Nuevos enfoques lingüísticos aplicados a la lengua latina. Una nueva concepción del ablativo

The study of the Latin ablative has been very exhaustive in the linguistic tradition: in order to explain the big amount of meanings and functions that this case can have, grammarians have done a huge work, trying to reach an original, simple, and unespecific meaning from which the different meanings could be drawn. Recent studies on this subject have shown a new perception and understanding of the case. On the one hand, the etymology of the case shows that two Indo-European cases have merged in this case: the ablative and the instrumental singular, blending together their markers, against the traditional opinions —the syncretism of three cases: instrumental, ablative and locative. On the other hand, new grammatical approaches show how frequent is for a marker to develop Semantic Functions that are related, as Cause and Source, for example avoiding rigid conceptions of semantics. In addition, new methods of representation, as Haspelmath’s Semantic Maps, allow us to see how our semantic conception puts together and relates Semantic Functions that didn’t seem so close.