
which semantically qualifies the head word. But we can still wonder if they really make
sense in the case of fortuna fabri or in liber Petri, for the fortune is not a part of the
craftsman, and the book is not a part of Peter; fortune does not limit the craftsman any
more than the book limits Peter. As for the adverbal genitive after potior, seen
traditionally as a partitive genitive since “a supremacy is”, as Jean Humbert says, “a
kind of yoke which hangs over the nape of the neck of subjects”, which brings us to the
“notion of partial contact”. Such an explanation is not inconceivable, but it is somewhat
laughable when we encounter the example of Caesar Totius Galliae potiri, where the
presence of totius manifestly forbids any partitive interpretation of the adverbal
genitive.
If, at the end of this critical analysis, we must admit that all the attempts at a
unitary theory of the Latin genitive not only do not succeed in establishing the
synchronic unity of this case, but even suggest that the genitive corresponds to several
homonymous morphemes, then it appears possible to us to explain their failure by
postulating that cases are not morphemes in themselves but morphological units which
do not belong to the first articulation level, and that consequently they must not be
analysed, even implicitly, as first articulation units. If we want to find a single value in
all of the uses of the genitive, more or less semantic or more or less syntactic, we
implicitly admit that the genitive is a minimal significant unit. This would amount to
-7-
improperly classing a unit that is inferior to the first articulation level among first
articulation units.
2 MORPHEMES WITH THE GENITIVE
If, as we assume, cases are nothing more than classes of formal units which Latin
uses to form its grammatical morphemes, it is important to specify which various Latin
morphemes have a form which is partially or totally composed by the genitive.
a. THE ADNOMINAL GENITIVE
At the outset, it appears to us that it is possible to find a single functional
morpheme of nominal attribute in all the adnominal uses of the genitive. This is simply
because, in all its adnominal uses, the genitive not only indicates that a noun or a noun
phrase fulfils the function of an adjective or, as Tesnière says, is moved to the class of
the adjectives (cf. Tesnière, 1966, 438 ff), but that a noun or a noun phrase belongs to
the same functional paradigm as the so-called attributive adjective it commutes with. It
thus fulfils the function of a structural attributive adjective: in other terms, it is an
expansion of N (a simple or complex noun) and at the same time an immediate
constituent of (complex) N. We can obviously go on using the term “possessive
phrase” (in French grammar books “complément de nom”), on the condition that we are
aware that this traditional term refers to the syntactic function of attribute when the
latter is fulfilled by a noun or a NP.
This view is in accordance with Marius Lavency’s point of view that the genitive
is the mark of the function of “determinative complement”. He explicitly states:
“determinative complement genitive: the genitive marks the noun (the pronoun) that
functions as a possessive phrase and that can commute with meus, mea, meum / noster,
nostra, nostrum” (adapted form Lavency, 1985, 154, § 229). Perhaps we could
reproach this wording for only allowing the commutation with the so-called
“possessive adjectives”, which Marius Lavency prefers to distinguish from qualifying
adjectives and calls “referential adjectives” (cf. Lavency, 1985, 69, §113). As for us,
we would prefer to say following Tesnière that the possessive phrase can be substituted
for any attributive adjective; Tesnière expressly says that “nothing structurally
distinguishes the phrase le livre de Pierre (“Peter’s book”) from the phrase le livre
rouge (“the red book”). In both cases, the subordinate plays the same role of
predicative adjective to the word book” (adapted from Tesnière, 1966, 364). But our
generalization is not at all incompatible with the very wording of Marius Lavency, if
we acknowledge that the alleged Latin possessive adjectives do not belong to the
paradigm of the supposed “anaphoric” adjective is and of the supposed “demonstrative”
adjectives hic, iste and ille. They do not syntactically correspond to the French mon
-8-
(“my”) in mon livre (“my book”) but to the French mien (“mine”) in un livre mien (“a
book of mine”) as shows their compatibility in Latin with the “demonstrative” or
“interrogative” adjectives :
Quamdiu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet (Cic., cat. 1, 1) “How long will your fury (=
this fury of yours) dupe us?”
Quae mea culpa tuam […] mentem uertit? (Ov., meta. 11, 421) “What fault (of mine)
did I commit to make you, change your mind?”
The alleged possessive adjectives would, under these conditions, be authentic
qualifying adjectives and real attributive adjectives.
