Vulgar Latin

Not to be confused with Latin profanity and the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible used by the Catholic Church.
Vulgar Latin
sermo vulgaris
Native to Roman Republic, Roman Empire
Era Antiquity; developed into Romance languages 6th to 9th centuries
(unwritten)
Language codes
ISO 639-3 –
Linguist list
 lat-vul
Glottolog None

The Roman Empire in 117 AD

Vulgar Latin or Sermo Vulgaris ("common speech") is a generic term for the nonstandard (as opposed to classical) sociolects of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Works written in Latin during classical times used Classical Latin rather than Vulgar Latin, with very few exceptions (most notably sections of Gaius Petronius' Satyricon). Because of its nonstandard nature, Vulgar Latin had no official orthography. Vulgar Latin is sometimes also called colloquial Latin,[1] or Common Romance (particularly in the late stage). In Renaissance Latin, Vulgar Latin was called vulgare Latinum or Latinum vulgare.

Proto-Romance

Vulgar Latin is often confused with Proto-Romance.[2] Proto-Romance is a proto-language, i.e., the latest stage common to all of the Romance languages. Because some of the less familiar Romance languages branched off earlier than others (Sardinian in particular), followed by Romanian and related Eastern Romance languages, it is also common to reconstruct later stages: e.g., Proto–Continental Romance (after Sardinian branched off); Proto–Italo-Western Romance (after Sardinian and Romanian branched off); and Proto–Western Romance (after the branching-off of Sardinian, Romanian, and the central and southern Italian languages, including standard Italian).

Proto-Romance and the other proto-languages are theoretical, unitary linguistic constructions. Vulgar Latin, on the other hand, is the actual speech of the common people during the late Roman Empire. As a result, it is not simply theoretical but actually attested (if thinly), and is not unitary, with differences over both time and space. Hence, it is possible to speak of, for example, the loss of initial /j/ in unstressed syllables in the Vulgar Latin of Cantabria (an area in northern Spain), whereas it is meaningless to speak of a similar change in the "Proto-Romance of Cantabria".

Origin of the term

The term "common speech" (sermo vulgaris), which later became "Vulgar Latin", was used by inhabitants of the Roman Empire. Subsequently it became a technical term from Latin and Romance-language philology referring to the unwritten varieties of a Latinised language spoken mainly by Italo-Celtic populations governed by the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Traces of their language appear in some inscriptions, such as graffiti or advertisements. The educated population mainly responsible for classical Latin might also have spoken Vulgar Latin in certain contexts depending on their socioeconomic background. The term was first used improperly in that sense by the pioneers of Romance-language philology: François Juste Marie Raynouard (1761–1836) and Friedrich Christian Diez (1794–1876).

In the course of his studies on the lyrics of songs written by the troubadours of Provence, which had already been studied by Dante Alighieri and published in De vulgari eloquentia, Raynouard noticed that the Romance languages derived in part from lexical, morphological, and syntactic features that were Latin, but were not preferred in classical Latin. He hypothesized an intermediate phase and identified it with the Romana lingua, a term that in countries speaking Romance languages meant "nothing more or less than the vulgar speech as opposed to literary or grammatical Latin."[3]

Diez, the principal founder of Romance-language philology, impressed by the comparative methods of Jakob Grimm in Deutsche Grammatik, which came out in 1819 and was the first to use such methods in philology, decided to apply them to the Romance languages and discovered Raynouard's work, Grammaire comparée des langues de l'Europe latine dans leurs rapports avec la langue des troubadours, published in 1821. Describing himself as a pupil of Raynouard, he went on to expand the concept to all Romance languages, not just the speech of the troubadours, on a systematic basis, thereby becoming the originator of a new field of scholarly inquiry.[4]

Diez, in his flagship work on the topic, Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen, "Grammar of the Romance Languages," first published in 1836–1843 and multiple times thereafter, after enumerating six Romance languages that he compared: Italian and Wallachian (i.e., Romanian) (east); Spanish and Portuguese (southwest); and Provençal and French (northwest), asserts that they had their origin in Latin, but nicht aus dem classischen Latein, "not from classical Latin," rather aus der römischen Volkssprache oder Volksmundart, "from the Roman popular language or popular dialect".[5] These terms, as he points out later in the work, are a translation into German of Dante's vulgare latinum and Latinum vulgare, and the Italian of Boccaccio, latino volgare.[6] These names in turn are at the end of a tradition extending to the Roman republic.

The concepts and vocabulary from which vulgare latinum descend were known in the classical period and are to be found amply represented in the unabridged Latin dictionary, starting in the late Roman republic. Marcus Tullius Cicero, a prolific writer, whose works have survived in large quantity, and who serves as a standard of Latin, and his contemporaries in addition to recognizing the lingua Latina also knew varieties of "speech" under the name sermo. Latin could be sermo Latinus, but in addition was a variety known as sermo vulgaris, sermo vulgi, sermo plebeius and sermo quotidianus. These modifiers inform post-classical readers that a conversational Latin existed, which was used by the masses (vulgus) in daily speaking (quotidianus) and was perceived as lower-class (plebeius).

