supine
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈs(j)uːpaɪn/
ipa: /ˌsuˈpaɪn/
ipa: /ˈsuˌpaɪn/
rhymes: -uːpaɪn
rhymes: (General American) -aɪn
Forms: form: supines
Etymology: The adjective is borrowed from Latin supīnus, from *sup- (see sub (“under”)) + -īnus (“of, pertaining to”). The word is cognate with Catalan supí, Italian supino, Old French sovin, Middle French souvin, Anglo-Norman supin, Old Occitan sobin, sopin, Portuguese supino, Spanish supino. Partly displaced Old English upweard (“upward, supine”), whence Modern English upward.
The noun is from Late Middle English supin (“supine of a Latin verb”) or Middle French supin (“(grammar) supine”), from Latin supīnum, (ellipsis of supīnum verbum (“supine verb”)), from supīnus; further etymology above.
Senses: examples: text: And here also you may observ, that the syllable which is doubled in the Preterperfect tens is not doubled in the Supines, as totondi to clip, make's tonsum: cecídi to beat, cæsum: […]
ref: 1653, Charles Hoole, “Of the Supines of Simple Verbs”, in The Latine Grammar Fitted for the Use of Schools. […], 2nd corrected edition, London: Printed by William Du-Gard; and are to bee sold by John Saywell […], →OCLC, page 142:
text: There be alſo appertaining unto Verbs, two Supines, the one ending in um, which is called the firſt Supine, becauſe it hath the ſignification of the Verb Active: as, Eo amatum, I go to love: and the other in u, becauſe it hath for the moſt part the ſignification of Paſſive, as Difficilis amatu, hard to be loved.
ref: 1718, Richard Johnson, “Of Supines”, in Grammatical Commentaries: Being an Apparatus to a New National Grammar: […], London: Printed for the author, and sold by Thomas Bickerton, […], →OCLC, page 354:
text: Of the large number of verbs which take the infinitive in Old-English the greater number are now followed by the supine. […] The substitution of the supine for the infinitive began in Old-English itself. Thus the supine of purpose, as in hīe cōmon þæt land tō sċēawienne 'they came to spy out the land,' gradually supplanted the older infinitive with many verbs of desiring, intending, attempting, etc., so that while such a verb as willan 'will' continued—as it still does in modern English—to take the infinitive only, other verbs of similar meaning, […] began to take the supine as well as the infinitive.
ref: 1898, Henry Sweet, “Verbs”, in A New English Grammar: Logical and Historical (Clarendon Press Series), part II (Syntax), Oxford: At the Clarendon Press [by Horace Hart], →OCLC, §§ 2314 and 2315, page 118:
text: If you must know, the verb finite (i.e. limited by person and number) has three persons, two numbers, six tenses and three moods, while the verb infinite (not so limited) has infinitives, three participles, the gerund and gerundive and two supines.
ref: 2013, Emma Short, Alex George, “The Verb (Stearn, pp. 130–139)”, in A Primer of Botanical Latin with Vocabulary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 47:
text: The chapter focuses on the supine clause, which is a language-specific construction. An example is offered in (1): the aspectual verb isprăvi 'finish' selects a clausal complement that contains a supine verb. We know that the supine is a verb because its direct object is in unmarked Case (i.e. Accusative). Supine nouns, like any regular noun, have the direct object marked for Genitive Case. […] The emergence and the spread of the supine clause is very well captured in the Old Romanian texts, a situation that contrasts with the incomplete information we have about other clausal complements.
ref: 2016, Virginia Hill, Gabriela Albiou, “Supine Clauses: On the Road to Balkanization”, in Verb Movement and Clause Structure in Old Romanian (Oxford Studies in Diachronic & Historical Linguistics), Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 267:
topics: grammar
human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
glosses: In Latin and other languages: a type of verbal noun used in the ablative and accusative cases, which shares the same stem as the passive participle.
examples: text: The three conjugations are distinguished principally by the ending of the supine. In the first conjugation the supine ends in at, as: tala speak talat spoken. In the second conjugation the supine ends in t after a consonant, as: köpa buy köpt bought. In the third conjugation the supine ends in it, as: taga take tagit taken.
ref: [1849], A[lfred] May, “Etymology”, in A Practical Grammar of the Swedish Language, with Reading- and Writing-exercises, Stockholm: A. Bonnier, →OCLC, page 42:
text: There are two non-finite forms in Swedish, the infinitive and the supine. […] The supine has two basic allomorphs: -t (weak verbs) and -it (strong verbs). […] The supine verb phrase serves as complement of the perfect auxiliary ha 'have' (hon hade bundit honom) which can be deleted, though, in subordinate clauses (eftersom hon [hade] bundit honom 'since she had bound him'). (The supine has existed as a morphologically distinct category in standard Swedish language at least since the 19th c.; cf. art. 155.)
ref: 2005, Ulf Teleman, “The Standard Languages and Their Systems in the 20th Century IV: Swedish”, in Herbert Ernst Wiegand, editor, The Nordic Languages: An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages (Händbucher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft [Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science]; 22.2), volume 2, Berlin; New York, N.Y.: Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, part XVI (The Nordic Languages in the 20th Century), pages 1613–1614:
topics: grammar
human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
glosses: In Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic and Old Norse: a verb form that combines with an inflection of ha/hafa/hava to form the present perfect and pluperfect tenses.
topics: grammar
human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
glosses: (obsolete terminology) The 'to'-prefixed infinitive in English or other Germanic languages, so named because the infinitive was regarded as a verbal noun and the 'to'-prefixed form of it was seen as the dative form of the verbal noun; the full infinitive.
Derived terms: supine tense
Related terms: gerund
infinitive