Semantic interpretations of the genitive which correspond to the sole syntactic
relation of possessive vary according to the meaning of the syntactically related noun
and according to the meaning of the utterance where the noun phrase formed with these
nouns occurs. When the semantics of the “support”*** of the attributive adjective is
derived from or related to a verbal or predicative notion, the semantic relation between
the two nouns corresponds to that which would occur between the corresponding
logical verb or predicate and its first “actant” (“argument”) or its subject. In this way,
the semantic relation between the two constituents in aduentus consulis “the consul’s
arrival” or in altitudo montis “the height of the mountain” is the same as that occurring
between the two constituents in consul aduenit “the consul arrives” or in mons (est)
altus “the mountain is high”. And when the two nouns could correspond to two distinct
sentences such as occisio hostis, which may be semantically equivalent to hostis occidit
“the enemy kills” as well as to hostis occiditur “the enemy is killed”, the context where
the noun phrase occurs which automatically ascribes one of the semantic interpretations
to the syntactic relation of attribute. Besides, aduentus consulis may take several
semantic interpretations from the temporal point of view, insofar as it may correspond,
semantically, either to consul aduenit “the consul is arriving” or to consul adueniet “the
consul will arrive” or to consul aduēnit “the consul arrived”.
When the “support” of the attribute has no verbal or predicative semantics, the
semantic relation between two syntactically related nouns depends on referential
data and sociocultural data corresponding to the meaning of these nouns. Thus a
noun denoting an object or an animal modified by a noun denoting a human being
will correspond to a semantic relation of possession as in liber Petri or in aedes
regis. However, a proper noun determined by a another proper noun will mean
“family ties or family belonging”, as Thomas & Ernout note (1953, 41): “for
instance Palinurus Phaedromi “Phaedromus’s (slave) Palinurus”, Hectoris
Andromache “Hector’s (wife) Andromache”, Cornelia Gracchorum “the Gracchi’s
(mother) Cornelia”. Only the knowledge of the extralinguistic context allows us to
correctly and precisely interpret these adnominal adjectives. However it is possible
that, in a given society, the referents of a noun denoting an object determined by a
proper noun are related to each other in various ways. In this case, the context
-9-
where the noun phrase occurs allows us to accurately interpret the genitive and to
know whether, for instance, statua Myronis “Myro’s statue”, means “the statue
that belongs to Myro” or “the statue made by Myro” or even “the statue
representing Myro”. The major kinds of referential relations have been noted by
grammarians, who generally give them specific names: “possessive genitive”,
“genitive of relations”, “genetivus auctoris”, etc. But they have not been able to
make a list of all the referential relations that can correspond to an adnominal
genitive, for this would require a classification of the entire Roman world. This is
why it is not possible to make genitives as simple as arbor horti “the tree of the
garden”, or ferae siluarum “the wildcat of the forest” fall into one their various
categories, since these genitives could not be considered as possessive genitives,
strictly speaking. In fact, these specific terms are only semantic impacts, or rather
glosses that say more than what the functional morpheme whose genitive is the
form really means. Marius Lavency is right to say that the phrase Serapionis liber
means “the book defined in reference to Serapio” (Lavency, 1985, 154, §229).
Only the context and knowledge of the situation thus designated allow us to
specify if “the book is written, owned, lent, bought, quoted by Serapio” (Lavency,
1985, 154, §229).
We should admit, as de Groot does, that the genitive of quality in expressions such
as
homo magnae eloquentiae “a man of great eloquence”,
amphora praeclari operis “an amphora of remarkable toil”
is different from the adnominal genitives we have just discussed about and that de
Groot terms “proper genitives”. However, it appears to us that it is not, for the only
particularity of these constructions is the semantics of the phrase in the genitive, which
contains a noun of quality and a noun that can correspond to a quality which, moreover,
is always emphasized by the presence of an adjective. As a consequence, the NP in the
said genitive of quality is, as Marius Lavency rightly observes, “commutable with a
qualifying adjective” (Lavency, 1985, 156 §232), which, for him, would distinguish it
somewhat from a simple possessive phrase since he does not consider meus a
qualifying adjective.
When the NP that expresses qualification refers to a measure such as in amphora
trium pedum “an amphora of three feet” or a price such as in amphora minimi preti “a
low-price amphora”, the alleged genitive of quality becomes what grammarians call a
genitive of evaluation or a genitive of price. But if we take a closer look at this, we can
note that the designation of genitive of quality (and thus of measure and of price) seems
inaccurate or vague. In fact it is not the genitive but the adjunct phrase which refers to
a quality, a measure or a price: the genitive morpheme contents itself with making the
phrase the attributive adjective of a noun. The semantic consequence of this syntactic
connection is indeed to ascribe the quality expressed by the attributive phrase to the
- 10 -
person that the noun refers to. But it does not at all make the genitive of quality (and
thus of measure and of price) a syntactic phenomenon which is different from the
proper genitive. What could encourage us to distinguish the genitive of quality (of
measure or of price) from the genitive “proper”, however, is the fact that the verb esse
should take genitives that seem to have the same semantic value, for instance:
amphora est praeclari operis (est trium pedum, est minimi preti) “the amphora is of great
toil” (of three feet, of a low-price)”.
Yet if we have good reason to suppose that the adnominal genitive is a grammatical
morpheme that only indicates the syntactic function of attribute, the sole problem these
adverbal genitives pose is that of knowing how they can receive the same semantic
interpretation as the adnominal genitives when they have a different syntactic function.
The explanation is in fact rather simple: the noun phrase in the genitive combined with
esse is the predicate of a subject noun phrase: it thus corresponds from the syntactic
point of view to what is said or rather to what concerns the subject (cf. Touratier, 1977,
37). And insofar as the copula has none of its own semantic content, the content of the
noun phrase in the genitive is given as a property of the subject. At the semantic level,
we thus inevitably have, between the noun phrase in the genitive and the subject noun
phrase, the assertion of the same semantic relation as between a noun phrase in the
genitive and its nominal “support” – a semantic relation of quality, of measure, or of
price that is not conveyed by the genitive, but that follows from the sole semantics of
the noun phrase in the genitive. Insofar as the identical value of the adverbal genitive
of quality and of the adnominal genitive of quality which may be explained
independently, there is no reason not to consider the casual ending of adnominal
genitive of quality as a simple indication of the syntactic function of attributive
adjective.
De Groot rightly considers that the partitive genitive in pars fluminis “part of the
river”, and pars equitum “part of the cavalry men” is just a “lexical variety of the
genitive proper” (De Groot, 1956, 42), since it is the head of the noun phrase and not
the genitive that expresses the notion of part. But he is wrong, according to us, to
distinguish the partitive genitive from the genitive he calls “genitive of the set of
persons” we have for instance in:
primus equitum “the set of horses”
plerique hominum “most of the men”
optimus ciuium “the best of the citizens”
maior fratrum “the older brother (of the two)”.
These constructions do have the characteristic feature of having as head of the group
“not a noun but a substantival pronoun adjective or numeral” (De Groot, 1956, 42).
However, this head expresses in itself a limited quantity (cf. primus, plerique, etc.) or a
set of persons defined by a restricted quantity since it expresses a certain degree of
- 11 -
comparison (cf. otpimus, maior, etc.). In addition, relative to this limited amount, the
persons the noun in the genitive refers to can only be, the set of reference that this
amount applies to and in which he thus makes a partition. Consequently the partitive
value is not conveyed by the genitive but by the semantics of the determinative unit i n
the so-called “genitive of quality”. Such is also Marius Lavency’s point of view; he
defines in the following terms the “partitive genitive: the genitive marks possessive
phrases or pronouns referring to amounts and designating an amount and commutable
with the pronouns nostri / nostrum “ (Lavency, 1985, 157, §233). It is indeed a
particular case of the possessive phrase.
According to grammarians, constructions such as the following ones fit into
partitive genitives:
quid noui? “what’s new?”, id temporis “at that time”, idem iuris “the same legislation”,
word for word, “the same thing as far as legislation”, ubi terrarum? “where in the
world?”.
Although, a positive interpretation is not inconceivable in the last example and in id
temporis, it is more difficult to justify it in the other two cases. In fact, it is
characteristic of these constructions to have a neuter pronoun and a place morpheme
(that is to say the amalgam of a pronoun and a place morpheme) as head. These have a
very precise grammatical value, which can be interrogative or demonstrative, for
instance, and a very vague lexical value, which, for place adverbs, corresponds to the
archisememe of all the place nouns. For neuter pronouns, it corresponds to the
archisememe of inanimate nouns. The noun or the nominalized adjective used as a
noun, being attributive because of the genitive, has a specific lexical content that is
inevitably more precise than that of head pronouns. Therefore, words in the genitive
cannot only particularize the semantics of the head pronoun from the lexical point of
view, as is well shown in translation of “en fait de” (“as far as”) used among others by
Ernout and Thomas:
“nihil praemii ‘nothing as far as award’, id muneris ‘that as far as present’ (= nihil
praemium, “no award”, id munus “this present”), idem iuris (Cic. Balb. 29) ‘the same
thing as far as legislation’, ‘the same legislation’” (Ernout & Thomas, 1953, 49).
As noted by Ernout and Thomas,the general meaning of these noun phrases formed by
a pronoun and a noun in the genitive (nihil praemii or id muneris) is then equivalent to
that of the noun phrases where an adjective corresponding to the pronoun is the
determiner of a noun meaning the same as the noun in the genitive (respectively nullum
praemium or id munus), because in both types of constructions, the noun that brings a
specific lexical content. There is indeed a semantic restriction between the two nouns
of nihil praemii as well as the nouns in pars fluminis or primus equitum. However in
the construction in question, the semantics of the noun in the genitive brings the
restriction, whereas in the other construction, the semantics of the leading word brings
it. The fact remains nonetheless that it is quite possible to explain all the pseudo -values
- 12 -
of the adnominal genitive by the semantic characteristics of one of the nouns or of both
nouns thus syntactically related. Consequently, there is reason to suppose that the
genitive indicates nothing more than this syntactic relation, which is an attributive
relation.
In these conditions, it does not seem truly necessary to distinguish two kinds of
adnominal genitives,, as we might be tempted to do by following Benveniste and
Kuryłowicz, namely “on the one hand the genitive complement of a nominal element
[…] in a phrase transposing in nominal terms a relation expressible by a verbal term
and a nominal complement. On the other hand, the genitive complement of a nominal
element of another kind […] excluding such a transposition” (adapted from Perrot,
1966, 220). They may not even be “two variants of functioning of a single function”, as
Jean Perrot says (1966, 220). Indeed if one corresponds to transformation and not the
other, it is at the level of the semantic interpretation and not at that of the syntactic
functioning, in both cases; this semantic interpretation exclusively depends on the
semantics of the nouns that form the syntactic unity involved. It is just the particular
semantics of the verbal derivative which characterizes the phrases in the objective or
subjective genitive, and that allows us to make their semantic interpretation correlate
with a transposition or a transformation which can be formulated in an explicit way.
Therefore, these constructions, far from being the somewhat prototypical model of the
adnominal genitive, as Kuryłowicz and Benveniste thought, are rather a particular case
of adnominal genitive, as suggested by Marius Lavency. In his terms, this is the case
when “the genitive marks the complement of a verbal noun” (adapted from Lavency,
1985, 155 §231).
b. THE ADVERBAL GENITIVE
When it occurs with a verb, the genitive represents another syntactic grammatical
morpheme which indicates the syntactic function of verb complement. In other terms, a
phrase is an immediate constituent of a verb phrase which is brought about by the
semantics of the verb of this verb phrase and which forms an exocentric construction
with this verb (cf. Touratier, 1977, 40-43).
In Latin, the genitive rarely marks the first verbal complement, which is
traditionally called the object. It only alternates with the accusative after potior and
verbs of remembering such as meminisse, obliuisci. It is futile to try to find a difference
in the meaning according to the case of the complement because the accusative and the
genitive appear to be two allomorphs or free variants. At the most, we can note
preferences in certain authors or in some literary styles. For instance, “Cicero employs
meminisse with the accusative particularly often (except for personal and reflexive
pronouns)” adapted from Kühner-Stegman, 1955, I, 471), whereas “obliuisci taking the
accusative only occurs in poetry” (adapted from Kühner-Stegman, 1955, I, 71). It can
also alternate with the ablative after potior and after abounding and depriving verbs
- 13 -
such as egere, carere “to lack”, without grammarians absolutely having to try to find a
difference in meaning between the two kinds of constructions.
The genitive more often marks a second verb complement, namely a verb
complement that is added to the object to form an exocentric phrase with the verb. We
need the semantic context of certain verb classes for a second verb complement to take
the genitive. After a verb of accusing or of condemning, the inanimate verb
complement that indicates grievance or penalty takes the genitive (which alternates
with the ablative) such as in:
eum te accusas auaritiae? (Cic., Flacc., 83) “do you accuse him of avarice?”
aliquem capitis damnare (cf. Caes., Civ. 3, 83, 3) “to sentence someone to death”.
After impersonal verbs of feeling, the animate or inanimate complement that indicate
that relative to which the feeling is experienced takes the genitive (which does not
alternate with the ablative) such as in
eorum nos […] miseret (Cic., Mil. 92) “and we pity them”.
The adverbal genitive which we traditionally call the genitive of estimation or genitive
of price is either verb complement:
Minoris constare “to be less expensive”
or more often a second verb complement:
uoluptatem […] uirtus minimi facit (Cic., fin. 2, 42) “virtue does not attach any price to
pleasure”
id quanti aestimabat tanti uendidit (Cic., Verr. 2, 4, 10) “he sold it at the price that he had
estimated” (adapted from G. Rabaud)
or else an adverbial:
si aedes uendiderit pluris multo quam se uenditurum putarit (Cic., off. 3, 54) “if he sells
the house at a higher price than he thought he would”.
We might think that the word in the genitive in these expressions is not analyzable, for
grammar books quite rightly consider complements of price as adverbs of quantity. But
insofar as it is also possible to find nouns in the genitive of price meaning a unit of
account or which can be considered as such as in:
Aliquem assis (flocci) facio “to not pay attention to someone that is to say to take
someone for a penny (for a bit of wool)”
it is preferable to see these genitives as a grammatical morpheme that does not indicate
a syntactic function but rather the fact that it belongs to the category of the adverbial
phrases of the constituent involved, since this constituent may fulfil the same function
of verb complement as well as that of adverbial. As for its so-called value of price, it
- 14 -
actually comes from its own quantitative meaning. It would thus be a different
morpheme from the genitive variant of the morpheme of verb complement, as noted
earlier.
