| From: | R A Brown <ray@...> |
|---|---|
| Date: | Tuesday, September 25, 2007, 11:56 |
Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:> R A Brown skrev: > >> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote: >> >>> On 2007-09-24 R A Brown wrote: >>> >>>> Also, Cattulus keeps the -o at the end of 'Nescio' short ;) >>> >>> >>> >>> Why? >> >> >> Basically, so that it would scan :) >> >> Normally in Classical Latin final -o is long, except in the words _ego >> (I), duo (two), modo (only), cito_ (quickly) where it was short. But >> you will find that poets will treat the final -o of the 1st person >> singular of verbs and the nominative singular of the 3rd declension as >> short if it suits their purpose; this often the case with the poets >> Martial and Juvenal. >> > > Might this have something to do with vowel length already being lost in > these poets' everyday pronunciation?Yes, in as much as their speech was similar to Vulgar Latin. I imagine that among the educated literati one found in the same person a whole range of speech from the (near) Vulgar Latin with which they communicated with their slaves through to something approaching the 'Classic Norm' when speaking with their peers - something like the diglossia that existed in Greece in the days when Katharevousa was the official language.> I guess they could mostly recover the old quantity from > quality distinctions in the everyday pronunciation,No, no - they knew the Classical quality distinctions from their education. In many case it would've been literally beaten into them!> if > this was the case, although it is hard to believe > they'd be any good as poets if their meter was already > wholly artificial.Quantitative was artificial, but their fellow peers were trained in it and would judge them by how successfully their verse conformed to Classical norms.> Possibly length was lost earlier in unstressed syllables.I have no doubt that length in final unstressed syllables was lost in the popular speech. -- Ray ================================== http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitudinem.
| Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |