Absolute Construction
Despite the inflectional nature of Russian, there is no equivalent in the modern language to the English nominative absolute or the Latin ablative absolute construction. The old language had an absolute construction, with the noun put into the dative. Like so many other archaisms, it is retained in Church Slavonic. Among the last known examples in literary Russian occurs in Radishchev's Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (Путешествие из Петербурга в Москву ), 1790:
- Едущу мне из Едрова, Анюта из мысли моей не выходила. "As I was leaving Yedrovo village, I could not stop thinking about Aniuta."
Read more about this topic: Russian Grammar, Syntax
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