Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Lesser-known Historical Grammars of Latin VI




The book pictured at left is the 2nd edition of Ernesto Faria's Fonética Histórica do Latim, published by Livraria Academica in Rio De Janeiro in 1957. According to the preface this was intended to be the first of a three volume work, but the projected tomes on morphology and syntax never appeared as far as I know. Faria was a pioneering professor of Latin linguistics in Brazil, whose centenary was celebrated in April 2006. The work is bem feito as Faria would have said. In addition to the typical subjects there is an interesting and detailed section on the history of the development of the scholarly reconstruction of Latin pronunciation and a long chapter on the Latin accent. The commented bibliography is pretty thorough. IE is not treated except tangentially. This work is, to the best of my knowledge, the only extensive treatment of Latin historical phonology existing in Portuguese. Reader from Portugal, am I wrong?


Update:  No, there does not seem to be any comparable book in Portuguese.

No comments:

Post a Comment