The Latin Language at the End of the Empire: A Phonological and Morpho-Syntactic Sketch Paul A. Gaeng Modern Language Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Feb., 1971), pp. 3-12. Stable URL: http:/Mlinks,jstor.org/sici?sici=0047-7729% 28197 102% 291%3A 1%3C3%3ATLLATE®3E2.0.CO%3B2-X Modern Language Studies is currently published by Modern Language Studies. ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstororg/about/terms.huml. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hhup:/www jstor-org/journals/mls.huml Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ ‘Sun Jun 4 11:43:02 2006THE LATIN LANGUAGE AT THE END OF THE EMPIRE A PHONOLOGICAL AND MORPHO-SYNTACTIC SKETCH Paul A. Gaeng Few languages have known the success that Latin has had. Originally the tongue of shepherds and peasants, limited as to its use to Rome and Latium, it became, little by little, the language of a great civilization spoken throughout the western portion of the Roman Empire. Even more remarkable is the history of Latin after the fall of the Empire. Spoken Latin never really died; it changed from generation to generation, it broke up into dialectal variations, and it eventually gave rise to the Neo-Latin or Romance languages. Nor has written Latin ceased to be used. It served as a means of communication in the churches and schools and under the name of Medieval Latin it became a supra-national language, limited though it was to the educated classes of society. With Christianity it reached Celtic, Germanic, Hungarian, and western Slavic peoples and became a common linguistic vehicle for western civilization, upon which it left an indelible mark. During the first centuries of modern times, the intellectual elite was still thoroughly familiar with Latin, whose importance, for all practical purposes, did not begin to wane until after the middle of the seventeenth century. But even in our own days Latin preserves its universality; it is taught in schools - though not as widely as one might wish --, the Catholic Church still uses it as liturgical language, and science and technology draw upon it for their vocabulary. This is why he who wishes to understand the unity and complexity of our civilization owes it to himself to study this language which has molded peoples’ minds for such a long time. No language has a similar history; no language has played a comparable role in the history of mankind. During the third century A.D. the Roman Empire experienced a number of violent crises. The Persians, the Goths, the Alamans, and other barbaric tribes inflicted crushing defeats on the Romans. On the domestic front, continuous rebellions threatened to disrupt the state. And when the barbarians were finally repulsed and the unity of the Empire was reestablished, the world had considerably changed. Rome was no longer the center of political and cultural life. The emperors lived in Milan, in Trier, in Constantinople, and other places. These cities and other provincial capitals often afforded a more favorable intellectual climate than the old metropolis. All these events foreshadowed impending linguistic differentiation. In 313 A.D. the Emperor Constantine issued his famous Edict of Milan in which he proclaimed freedom of religion. In 392 A.D. 3Emperor Theodosius forbade the holding of pagan cults and rites, and the triumph of Christianity was thenceforth complete. These are two dates of fundamental importance for the West, and also for the development of the language. The Christians had led a life of their own, a group isolated from the great masses of the population, often despised and persecuted. Their isolation favored the creation of a new dialect which the pagans had just as much difficulty understanding as the new ideology. Now, the Christians were becoming the leaders of a new society and they imposed both their philosophy and their language on the others. The new religion in the West was at first practiced by Easterners whose language was Greek. As a matter of fact, for almost two centuries the language of the Christian Church was Greek, even in Rome. It follows, therefore, that a great portion of the vocabulary of the Christians is borrowed from Greek, especially the terms referring to the organization and the institutions of the Church. They became Iatinized. Thus, ecclesia is a very old borrowing as evidenced by the stress pattern ecclesia rather than ecclesia. Other words of this type are episcopus, presbyter, diaconus, martyr, evangelium, baptisma, etc. Even some Hebrewisms reached the West by way of the Bible, eg.,sabbatum, pascha, satanas, and gehenna. These terms were so well accommodated to the Latin language that with the help of Latin suffixes such hybrid formations as episcopatus, episcopalis, haptizator, paschalis, and others were created. It is interesting to note that while concrete concepts were often rendered by borrowed words, Latin words were preferred to express abstract notions referring to Christian faith. Thus, the Latin words credere, fides, gratia, salus, revelatio, and many others were given the same Christian connotation that the corresponding Greek words had. To formulate the new ideology in Latin terms, a number of new words were coined: salvare, salvator. sanctificare. sanctificatio, trinitas, incarnatio, passibilis, and transgressor make their appearance with Christianity. When the pagans reproached the Christians with disturbing the purity of the language, St. Augustin retorted in one of his sermons: Let the grammarians not wonder whether the term /salvator! is a Latin one but let the Christians ask themselves whether it isa fitting one. Salus is a Latin word. Salvare and Salvator, however, were not Latin words before the coming of the Savior. But when he came to the Romans, He made them Latin words.’ The western Christians often had a choice of several Latin words to express an idea. There was, for instance, a series of verbs with the meaning of ‘request’: obsecrare, orare, petere, precari, rogare, etc. Of 4these, the verb orare was supplanted by the others in everyday speech at an early date and it was used only in certain fixed expressions which often sounded archaic and solemn. This is why this particular verb was chosen to designate the Christian prayer, thus giving a verb about to disappear a new lease on life. The history of the word gentes is also quite instructive. In order to translate the idea of ‘pagans’ the Christians first hesitated between the Greek borrowing ethnici and the Latin words nationes and gentes. Finally, it is the latter term that won out, the reason being that already in classical Latin it had a pejorative connotation because it was used to ‘oppose the concept of populus romanus. The meaning of gentes, as a result of this opposition, became ‘foreigners’ or ‘barbarians’ implying a note of contempt which favored the Christian use of the term and its semantic change to ‘non-initiated,’ that is, ‘pagan.’ Christian Latin has been greatly influenced by the language of the Bible which everyone was exposed to in church, down to the most humble illiterate. The earliest translations of the Holy Scriptures were quite literal and it is not surprising that both Hebrew and Greek should have exerted great influence on Latin, even in the area of syntax. Here are two examples to illustrate this point The first one concerns syntax. In Vulgar Latin there is a definite tendency to extend the use of the preposition in. People said, for instance, in man tenere, in equo vehi, as well as, offendere aliquem inaliqua re. The earliest translators followed this tendency in e.g., Exodus 17, 5 where we read virgam in qua percussisti flumen accipe in manu tua’... the rod wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand and go," or Exodus 17, 13 fugavitque Josua Amalec et populum eius in ore gladit 'and Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.’ They would not have chosen this strange-sounding construction if they had not come upon it in Greek sentences in which the preposition éy is used with the value of an instrumental. This use of the Greek preposition, in turn, is due toa similar construction in the original Hebrew. Following the example of the Bible, the Church Fathers often use an instrumental in (for de) which became customary in Christian literature. The second example is also instructive. It involves vocabulary. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew text the Hebrew word maSal tomparison,’ ‘proverb,’ ‘speech,’ or ‘word,’ is always rendered by parabolé, although the Greek’ word has only the meaning of ‘comparison.’ In the Latin versions of the Bible, most of the time the Greek borrowing parabola is used in all the meanings of the Hebrew original, even that of ‘word.’ From the biblical language the use of parabola with this latter meaning spread to the colloquial language of 5the Christians and, eventually, became the everyday work for ‘word. People even coined the verb parabolare which we find for the first time used in a Merovingian text, the Visio Baroni (Chapter 1): ille nihil homini valuit parabolare sed digito gulam ei mostrabat ‘he was unable to say anything to the man but pointed with his finger at his throat.’* The political, social, and spiritual revolutions of the third and fourth centuries A.D. unleashed forces that inexorably transformed the language. Classical Latin had been a creation of the Roman élite and continued to be cultivated by it. During these times of upheaval Rome and, generally speaking, Italy yielded to the provinces and all the strata of society underwent considerable change. The rhythm of Latin based on quantity was too much of a refinement to be pre served by the man-in-the-street. In the classical pronunciation the stress was essentially musical, i., it consisted in raising the voice on a given syllable and the stress was very weak. The Romans did not have any difficulty in perceiving the difference between long and short syllables. Quantity was phonemic: milum ‘evil’ differed from ‘malum ‘apple’ and Yenit ‘he comes’ differed from venit ‘he came’ according to whether the accented vowel was long or short. In the course of the second and third centuries A.D. -- and possibly even before that ~- new habits of pronunciation gracually became general- ized. The accent came to be increasingly associated with stress, rather than pitch, and this new feature completely upset the old rhythm based on quantity. St. Augustin notes that his fellow countrymen were no longer aware of the classical syllable quantity and, hence, they were unable to distinguish between long and short vowels, as in ‘is ‘bone’ versus 8s ‘mouth.”* Distinctions of quantity gradually dis appeared; short vowels tended to become open and long vowels be came closed. To put it in more technical terms, the opposition based ‘on vowel quantity, or duration, gave way to an opposition based on vowel quality. This new system was to have far-reaching conse- quences for the phonetic structure of the language. We know that in the greater part of Romania short i and y in stressed syllables assumed the same quality as long ¢ and 0: bho became bebo and gitla became gola with the same vowel sounds as sta and hora, respectively. It is generally maintained that the front vowels merged before the back vowels*but my own investigation of inscriptional material seems to indicate that this may not have been the case everywhere where this merger took place. Indeed, statistical data based on the frequency of occurrence of deviations points to the area of Central Italy where tf and 6 may have merged before i andAs to classical Latin short ¢ and 0. which became open vowel sounds, there is no real evidence of diphthongization of the kind we find in many of the Romance languages.’ The ue and oc diphthongs of Latin, on the other hand, appear in texts of late Republican times as the monophthong «* These changes in pronunciation were also reflected in Latin orthography. In inscriptions of imperial times we find spellings like menus, veces, tomolo, colomna, and fede, instead of minus, vices tumulo, columna, and fide, as well as forms like egrotus, era, amenus, Phebus for aegrotus, aera, amoenus, Phoebus, besides reverse spellings like diaes, faecerunt, Advaentu, and aedo for dies, fecerunt, Adventu, and edo. In the authors of the early Middle Ages orthography is often so chaotic that it is difficult to make out the meaning of the text and to get an idea of the pronunciation which is reflected in the indiscriminate and irrational use of the letters i, ¢. . 1, ae, and oe. The unstressed vowels tend to disappear and syncopy becomes increasingly frequent; this is but another consequence of the stress accent. In the Appendix Probi. a kind of orthographic manual dating back to the third or fourth century A.D., we read rules like calida non calda, masculus non masclus, vetulus non veclus, tabula non tabla, and viridis non virdis. It is from these syncopated forms that we derive such Romance forms as French chaude, male, vieil, table, and vert There is also some evidence that the place of the accent in compound verbs has shifted from the prefix to the root, with a concomitant restoration of the root vowel of the simple verb. Thus, classical Latin céutinet is replaced by conténet, with the root vowel of tenet, Texts show many other instances of this recomposition, eg, displacet, incddit, implicat, and others, for displicet, incidit, and ‘tmplicat. Seansion in late Latin poetry often confirms this shift of stress to the penult, even where the root vowel does not change, e.g. indtit, invocat, rettlit, etc.°The fact that in these forms the penult is short and that, according to classical standards, the accent is to fall (on the antepenult is no longer an impediment. The penult rule has ceased to operate. ‘Spoken Latin of the late Empire underwent other phonetic changes, as evidenced by our texts. The vowels i and « in hiatus lost their vocalic value and turned into semi-vowels. The author of the Appendix enjoins his pupils not to spell vinia for vinea, lancia for lancea, and cavia for cavea and, conversely, to spell. tolonium, ostium. and alium instead of ‘foloneum, osteum, and aleum respectively. By the same token, 0 and w in hiatus also becomesemi-vocalized: vacua non vaqua, vacui non vaqui. On occasion hiatus vowels simply disappear, as in parietem, quietus, and duodecim which appear in texts and inscriptions again and again as parete, quetus, and dodeci. Before the initial sp, sc, and st consonant groups there develops a socalled prosthetic vowel: ispiritus or espiritus, escola, istratum, and exspectare for the normal Spiritus, schola, stratum, and spectare, Late Latin texts also abound in hypercomections of the Spania for Hispania and storia for historia types. Rather early during imperial times the intervocalic b and the semivowel u (v) have merged into a bilabial fricative b sound; hence the frequent confusions between the letterss, b and u (v) which are copiously attested in inscriptions: devere, iuvente for debere, iubente. This feature is also recorded in the Appendix: baculus non aclus, bravium non brabium, plebes non plevis, and alveus non albeus. Later, the bilabial u tured into a labiodental v, so that the former semivocalic articulation was kept only after q and g, as in ‘aqua and lingua. At about the same time, the Germanic speakers still pronounced a bilabial semivowel u in words like werra and wardon and when the Romans borrowed these words they tried to