Latin Syntax Research Articles

On the Syntax of Kožičić’s MISAL HRUACKI

Šimun Kožičić Benja’s Misal hruacki (1531) holds a special place amongst the Croatian Glagolitic missals. Namely, recent studies have shown it to be the first comprehensive Croatian redaction of Bible readings according to the Vulgate, and to execute this redaction, Kožičić probably made use of some contemporary Latin missal of Venetian provenance. Since the syntax has largely remained outside the range of previous studies, it is thoroughly explored in this paper. While relying on Latin syntax, Kožičić ended up using forms and structures which to some degree deviate from the Croatian Church Slavonic language tradition. At the same time, he occasionally deviates from both Latin and Croatian Church Slavonic in favor of Old Croatian forms and constructions. Thus the analysis of the syntax also confirms the presence of planning in his conception of literary language, where the status of Croatian Church Slavonic and Old Croatian (Čakavian) elements is defined and to some extent standardized. While the analysis of the selected syntactic features, as expected, affirms the strong dependence of the Misal hruacki on its Latin template, it also shows that the impact of this template should not be overstated. Kožičić does not blindly copy Latin constructions in order to adhere to his source, but rather takes Latin as an incentive and a reliable model on which he can construct a literary language based on clear syntactic principles.

New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax. Volume 4: Complex Sentences, Grammaticalization, Typology. Edited by PHILIP BALDI and PIERLUIGI CUZZOLIN.

New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax. Volume 4: Complex Sentences, Grammaticalization, Typology. Edited by Philip Baldi and Pierluigi Cuzzolin. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 180.4. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin New York, 2011. xxxiv, 926 Seiten. Gebunden, 159,95 EUR. ISBN: 978-3-11-025340-5.

Fusión de estilo directo e indirecto en la transmisión de doctrina en el <i>Ars grammatica</i> de Carisio

When transmitting the teaching of his predecessors, the grammarian Charisius usually makes use of either subordinating clauses or direct speech, but he hardly ever employs the so-called indirect speech, typically found in strictly literary works rather than in technical ones. However, we have encountered some passages in which portions in direct speech precede indirect speech clauses, a remarkable phenomenon which could be thought of as textual corruptions needing emendation. Nevertheless, from the fact that this phenomenon is mainly found in parts of Charisius’ work taken from Julius Romanus’ De analogia (where the latter quotes Pliny the Elder’s Dubius sermo ), we conclude that the text is correct and that we are dealing with a type of citation characteristic of Julius Romanus, the description of which is not found in the literature on Latin Syntax.

New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax Vol. 3: Constituent Syntax: Quantification, Numerals, Possession, Anaphora. Edited by Philip Baldi and Pierluigi Cuzzolin.

New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax Vol. 3: Constituent Syntax: Quantification, Numerals, Possession, Anaphora. Edited by Philip Baldi and Pierluigi Cuzzolin. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 180.3. Mouton de Gruyter Berlin–New York, 2010. 556 Seiten. Gebunden, 129,95 EUR. ISBN: 978-3-11-020754-5.

New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax Vol. 1. Edited by Philip Baldi and Pierluigi Cuzzolin.

New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax Vol. 1: Syntax of the Sentence. Edited by Philip Baldi and Pierluigi Cuzzolin. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 180.1. Mouton de Gruyter Berlin-New York, 2009. 561 Seiten. Gebunden, 128,00 EUR. ISBN: 978-3-11-019082-3

Contact effects of translation: Distinguishing two kinds of influence in Old English

ABSTRACTMany of our surviving Old English (OE) texts are translations from Latin originals. Given that the syntax of Latin and OE differ in a number of ways, the possibility of transference in the process of translation is an important issue for studies of OE syntax. This article examines one syntactic structure where the syntax of the languages differ: the prepositional phrase (PP) with pronominal complement. In Latin, PPs with pronominal complements are essentially head-initial, while in OE they vary between head-initial and head-final. I show that two distinct translation effects can be distinguished, one direct and one indirect, and that these effects apply differentially to two different types of translation, biblical and nonbiblical. I relate these different translation effects to the different strategies of OE translators when faced with biblical and nonbiblical texts.

A Case Study in Treebank Collaboration and Comparison: Accusativus cum Infinitivo and Subordination in Latin

We describe here a collaboration between two separate treebank projects annotating data for the same language (Latin). By working together to create a common standard for the annotation of Latin syntax and sharing our annotated data as it is created, we are each able to rely on the resources and expertise of the other while also ensuring that our data will be compatible in the future. is compatibility allows us to conduct diachronic studies involving both datasets, and we add our results to an ongoing discussion of one such issue, the gradual replacement of the Accusativus cum Infinitivo construction in Latin with subordinate clauses headed by conjunctions such as quod and quia.

Enrichment and Simplification in Latin Syntax: (the Development of the Optative and the Subjunctive)

SummaryThough the Latin language seems to have been rather stable and have undergone few changes even in the passage from early to classical Latin, some new words and morpho-syntactic forms entered into Latin, some perished and some other were reintroduced. Two forces, therefore, seem to have been active in Latin which can be calied enrichment and simplification (enrVsimpl.). After taking into account this Situation of Latin language I will use this criterion to explain some syntactic enlargements, and in particular the birth and enlargement of optative and subjunctive moods and the passage from an early phase of Indo-European languages (as represented by Hittite) to a historical one (I will give a hypothesis of such a birth). Birth and expansion of these moods offered the possibility of distinguishing deictic and non-deictic verbal processes. Such an enrichment of Greek and Latin fmite verb produced some distinctions which could not be expressed before and perhaps didn't exisL This brought to a syntax more and more concentrated on the use of finite verbal forms and permitted an expression which got more clear and fine and, through conservation of old expressions and introduction of new ones, was also richer.

Liturgical Expressions of Episcopal Power: Juan de Palafox y Mendoza and Tridentine Reform in Colonial Mexico

When the Minister of Culture for the State of Puebla, Hector Azar, organized the 350th anniversary festivities for the Biblioteca Palafoxiana in 1996, he included a concert of epigraphs and sonnets set to classical music in the city's cathedral. Employing an ancient form of the Church's liturgical psalmody,1 Azar replaced scriptural psalms with several lines taken from poetry written by the seventeenth-century bishop of Puebla, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, whose donation of books to the city in 1646 established the first public library in colonial Mexico. With a full accompaniment of string, percussion, woodwind, and brass instruments to provide music for the Salmodia Palafoxiana, Azar and the Coro del Benemerito Institute Normal del Estado transformed a few lines of the bishop's poetry into quasi-liturgy. Perhaps Bishop Palafox would have disapproved of substituting his poetic metaphors for biblical verse, but this probably never crossed the minds of the city's residents and visitors who gathered around the bishop's cenotaph to attend the concert. The first antiphon, however, evokes quite nicely Palafox's liturgical sensibilities: Today the sun of wounded love, the new shepherd comes to be.2 The new shepherd is the resurrected, triumphant Christ who gives light to his flock. And, to the shepherd of Puebla and his seventeenth-century flock, Christ's real presence in the bread and wine was instituted each time a priest celebrated the Mass. Liturgy as a sacramental rite imbued with cultural meaning has escaped the scholarly purview of most historians of colonial Latin America. Deciphering discrete portions of ecclesiastical texts in Latin or italicized scriptural citations located in the margins of ceremonials appears more suited to the canon lawyer or liturgist. Moreover, despite the historical centrality of the Mass, as well as of the seven sacraments, to Catholic culture, historians have examined almost every other dimension of the colonial Catholic experience except liturgy and prayer.3 Perhaps scholars view the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, or Hoc Est Enim Corpus Meum4 as officiai prayers of the institutional Church, whose significance remained hidden behind complicated Latin syntax that parishioners (and not a few clergymen too) failed to grasp. Even Bishop Palafox might have agreed in part with this view. Moreover, the mundane features of the Mass, rosary, and other liturgical rites and rituals, with their scripted formulas and responses, seem to demonstrate, on the surface, something less spectacular, less ideological than the extravagant religious and civic processions of Corpus Christi or Holy Week, for example, that so marked urban society in colonial Mexico. Recent contributions to the new cultural history of Mexico provide theoretical and conceptual frameworks that interpret rituals and ceremonies within the context of power relations, popular culture, and resistance.5 Some historians have demonstrated how Spaniards used rituals to help establish their authority and legitimize colonial rule through language and ceremony. Ritual is seen as the medium for rulers to act out the drama of their power, while daily life itself is suffused with ritual performances that reinforce social hierarchies.6 The festival of Corpus Christi in seventeenth-century Mexico City has received some scholarly attention in recent years, and illustrates this turn to cultural history in Mexican studies. Indians and Spaniards, guilds and cofradias (confraternities), parishioners and priests, participated in festivities that expressed political as well as religious sentiment. The principal focus of such studies, however, tends to emphasize procession-as-spectacle and its uses as a tool of hegemonic control and institutional legitimization.7 The centrality of the Blessed Sacrament in Catholic worship and the liturgical dimensions of the procession are less evident. When, in 1692, the celebrations turned riotous, two Franciscan friars hoisted the Blessed Sacrament in the air, presumably in its sacred container, the monstrance, in an effort to calm passions and return tranquility to the city. …

