More on Proclitics

On pg. 111 in discussing clitic elements I simply define proclitics as elements that do not receive their own stress, but form a prosodic unit with the following tonic word, but I didn't give any Latin examples or evidence. 

It is general thought that a preposition was proclitic on the noun it governed.  There are a number of pieces of evidence for this.  

First, Quintilian reports (1.5.27) cum dico circum litora, tamquam unum enuntio dissimulata distinctione, itaque tamquam in una voce una est acuta. "For when I say circum  litora I pronounce the phrase as one word, concealing the fact that it is composed of two, consequently it contains but one acute accent, as though it were a single word.  [translation H. E. Barber, Loeb edition].  

Second, we often find prepositions written together with the noun they govern, or, in text which regularly use interpuncts to separate words, with omitted interpuncts. For example, APVRFINEM (ILLRP 7, from Marsian territory), INFRONTE (CIL 1².1319) and with missing interpuncts from the letters of Rustius Barbarus from the Ostraka of Wadi Fawâkhir, 1st or 2nd cent CE: 1.4f. ·per Popilium·, cf. 1.6 ·per Draconem·.

Incidentally the term proclitic, unlike enclitic, does not have ancient roots and was coined by Gottfried Hermann (pictured above) in De emendanda ratione Graecae Grammaticae.

 

See Adams, J. N. 1996. Interpuncts as evidence for the enclitic character of personal pronouns in Latin. ZPE 111:208–10.

Lesser-known Historical Grammars of Latin IX

A Görög és Latin Nyelv Hang- és Alaktana (I think that translates as Phonology and Morphology of the Greek and Latin Languages) was published in Budapest in 1932 by János Szidarovszky.  It is owned by exactly one library in the States, Columbia.  I haven't been able to discover anything about the author yet except that János Harmatta published an obituary of him in Antik Tanulmányok, 1954. I also can't say anything about the quality of this work except that the author certainly seems to have been au courant with the latest in IE scholarship to judge from the works cited. But I can say I've held it in my hands and leafed though it. Is this the sole historical grammar of Greek and/or Latin written in Hungarian?

Update on Casus Interrogandi

In a previous post I mentioned Nigidius Figulus' discussion of the intonation and/or stress of the vocative and genitive of Valerius.  I didn't say anything about Nigidius' odd term casus interrogandi, in this context, apparently meaning the genitive.  This term and the interpretation of this passage and others are the subject of a book-length treatment by Walter Belardi and P. Cipriano, Casus interrogandi. Nigidius Figulus e la teoria stoica della lingua. They argue that casus (plural)  interrogandi refer to the oblique cases in general, a term originating in Stoic grammatical theory.

The authors specifically lament the fact that English-speaking scholars, especially on the subject of ancient Grammar, don't read works written in Italian (p. 159).  I try very hard to read what Italian scholars produce, but I missed this one.  

Belardi W. and P. Cipriano, 1990. Casus interrogandi. Nigidius Figulus e la teoria stoica della lingua. Rome: Libreria Herder.

Worst Mistake Discovered Yet!!

On pg. 60 fn. 52 at the end of the note I wrote:

Quintilian (1.7.23) mentions that Servius Sulpicius, presumably the consul of 53 BCE, was criticized for removing final s whenever the next word began with a vowel.

This sentence is embarrassingly full of errors. First, the passage where Quintilian discusses Servius Sulpicius' treatment of final -s is not 1.7.23 (that's the famous one about dice and facie), it's 9.4.38. Second, what Quintilian reports there is as follows:

Quae fuit causa et Servio Sulpicio, ut dixit, subtrahendae s litterae quotiens ultima esset aliaque consonante susciperetur, quod reprehendit Luranius, Messala defendit. Nam neque Lucilium putat uti eadem ultima, cum dicit "Aeserninus fuit" et "dignus locoque", et Cicero in Oratore plures antiquorum tradit sic locutos.

This was the reason (i.e. avoidance of stridor) why Servius, as he himself has observed, (or "as I said" if ut dixi is read) dropped the final s, whenever the next word began with a consonant, a practice for which Luranius takes him to task, while Messala defends him. For he thinks that Lucilius did not pronounce the final s in phrases such as, Aeserninus fuit and dignus locoque, while Cicero in his Orator records that this was the practice with many of the ancients. [Translation H. E. Butler, Loeb edition]

So Sulpicius is said to have eliminated s when the next word began with a consonant, presumably an affectation modeled on old writers of the Republic, not before a vowel as I erroneously reported.

Third, Servius Sulpicius was consul in 51 BCE, not 53 BCE.  Finally—this last one is not really an error on my part—it is not certain that the Servius Suplicius referred to here is the consul of 51 BCE or his son.  Syme 1981 argued for the later.

So the sentence should be emended to:

Quintilian (9.4.38) mentions that Servius Sulpicius, either the consul of 51 BCE or more probably his son (see Syme 1981), was criticized for removing final s whenever the next word began with consonant to avoid a cacophonous effect. He was probably modeling this archaizing affectation on early Republican authors.

Syme, Ronald. 1981. A great orator mislaid. The classical quarterly. 31.2:421–7.

