I think it was Joe, yesterday during my Image Grammar demo, who asked an excellent question about the term absolute in grammar.
The Oxford on-line dictionary says this:
9. Standing out of (the usual) grammatical relation or syntactic construction with other words, as in the ablative absolute. The absolute form of a word: that in which it is not inflected to indicate relation to other words in a sentence. Also absolute clause, comparative, construction, superlative. ¶The absolute case in English was formerly the Dative or Instrumental: it is now the Nominative.
I am sure this makes sense to all of you and this clears up Joe's question completely. :) Ha.
To me it is the "not inflected to indicate relation to other words in the sentence" that makes the most sense. I just can't articulate it. Any comments? Maybe you could explain it to me????
Kathy
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1 comment:
Thanks. I had been wondering what nominative meant. Now I know. It is an absolute. Isn't that a vodka?
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