These vocabulary items manifest no opposition to the written language. There was an opposition to higher-class, or family Latin (good family) in sermo familiaris and very rarely literature might be termed sermo nobilis. The supposed "sermo classicus" is a scholarly fiction unattested in the dictionary. All kinds of sermo were spoken only, not written. If one wanted to refer to what in post-classical times was called classical Latin one resorted to the concept of latinitas ("latinity") or latine (adverb). If one spoke in the lingua or sermo Latinus one merely spoke Latin, but if one spoke latine or latinius ("more Latinish") one spoke good Latin, and formal Latin had latinitas, the quality of good Latin, about it. After the fall of the empire and the transformation of spoken Latin into the early Romance languages the only representative of the Latin language was written Latin, which became known as classicus, "classy" Latin. The original opposition was between formal or implied good Latin and informal or Vulgar Latin. The spoken/written dichotomy is entirely philological.

Sources

It cannot be supposed that the spoken language was a distinct and persistent language so that the citizens of Rome would be regarded as bilingual. Instead, Vulgar Latin is a blanket term covering the popular dialects and sociolects of the Latin language throughout its range from the hypothetical prisca latinitas of unknown or poorly remembered times in early Latium to the death of Latin after the fall of the empire. Although making it clear that sermo vulgaris existed, the ancients said very little about it. Because it was not transcribed, it can only be studied indirectly. Knowledge comes from these chief sources:[7]

  1. Solecisms, especially in Late Latin texts.
  2. Mention of it by ancient grammarians, including prescriptive grammar texts from the Late Latin period condemning linguistic "errors" that represent spoken Latin.
  3. The comparative method, which reconstructs Proto-Romance, a hypothetical vernacular proto-language from which the Romance languages descended.
  4. Some literary works written in a lower register of Latin provide a glimpse into the world of Vulgar Latin in the classical period: the dialogues of the plays of Plautus and Terence, being comedies with many characters who were slaves, and the speech of freedmen in the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius Arbiter.

History

Extract of the Oaths of Strasbourg, the earliest French text.

Vulgar Latin developed differently in the various provinces of the Roman Empire, gradually giving rise to the different Romance languages. József Herman states:

It seems certain that in the sixth century, and quite likely into the early parts of the seventh century, people in the main Romanized areas could still largely understand the biblical and liturgical texts and the commentaries (of greater or lesser simplicity) that formed part of the rites and of religious practice, and that even later, throughout the seventh century, saints' lives written in Latin could be read aloud to the congregations with an expectation that they would be understood. We can also deduce however, that in Gaul, from the central part of the eighth century onwards, many people, including several of the clerics, were not able to understand even the most straightforward religious texts.[8]

As early as 722, in a face to face meeting between Pope Gregory II, born and raised in Rome, and Saint Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon, Boniface complained that he found Pope Gregory's Latin speech difficult to understand, a clear sign of the transformation of Vulgar Latin in two regions of western Europe.[9]

At the third Council of Tours in 813, priests were ordered to preach in the vernacular language – either in the rustica lingua romanica (Vulgar Latin), or in the Germanic vernaculars – since the common people could no longer understand formal Latin. Within a generation, the Oaths of Strasbourg (842), a treaty between Charlemagne's grandsons Charles the Bald and Louis the German, was proffered and recorded in a language that was already distinct from Latin.

From approximately this point on, the Latin vernaculars began to be viewed as separate languages, developing local norms and, for some, orthographies of their own, so that Vulgar Latin must be regarded not as extinct – since all modern Romance varieties are its continuation – but as replaced conceptually and terminologically by multiple labels recognizing regional differences in linguistic features.

Extract of the Romance part of the Oaths of Strasbourg (842)
Old French (semi-phonetic) Vulgar Latin (circa 5th c.) Translation
"Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblə et nostrə commun salvament, d'est di en avant, en quant Deus savér et podhér me dunət, si salvarai eo cest meon fradrə Karlə, et en ajudhə et en cadhunə cosə si cum om per dreit son fradrə salvar dift, en o quid il mi altresi fatsət. Et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquə prendrai qui meon vol cest meon fradrə Karlə en damnə sit."[10]"Por Deo amore et por chrestyano poblo et nostro comune salvamento, d'esto die en avante, en quanto Deos sabere et podere me donat, sic salvarayo eo eccesto meon fradre Karlo, et en ayuda et en caduna causa, sic quomo omo per drecto son fradre salvare devet, en o qued illi me altrosic fatsyat, et ab Ludero nullo plagido nonqua prendrayo qui meon volo eccesto meon fradre Karlo en damno seat."[11]"For the love of God and for Christendom and our common salvation, from this day onwards, as God will give me the wisdom and power, I shall protect this brother of mine Charles, with aid or anything else, as one ought to protect one's brother, so that he may do the same for me, and I shall never knowingly make any covenant with Lothair that would harm this brother of mine Charles."

Vocabulary

Further information: Reichenau Glosses

Vulgar Latin featured a large vocabulary of words that were productive in Romance.

