Re: USAGE: Latin puerique (was: Circumfixes)

On Tuesday, May 11, 2004, at 09:57 PM, Richard Wordingham wrote:

> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@M...>
> wrote:
>> 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:
Yes - I'd forgotten - must check out the evidence when I can.

>>         1. puéllae púerique     (no effect)
I find that difficult to believe, at least for the Classical &
post-Classical periods. Early Latin, as we know, did have word initial
stress (like the gaelic langs, Hungarian etc) so 1 would clearly apply
then. But when the stress shifted to the penultimate or antepenultimate,
depending on the quantity of the penultimate syllable, I find it difficult
to believe that púerique would survive.

>>         2. puéllae puérique     ("puerique" treated as single word)
>
> No!  The <i> is long, so as a single word, the stress has to be
> pueríque.
'sright - treat it as a single word, and you get _puerí:que. I thought the
weight of evidence pointed to this being the Classical pronunciation, but
I must check when I can.

>>         3. puéllae pueríque     (always stress the syllable
> before -que)
>>
>> But as I said, I could be misremembering.
===================================================================
On Tuesday, May 11, 2004, at 10:24 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
[snip]
> Oh, whups.  You are correct.  Those darn macrons have spoiled me. :)
> Okay, three rules, two of which yield the same result. :)
Quite rules 2 & 3 give the same result here. A very quick check today led
me to the following rules:
"The enclitic words -que, -ne, -ve drag the accent to the final syllable
of any words to which the are attached (e.g. _hominúmque_, _magnaque_).
"The inseparable particle -que causes the same dislocation when appended
to an inflected word (i.e. _utérque_, plerúsque): but other words
containing this particle are subject to the general rules (e.g. _utrímque_,
  but _úndique_). This means that _itaque_ is accented on the first
syllable when it is a single word, but on the second when it represents
_et ita_."

Umm - this look like rules made up by post-Classical schoolmasters,
especially that last one about _itaque_.

As applying Mark's rule (2) would generally cause the syllable before -que
to be accented, I can well believe that when vowel length was no longer
phonemic in the spoken language, then by analogy rule (3) became the norm.
  But it would surely have gone counter to all habits of educated Romans of
the 1st centuries BCE & CE to stress an unblocked short vowel on the
penultimate syllable (as, e.g. in the _magnáque_ quoted above).

I'd guess that rule (1) was pre-Classical, rule (2) Classical & rule (3)
medieval.

At least, both rules (2) and (3) show that the enclitic did affect the
pronunciation of the word to which it was attached, as it most certainly
did - and does - in Greek.

Ray
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