De Groot considers that the genitive of
cuiusuis hominis est errare (Cic., Phil. 12,5) “to err is a feature of man”
est miserorum ut maliuolentes sint atque inuideant bonis (Plaut., Capt., 583) “it is up to
the needy to be wicked and jealous of good people”
which means “a typical quality of a class of persons” (de Groot, 1956, 44) and that he
thus terms the “genitive of the type of person”, is syntactically different from other
adverbal genitives. He considers this kind of genitive as a “conjunct of a copula”,
whereas the other adverbal genitives would be (first or second) “adjuncts to a verb”.
The distinction he makes between “adjunct” and “conjunct” is interesting but does not
seem to be properly used for a VP because, in spite of appearances, it does not easily
uphold the distinction dependency grammar makes between a “verb complement”
(“Vererganzung”) and “free indication” (“freie Angabe”) or adverbial. In fact, an
“adjunct” is defined as the omissible member of a word-group of which the other
member is not omissible” and “a conjunct is defined as a member of a group of which
neither of the members is omissible” (de Groot, 1956, 32). A phrase with “adjunct”
therefore seems to be an endocentric construction, and a phrase with “conjunct”, an
exocentric construction. However, if we want to base the distinction between verb
complements and adverbials on purely syntactic and structural foundations, we must
postulate that the verb and its verb complement(s) form a minimal verb phrase that is
an exocentric construction, whereas the adverbial combines with a verb phrase and not
a verb to form a verb phrase of a higher level which is an endocentric construction (cf.
Touratier, 1977, 40-43). This implies that adverbials are adjuncts to verb phrases and
verb complements are conjuncts of a verb. And as a consequence there cannot be any
structural difference between the adverbial genitives governed by verbs of reminding or
verbs of accusing, which, as noted earlier, are verb complements, and the supposed
conjunct of a copula, which, as Marius Lavency rightly says, marks “the noun
complement of esse ‘to belong to’, fieri ‘to become the property of’” (Lavency, 1985,
159, § 238). The sole syntactic particularities of the minimal verb phrase whose head is
a copula are that the verb lacking its own lexical content may receive a zero signifier or
not appear at all in Latin, depending on the way we describe the so-called nominal
sentences, but is not adapted to the intransitive use. This second functional particularity
explains why de Groot mistakenly, according to us, wants to give the constituents
which combine with the verb esse a different structural status from that of the other
verb complements, which are syntactically omitted when the verb of the VP is
“intransitivized”. The copula and not its complement is omissible, due to the fact that
the copula, unlike verbs with a precise lexical content, does not contain the central part
of the meaning of a copulative phrase.
- 15 -
Moreover, the values that grammar books claim to recognize in the different kinds
of complements of the copula in the genitive all seem to us to come from the very
semantics of the nominal lexemes that make up a copulative predicate and its subjects.
When the noun in the genitive denotes a human being, the predicate means the
belonging to this person, if the subject refers to an object or to a non-human being (hic
liber est Petri “this book is Peter’s”), and the characterization of this individual, if the
subject has a propositional content, that is to say expresses a state or an action
(cuiussuis hominis est errare). But if the subject refers to another human being, the
predicate will inevitably correspond to a social relationship that may exist between the
two people involved: for instance, an amorous liking of a man for a girl (in this
instance, a girl who has left him) as in
cuius esse diceris? (Catull. 8, 17) “whom will you be told the mistress of?”
or a relationship to a political party when it is question of politics as in:
Iam me Pompei totum esse scis (Cic., epist. 2, 13, 2) “and you know I belong heart and
soul to Pompey (that I am a resolute supporter of Pompey)”.
When the phrase in the genitive refers to a quality, which generally underlines the
presence of an attributive adjective, the predicate asserts this quality about the subject
(amphora est praeclari operis). This quality is a sought-after purpose when the noun in
the genitive is modified by a verbal adjective (cetera in XII minuendi sumptus sunt). It
is a price when the noun of the noun phrase in the genitive refers to a monetary unit as
in:
quod est mille denarium (Cic., off., 3, 92) “which is worth one thousand denarii”.
Finally, when the constituent in the genitive is an adverb indicating a quantity, the
predicate corresponds to an assessment of the subject:
ager nunc multo pluris est (Cic., Q. Rosc. 33) “the field is now worth much more”.