Phonology

Main article: Romance languages

There was no single pronunciation of Vulgar Latin, and the pronunciation of Vulgar Latin in the various Latin-speaking areas is indistinguishable from the earlier history of the phonology of the Romance languages. See the article on Romance languages for more information.

Evidence of changes

Latin Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Evidence of phonological changes can be seen in the late 3rd-century Appendix Probi, a collection of glosses prescribing correct classical Latin forms for certain vulgar forms. These glosses describe:

Many of the forms castigated in the Appendix Probi proved to be the productive forms in Romance; e.g., oricla (Classical Latin auricula) is the source of French oreille, Catalan orella, Spanish oreja, Italian orecchia, Romanian ureche, Portuguese orelha, "ear", not the Classical Latin form.

Consonant development

The most significant consonant changes affecting Vulgar Latin were palatalization (except in Sardinia); lenition (in areas north and west of the La Spezia–Rimini Line); and loss of final consonants.

Loss of final consonants

The loss of final consonants was already under way by the 1st century AD in some areas. A graffito at Pompeii reads quisque ama valia, which in Classical Latin would read quisquis amat valeat ("may whoever loves be strong/do well").[12] (The change from valeat to valia is also an early indicator of the development of /j/ (yod), which played such an important part in the development of palatalization.) On the other hand, this loss of final /t/ was not general. Old Spanish and Old French preserved a reflex of final /t/ up through 1100 AD or so, and modern French still maintains final /t/ in some liaison environments.

Lenition of stops

Areas north and west of the La Spezia–Rimini Line lenited intervocalic /p, t, k/ to /b, d, ɡ/. This phenomenon is occasionally attested during the imperial period, but it became frequent by the 7th century. For example, in Merovingian documents, rotatico > rodatico ("wheel tax").[13]

Loss of word-final m

The loss of the final m was a process which seems to have begun by the time of the earliest monuments of the Latin language. The epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, who died around 150 BC, reads taurasia cisauna samnio cepit, which in Classical Latin would be taurāsiam, cisaunam, samnium cēpit ("He captured Taurasia, Cisauna, and Samnium"). This however can be explained in a different way, that the inscription simply fails to note the nasality of the final vowels (like in the established custom of writing cos. for consul).

Consonant cluster simplification

In general, many clusters were simplified in Vulgar Latin. For example, /ns/ was changed to /s/, reflecting the fact that /n/ was no longer consonantal. In some inscriptions, mensis > mesis ("month"), or consul > cosul ("consul").[13] Descendants of mensis include Portuguese mês, Spanish and Catalan mes, Old French meis, Italian mese.[13] In some areas (including much of Italy), the clusters [mn], [kt] ⟨ct⟩, [ks] ⟨x⟩ were assimilated to the second element: [nn], [tt], [ss].[13] Thus, some inscriptions have omnibus > onibus ("all [dative plural]"), indictione > inditione ("indiction"), vixit > bissit ("lived").[13] Also, three-consonant clusters usually lost the middle element. For example: emptores > imtores ("buyers") [13]

Not all areas show the same development of these clusters, however. In the East, Italian has [kt] > [tt], as in octo > otto ("eight") or nocte > notte ("night"); while Romanian has [kt] > [pt] (opt, noapte).[13] By contrast, in the West, the [k] was turned into [j]. In French and Portuguese, this caused the diphthongization of the previous vowel (huit, oito; nuit, noite), while in Spanish, this developed further to [tʃ] (*oito > ocho, *noite > noche) [14]

Also, many clusters including [j] were simplified. Several of these groups seem to have never been fully stable (e.g. faciunt for facunt). This dropping has resulted in the word parietem ("wall") turning into: Italian parete, Romanian părete>perete, Portuguese parede, Spanish pared, or French paroi.[14]

The cluster [kw] ⟨qu⟩ was simplified to [k] in most instances. In 435, one can find the hypercorrective spelling quisquentis for quiescentis ("of the person who rests here"). Modern languages have followed this trend, for example Latin qui ("who") has become Italian chi, and French qui (both /ki/); while quem ("who") becomes quien (/kjen/) in Spanish and retains quem (/kẽ/) in Portuguese.[14] However, [kw] has survived in front of [a] in most areas, although not in French; hence Latin quattuor yields Spanish cuatro (/kwatro/), Portuguese quatro (/kwatro/), and Italian quattro (/kwattro/), but French quatre (/katʀ/), where the qu- spelling is purely etymological.[14]

Vowel development

In general, the ten-vowel system of Classical Latin, which relied on phonemic vowel length, was newly modelled into one in which vowel length distinctions lost phonemic importance, and qualitative distinctions of height became more prominent.

System in Classical Latin

Classical Latin had 10 different vowel phonemes, grouped into five pairs of short-long, ⟨ă – ā, ĕ – ē, ĭ – ī, ŏ – ō, ŭ – ū⟩. It also had four diphthongs, ⟨ae, oe, au, eu⟩ (some authors also include ui). Finally, there were also long and short ⟨y⟩, representing /y/, /yː/ in Greek borrowings, which, however, probably came to be pronounced /i/, /iː/ even before Romance vowel changes started.