More on Final -s in Old Latin

On pg. 60 I touch upon the fact that final -s was sometimes omitted in Old Latin inscriptions and that it did not make position in the thesis in non-dramatic verse.  I didn't say anything explicit about dramatic verse except to make reference to Rex Wallace's article that argues that non-observance of final -s is more common in spoken verses than in the cantica.

The standard view, as canonized for example in Questa 2007:32–3, is that in dramatic verse s was "reduced", i.e. potentially did not make position,  in polysyllables, following a  short vowel before a consonant initial word.

Here are some examples where s fails to make position:

Plaut. Bacch. 313:  ibidem publicitus servant:: occidisti(s) me (ia6)

                                a  a  B     C    d d A  B     C       D  a   B  c    D

But note that the final s of publicitus does make position.

Ter. Ad. 839:  exporge frontem:: scilicet ita tempu(s) fert (ia6)

                        A    B  c    D   A        B c  D a a  B       c      D

To which we can contrast:

Ter. Eun. 1048: an mei patris festivitatem et facilitatem?  O Iuppiter!

                           A    b b   c   D   A  B c D      A   b b c D         A  B     c  d+

where s does make position in patris.

This account raises at least three questions.  First, how do we know that s was retained after a long vowel since V:s and V:(s) are metrically equivalent? Second is there any pattern to the observance and non-observance of s?  Third what happened to final s prevocalically?

(1)  I don't think we can be sure that final -s had a different treatment after long vowels than after short vowel.  There can be no metrical evidence as far as I can see.  Further non-notation of final -s after a long vowel (see Vine 1993:22) is found in inscriptions at Rome, and not just dialectically—an incidentally Latin inscriptions from the 3rd century are more common found outside of Rome.

(2) I don't know if there is a pattern or not.  It doesn't seem that anyone has pointed to an obvious one in the literature.  Since there is a difference in non-dramatic verse between the strong and the weak positions within the foot, it would be interesting to explore whether anything could be made of that for iambo-trochaic verse.  It will be important in this investigation to omit all pyrrhic/iambic sequences from this investigation since Iambic Shortening is an alternative explanation in those cases.

(3) In Plautus and Terence, there do not seem to be any certain cases of loss of s in prevocalic position with subsequent elision—mage rarely occurs prevocalically and elides, but we are not certain that mage is phonologically derived from magis.  This suggests that in the relevant idiolects final s resyllabified into the onset of the following word  But there does appear to be evidence for  an alternative pronunciation where s was lost before a vowel.  In Cicero's Orator 153 we find the following sentence in the OCT edition of Wilkins:

Sine vocalibus saepe brevitatis causa contrahebant, ut ita dicerent: multi' modis, in vas' argenteis, palmi' crinibus, tecti' fractis.

palmi’ Ribbeck; palmet A (Abrincensis = from Avranches pictured in the postcard above) : palma et L (= consensus FOPM)

Here Cicero seems to be referring to reduced pronunciation and/or spellings in some way analogous to elision. In the case of multi'modis Cicero may be referring to multimodīs, the adverb which is a hypostasis of multīs modīs. Here multi- stands form multīs but is a combining form, not a phonological reduction.  The second example, however,  can only be explained through the omission of final s after a long vowel followed by elision: vasīs argenteīs > vasī' argenteīs > vas'argenteīs.  The third example, where the manuscript tradition clearly points to palm'et crinibus for palmis et crinibus, requires the same explanation.  The final form with no elision simply seems to refer to non-notation of final s.


The loss of s in vidēn et sim. seems to be a different phenomenon.

Misleading Typo

On pg. 60 I quote the form STATIA for gen. sg. stātiās from a 3rd–2nd century BCE inscription from Rome as an example of the omission of final -s in Old Latin.  This form is said to come from  CIL 12.480, but that's wrong it comes from CIL 1².480, i.e. the second edition of vol. 1 of CIL not from CIL 12 which covers Gallia Narbonensis.     There may be other places where the 2 failed to get superscripted. 


Update: Yes, there is another place: pg. 60 n. 51 last line: For "CIL 12.592.2" read "CIL 1².592.2"

I will have more to say about the treatment of final -s in a future post.  

Quintilian on C

On pg. 58 in discussing the pronunciation of as a voiceless velar stop, I might have mention this passage from Quintilian (Inst. 1.7.10) where Quintilian mentions that he thinks the letter k should only be used in those words which can be abbreviated by k alone (e.g. K for Kalendae, Kaeso, etc.):

Hoc eo non omisi quod quidam eam quotiens a sequatur necessariam credunt, cum sit c littera, quae ad omnis vocalis vim suam perferat.

I mention the fact because some hold that k should be used whenever the next letter is an a, despite the existence of the letter c which maintains its force in conjunction with all the vowels. [Translation H. E. Butler, Loeb edition]

This clause [quae ad omnis vocalis vim suam perferat] might be taken to mean that c had no significant allophones and therefore that c was still a voiceless velar stop before a front vowel.  Fantasy image of Quintilian from the 15th century Nuremberg Chronicle.