Consequently, there is no reason to attribute any lexical value to all of these uses of the
genitive: the scientific meanings grammarians thought they had identified in fact
belong to the semantic environment in which the genitive occurs. It is therefore
unnecessary to consider the genitive of complements of the verb esse as something else
than the form of a grammatical morpheme of an immediate constituent of a minimal
verb phrase.
And what about the adverbal uses of the genitive that de Groot studies separately?
He calls them “genitive of purpose” in the following:
Germanicus Aegyptum proficiscur cognoscendae antiquitatis (Tac., ann. 2, 59,1)
“Germanicus is leaving for Egypt in order to learn about antiquity”
- 16 -
and of “genitive of locality” in:
hiemare Dyrrachii, Apolloniae omnibusque oppidis maritimis constituerat (Caes., civ. 3,
5, 2) “He had decided to go into his winter quarters in Dyrrachium, Appolonye and in all
the other towns of the coast”.
De Groot admits that these two uses of the genitive have the same function of “adjunct
to a verb”, which in our terminology would correspond to the function of adverbial
(“circonstant”). Such is indeed the case of the phrase in the genitive cognoscendae
antiquitatis which is not a complement of the verb proficiscitur but an expansion of the
verb phrase Aegyptum proficiscitur. In these conditions, is the genitive the signifier of a
morpheme that would indicate this function of adverbial and would even specify that it
is an adverbial meaning a “purpose”? This is probably what de Groot would think,
since he classifies this genitive under the special heading of “genitive of purpose”. At
any rate, it is what some handbooks or schoolbooks editors expressly postulate, when
they assert that the genitive alone is then a kind of variant of the preposition causa
followed by the genitive (cf. E. Jacob, 1909, Tacite Annales, Paris, Hachette, 9 th ed., 7
note 19). This is also Marius Lavency’s position: he says that “in the genitive one finds
a noun with a verbal adjective in a phrase which performs the function of adverbial
complement of purpose” (adapted from Lavency, 1985, 160 §239), speaking precisely
about our example from Tacitus. As for us, we prefer to say that in such a context, the
genitive is only a functional morpheme that makes the constituent it modifies an
adverbial phrase. It would thus be the same grammatical morpheme as that which we
identified above in the alleged genitive of price.
As for the analysis of the “genitive of locality”, it poses a preliminary problem,
namely that of knowing if it is indeed a genitive. Traditionally, Latin grammar books
consider this genitive as a separate case they call “locative”. But de Groot is right to
think that this comes from confusion between synchrony and diachrony. “There is not
the slightest doubt that, in Republican Latin, there is no locative case in the sense in
which we speak of nominative, vocative, genitive, etc case” (de Groot, 1956, 49) unlike
what happens in declensions Sanskrit and Russian. Indeed, in Latin, this so-called case
only concerns proper nouns of the first and second declensions and does not have any
special inflexional form. It is true that there are several words in classical Latin such as
domi “at home”, rure “in the country”, Carthagini “in Carthage” where the alleged
locative is different from the genitive domus, ruris, Carthaginis. But it is possible to
think that here we are faced with “semi-adverbial forms of nouns in -i” (de Groot,
1956, 49) comparable to such temporal adverbs as heri “yesterday”, uesperi “in the
evening”. Moreover, Latin probably tended to class these adverbial forms with more or
less irregular genitives. Otherwise one could not understand why it is possible to find
in Plautus and even in Cicero expressions such as domi meae, domi nostrae, etc., with
an attributive adjective unquestionably in the genitive (cf. Kühner-Stegmann, 1955, 1,
482). If the alleged locative is thus well and truly a genuine genitive, at the synchronic
- 17 -
level of classical Latin, it is obvious that it does not represent the morpheme of a verb
complement of nor even the morpheme of an adverbial phrase as in the adverbal
genitives mentioned above. Rather, it must be one of the allomorphs of the morpheme
of locality “in”, whose ordinary morph is /in… Abl./ (as noted in Touratier, 1978, 106).
Thus it does not exclusively act as a syntactic function of adverbial, as de Groot seems
to think when he speaks of “adjunct to a verb” (de Groot, 1956, 47). It can in fact be a
complement of the copula such as in:
Si neque hic neque Acherunti sum, ubi sum? (Plaut., Merc. 606) “if I am neither on the
earth nor in Acheruns, where can I be?”.
Our analysis is closely akin to Marius Lavency’s view, who speaks of “locativegenitive”, specifying that “it is a variant of in + Abl., the constituents in the genitive
being indeed commutable with ibi” (adapted from Lavency, 1985, 160, §241).
