Re: Proto-Latin or Italic

Nik Taylor wrote:

> Mike Adams wrote:
> > so therefore in ways vulgar
> > latin in the area was more a creole/pidgin, than became the new lingo,
> > post-roman romance lingo?
>
> It has been hypothesized that Vulgar Latin came from a creolized form of
> Latin, which makes sense given the rapid spread of Roman power,
It wasn't really that rapid.  Rome under the Republic took from about 509 BC
till 201, at the end of the Second Punic War, to really dominate Italy and the
Western Mediterranean.  After that, the pace of acquisition of provinces
and "allies" under their thumb quickened, mostly because of instability in the
Eastern Mediterranean which eventually involved the very unwilling and
somewhat isolationist Romans simply because they were the only ones powerful
enough to fight the Antigonids and win.  Latin as a language spread only
gradually outside Italy, and even there the Samnites, Umbrians, Etruscans
and Greeks and others retained substantial speaking populations.

> and the
> fact that VL was spread largely by soldiers, most of whom were not
> native speakers of Latin.
...which is almost certainly incorrect. Yes, Vulgar Latin may have been spread
by the soldiery, but they weren't pidginizing the language. In almost all cases of
pidginization, and to a lesser extent in any consequent creoles that might develop
from it, there is usually a complete loss of all morphology of any kind from both
substrate and adstrate influences.  In VL, however, we see very much morphology
remaining, especially in the verbal paradigms.  Even the nouns, however, retained
IIRC three cases, which ones dependent on dialect.  (This three way system was
only later conflated to two and none IIRC.)

The fact that the Roman soldiers were not ethnic Romans or Italians during the
Late Empire does not tell us much, if indeed anything, about their language use.
Indeed, this is especially so since it was only during the mid to Late Empire
that any sizeable number of soldiers *weren't* ethnic Romans or Italians, yet
it was before this that a great many of the soldier-colonies had been settled,
especially under Augustus, who made it state policy, Stalin-like.  By the time of
the Late Empire (3rd to 5th Centuries), Latin was widespread enough that I
suspect most soldiers had little trouble acquiring it at a native level proficiency.
They were expected to take and give any orders in it, after all.

======================================
Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
======================================