At least since the 1st century AD, short vowels (except a) differed by quality as well as by length from their long counterparts, the short vowels being lower.[15][16] Thus the vowel inventory is usually reconstructed as /a – aː/, /ɛ – eː/, /ɪ – iː/, /ɔ – oː/, /ʊ – uː/.

General vowel changes in most Vulgar Latin
Spelling 1st cent. 2nd cent. 3rd cent. 4th cent.
ă /a/ /a/
ā /aː/
ĕ /ɛ/
ē /eː/ /e/ /e/
ĭ /j/
ī /iː/ /i/
ŏ /ɔ/
ō /oː/ /o/ /o/
ŭ /ʊ/
ū /uː/ /u/

Monophthongization

Many diphthongs had begun their monophthongization very early. It is presumed that by Republican times, ae had become /ɛː/ in unstressed syllables, a phenomenon that would spread to stressed positions around the 1st century AD.[17] From the 2nd century AD, there are instances of spellings with ⟨ĕ⟩ instead of ⟨ae⟩.[18] ⟨oe⟩ was always a rare diphthong in Classical Latin (in Old Latin, oinos regularly became unus ("one")) and became /e/ during early Imperial times. Thus, one can find penam for poenam.[17]

However, ⟨au⟩ lasted much longer. While it was monophthongized to /o/ in areas of north and central Italy (including Rome), it was retained in most Vulgar Latin, and it survives in modern Romanian (for example, aur < aurum). There is evidence in French and Spanish that the monophthongization of au occurred independently in those languages.[17]

Loss of distinctive length and near-close mergers

Length confusions seem to have begun in unstressed vowels, but they were soon generalized.[19] In the 3rd century AD, Sacerdos mentions people's tendency to shorten vowels at the end of a word, while some poets (like Commodian) show inconsistencies between long and short vowels in versification.[19] However, the loss of contrastive length caused only the merger of ă and ā while the rest of pairs remained distinct in quality: /a/, /ɛ – e/, /ɪ – i/, /ɔ – o/, /ʊ – u/.[20]

Also, the near-close vowels /j/ and /ʊ/ became more open in most varieties and merged with /e/ and /o/ respectively.[20] As a result, the reflexes of Latin pira "pear" and vēra "true" rhyme in most Romance languages: Italian and Spanish pera, vera. Similarly, Latin nucem "walnut" and vōcem "voice" become Italian noce, voce, Portuguese noz, voz.

There was likely some regional variation in pronunciation, as the Romanian languages and Sardinian evolved differently.[21] In Sardinian, all corresponding short and long vowels simply merged with each other, creating a 5-vowel system: /a, e, i, o, u/. In Romanian, the front vowels ĕ, ĭ, ē, ī evolved like the Western languages, but the back vowels ŏ, ŭ, ō, ū evolved as in Sardinian. A few southern Italian languages behave like Sardinian (such as southern Corsican, northernmost Calabria, southern Lucania) or Romanian (such as Vegliote (partially), western Lucania).[22]

Phonologization of stress

The placement of stress did not change from Classical to Vulgar Latin, and words continued to be stressed on the same syllable they were before. However, the loss of distinctive length disrupted the correlation between syllable weight and stress placement that existed in Classical Latin. Where in Classical Latin the place of the accent was predictable from the structure of the word, it was no longer so in Vulgar Latin. Stress had become a phonological property and could serve to distinguish forms that were otherwise homophones.

Lengthening of stressed open syllables

After the Classical Latin vowel length distinctions were lost in favor of vowel quality, a new system of allophonic vowel quantity appeared sometime between the 4th and 5th centuries. Around then, stressed vowels in open syllables came to be pronounced long (but still keeping height contrasts), and all the rest became short. For example, long venis /*ˈvɛː.nis/, fori /*fɔː.ri/, cathedra /*ˈkaː.te.dra/; but short vendo /*ˈven.do/, formas /*ˈfor.mas/.[23] However, in some regions of Iberia and Gaul, all stressed vowels came to be pronounced long: for example, porta /*ˈpɔːr.ta/, tempus /*ˈtɛːm.pus/.[23]

Grammar

Romance articles

It is difficult to place the point in which the definite article, absent in Latin but present in all Romance languages, arose, largely because the highly colloquial speech in which it arose was seldom written down until the daughter languages had strongly diverged; most surviving texts in early Romance show the articles fully developed.

Definite articles evolved from demonstrative pronouns or adjectives; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative adjective ille, illa, (illud), in the Romance languages, becoming French le and la, Catalan and Spanish el and la, and Italian il and la. The Portuguese article a ultimately comes from the same source, while o is derived from hoc. Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article from ipse, ipsa (su, sa); some Catalan and Occitan dialects have articles from the same source. While most of the Romance languages put the article before the noun, Romanian has its own way, by putting the article after the noun, e.g. lupul ("the wolf") and omul ("the man" – from lupum illum and *homo illum),[21] possibly a result of its membership in the Balkan sprachbund.