It is quite possible to view the famous animi, which is sometimes replaced or
accompanied with mentis as shown the coordination of:
Satin tu es sanus mentis aut animi tui (Plaut., Trin. 454) “are you sufficiently sound in
mind or heart?”,
as a somewhat fossilized use of this locative genitive. And since the morpheme of place
is not intrinsically related to a particular syntactic function not even that of adverbial,
as is usually thought, it is not surprising to find this genitive after something other than
a verb and specially after an adjective such as in:
At non infelix animi Phoenissa […] soluitur in somnos (Verg., Aen. 4, 529-530) “but the
wretched-hearted Phoenician cannot sleep”.
Perhaps is it actually possible to link the same morpheme /in…Abl./ with the
genitive we considered above as simply an “adverbializer”, because this morpheme can
have the notional value of “about, concerning” which might explain how a phrase in
the genitive such as that of Germanicus Aegyptum proficiscitur cognoscendae
antiquitatis (Tac. ann. 2, 59, 1) has the role of an adverbial phrase. But such an
identification would hardly be acceptable in the case of the so-called genitive of price.
c. GENITIVE WITH ADJECTIVES
The genitive animi, when combined with an adjective, seems to us to be different
from the genitive we find after adjectives as in:
auidus laudis “greedy of praise”, memor uestri “thinking of you”, iuris peritus “skilled in
law”, rationis expers “devoid of sense”…
Indeed, the genitive has no value in these constructions. It only indicates the
grammatical function of adjectival complement, that is to say the fact that a noun or a
noun phrase acts as an expansion to an adjective and forms an endocentric construction
with it, which is a complex adjective in some sense.
- 18 -
It is probably the same morpheme of adjectival complement that we find after
present participles:
Meum uirum […] rata siccum, […] continentem, amantem uxoris maxume (Plaut., Asin.
856-857)) “having found my husband sober, temperate, extremely in love with his wife”.
The alleged participle is in fact a genuine adjective and its construction with the
genitive distinguishes it from a genuinely verbal participle which has a complement in
the Accusative. With this difference in grammatical nature between the adjective
participle and the verbal participle, grammar books often associate a difference in
meaning: “with present participles, the genitive of relation denotes a permanent quality:
miles patiens frigoris ‘a soldier who can endure cold weather’, whereas the accusative
denotes a momentary action: miles patiens frigus ‘a soldier who is enduring the cold
weather’” (adapted from Ernout-Thomas, 1953, 57). But this distinction seems rather
unwarranted when we note that a participle with the accusative has the permanent
meaning that a participle should have with the genitive, for instance in:
Te natura excelsum quemdan […] et humana despicientem genuit (Cic., Tusc. 2, 11)
“nature gave you at birth a certain high and contemptuous mindedness of human things”
or that a participle with the genitive presents the momentary meaning that a participle
should take when followed by the accusative:
hunc anulum ab tui cupienti huic detuli (Plaut., Mil. 1049) “this ring coming form a
woman who sighs for you, I gave it to him”.
d. ITS OTHER USES
If we wanted at all costs to claim the unity of all these uses of the genitive, we
might say that the genitive, which marks a possessive phrase, a complement of a verb,
an adverbial phrase, and an adjectival complement is the signifier of a single
grammatical morpheme of a complement. But this kind of unity would be more verbal
than real, for the word complement then corresponds to a rather vague semantic content
or to a grammatical content that is imprecise and not unified. If indeed we precisely
define syntactic functions in purely syntactic terms, that is to say structural or
constructional, the genitive corresponds to at least four syntactic functions, namely
expansion of the noun (or attributive adjective), expansion of a noun phrase (or
complement of a verb), expansion of a verb phrase (or adverbial), and expansion of an
adjective. These four different syntactic functions can be represented as follows:
N
N
VP
NP
V
VP
NP
VP
- 19 -
Adj
AdvP
Adj
NP
attribute
complt of a verb
adverbial
complt of adj.
The second of the four is an exocentric relation, and the other three are endocentric
relations.
Even if we acknowledge this fictitious and vague unity that traditional grammar
does not acknowledge, for it links all of these uses with two distinct cases, namely the
genitive and the locative, the genitive would nevertheless have two values: that of
alleged complement and that of on “adverbializer”, the so-called genitive of price not
being either a verb complement or an adverbial. Moreover, one could not explain the
other uses of the genitive, because the genitive can still be – although rarely– a
morpheme of exclamatory predication such as in the construction:
di immortales, mercimoni lepidi! (Plaut., Most. 912) “God heavens! What a excellent
bargain!”.
It can also only be an element of the discontinuous signifier of a morpheme such as in
the prepositional genitives of
quam multa enim quae nostra causa numquam faceremus, facimus causa amicorum! (Cic.,
Lael. 57) “so many things we do for our friends which we would never do for ourselves”
effecerant ut instar muri hae saepes munimenta praeberent (Caes., Gall. 2, 17, 4) “they
saw to it that these hedges, like a wall, acted as ramparts”
illius ergo uenimus (Verg., Aen. 670-671) “it is for him that we came”
et crurum tenus a mento palearia pendent (Verg., georg. 3, 53) “and whalebone hang from
the chin to the legs”.