render this initial sound by reinforcing it with a velar as in guerra and guardare,! ‘Some evolutions are not easy to follow through with any kind of precision, for example, y, dy, and gv (generally written i, di, de, gi, and ge)’ before a following vowel. In both inscriptions and other texts we find such spellings as iosum and zosum for deorsum, baptidiare for baptizare, gianuaria and Zanuaria for lanuaria azutoribus for adiutoribus, oze for hodie, zabolus for diabolus, and zeta for diaeta, Are these evidences for the kinds of palatalizations that we find in the Romance languages, e.g., Lat. diurnum > It. giorno and Fr. jour? Probably the best we can do is to agree with Veikko VAindnen that these spellings represent “des degres dlassibilation varies selon le temps, la classe sociale, voir la région.” The consonant groups ty and ky seem to have undergone an analogous development. On the cursing tablets, the so-called Defixionum Tabellae of the second and third centuries A.D., one can read forms like Vincentzus, Vincentzo, and ampitzarru for Vincentius, Vincentio, and amphitheatrum, respectively. Confusion between ti and ci spellings before 2 vowel would also point in the direction of assibilation. Forms like terciae, definicionis for tertiae and definitionis, respectively, appear on inscriptions as early as the second century and in later medieval texts spellings like gracia, spacium, contemplacio, and racionabilis are legion, with an occasional reverse spelling like provintia and offitivm. 8The velar sounds represented by written ei, ee. gi. and ge have palatalized in the greater part of Romania. Graphic evidence, however, is scarce and rather late. The first examples of this palatalization go back to the fifth century A.D. In an inscription from Italy we find the form inteitamento (CIL XIV, 2165). While the beginnings of this phenomenon may reach back farther than this form would suggest, its chronology seems very difficult to establish.'? As regards final consonants, we are pretty certain that final -m was weakly articulated ever since the beginning of Latin literature. During the time of the Empire the tendency to eliminate this sound altogether became general. The Appendix Probi censures the forms oli, numgua, and ide for olim, numquam, and idem. Though by no means the principal cause of it, the loss of final -m also greatly contributed to the collapse of the Latin declensional system. AAs to the fall of final -1 in the spoken language, it seems to be attested already in Pompei: quisquis ama vatia, peria qui nosei amare (CIL IV, 40991) In morphology and syntax, spoken Latin underwent equally important changes. Written sources enable us to ascertain the beginning of the loss of the neuter gender which, in general, was replaced by the masculine ~ farus, vasus, and vinus being already attested in Petronius. The neuter plural, often used in a collective sense, sometimes shifted to the feminine, e.g., Lat. folia>It. foglia, Fr. feuille, and Sp. hoja. ‘The nouns of the fourth declension shift to the second and those of the fifth to the first declension. The singular genitive forms senati and fructi are not infrequent and glacia and rabia for glaci’s and rabies are duly attested in glossaries. On the pattern of pulcher. pulchra, pulchrum, people begin to decline acer, aera, acrum and pauper, paupera, pauperum (cf. pauper mulier non paupera mulier in the Appendis). When it is no longer possible to distinguish between 3s ‘mouth’ and Ys ‘bone,’ the former is replaced by ossum, a form already accepted by St. Augustin.'* Within the third declension the imparisyllabic nouns of the bos, bovis and fos, floris type yield to a levelling trend and take on a new nominative form bovis and floris. respectively. The case system begins to crumble. Prepositional phrases constructed especially with de. ad, per, and cum are increasingly used as substitutes for the genitive, dative, and ablative cases. After prepositions the use of the accusative tends to be generalized Already in Pompeian inscriptions we read a pulvinar (CIL IV, 2155) and cum discentes suos (CIL IV, 698). In the singular, the loss of the final -m and the coalescence of final i and e. and o and u results in amerger of accusative and ablative. The hesitation in the use of these two cases may also be observed in the lack of clear distinction between ubi and qud, that is, between in urbe and in urbem, or in civitatibus and in civitates. The accusative comes to be used with such verbs as uti, nocere, persuadere, and others which traditionally call for the use of the ablative case. By the same token, an accusative - and even nominative ~- absolute makes its appearance to replace the ablative absolute, Regarding the adjective and the adverb, let us note the confusion of the positive, comparative, and superlative forms: quam plures for complures, tam clarissinnus for tam clasus, bonus quisque for optimus quisque, superius for supra, and saepius for saepe. The comparative is increasingly expressed by means of magis and plus and the adverb by an analytic construction like firm mente. The pronouns tend to ievel their forms. One frequently reads ‘lui for illud, ilae