Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 08:48:11PM +0100, Ray Brown wrote:
> That the Romans, at least,
> intuitively regarded -que as a 'word' is surely put beyond doubt by the
> well-known common abbreviation: SPQR = Senatus Populus-Que Romanus = the
> Roman Senate and People.
Interesting.  But apparently later non-Roman Latin-speakers didn't
so regard it, thus the inequity of its treatment with regard to the
new spacing convention.

> (b) it can change the stress of the word to which it is
> attached, e.g.
>
> púeri et puéllae = boys & girls (nom.)
> púeri puelláeque = boys & girls
But if I'm not misremembering, that is not certain; there is conflicting
evidence with regard to the effect of -que on stress.  In fact, I
believe that if you reverse the phrase to "puellae puerique", then there are
actually three different possibly-correct placements of the emphasis:

        1. puéllae púerique     (no effect)
        2. puéllae puérique     ("puerique" treated as single word)
        3. puéllae pueríque     (always stress the syllable before -que)

But as I said, I could be misremembering.

-Mark

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