These constructions that theoreticians eliminate or disregard, and that grammarians
readily relegate to the margin have the serious advantage of showing clearly and
unquestionably that a case such as the Latin genitive may not be in itself a morpheme,
but only a part of the signifier of a morpheme. This leads us to more accurately
interpret the genitive alone in uses where we are tempted to find a given morpheme:
this case is in fact not the morpheme in question, as we could be tempted to say a little
quickly; it is only the signifier of this morpheme. Such a theoretical description also
makes it possible to understand that another case could correspond to the same signifier
and could represent the same morpheme, both cases then being only allomorphs of the
said morpheme. Also, a single case could represent several distinct morphemes which
do not form a small system of values as a whole, homonymy being one of the normal
consequences of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign.
We can conclude by saying that a case such as the genitive is not in itself a
functional unit and that, without counting the morphemes with a discontinuous signifier
where the genitive occurs (namely gratia, causa, instar, ergo and tenus followed by the
genitive), this case is the signifier of five distinct grammatical morphemes in Latin,
- 20 -
namely a morpheme of possessive phrase, a morpheme of verb complement, a
morpheme of an adjectival complement, a morpheme of an adverbial phrase and a
morpheme of an exclamatory predication, as well as a morpheme with a lexical content,
the relational morpheme “in”. This multiplicity may seem shocking and rather
unsatisfactory, but it corresponds to a methodical analysis of the real functioning of the
genitive and to a precise and non*** reductionist definition of the different values this
functioning brings to the fore. It would be not rash to add that it often corresponds very
closely with Marius Lavency’s grammar book. Our theory underlines one of the book’s
great merits: although the book may appear rather traditional and academic, it is in fact
based on a much more evocative and profound linguistic thinking than it may seem
from a first reading.
Generally speaking, this description of the Latin genitive clearly confirms the
hypothesis that previously allowed us to describe the Latin ablative as well as the
accusative of various living or dead Indo-European languages: that is that cases are not
in themselves functional or significant units. It also confirms part of Charles Fillmore’s
case theory, namely that what tradition calls case is in no way the (deep) “syntacticosemantic relation” (cf. Fillmore, 1968, 21), which this linguist intends to reserve the
term case, but simply a set of formal “expressions” he prefers to denote case forms and
that we have called morphological unit, which is the set of morphological segments in
complementary distribution.
bibliographical references
BENVENISTE E., 1961, “Pour l’analyse des fonctions casuelles : le génitif latin”, in :
Lingua, 11, 10-18, again printed in : Problèmes de linguistique générale, 1966,
Paris, Gallimard, 140-148.
ERNOUT A. & THOMAS Fr., 1953, (2d. ed), Syntaxe latine, Paris, Klincksieck, 3961.
FILLMORE Ch. J., 1968, “The case for case”, in: Emmon Bach & Robert T. Harms
(eds.), Universals in Linguistic Theory, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1-88.
de GROOT A. W., 1956, “Classification of the uses of a case illustrated on the genitive
in Latin”, in: Lingua, 6, 8-66.
HUMBERT J., 1954, (2d. ed.), Syntaxe grecque, Paris, Klincksieck, 267-283.
JAKOBSON R., 1936, “Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre”, in T.C.L.P., 6, 240-288.
KÜHNER R. & STEGMANN C., 1955, (3th. ed.), Ausfürliche Grammatik der
lateinischen Sprache, Leverkusen, Gottschalksche Verlagsbuchhandlung, I, 412487.
KURYŁOWICZ J., 1949, “Le problème du classement des cas”, again printed in:
Esquisses linguistiques I, 1973, (2d. ed.), München, Fink, 131-150.
―
, 1964, The Inflexional Categories or Indo-European, Heidelberg, Winter,
179-197.
- 21 -
LAVENCY M., 1985, VSVS. Grammaire latine, Description du latin classique en vue
de la lecture des auteurs, Paris-Gembloux, Duculot, 154-160.
PERRET J., 1965, “La signification du génitif adnominal”, in : R.E.L., 43, 466-482.
PERROT J., 1966, “Le fonctionnement du système des cas en latin”, in : R.Ph., 40,
217-227.
TOURATIER Ch., 1977, “Comment définir les fonctions syntaxiques”, in : B.S.L.,
72.1, 27-54.
― , 1978, “Quelques principes pour l’étude des cas”, in : Langages, 50, 98-116.
― , 1979, “Accusatif et analyse en morphèmes”, in : B.S.L., 74.1, 43-92.
- 22 -