This demonstrative is used in a number of contexts in some early texts in ways that suggest that the Latin demonstrative was losing its force. The Vetus Latina Bible contains a passage Est tamen ille daemon sodalis peccati ("The devil is a companion of sin"), in a context that suggests that the word meant little more than an article. The need to translate sacred texts that were originally in Greek, which had a definite article, may have given Christian Latin an incentive to choose a substitute. Aetheria uses ipse similarly: per mediam vallem ipsam ("through the middle of the valley"), suggesting that it too was weakening in force.[12]

Another indication of the weakening of the demonstratives can be inferred from the fact that at this time, legal and similar texts begin to swarm with praedictus, supradictus, and so forth (all meaning, essentially, "aforesaid"), which seem to mean little more than "this" or "that". Gregory of Tours writes, Erat autem. . . beatissimus Anianus in supradicta civitate episcopus ("Blessed Anianus was bishop in that city.") The original Latin demonstrative adjectives were felt no longer to be specific enough.[12] In less formal speech, reconstructed forms suggest that the inherited Latin demonstratives were made more forceful by being compounded with ecce (originally an interjection: "behold!"), which also spawned Italian ecco. This is the origin of Old French cil (*ecce ille), cist (*ecce iste) and ici (*ecce hic); Spanish aquel and Portuguese aquele (*eccu ille); Italian questo (*eccum istum), quello (*eccum illum) and obsolescent codesto (*eccum tibi istum); Spanish acá and Portuguese cá, (*ecce hic), Portuguese acolá (*ecce illic) and aquém (*ecce inde); Romanian acest (*ecce iste) and acela (*ecce ille), and many other forms.

On the other hand, even in the Oaths of Strasbourg, no demonstrative appears even in places where one would clearly be called for in all the later languages (pro christian poblo – "for the Christian people"). Using the demonstratives as articles may have still been considered overly informal for a royal oath in the 9th century. Considerable variation exists in all of the Romance vernaculars as to their actual use: in Romanian, the articles can be suffixed to the noun, as in other members of the Balkan sprachbund and the North Germanic languages.

The numeral unus, una (one) supplies the indefinite article in all cases. This is anticipated in Classical Latin; Cicero writes cum uno gladiatore nequissimo ("with a most immoral gladiator"). This suggests that unus was beginning to supplant quidam in the meaning of "a certain" or "some" by the 1st century BC.

Loss of neuter

First and second adjectival declension paradigm in Classical Latin. E.g., altus ("tall")
singular plural
masculine neuter feminine masculine neuter feminine
nominative altus altum alta altī alta altae
accusative altum altam altōs alta altās
dative altō altae altīs
ablative altō altā altīs
genitive altī altae altōrum altārum
The genders

The three grammatical genders of Classical Latin were replaced by a two-gender system in most Romance languages.

The neuter gender of classical Latin was in most cases absorbed by the masculine both syntactically and morphologically. The confusion starts already in the Pompeian graffiti, e.g., cadaver mortuus for cadaver mortuum ("dead body"), and hoc locum for hunc locum ("this place"). The morphological confusion shows primarily in the adoption of the nominative ending -us (-Ø after -r) in the o-declension. In Petronius' work, one can find balneus for balneum ("bath"), fatus for fatum ("fate"), caelus for caelum ("heaven"), amphitheater for amphitheatrum ("amphitheatre"), vinus for vinum ("wine"), and conversely, thesaurum for thesaurus ("treasure"). Most of these forms occur in the speech of one man: Trimalchion, an uneducated, Greek (i.e., foreign) freedman.

In modern Romance languages, the nominative s-ending has been abandoned, and all substantives of the o-declension have an ending derived from -um: -u, -o, or-Ø. E.g., masculine murum ("wall"), and neuter caelum ("sky") have evolved to: Italian muro, cielo; Portuguese muro, céu; Spanish muro, cielo ', Catalan mur,cel; Romanian mur, cieru>cer; ; French mur, ciel. However, Old French still had -s in the nominative and -Ø in the accusative in both words: murs, ciels [nominative] – mur, ciel [oblique].[24]

For some neuter nouns of the third declension, the oblique stem became the productive; for others, the nominative/accusative form, which was identical in Classical Latin. Evidence suggests that the neuter gender was under pressure well back into the imperial period. French (le) lait, Catalan (la) llet, Spanish (la) leche, Portuguese (o) leite, Italian language (il) latte, Leonese (el) lleche and Romanian lapte(le) ("milk"), all derive from the non-standard but attested Latin nominative/accusative neuter lacte or accusative masculine lactem. Note also that in Spanish the word became feminine, while in French, Portuguese and Italian it became masculine (in Romanian it remained neuter, lapte/lăpturi). Other neuter forms, however, were preserved in Romance; Catalan and French nom, Leonese, Portuguese and Italian nome, Romanian nume ("name") all preserve the Latin nominative/accusative nomen, rather than the oblique stem form *nominem (which nevertheless produced Spanish nombre).[21]

Typical Italian endings
Nouns Adjectives and determiners
singular plural singular plural
masculine giardino giardini buono buoni
feminine donna donne buona buone
neuter uovo uova buono buone

Most neuter nouns had plural forms ending in -A or -IA; some of these were reanalysed as feminine singulars, such as gaudium ("joy"), plural gaudia; the plural form lies at the root of the French feminine singular (la) joie, as well as of Catalan and Occitan (la) joia (Italian la gioia is a borrowing from French); the same for lignum ("wood stick"), plural ligna, that originated the Catalan feminine singular noun (la) llenya, and Spanish (la) leña. Some Romance languages still have a special form derived from the ancient neuter plural which is treated grammatically as feminine: e.g., BRACCHIUM : BRACCHIA "arm(s)" → Italian (il) braccio : (le) braccia, Romanian braț(ul) : brațe(le). Cf. also Merovingian Latin ipsa animalia aliquas mortas fuerant.

