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352 brigitte l. m. bauer
uncommon dichotomy between prose and poetry: in contrast to general
tendencies in diachronic linguistics this time it is in poetry, where normally
we find archaisms, that we observe the first instances of linguistic
innovation.
Already at the earliest stage of what was going to be a process of grammaticalisation,
we notice a discrepancy between prose and poetry. In poetry
combining the noun and an adjective – whatever their context – is much
more common than in prose. Moreover, it is in poetry that we find a
stronger variety of adjective–noun combinations in lexical/adverbial (or
adverbial) use. Instances of this use in prose authors are limited in number
and in type: the structure primarily includes animo and shows a strong
preference for aequo. It is important to note that the earliest prose text
analysed here (Cato) includes two instances of that combination, both
with adverbial value. Second, the high numbers of instances of this use in
Livy almost exclusively entail animo. By contrast, evidence from the latest
author analysed here, Petronius, shows that we are dealing with a development:
as in the earlier poetic texts, his lexical/adverbial combinations
involve a variety of nouns. The spread of adjective + noun constructions
therefore follows the patterns found for the development of adjective +
mente (Bauer 2001).
There are more parallels. In my earlier articles on adverbs I noticed
that from a diachronic perspective the main difference between animo
and mente resides in the formal stability – in time and genre – of mente
combinations, which may account for the survival of mente as a suffix
(Bauer 2003). Conversely animo + noun combinations displayed important
formal variety, including prepositions, genitives and so forth. Analysis
in this chapter has revealed a similar formal variety, culminating e.g. in the
Vulgate’s importance of preposition + adjective + corde combinations
reflecting adverbial value.
In conclusion we can therefore say that the patterns we observed earlier
for mente in the early instances (prose vs poetry), and for animo in the
Vulgate (variability) are similar to those involving other nouns. In view of
the topic of this Festschrift we therefore underscore the important observation
that in the development of adverbial constructions the relation
between poetry and prose is the reverse of what we traditionally find.
The first question that comes to mind is: ‘Why in this specific development
is it prose that “catches up” with poetry and not the other way
around?’ Influence from Greek poetry may have been a factor. A century
ago already Shorey (1910) pointed out that adjective + noun combinations
in the dative featuring adverbial value are found in ancient