Ablative Absolute

[Chagen]

I recently found this while digging through Latin textbooks. Felt like testing it out on Pazmat:


With the city having been captured, the soldiers departed.


urbe captā, mīlitēs discessērunt.
city-SG.ABL take-PERF_PASS_PCPL-F.SG.ABL, soldier-PL.NOM depart.PERF-3PL

Pazmat:
Pras atlasiges orelas, zdatvo saqegux.
through sieze-PCPL.PST.PASS city-GEN, soldier-PL away-go-3PL
(Lit. "Through the city's 'having-been-siezed', the soliders depart")

Pazmat is unlike Latin and English in that the second verb ("departed") doesn't need to conjugated for tense at all--since the first clause already tells you the tense through which participle is used.

Speaking of, Pazmat can do this in the future as well:

Pras atlasibor orelas, zdatvo saqegux

The only difference is that the first verb ("atlasja"--"to sieze") is used in the future passive participle form.

[Visinoid]

La cité/ville ayant été capturée, les soldats en partirent/en sont partis.
the.FEM city/city having been captured-FEM, the.PL soldiers from.it go.away-3P.HISTORIC.PAST/from.it be.3P gone.away-PL
/la si.te/vil ɛ.jɑ̃ e.te kap.ty.ʁe lɛ sɔl.da ɑ̃ paʁ.tiʁ/ ɑ̃ sɔ̃ paʁ.ti/

(My glossing is very shitty today. ¬¬)

[Salmoneus]

Just to help out: the English you give is ungrammatical. I think you were aiming at "with the city having been captured..."

However, a better English version of what you said would be:
The city captured, the soldiers left

That said, looking at it, wouldn't a more accurate translation be:
The city captured, the soldiers have left

[Chagen]

Yeah. I was trying to show off a literal translation from the Latin. That's how the textbook explained it (after that it then said "But this is better rendered 'The city captured...'").

[clawgrip]

The English is fine if you just drop "with", i.e. "The city having being captured, the soldiers departed."

[Xing]

Wakeu

One can have "the capture of the city" as an action nominal:

Ko lalaka miakare i penngo o ta keipakorai o ta mera (a era).
PFV PL.leave soldier LOC behind GEN capture GEN SG city (INSTR 3p)
"The soldiers departed after the(ir) capture of the city."

One can also treat "the city having been captured" as subordinate clause:

Ko lalaka miakare karu pakorai a era ta mera.
PFV PL.leave soldier after capture ERG 3p SG city
"The soldiers departed after they captured the city".

The latter rendering would emphasise that the soldiers' departure was a result or consequence of the capture (they had finished their mission, and therefore left).

[Iron]

Šutkietanin mâtazen šurir isak.
['ʃʊtki.ɛtɑnin mɑ:'tɑzɛn 'ʃʊrir 'ɪsɑk]
leave.PERF.3PL war-men.NOM capture.LOC city.GEN
"The soldiers departed in the city's capture."

[Lao Kou]

Géarthnuns

Chau gzhuvezhtölörsauv cha shtülansas, chük bdiksüp lé palenguf.
[tʃɔ 'gʒuvɛʒtø'løɾsɔv tʃa ʃty'lɑ̃sas, tʃyk 'bdɪksyp 'le palɛ'ŋuf]
DEF capture.PRESPRF.PASS.GER-LOC DEF city-GEN, DEF.PL soldier-NOM.PL AUX.PAST depart
The city having been captured, the soldiers departed.

Pragmatically speaking in Géarthnuns, this sounds like the city was captured by, say, the Visigoths, and these soldiers, whoever they might be, decided to hightail it outta Dodge -- a rather non-Roman, non-Klingon sentiment where I think we would, instead, naturally infer it was they who did the capturing (perhaps because, if I remember correctly, you can't use an ablative of means or agent here as it would totally gum up the proceedings).

For the more glorious, high-fiving departure of the soldiers upon their capturing of the city, I think I would go with:

Cha shtülansat chau gzhuvezhölörsauv rhükürauv, chük bdiksüp lé palenguf.
[tʃa ʃty'lɑ̃sat tʃɔ 'gʒuvɛʒø'løɾsɔv Xy'kyɾɔv, tʃyk 'bdɪksyp 'le palɛ'ŋuf]
DEF city-ACC DEF capture.PRESPRF.GER-LOC their-LOC, DEF.PL soldier-NOM.PL AUX.PAST depart
(Against the backdrop of) their having captured the city, the soldiers departed.

Back in the day, the Géarthnuns locative was to be used precisely to mirror Latin's ablative absolute (I think Sanskrit has a locative absolute?), but as you can see, the structure has hardly remained absolute.