Alternations in Italian heteroclitic nouns such as l'uovo fresco ("the fresh egg") / le uova fresche ("the fresh eggs") are usually analysed as masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, with an irregular plural in -a. However, it is also consistent with their historical development to say that uovo is simply a regular neuter noun (ovum, plural ova) and that the characteristic ending for words agreeing with these nouns is -o in the singular and -a in the plural. Thus, neuter nouns can arguably be said to persist in Italian, and also Romanian.

These formations were especially common when they could be used to avoid irregular forms. In Latin, the names of trees were usually feminine, but many were declined in the second declension paradigm, which was dominated by masculine or neuter nouns. Latin pirus ("pear tree"), a feminine noun with a masculine-looking ending, became masculine in Italian (il) pero and Romanian păr(ul); in French and Spanish it was replaced by the masculine derivations (le) poirier, (el) peral; and in Portuguese and Catalan by the feminine derivations (a) pereira, (la) perera.

As usual, irregularities persisted longest in frequently used forms. From the fourth declension noun manus ("hand"), another feminine noun with the ending -us, Italian and Spanish derived (la) mano, Romanian mânu>mâna pl (reg.)mânule/mânuri, Catalan (la) mà, and Portuguese (a) mão, which preserve the feminine gender along with the masculine appearance.

Except for the Italian and Romanian heteroclitic nouns, other major Romance languages have no trace of neuter nouns, but still have neuter pronouns. French celui-ci / celle-ci / ceci ("this"), Spanish éste / ésta / esto ("this"), Italian: gli / le / ci ("to him" /"to her" / "to it"), Catalan: ho, açò, això, allò ("it" / this / this-that / that over there); Portuguese: todo / toda / tudo ("all of him" / "all of her" / "all of it").

In Spanish, a three-way contrast is also made with the definite articles el, la, and lo. The last is used with nouns denoting abstract categories: lo bueno, literally "that which is good", from bueno: good.

Loss of oblique cases

The Vulgar Latin vowel shifts caused the merger of several case endings in the nominal and adjectival declensions.[25] Some of the causes include: the loss of final m, the merger of ă with ā, and the merger of ŭ with ō (see tables).[25] Thus, by the 5th century, the number of case contrasts had been drastically reduced.[25]

Evolution of a 1st declension noun:
rosa ‘rose’ (feminine singular)
Classical
(c. 1st century)		 Vulgar[25]
(c. 5th cent.)		 Modern
Romanian
nominative rosa *rósa roză
accusative rosam
ablative rosā
dative rosae *róse roze
genitive
Evolution of a 2nd declension noun:
mūrus ‘wall’ (masculine singular)
Classical
(c. 1st cent.)		 Vulgar[25]
(c. 5th cent.)		 Old French
(c. 11th cent.)
nominative mūrus *múros murs
accusative mūrum *múru mur
ablative mūrō *múro
dative
genitive mūrī *múri

There also seems to be a marked tendency to confuse different forms even when they have not become homophonous (like in the generally more distinct plurals), which indicates nominal declension was not only shaped by phonetic mergers, but also by structural factors.[25] As a result of the untenability of the noun case system after these phonetic changes, Vulgar Latin shifted from a markedly synthetic language to a more analytic language.

The genitive case died out around the 3rd century AD, according to Meyer-Lübke, and began to be replaced by de + noun as early as the 2nd century BC. Exceptions of remaining genitive forms are some pronouns, many fossilized combinations like sayings, some proper names, and certain terms related to the church. For example, French jeudi ‘Thursday’ < Old French juesdi < Vulgar Latin jovis diēs; Spanish es menester ‘it is necessary’ < est ministeri; terms like angelorum, paganorum; and Italian terremoto ‘earthquake’ < terrae motu as well as names like Paoli, Pieri.[26]

The dative case lasted longer than the genitive, even though Plautus, in the 2nd century BC, already shows some instances of substitution by the construction ad + accusative. For example, ad carnuficem dabo.[26][27]

The accusative case developed as a prepositional case, displacing many instances of the ablative.[26] Towards the end of the imperial period, the accusative came to be used more and more as a general oblique case. [28]

However, despite increasing case mergers, nominative and accusative forms seem to have remained distinct for much longer, since they are rarely confused in inscriptions.[28] Even though Gaulish texts from the 7th century rarely confuse both forms, it is believed that both cases began to merge in Africa by the end of the empire, and a bit later in parts of Italy and Iberia.[28] Nowadays, Romanian maintains a two-case system, while Old French and Old Occitan had a two-case subject-oblique system. This Old French system was based largely on whether or not the Latin case ending contained an "s" or not, with the "s" being retained but all vowels in the ending being lost (as with veisin below). But since this meant that it was easy to confuse the singular nominative with the plural oblique, and the plural nominative with the singular oblique, along with the final "s" becoming silent, this case system ultimately collapsed as well, and French adopted one case (usually the oblique) for all purposes, leaving the Romanian the only one to survive to the present day.

