Re: Question about Latin.

 --- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> skrev:
> On Saturday, October 16, 2004, at 04:25 , Steven
> Williams wrote:
>
> > Did the Latin clitic -que (as in 'mare terraque',
> 'the
> > sea and the earth') survive into any modern
> Romance
> > languages?
>
> Nope.
>
> > Also, was it an exact equivalent to 'et',
> > or did something more specific govern its use?
>
> Not exactly in that 'et' was used more generally and
> had wider range of
> mainings such as "also", "even". But there was
> considerable overlap in
> meaning & usage. There was also another Classical
> Latin word for "and",
> namely 'atque' (/ak_wk_we/ or /akkwe/ depending upon
> your analysis of CL
> phonology) with a shortened form 'ac'; in CL 'ac'
> was used only before
> words beginning with consonants (except |h|), while
> 'atque' was used
> before any word.
>
> The latter word is obviously derived from 'at-que'
> ("and but"). Texts
> books tend to give explanations such as:
> "_et_ simply joins words and clauses; _-que_ couples
> words to form one
> whole (_se suaque_ 'himself and his belongings'), or
> couples two closely
> related clauses; _atque_ connects with emphasis:
> 'and also, and I may add'
> ."
> [Bradley's Arnold Latin Prose Composition]
>
> They were at best tendencies. There was in practice
> a great deal of
> overlap in usage between all three. The situation is
> not helped in that
> manuscripts show considerable confusion between
> 'et', 'at' and 'ac', and
> also between 'atque' and the adverb 'atqui' "but
> anyhow...." (Darned
> careless copyists   :)
>
> I have a vague idea I did read once that 'ac'
> survived into some Romance
> dialects, but throughout western Romance the only
> word that survived to
> the modern languages are descendants of _et_. Even
> that disappeared in the
> eastern VL; the Romanian word for 'and' is _ºi_ /Si/
> from Latin _si:c_
> (thus, so), which presumably had acquired a
> colloquial use of "and so".
>
I liked this '-que' form and always found it very
elegant. I think it's really a pity it disappeared
nowadays, because clearly it indicated a nuance which
was lost when the 'et' generalized. It seems to belong
to a different way of thinking and analyzing (since it
was attached at the end of the secund term, which
looks very weird to us): perhaps it came from some
ancient language of a different type ?

In Russian, using 'a' instead of normal 'i' (for:
'and') is very usual. It normally denotes a slight
opposition ('but' being 'no', strong opposition). It
can sometimes be translated into French by 'tandis
que' (while, whereas). In many cases where the French
would use 'et', it would be incorrect to use 'i' in
Russian, like in sentences like: "Je pars. Et toi ?"
(I'm going. What about you ?) ([And you ?])

Si it's a pity to lose all these nuances and to have
to use periphrases to express them, IMO.

(NB. Latin '-que' can sometimes be translated by
'comme' in French: sur terre comme sur mer)

=====
Philippe Caquant


Ceterum censeo *vi* esse oblitterandum (Me).

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