for iltius, illo and illae for ill. In the spoken language, as reflected in the texts, the relatives qui and quem supplant the feminine forms quae and quam and the paradigm becomes simplified as a result of the merger of quod, quid, and quae The system of Latin demonstratives was too’ complicated to survive. Is and ic. of which there are only a few traces left in the Romance languages, are replaced by iste. ille, and ipse, and these are often confused. Ipse sometimes also carries the meaning of idem. ‘There is an occasional use of the reflexive promoun with a verb, eg., ambulare sibi, radere sibi, or vadere se, etc. Hence such Romance forms as Fr. s'en aller, It. andarsene, and Sp. trse. Almost all synthetic forms of the Latin future have disappeared in the Romance languages. Their loss begins with the increasing use of periphrastic constructions which appear in the literature of the Empire. Debere, velle, and habere preceded or followed by an infinitive often express not only obligation or will but also future tense, 28 in tempestas ila rollere habet total palean ‘this storm will carry’ off the chaff’ used by St. Augustin.The new periphrastic future is already quite frequent in Gregory of Tours and the new synthetic form appears for the first time in the seventh century Fedegarius Chronicle: daras ‘you shall give' from dare habes.® In purpose and result clauses debere, velle, posse, and valere are often used to reinforce the subjunctive: praccipimus ut hoe facere debeatis becomes a frequent construction for ut hoc fuciatis. The deponent forms seem to have been eliminated from the spoken language at an early date. In post-classical texts one often finds the forms horto, uto, and vesco. On the other hand, perfect forms of the mortuus est and secutus est type resist and’ serve as 10models for innovations like interitus est, ventus est. ete. The synthetic passive, however, is quite alive in all the texts written well after the fall of the Empire. While the supine becomes obsolete, the use of the infinitive is on the increase. It is particularly frequent after facere in a phrase like facere aliquem venire (of. Fr. faire venir quelqu’un). In the Ttala version of the Bible (Joh. 6, 52) we find for the first time an infinitive preceded by the preposition ad: quomodo potest hic nobis carnem dare ad manducare (whereas the vulgate version has ad ‘manducandum), a construction that was to become very widespread in the spoken language of the Middle Ages. It seems to have resulted from a contamination of expressions like dare aliquid manducare and dare aliquid ad manducandum (cf Fr. donner a manger, or It. dare a mangiare). The ablative of the gerund often replaces the present participle to express simultaneous action. The phrase sic redirent ... dicendo psalmos in the Peregrinatio (15, §) is the equivalent of dicentes psalmos foreshadowing the Romance construction, for example Fr. en chantant ( Quoted in Einar Lofstedt, Late Latin (Oslo: Aschshows, 1959), p82 cafeas aures de corruptions vosalium vel productione nom iudicant.” De Dacrina Chistans, IV, 10, 24). CF. Migne, Pavolopie, XXX1V, 99 5 See Edouard Bourciez, Elements de lingistave rama, 4th od, rom, (Pati Klinckseck, 1986), p43 © See Paul A. Gueng, An nguiy Ito Local Variations Volga’ Lai, As Relic the Vocutmot Cvtian serpin (Chapel Hil: Uaiversy of North Carolina Pes, 1969), pp. 83:88, 7 W. D. Eleock mentions a Roman inscription of cA. D: 120.0 which we read the form repor (CIL_XV 1118) but, he hist states, this form has generally been "viewed with Stapiion "See his.” The Remance Languofes (London: Faber & Faber, 1960). * the phenomenon is amply attested in Pompen inscriptions. Soe Veikko Vs {Delain ular des scritons pmwienes, Sede. (Bevin: Akademle Verlag, 1968), pp. 2398 9 See Dag Norhere, La pase nthminve de haw myen age (Stockholm: Almavist & Wise 1983), 99 We have been able to observe the same kind of reinforcement ive Spanish Sreshers in connection with Engish words bapining with the same blabla semivowel SPinthe word ware” for example, which i likely to be pronounced [ewacl ‘See his tntmduction au latin vulgve, tad ed. tev. (Batis: Klincksieck, 1967), . 55. The German scholar Heinrich Lausberg would place the fist stage of this plataization in'the third century of ourera sith the development of Latin ot [sound By'the fifth century, so. we are told, the phenomenon had definitely reached the [ts age of modern Iaisa cnt See his Ronamache Sprchwssenschat (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1980), Ih 941. The evidence fo" support such's claim however, hardly quod vulgo dicturr oxsum, lating os dicitur” But far from censuring this popula form he sues it in paraphrasing the biblical "Non est absconditum os meum a te ByPSttabeo. in abacondita quovdam ossum.” It is at tis pomt, incidentally, that St ‘Regustin makes the famous statement "Sle enim loguamur: mel ext reprehendaat nos rammaticrquamn non iteligant popu” Tenuate Psaimam, 38, 20)-CE Migne, (Jeans Evangeian Tacats, 1, 2.CF.Migne, Pattie, OOK, 1406, frano _Krusch (ed). Menaneta Genmanz ston, Septum Retin ucoringearan Ii (Manover, 1888), Chonctam ge ctr Fees stooasner, Lib 8S