Friday, March 30, 2012

Earliest Italic gen. sg. in -i

On. pg. 234 fn. 10 I mention that the form MORAI from a 4th century inscription from Signia or the Ager Signinus (the place is called Signia not Signum as I write there and is modern Segni about 60 km southeast of Rome) is the earliest example of gen. sg. -ī in any stem class. However, this is no longer true. In Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 168, 2009, pp. 273–7 Maria Cristina Biella ("Una nuova iscrizione falisca di VII a.C.: Un sostantivo con tema in -o e genitivo in -i") has published a 7th century Calix from Falerii with the inscription TITI. This form is most probably a genitive of the common praenomen Titos and  might be taken as more evidence that the original locus of the -ī genitive was in names.

No comments:

Post a Comment