Intereā etc.

On pg. 354 E in discussing the adverbial forms in -ā like inter-eā ‘meanwhile’ I suggest that these forms are most probably old feminine instrumental ablatives, but I failed to mention another attractive possibility proposed by J-L García Ramón that these forms are old feminine instrumentals < *-eh2(e)h1.  If that is correct then these would constitute an addition case of the retention of final -ā in Latin.

García Ramón, José Luis, 1997. Adverbios de dirección e instrumental indoeuropeo. In E. Crespo and J. L.García Ramón eds., Berthold Delbrück y la sintaxis indoeuropea hoy, Madrid/Wiesbaden:Reichert, 113-141.

Corrigendum

Professor Michael Johnson of Vanderbilt, a former student of mine at UNC, points out this error:


on pg 484 A.1.c. for "with any value" read "without any value".


Thanks, Michael! He also passes along a number of corrigenda corrigendorum, which I have silently fixed.

Monosyllabic Lengthening

In regard to the discussion of monosyllabic lengthening on pg. 41, fn. 48 Brent Vine draws my attention to the recent Ph.D. dissertation by M. Kapović, Reconstruction of the Balto-Slavic Personal Pronouns, Zagreb 2006, which has an extensive treatment of the subject (pp. 147–153). Reference to Kapović's work should also be added to the bibliography cited on pg. 325, n. 1.

VIne Corrigenda

Professor Brent Vine of UCLA has been kind enough to send along his list of typos, corrigenda, and addenda. I will post all the simple typos here and post the more complicated issues in separate postings. Thanks, Brent!

• pg. 26, n. 13, l. 6: read “to indicate” for “to indicated”

• pg. 38 C 5: read “sonorant consonants” for “sonorants consonants”

• pg. 40, n. 46, ad fin.: read “pp. 158–9” for “pp. 158”

• pg. 121 mid., middle of A.1.: read gifroran for giforan

• pg. 127, n. 16, mid.: read “into the Classical period” for “into Classical period”

• pg. 133, n. 52: read “forms” for “form”

• pg. 134, Cat. 85.1: missing macrons in quārē

• pg. 143, n. 47: read “may be dialectal” for “may dialectal”

• pg. 160, B.1.: Read "-" for “e” + superscript dot and tilde in *ap-weriō

• pg. 163, n. 18: The cross-ref. should be pg. 156, not pg. 163

• pg. 177, n. 9: read “called” for “call”

• pg. 198 n. 25, 1st word of last sent.: read “Others” for “Other”

• pg. 334, n. 25: read “a reduction” for “an reduction”
•pg. 360, c.ii., 3rd line fr. bot. of page: For “superlative” read “comparative”
• pg. 368, n. 17, 2nd line: missing “close [single] quote” at the end of the gloss of *tri-sth2o/i-
• pg. 549, Jasanoff 2009: Wrong order of editors; should be “Kazuhiko Yoshida and Brent Vine”

Lesser-known Historical Grammars of Latin XIV

Emilia Ndiaye, De L'indo-européen au latin et au grec. Initiation à la grammaire comparée du latin et du grec, avec excercices corrigés, tableaux synthétiques et lexiques was published in 2009 (Brussels: Éditions Safran).  The level is very introductory, and there are mistakes, but the book has abundant exercises, which look well designed, and it also has a convenient list of Greek and Latin cognates arranged alphabetically according to the Latin reflex.  In the top right of the picture you can see a drawing of the text of TI V.

Tocharian B Love Poetry

On pg. 22 I quote the famous love poem (Krause and Thomas 1960–64:2.72) as a text sample of Tocharian B:

[mā] ñ[i ci]sa noṣ śomo ñ[e]m [wno]lme [l]āre tāka, 

mā ra postaṃ cisa lāre mäsketär-ñ

But the translation I offered there (No person was dearer to me than you previously, nor will any be afterward) was not very precise. Pinault 20083:32 offers a more accurate rendering: "D'être vivant portant le nom d'humain, il n'en fut pas auparavant de plus cher pour moi que toi, et il n'en sera pas non plus dans l'avenir de plus cher que toi pour moi." śomo ñem wnolme literally means "a being (wnolme) the name (ñem) human (śomo)" and is the Tocharian reflex of the construction familiar from Skt. (āsīd rājā Nalo nāma) and elsewhere. Notice that Tocharian, like many languages, has no distinct comparative form of the adjective but just uses the positive form plus the standard of comparison in the perlative (ci-sa 'than you').

The genitive plural of mare

On pg. 242 I give a complete paradigm of mare as an exemplum for the neuter i-stems, but Erica Bexley of Cornell has called my attention to the fact that the expected genitive plural marium is never attested in all of Classical Latinity. I couldn't believe it at first, but it is true. The absence of the the oblique plural forms of mare was noted by the Grammarians. The 4th-century CE Charisius (p. 38.6 Barwick) wrote: 

maria tamen quamvis dicantur pluraliter, attamen ne marium nec maribus dicemus.

(Followed by Ars Bobiensis (M. De Nonno 1982: 29, 22):  quamuis maria dicitur nec marium nec maribus... accipimus and [Augustinus] Regulae: mare maria: sed pluraliter tres casus habet tantum, nominatiuum accusatiuum et uocatiuum, genitiuum datiuum et ablatiuum non habet: non enim dicimus in genitiuo horum marium aut in datiuo his maribus aut in ablatiuo ab his maribus.)

Priscian (2.351 Keil) gave an actual example of the supposedly nonexistent ablative plural maribus from Caesar and quote a line of Naevius with the genitive plural marum, not marium: 

et sciendum tamen, quod rarissime haec, quae in solam i finiunt ablatiuum, syncopam patiuntur i per genetiuum pluralem. inueni marum pro marium, qui tamen in rarost usu genetiuus, apud Naeuium in carmine belli Punici (Blänsdorf 9): 

senex fretus pietatei     deum adlocutus

summi deum regis      fratrem Neptunum 

regnatorem  marum

pro marium. eius ablatiuum Caesar in V belli Gallici (5.1) ponit: paulo latiores quam quibus in reliquis utimur maribus.

Basically the word seems to have been defective in the plural.  The form marum is surprising since we are confident that this word has been an i-stem for a very long time having an exact morphological match in Old Irish muir 'sea' < *mori.  It must be analogical.

It's unbelievable that I could have lived 45 years and written a book on Latin historical grammar without knowing this!