Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 August 31

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August 31

Latin passive agent question

If a passive action is done by an animal, does the animal take the ablative of agent like humans (making “Piscis ā cane comēsus est” for “The fish was eaten by the dog”) or the ablative of means like inanimate objects (making “Piscis cane comēsus est”)? Primal Groudon (talk) 00:51, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

In a quick web search, you'll find multiple Latin text examples where somebody was "a canibus dilaceratus" (torn to pieces by dogs) or similarly, so it would seem to be the former. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:06, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Immortalized in perhaps the most famous stage direction of all time, "exit ab urso actus". 71.126.56.214 (talk) 07:24, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Ablative_(Latin)#Instrumental_ablative has a bit on that distinction, although I'm not entirely convinced that the "weapons of the soldiers" mentioned there are really the agents of the action rather than the means (as in "the fish was eaten with a knife"). It would be interesting to see whether Latin makes a distinction between "the deer was chased by the dog" (of the dog's own volition) and "the deer was chased with the dog" (the dog being employed by human hunters). --Wrongfilter (talk) 07:37, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the weapons of the soldiers are the instruments by means of which the king was killed, so it is not a good example. The distinction is really whether the agent is seen as having agency and performing the action willfully. Quoting Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges 405: "The voluntary agent after a passive verb is expressed by the ablative with ā or ab." and particularly Note 3: "The Ablative of the Agent is commonest with nouns denoting persons, but it occurs also with names of things or qualities when these are conceived as performing an action and so are partly or wholly personified, as in the last example under the rule."^[1]  --Lambiam 08:08, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I've proposed a fix to the article Ablative (Latin) at Talk:Ablative (Latin) § Ablative of agent.  --Lambiam 08:38, 31 August 2023 (UTC)