Viginti quatuor sunt iuncturae

The purpose of this paper is to present a recently published medieval Latin grammatical text, whose manuscript location is Bibliothèque National Lat. 16670 ff 19vb-21vb, and whose edition is Cser (2000). Texts of this type occur in great numbers and great variety in the last centuries of the Middle Ages. They summarise the rules of Latin syntax, interspersed occasionally with morphological information, in twenty-odd points. First we give short and typical sections of the text with some explanatory notes. Then we give an English translation of the selected sections, finally we discuss some aspects of the text as a whole.

Simplifying Latin in Notker's Classroom: Tradition and Innovation

Much of the rearrangement of the Latin syntax by Notker Labeo in his classroom translation/commentaries is done according to a pedagogic principle called theordo naturalis, which prescribes an SVO word order. A theoretical discussion of theordo naturalisis preserved in a tenth-century treatise composed at St. Gall, and its practical application is found throughout Europe in the form of glosses and construe marks. My analysis shows that Notker varied the traditional and prescribed “natural order” according to the passage at hand, taking into consideration the level of textual difficulty and pedagogic relevance of the passage as well as the text-building strategies of the original. In a few instances Notker even sprinkled his personal variant ofordo naturaliswith OHG word order. Notker expanded upon and modified tradition with his own pedagogic common sense, thus tailoring his teaching materials to the needs of the St. Gall pupils.

Les grammaires latines en France

Bernard Colombat : Latin grammars in France. The aim of this article is to show that while France contributed little to the theoretical development of Latin grammar in the 18th Century, it produced truly new works for learning Latin. The big 17th-century grammars, too complex for children with no real competence in the language, were replaced by much shorter works, even when, like Lhomond's, they were in the traditional style. At the same time there appeared more original methods, like that of Frémy, who claimed to reduce all of Latin syntax to a single rule, inter-line translations (Du Marsais and many others) or methods based on the reading of authors (Chompré, Pluche). The work by Radonvilliers shows a real concern for pedagogical progress and provides interesting remarks on word order. Now Latin was learnt through a knowledge of French grammar and implied an analysis of the differences between French and Latin, or what was precisely called the "method".

Les <i>Transformacions</i> del poeta Ovidi segons la versió de Francesc Alegre: el mite de Pigmalió