Evolution of a masculine noun
in Old French: veisin ‘neighbor’.
(definite article in parentheses).
Classical Latin
(1st cent.) 		Old French
(11th cent.)
singular nominative vīcīnus (li) veisins
accusative vīcīnum (le) veisin
genitive vīcīnī
dative vīcīnō
ablative
plural nominative vīcīnī (li) veisin
accusative vīcīnōs (les) veisins
genitive vīcīnōrum
dative vīcīnīs
ablative

Wider use of prepositions

Loss of a productive noun case system meant that the syntactic purposes it formerly served now had to be performed by prepositions and other paraphrases. These particles increased in number, and many new ones were formed by compounding old ones. The descendant Romance languages are full of grammatical particles such as Spanish donde, "where", from Latin de + unde, or French dès, "since", from de + ex, while the equivalent Spanish and Portuguese desde is de + ex + de. Spanish después and Portuguese depois, "after", represent de + ex + post. Some of these new compounds appear in literary texts during the late empire; French dehors, Spanish de fuera and Portuguese de fora ("outside") all represent de + foris (Romanian afară – ad + foris), and we find Jerome writing stulti, nonne qui fecit, quod de foris est, etiam id, quod de intus est fecit? (Luke 11.40: "ye fools, did not he, that made which is without, make that which is within also?"). In some cases, compounds were created by combining a large number of particles, such as the Romanian adineauri ("just recently") from ad + de + in + illa + hora.[29]

As Latin was losing its case system, prepositions started to move in to fill the void. In colloquial Latin, the preposition ad followed by the accusative was sometimes used as a substitute for the dative case.

Classical Latin:

Marcus patrī librum dat. "Marcus is giving [his] father [a/the] book."

Vulgar Latin:

Marcus da libru a patre. "Marcus is giving [a/the] book to [his] father."

Just as in the disappearing dative case, colloquial Latin sometimes replaced the disappearing genitive case with the preposition de followed by the ablative.

Classical Latin:

Marcus mihi librum patris dat. "Marcus is giving me [his] father's book.

Vulgar Latin:

Marcus mi da libru de patre. "Marcus is giving me [the] book of [his] father."

Pronouns

Unlike in the nominal and adjectival inflections, pronouns kept great part of the case distinctions. However, many changes happened. For example, the /a/ of ego was lost by the end of the empire, and eo appears in manuscripts from the 6th century.[30]

Reconstructed pronominal system of Vulgar Latin[30]
1st person 2nd person 3rd person
singular plural singular plural singular plural
Nominative *éo *nọs *tu *vọs
Dative *mi *nọ́be(s) *ti, *tẹ́be *vọ́be(s) *si, *sẹ́be *si, *sẹ́be
Accusative *mẹ *nọs *tẹ *vọs *sẹ *sẹ

Adverbs

Classical Latin had a number of different suffixes that made adverbs from adjectives: carus, "dear", formed care, "dearly"; acriter, "fiercely", from acer; crebro, "often", from creber. All of these derivational suffixes were lost in Vulgar Latin, where adverbs were invariably formed by a feminine ablative form modifying mente, which was originally the ablative of mens, and so meant "with a _____ mind". So velox ("quick") instead of velociter ("quickly") gave veloci mente (originally "with a quick mind", "quick-mindedly") This explains the widespread rule for forming adverbs in many Romance languages: add the suffix -ment(e) to the feminine form of the adjective. This originally separate word becomes a suffix in Romance.

Verbs

The Cantar de Mio Cid (Song of my Cid) is the earliest Spanish text.
Main article: Romance verbs

In general, the verbal system in the Romance languages changed less from Classical Latin than did the nominal system.

The four conjugational classes generally survived. The second and third conjugations already had identical imperfect tense forms in Latin, and also shared a common present participle. Because of the merging of short i with long ē in most of Vulgar Latin, these two conjugations grew even closer together. Several of the most frequently-used forms became indistinguishable, while others became distinguished only by stress placement:

Infinitive 1st sing. 2nd sing. 3rd sing. 1st plur. 2nd plur. 3rd plur. sing. imperative
Second conjugation (Classical) -ēre -eō -ēs -et -ēmus -ētis -ent -ē
Second conjugation (Vulgar) *-ẹ́re *-(j)o *-es *-e(t) *-ẹ́mos *-ẹ́tes *-en(t) *-e
Third conjugation (Vulgar) *-ere *-o *-emos *-etes *-on(t)
Third conjugation (Classical) -ere -ō -is -it -imus -itis -unt -e

These two conjugations came to be conflated in many of the Romance languages, often by merging them into a single class while taking endings from each of the original two conjugations. Which endings survived was different for each language, although most tended to favour second conjugation endings over the third conjugation. Spanish, for example, mostly eliminated the third conjugation forms in favour of second conjugation forms. French and Catalan did the same, but tended to generalise the third conjugation infinitive instead. Catalan in particular almost completely eliminated the second conjugation ending over time, reducing it to a small relic class. In Italian, the two infinitive endings remained separate (but spelled identically), while the conjugations merged in most other respects much as in the other languages. However, the third-conjugation third-person plural present ending survived in favour of the second conjugation version, and was even extended to the fourth conjugation. Romanian also maintained the distinction between the second and third conjugation endings.