[atman]

(I think Sanskrit has a locative absolute?)

Yes it does.

In general, many older/conservative Indo-Euro languages have absolute constructions using various cases.

So it doesn't come as a surprise that Atlantika has them too:

Polhor labonhor, strashote yegbenson.
/'poʎoɾ la'boɲoɾ stɾa'ʃɔte jeg'bɛnson/
city.LOC take.PTCP.LOC soldier.PL PAST-from-go.PAST-3PL
The city having been captured, the soldiers departed.

[Omzinesý]

Polhor labonhor, strashote yegbenson.
/'poʎoɾ la'boɲoɾ stɾa'ʃɔte jeg'bɛnson/
city.LOC take.PTCP.LOC soldier.PL PAST-from-go.PAST-3PL
The city having been captured, the soldiers departed.

So, how do you differentiate between that and 'In the captured city, the soldiers departed.'

[MrKrov]

Pretty sure your second sentence should have from, not in. Also, I don't see the problem. What other location would they be leaving from if not the city?

[atman]

Polhor labonhor, strashote yegbenson.
/'poʎoɾ la'boɲoɾ stɾa'ʃɔte jeg'bɛnson/
city.LOC take.PTCP.LOC soldier.PL PAST-from-go.PAST-3PL
The city having been captured, the soldiers departed.

So, how do you differentiate between that and 'In the captured city, the soldiers departed.'

Well first of all I have to correct the gloss : labonhor is correctly glossed as take.PTCP.PST.MEDIOPASS.LOC.

take.PTCP.LOC as above would be lavanor instead.

Then, if MrKrov is right and you meant 'From the captured city the soldiers departed' or in more natural English 'The soldiers departed from the captured city', then it wouldn't be an absolute construction any longer. One would just translate 'from the captured city' with the ablative (not absolute!) instead of the locative.

[Omzinesý]

Polhor labonhor, strashote yegbenson.
/'poʎoɾ la'boɲoɾ stɾa'ʃɔte jeg'bɛnson/
city.LOC take.PTCP.LOC soldier.PL PAST-from-go.PAST-3PL
The city having been captured, the soldiers departed.

So, how do you differentiate between that and 'In the captured city, the soldiers departed.'

Well first of all I have to correct the gloss : labonhor is correctly glossed as take.PTCP.PST.MEDIOPASS.LOC.

take.PTCP.LOC as above would be lavanor instead.

Then, if MrKrov is right and you meant 'From the captured city the soldiers departed' or in more natural English 'The soldiers departed from the captured city', then it wouldn't be an absolute construction any longer. One would just translate 'from the captured city' with the ablative (not absolute!) instead of the locative.

Because you glossed 'LOC', I wrote 'in' because that's what the locative normally means. I don't find it wrong tho say that the soldiers are IN the city and are leaving.
However, we can have a contenxt where both the locative interpretation and the absolute structure are correct.
The city having been captured, the soldiers burned all houses.
In the captured city, the soldiers burned all the houses.

So how does the absolute structure differ from a normal noun phrase in the locative with a participle as an attribute? Or is it just ambiguous?

[atman]

The city having been captured, the soldiers burned all houses.
In the captured city, the soldiers burned all the houses.

1st senence: Polhor labonhor, strashote pases ikiyes ekewon.
2nd sentence: Labonhor polhor strashote pases ikiyes ekewon.

Basically it's just a matter of reversing the word order of the participle 'labonhor' and the noun 'polhor', and omitting the pause in speech marked by the comma. However an even better word order for the 2nd sentence would be the following:

Strashote labonhor polhor pases ikiyes ekewon.
soldier.PL take.PTCP.MEDIOPASS.LOC city.LOC all.ACC.PL house.ACC.PL PAST-burn-3PL

Typical Atlantika prose: subject at the beginning, verb at the end, complements in the middle with the object immediately before the verb.

[Lao Kou]

Strashote labonhor polhor pases ikiyes ekewon.
soldier.PL take.PTCP.MEDIOPASS.LOC city.LOC all.ACC.PL house.ACC.PL PAST-burn-3PL
In the captured city, the soldiers burned all the houses.

Typical Atlantika prose: subject at the beginning, verb at the end, complements in the middle with the object immediately before the verb.