Only in precious incunabula from 1494 has a Catalan version/translation and detailed commentary of Ovid's Metamorphoses ("Transformations") survived, the author of which, Francesc Alegre, is one of the last Catalan humanists. The inaccessibility of the work, which failed to be published in the last century, means that the work and its author remain almost unknown. With reference to this fact, Lola Badia has recently rejected the superficiality of the few, almost exclusively negative judgments about Alegre and his work. The detailed analysis of a small section from this work, namely the Pygmalion myth, and the comparison with the original text (Met. X 238-297) already reveal high linguistic and literary quality: Ovid's art of storytelling does not lose its vividness in Alegre's wordy prose version, and even if the paraphrase, which was still common in the 15th century, determines the rendering of the Ovidian saga, the clear effort to remain true to the content of the original is noticeable; it is not uncommon for individual accurate formulations to be noticed that correspond exactly to the original. Alegre's seemingly modern considerations of the task of translation show that such an approach is thoroughly reflected: emphasizing the peculiarities of the respective languages, he criticizes a purely mechanical "word-for-word" translation in favour of a reproduction that is as true to the original as possible and grasps the meaning. Thus, the fluent reading of the text is not hampered by Alegre's imitation of the Latin syntax, as is a common criticism, but rather by the punctuation of the incunabula, which often appears arbitrary. Analysis of the commentary shows the close dependence of the Catalan author on Boccaccio's mythographic works, the “Genealogie deorum gentilium”, which he in no way conceals. Therefore, his "Allegories and Moral Representations", the second part of the "Transformations", can be seen as excellent testimony to Boccaccio's reception in the Catalan Renaissance. As Menéndez Pelayo lamented, the contempt with which Alegre's work has been treated cannot be justified.

Gifts, Curses, Cult and Society at Bath

The finds from the Bath Sacred Spring comprise 130 inscribed lead tablets or parts of such, with some uninscribed pieces of scrap lead, 18 Celtic, 12,595 Roman with 2 post-Roman coins, and 123 miscellaneous objects, including a coherent group of 33 gemstones with I glass intaglio; clearly an important collection, and perhaps, with luck, approximately representative of the total of the goods deposited, of which, we are told, 'a considerable volume' remains in situ. Often the items are interesting in themselves, for example the gemstones (Flavian in date and linked with contemporary work being produced in Aquileia), the pewter ware (which no doubt reflects local industrial development), the ballista washer (from which Dr Baatz has reconstructed a whole ballista in a most elegant way), almost every one of the lead tablets which are social and religious documents of primary significance in many ways, including the history of writing, of language (Celtic, Latin and the Romance languages) and of literacy. Taken together they form a remarkable body of evidence, above all for the cult at this spring, for the character of those who dedicated there, for very important aspects of the cultural effects of Britain's absorption into the Roman empire. It is not, indeed, evidence that is easy to interpret. It raises questions, concerning aspirations, ideas, speech and manners, for instance, which could hardly have been formulated for any British site previously, and still cannot be effectively formulated for any other. And it is far from clear how much we ought to generalise from it; I find myself distinctly unhappy with suggestions like that on p. 79 that Bath 'was a microcosm of the speech habits of Roman Britain', which seems to me, despite the points of resemblance between the tablets and some inscriptions elsewhere in Britain, to be rather a big leap in the dark and would be, I think, even if we knew much more than we do about the identity of the dedicators (where they all 'British'?) or about the source of the phrases they used. The sharing of phrases with those of curse tablets from elsewhere in the Empire is a warning in itself; but leaving aside the major question of the ultimate origin of the formulae, was it the dedicators, or was it temple officials who introduced the Vulgar Latin words, syntax and spellings and if it was officials, where did they come from? Given this kind

A Categorial Approach to Latin Syntax

AbstractThis work investigates the effects of the application of a categorial grammar to Latin syntax. Due to the wide variety of constructions admitted in Latin, the analysis will focus on those properties of lexical items which more directly and intuitively offer the opportunity of evaluating the salient aspects and the effectiveness of the categorial strategy. Subcategorization properties of lexical items and certain word order patterns are considered in this perspective, and a picture of the case system is suggested, representing the traditional cases in terms of the categorial notation implemented by an appropriate system of syntactic features.

Vidularia: Outlines Of A Reconstruction

The last play of the Varronian canon, Vidularia, is transmitted to us through two different channels. Some pages of it survive in the Codex Ambrosianus, containing the prologue and a couple of scenes from the beginning of the play. On the other hand grammarians quote fragments of a few lines out of context, as examples of idiosyncratic Latin syntax and morphology. From the combination of these two disparate sources classical scholars have reconstructed a Vidularia that is parallel to Rudens on all major points. The plot is not very different, and on the whole the consensus philologorum is correctly summed up by the Terentian sentence of Leo: qui utramve recte novit, ambas noverit (p. 10).

