Multiple Corrigenda in One Sentence

On pg. 25 I write "A favorite locus for the alphabet transfer was one of the Greek trading posts like Posidonios (El-Alalakh) in Syria."  This is wrong in a number of ways.  First, of all the Greek city in Ancient Syria mentioned by Herodotus (3.91) is called Posideion not Posidonios, which, of course, is the name of the famous Hellenistic philosopher (155-51 BCE).  Second, the site sometimes thought to be of possible importance in the transfer of the alphabet is Al-Mina, a coastal site a little south of Samandağ, Turkey not Alalakh, which is a bronze-age site some 50 kilometres inland. Third, it is not clear that the site of Al Mina is the Posideion mentioned by Herodotus. Other have suggested Ras Al-Bassit in the present-day country of Syria. Finally, see the chapter by Roger Woodard in Bakker's Companion to the Ancient Greek Language for some doubts about the importance of Al Mina. This mistake rivals the worst mistake discovered yet for pure and total confusion!

Addendum

To the bibliography for Italian given on pg. 503 add Michel 1997. This is a very interesting account of the historical grammar of Old Italian with a good selection of commented texts in a variety of dialects.  From this book I learn that the historical interpretation of the Italian masc. sg. article il that I give in the book (p. 522) , i.e. < *illī is probably not correct. Instead il is prothetic from form earlier (')l as in dove 'l sol tace (Dante Inf. 1.60) < *ubi illum sole tacet. Another form found in Tuscan until the 16th century is el, which perhaps is from illum with apocope, although this too is not certain.

Michel, Andreas, 1997. Einführung in das Altitaliensche. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.

Addendum to Bibliography

To the basic bibliography for Greek add Bakker 2010.  I wrote the chapter on morphology and word formation, which I think is a pretty good sketch of the overall system, although the section on word formation is ridiculously short.  Other chapters worth mentioning as especially relevant to the Latin book are Phoinikeia Grammatika (Roger Woodard) Greek and Indo-European (Jeremy Rau), Phonology (Philomen Probert), Greek and Latin Bilingualism (Bruno Rochette). I will take the opportunity to correct one inaccuracy in my chapter. In explaining the concept of analogy I write "the past tense of the verb strive in many forms of present-day English is strove, not strived, which continues the Old English form."  Of course, strive is a loanword from Old French estriver and does not go back beyond the 13th century in English.  Ultimately, OF estriver is thought to be of Germanic origin, but there is no Old English ancestor of strive.  Furthermore, as a loanword we would expect strive to join the productive paradigm, i.e. the weak verbs, and strived in found from the 14th century on, but the first attested past tense is indeed strove. So in the case of strive the adoption of the strong verb pattern on the model of drive : drove vel sim. was pretty much instantaneous as soon as the word got into the Middle English lexicon.  

Bakker, Egbert, ed. 2010. A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language. Malden MA:Wiley-Blackwell.

Typo in Bibliography

Dariusz Piwowarczyk calls my attention to this error in the bibliography. In the entry for Matasović, Ranko. 1997 change latinskogo to latinskoga.

A False Quantity in the OLD

The OLD gives the verb sariō (sometimes written sarriō) 'I hoe' with long a.  As far as I can tell, this is wrong.  The verb apparently only occurs in verse one time at Plautus Captivi 663. The line is transmitted as nam semper occant prius quam sarriunt rustici, but sar- cannot be a heavy syllable and Nonius, who quotes the line, preserves the form sariunt and in fact this must be correct since the line only scans (ia6):


nam semper occant prius quam sariunt rustici
A      B    c       D   A    b b     C        d d A    B  c D


Why the spelling with a geminate r is so common and how it arises is another question, but there is no evidence for the macron of the OLD.

pesnas

The Latin word for 'feather' is penna, which is undoubtedly a derivative of the PIE root *pet(h2)- 'fly'. If we knew nothing else it would be assumed that penna was from *pet-na, but the picture is complicated by the existence of the forms pesnis (Fest. p. 222L) and pesnas (Fest. p. 228 L). This has led some scholars, e.g. Meiser 1998:118, to suppose that penna is from *petsna and that the outcome of *-VtsnV- was not -V:nV-, as one might have expected, but -VnnV-. This is not totally impossible since pullus < *putslo- (cf. pusillus) shows that at least one *-VtsRV- sequence could lead to -VRRV-.  Szemerényi's idea, on the other hand, that penna is from *pēna by the Iuppiter rule is totally impossible.  But I think the Festus passage at 228 suggests a solution other than the one favored by Meiser.  The passage reads in Lindsay's edition:

Pennas antiquos fertur appellasse †peenas† ex Graeco quod illi πετηνὰ quae sunt volucria, dicant. Item easdem pesnas ut cesnas.

It is evident that what stands between the obels must be emended to pet(V)nas, as suggested by Mueller, since only if the form had a t in it would the derivation from Greek πετηνὰ make sense. The second sentence (item easdem pesnas ut cesnas) means that  Festus' source also knew an old form with s. Thus there were two old forms floating around petna and pesna, just like *putslo- (Lat. pullus) beside *putlo- (Osc. puklo-). Thus nothing stands in the way of deriving penna from *petna.  Whether *petsna would have given penna too or *pēna cannot be answered with certainty. The upshot is that I agree with what I wrote on pg. 168 fn. 3.

Lesser-known Historical Grammars of Latin XV

Here is a work I have not been able to get my hands on: Σκάσσης, Ερρίκος Α., vol 1, 1969; vol. 2 1977. Ιστορικη γραμματικη της Λατινικης γλωσσης: μετα διαγραμματος της ιστοριας των Λατινικων γραμματικων ερευνων. Athens.

This work is available apparently only at the Library of Congress and the University of Sydney. The author, whom I have never heard of otherwise, was a Greek classicist who wrote, among other works, De Macrobii placitis philosophicis eorumque fontibus, and Observationes criticae in quosdam locos primi Ciceronis libri qui est de divinatione, both published in 1915. According to the Modern Greek Virtual Prosopography Skasses was born in 1884 at Ερμούπολη on the island of Syros and died in 1977 at Athens. This work appears to be the only treatment of Latin historical grammar in Greek. Has anyone ever seen this book?  I intend to take a look at it when I am in Washington, next month.