Well that would warm the cockles of a Géarthçins heart, though having the object down at the verb end of the playing field would sound a little literary flourish-y. Typical, unmarked:

Chük bdiksüp lé chök béöbsöch fanfeböch cha shtülansav gzuvezhtölönav híau bzégökh.
DEF.PL soldier-NOM.PL AUX.PAST DEF.PL house-ACC.PL all-ACC.PL DEF city-LOC capture.PastPassPTCP-LOC all-ADV burn
The soldiers burned all the houses in the captured city.

and on Wear-a-Wacky-Tie Fridays:

Chük bdiksüp lé cha shtülansav gzuvezhtölönav chök béöbsöch fanfeböch híau bzégökh.
The soldiers burned in the captured city all the houses.

[Chagen]

Oh look, Azenti can do this now:

Ja stuca ibi ćirgesdhjan zon, ros ratrasor sonuaidas.
DEF city GOAL capture-PTCPL.PERF be.PST, DEF soldier-PL out-go-PST

(lit. "Being in the state of having captured the city, the soldiers out-goed")

Azenti nominalizes the verb in the absolute phrase.

[Lambuzhao]

Just to help out: the English you give is ungrammatical. I think you were aiming at "with the city having been captured..."

However, a better English version of what you said would be:
The city captured, the soldiers left

That said, looking at it, wouldn't a more accurate translation be:
The city captured, the soldiers have left

Whom or what did the city capture
simply is not as elegant as with regard to expressing attendant circumstances concisely, and cannot be made to behave that way.

A couple of observations:

1) Chagen's translation into is as grammatically faithful as English is going to get to an attendant circumstance with a perfect passive participle in . Admittedly, the just plain clunky next to the more concise and elegant . This clunkiness appears in scores of Latin (English) textbooks.

2) Moreover, ablative absolutes can be translated in beginning with the word "with", or some conjunction like "because", "since", "while", "after". In this way, they resemble cum clauses, which also relate attendant circumstances.

Less clunky translations could be:

a) With the city captured, the soldiers left.
b) After the city was captured, the soldiers left.
c) The soldiers left because the city was captured.
d) Since the city was captured, the soldiers left. (which does not sound like this batch of hoarders and pillagers actually did the capturing)
e) Seeing as how the city was captured, the soldiers left.
http://idioms.yourdictionary.com/seeing-that

And here's a more colloquial skin-wrankler:
f) Being that the city was captured, the soldiers left.
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/being.html
http://winrow.wordpress.com/2006/05/30/ ... eing-that/
{completely barmy, yet many rural folk in use this turn of phrase. Except where I lived. There, we used being's 'at }

The translation depends A LOT on context. This lone floating sentence is without a natural habitat to more firmly decide whether to understand it (in ) as a/b, c or d.

[atman]

Admittedly, the just plain clunky next to the more concise and elegant . This clunkiness appears in scores of Latin (English) textbooks.

Well, stylish absolute constructions were one of the staples of old Indo-European languages: Latin used the ablative, Sanskrit used the locative, Ancient Greek used the genitive (mostly). Atlantika, as seen above, uses the locative, a case that is basically the bastard child of genitive and dative.

And here's a more colloquial skin-wrankler:
f) Being that the city was captured, the soldiers left.

Surprisingly, there are exact parallels in Spanish and Italian:
Siendo que...
Essendo che...

[Lambuzhao]

Admittedly, the just plain clunky next to the more concise and elegant . This clunkiness appears in scores of Latin (English) textbooks.

Well, stylish absolute constructions were one of the staples of old Indo-European languages: Latin used the ablative, Sanskrit used the locative, Ancient Greek used the genitive (mostly). Atlantika, as seen above, uses the locative, a case that is basically the bastard child of genitive and dative.

And, let us remember (mostly) dative absolutes in
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4 ... 2035207293

http://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/slc ... ew/details

Juicy
http://books.google.com/books?id=aiEqn_ ... an&f=false

http://ebooks.cambridge.org/ebook.jsf?b ... 1139019736

Surprisingly, there are exact parallels in Spanish and Italian:
Siendo que...
Essendo che...

Thanks so much for the reminder! This further reminds me of how non-standard registers also allow for multiple negative words, as in and , while "standard" does not admit this.

[Click]

I just found that Croatian has a nice construction for this. Basically, the absolute part uses the perfective adverbial participle (my term; the term I found in my grammar is verbal adverb past, with skewed word order).

Osvojivši grad, vojnici su otišli.
osvoji-vši grad-ø vojnik-i su otišli
conquer-PTCL city-ACC soldier-PL be.3PL.PRS leave-PTCL
With the city captured, the soldiers left.

If you really want the full gloss, here it is.

conquer-PFV.ADV.PTCL city-MASC.ACC.SG soldier-MASC.NOM.PL be.3PL.PRS leave-ADJ.ACT.PTCL.MASC.PL

Glossing Slavic languages in general is a pain in the ass.