An Early-Tudor Oxford Schoolbook

One of the most attractive genres of educational literature consists of the sets of Latin and English prose passages written by English schoolmasters during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to exercise their pupils in Latin. Some of the exercises were in Latin alone, intended as examples or models of Latin grammar and syntax. Others, which contemporaries called "vulgars" (Latin vulgaria), comprised passages in English for the pupils to translate into Latin, with model Latin versions for comparison.

Some Trends in Norwegian Linguistics 1800–1850

Summary The first Norwegian university was founded in 1811; in 1814 Norway became independent from Denmark. These two factors were decisive for the establishment of a linguistic milieu in Norway and for the development of linguistics in that country during the 19th century. Three scholars of very different backgrounds and interests dominated Norwegian linguistics in the first half of the 19th century: One, Christopher Holmboe (1796–1882) was a pupil of A. I. Silvestre de Sacy in Paris and from 1825 on Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo (Christiania). The main bulk of his linguistic production lay within comparative Indo-European philology, but in some minor works he also made interesting observations on various non-Indo-European languages and on topics within general linguistics. The second, Ludvig Caesar Martin Aubert (1807–87), became professor of Latin in 1840. Besides writing important works concerning Latin syntax and general syntactic theory, he introduced comparative Indo-European linguistics to Norway in a series of lectures from 1843 on. His sober and critical attitude concerning language study made him much more influential than Holmboe, whose somewhat oldfashioned preconceptions made him an outsider on the scientific (though not on the organizational) level of the discipline. The third figure was Ivar Aasen (1813–96), who never held a university position, but who as the founder of landsmål (nynorsk), the initiator of Norwegian dialectology, and the author of the first grammar of modern Norwegian had a tremendous impact both on Norvegian linguistics and on the socio-cultural development of Norway in the 19th and 20th century. The paper attempts to depict the intellectual background and the relations between these three men, their relationship to previous and contemporary European linguistics, to some basic trends of Norwegian society of their time as well as to the subsequent development of Norvegian linguistics.

The Latin Imperfect in *ba-

Various proposals for explaining the origin of the base constituent of the Latin imperfect tense formation in *bd(e.g. amabam 'I was loving') are examined. With an explicit phonological derivation, as well as critical evidence from Latin syntax and word formation, it is demonstrated that the present participle, e.g. *aman(t)s, is the source of the base member of this construction; and that it is joined, as traditionally assumed, to a form of the verb *bhau'be'.

On Curriculum Construction

At the present time the problem of curriculum construction is very much in the foreground. There is a widespread feeling that curriculum construction in the past was left almost wholly to tradition, guesswork, and individual bias. It was customary to announce certain lofty aims and then to lay down a curriculum that bore no discoverable relations to these aims. We now recognize this as bad form. As Bobbitt puts it: Objectives that are only vague, high-sounding hopes and aspirations are to be avoided. Examples are: 'character building,' the 'harmonious development of the individual,' 'social efficiency,' 'general discipline,' 'self-realization,' 'culture,' and the like. All of these are valid enough; but too cloud-like for guiding practical procedure. They belong to the visionary adolescence of our profession-not to its sober and somewhat disillusioned maturity (1924b, P-32). Adolescence, as we know, tends to take its responsibilities lightly. The objectives that used to be set up certainly have the appearance of being a kind of New Year resolutions, formulated in conformity with the spirit of the occasion but with no thought of taking them seriously. Our forefathers talked much of character formation and discipline, but did not consider it necessary to keep these high purposes in mind when they were occupied in drilling defenseless childhood in the forms of Latin syntax. In their actual teaching they were less concerned with general aims than with specific results. From the standpoint of certain modem educators their practice was wiser than their theory. A teacher of chemistry, as Thorndike says, thought vaguely of the general end of the teaching of science might well be doing far less to attain it than one who thought of the