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Forerunners of Romance -mente adverbsinLatin 343
and poetry, represent various linguistic registers. Moreover, Catullus and
Ovid both had many instances of adjective + mente, with high scores of
lexical/adverbial value. Since Horace, by contrast, had just three instances,
which were lexical, I include his work here as well. The differences in
chronological period and style have determined my choice of prose authors.
My analysis focuses on the non-abstract nouns pede, manu, voce, lingua,
corpore, anima, corde, pectore, ore, spiritu, and the abstract animo. Inthe
selected texts, I have identified all ablative singular forms of the nouns in
question. I then determined whether the noun combined with an adjective
or not. As a result, this analysis is broader than my earlier ones of mente
(2001 and 2003), in that all instances of the ablative singular forms have
been taken into account. The importance of evaluating the occurrence of
adjectives as such will later become clear. Subsequently, I categorised the
adjective + noun combinations, identifying their lexical or adverbial/lexical
value. This last category here includes not only instances that feature both
values (‘happily’ vs ‘with a happy heart’), but also those that are decidedly
adverbial. They are included in one category because this subcategorisation
may tend to be subjective. The qualification ‘lexical’ (as opposed to ‘nonlexical’)
is rather straightforward and may be motivated by the presence of
a preposition or a noun used in a similar way, as in:
(9) lubentissimo corde atque animo (Pl. Ps. 1321)
with great satisfaction of heart and soul/with a greatly satisfied heart and
soul.
The distinction between lexical/adverbial and adverbial on the other hand is
one of degree. Moreover, with a few exceptions, most non-lexical instances
are of the type lexical/adverbial. Important details about purely adverbial
use will be provided in the analysis (section 3) when necessary.
In the following pages, I will first present the numerical data for each
individual author. There are three tables, one for playwrights, one for poets,
and one for prose authors. The presentation of the data will be followed
by the discussion of the data.
3 analysis of the data
As said, all instances of the ablative of the nouns in question have been
examined. Among them, there are several that include an ablative noun
that is part of a prepositional phrase or that functions as complement to an
adjective or verb, as the following examples, which all include an adjective,
illustrate: