Response to Comments

Dear Commentors,


Somehow I've failed to see a few comments posted long ago until today!  I'm afraid I appeared ungracious. Thanks especially to Zsolt Simon, Bulbul, and Docente for their helpful comments. Of course, I am delighted if anyone reads this blog and takes the time to comment.


Michael

Bibliographical Addendum

To the general bibliography for Germanic given on p. 11, n. 5. add

Müller, Stefan, 2007. Zum Germanischen aus laryngaltheoretischer Sicht. Mit einer Einführung in die Grundlagen der Laryngaltheorie. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

More on More on Root Aorists

Apropos of fūdī, Alan Nussbaum reminds me that the root is *gh'ew- and that the -do/e- (an extension also seen in Goth. giutan 'to pour') of the Latin verb is in origin a present-forming suffix ( cf. pellō < *pel-dō vs. perf. pepulī < *pe-pol-). But if *-do/e- was a present formant, then the perf. fūd- has its -d- analogically from the present, and this favors an analogical explanation for fūdī, e.g. winko/e- : wi:k- = fundo/e- : X.

The Scansion of dat. sg. ei in Classical Latin

In his review James Clackson points out correctly that it is misleading to say, as I do on pg. 342, that the monosyllabic scansion of dat. sg. ei is typical for Classical Latin. All forms of is, ea, id were less common in Classical (Augustan) poetry than prose and the oblique forms were especially rare. See Meader 1901 for some statistics. The dative singular is not used at all by Vergil or the Elegaic poets. There are, however, a number of instances of ei in Late Republican and Imperial poetry:

At Catull. 82.3 (eripere ei noli, multo quod carius illi) ei must be a monosyllable, but at Ps.-Ov. Hal. 34 (semper ei similis quem contegit, atque ubi praedam) it must be an iamb. Similarly at Germanicus' Arat. 333 (talis ei custos aderit canis ore timendo) and 457 (lactis ei color, et mediis via lucet in umbris). The form ei also occurs in epigraphic poetry once as a long monosyllable at CIL 3.10501 (= Buecheler CLE 489, Aquincum): vox ei grata fuit, pulsabat pollice cordas and once as an iamb at CIL 3.754 (Buecheler CLE 492:15, 3rd cent. CE, Nicopolis): intima nulla ei quae non mihi nota fuere, a poem which Buecheler says is omni genere vitiorum deformatum.  There are some other instances of ei in CLE but the scansions are uncertain.  Since the form was so rare it hardly makes sense to say that any scansion was typical.


Meader, Clarence Linton. 1901.  The Latin pronouns: is, hic, iste, ipse. A semasiological study. London: Macmillan.

-ĕrunt is Not Absent from Classical Poetry

As Clackson points out, I made a mistake in representing the statistics for the 3rd plural perfect endings.  I followed the presentation of Bauer 1933, but Bauer lumped together -ērunt and -ĕrunt in his counts whereas I separated them.  This creates the misleading impression that -ĕrunt  is not attested in Vergil or Horace, but that is wrong.  According to Pye 1963 -erunt is attested at Verg. E. 4.61, G. 2.129, 3.283, Aen. 2.774, 3.48, 3.681 and 10.334. So the figures for Vergil should be corrected to -ērunt 22 vs. -ĕrunt 7. In Horace according to Pye there are three examples of -ĕrunt (Epod. 9.17, S. 1.10.45, Ep. 1.4.7). So the figures for the Satires should be corrected to -ērunt 10 vs. -ĕrunt 1.  The figures for Plautus, Terence, and Juvenal are correct.

See D. Pye. 1963. Latin 3rd plural perf. ind. act. endings in verse usage. TPhS:1-27.

Osc. pui

The Oscan form pui at Cp. 37.1, as Clackson points out, is not exactly attested.  The sequence actually reads according to Rix's edition pụ[i: / pu]ị.  The lithograph produced by Buecheler in RhM 1878 shows just the tail of something that could be an i. If the restoration is correct we have a virtual pui, but a more important issue is whether pui is the nom. sg. as I interpreted it or the dat. sg. = Lat. cui. (so Vetter p. 424).  Looking at the context again (the so-called Curse of Vibia) it seems more probable to me now that pui if correctly restored is a dat. sg. If that is the case it could not be an exact morphological match for cui, but a simple remodeling of the inherited form on the basis of the thematic dat. sg. So at p. 351 pui should simply be stricken and at p. 470 the Umb. form poi or the Osc. nom. sg. fem. paí should be substituted.

Meddíks

As James Clackson points out the form meddíks that I cite at pp. 75 and 238 ( but not at 159. n. 5  where I cite the Latinized form meddix as at Liv. 23.35.13) is a nominative plural < *med(o)-dik-es with final syllable syncope of the old athematic nom. pl. ending *-es.  The nom. sg. is meddíss (Cm 10 etc.) with assimilation from < *med(o)-dik-s.

More Root Aorists in Latin

In his review James Clackson correctly points out that I underestimated the role of the root aorist in the formation of the Latin perfect system.  I said on pg. 412 that "Latin does not continue any clear traces of the root aorist".  In the footnote thereto I mentioned the possible explanation of the lengthened grade of vēnī as generalized from 1st sg. *gwēm < *gwem-m and 2nd sg. *gwēn < *gwem-s. It's true that no personal ending of the perfect system can be directly traced to a root aorist, but there are a number of perfect forms that I failed to mention that most plausibly continue root aorists.  The best cases are:

1. OL fūī ' I was' matches Ved. ábhūt.

The True Cost

The BMCR review gives the cost of OHCGL as $110, but that is the "list price".  If you purchase the book directly from Beech Stave Press (the best way to get it) the cost is $75.  Not cheap, I know.

The First Review is In

A nice review of OHCGL at Bryn Mawr Classical Review by James Clackson of Cambridge. 
http://www.bmcreview.org/2010/09/20100935.html 
Professor Clackson has found some more things for me to correct.  I will post those here in the next few days. Thanks!

Ex Anatolia Lux!

I'd like to take the opportunity to announce the publication of Ex Anatolia Lux: Anatolian and Indo-European studies in honor of H. Craig Melchert. Ann Arbor: Beech Stave Press of which I was one of the four editors (the others being my esteemed colleagues Ron Kim, Elisabeth Rieken, and Norbert Oettinger). The volume was presented at the recent UCLA meeting of the Indogermanische Fachtagung on the Indo-European Verb.  I'm happy to say that the volume was (apparently) a complete surprise to the honorand! Most articles are naturally Anatolo-centric, but Olav Hackstein's "Latenisch omnis" (pp. 75–84) takes the etymology of omnis from *opnis <— op- 'abundance' (mentioned in passing at OHCGL, p. 140) from possible to very probable. Incidentally, a cognate of omnis appears in the Venetic Tavola da Este in the phrase to ommni opedon. I also have an article about an Italic subject: "Two Sabellic Praenomina" (pp. 363–374).

Spepondi

On pg. 410 I mention that Aulus Gellius (6.9) attests the form spepondī as an archaic but still classical variant for the regular spopondī. I should also have noted that the e-reduplicated form is also attested inscriptionally in the form SPEPODI in the wax tablets discovered in Moregine near Pompeii and composed by C. Novius Eunus (1st cent. CE, 15.2.11, 16.3.3, 17.3.5, 18.3.7). Interestingly some of these documents (15 and 18) exist  in two versions, one by Eunus himself with many spelling "errors", and one by a professional scribe with correct spellings. In the case of this particular word the scribe uses the standard form spopondi at 15.5.9, 18.5.16.

See Adams, J. N. 1990. The Latinity of C. Novius Eunus. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 82:227–247.