In the perfect, many languages generalized the -aui ending most frequently found in the first conjugation. This led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending was treated as the diphthong /au/ rather than containing a semivowel /awi/, and the /w/ sound was in many cases dropped; it did not participate in the sound shift from /w/ to /β̞/. Thus Latin amaui, amauit ("I loved; he/she loved") in many areas became proto-Romance *amai and *amaut, yielding for example Portuguese amei, amou. This suggests that in the spoken language, these changes in conjugation preceded the loss of /w/.[21]

Another major systemic change was to the future tense, remodelled in Vulgar Latin with auxiliary verbs. A new future was originally formed with the auxiliary verb habere, *amare habeo, literally "to love I have" (cf. English "I have to love", which has shades of a future meaning). This was contracted into a new future suffix in Western Romance forms, which can be seen in the following modern examples of "I will love":

A periphrastic construction of the form 'to have to' (late Latin habere ad) used as future is characteristic of Sardinian:

An innovative conditional (distinct from the subjunctive) also developed in the same way (infinitive + conjugated form of habere). The fact that the future and conditional endings were originally independent words is still evident in literary Portuguese, which in these tenses allows clitic object pronouns to be incorporated between the root of the verb and its ending: "I will love" (eu) amarei, but "I will love you" amar-te-ei, from amar + te ["you"] + (eu) hei = amar + te + [h]ei = amar-te-ei.

In Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, personal pronouns can still be omitted from verb phrases as in Latin, as the endings are still distinct enough to convey that information: venio >Sp vengo ("I come"). In French, however, all the endings are typically homophonous in the spoken language except the first and second person (and occasionally also third person) plural, so the pronouns are always used (je viens) except in the imperative and in a few expressions like allons-y! ("we go there!").

Contrary to the millennia-long continuity of much of the active verb system, which has now survived 6000 years of known evolution, the synthetic passive voice was utterly lost in Romance, being replaced with periphrastic verb forms—composed of the verb "to be" plus a passive participle—or impersonal reflexive forms—composed of a verb and a passivizing pronoun.

Apart from the grammatical and phonetic developments there were many cases of verbs merging as complex subtleties in Latin were reduced to simplified verbs in Romance. A classic example of this are the verbs expressing the concept "to go". Consider three particular verbs in Classical Latin expressing concepts of "going": ire, vadere, and ambulare. In Spanish and Portuguese ire and vadere merged into the verb ir, which derives some conjugated forms from ire and some from vadere. andar was maintained as a separate verb derived from ambulare. Italian instead merged vadere and ambulare into the verb andare. And at the extreme French merged all three Latin verbs with, for example, the present tense deriving from vadere and ambulare and the future tense deriving from ire. Similarly the Romance distinction between the Romance verbs for "to be", essere and stare, was lost in French as these merged into the verb être. In Italian, the verb essere inherited both Romance meanings of "being essentially" and "being temporarily of the quality of", while stare specialized into a verb denoting location or dwelling.

Copula

Main article: Romance copula

The copula (that is, the verb signifying "to be") of Classical Latin was esse. This evolved to *essere in Vulgar Latin by attaching the common infinitive suffix -re to the classical infinitive; this produced Italian essere and French être through Proto-Gallo-Romance *essre and Old French estre as well as Spanish and Portuguese ser (Romanian a fi derives from fire, which means "to become"). However, in Vulgar Latin a second copula developed utilizing the verb stare, which originally meant (and is cognate with) "to stand" to denote a more temporary meaning. That is, *essere signified the essence, while stare signified the state. Stare evolved to Spanish and Portuguese estar and Old French ester (both through *estare), while Italian and Romanian retained the original form.

The semantic shift that underlies this evolution is more or less as follows: A speaker of Classical Latin might have said: vir est in foro, meaning "the man is in/at the marketplace". The same sentence in Vulgar Latin should have been *(h)omo stat in foro, "the man stands in/at the marketplace", replacing the est (from esse) with stat (from stare), because "standing" was what was perceived as what the man was actually doing. The use of stare in this case was still actually correct assuming that it meant "to stand", but soon the shift from esse to stare became more widespread. In the Iberian peninsula esse ended up only denoting natural qualities that would not change, while stare was applied to transient qualities and location. In Italian, "stare" is used only for location and the eminently transient quality implied in a verb's progressive form, such as sto scrivendo for "I am writing". (Although it might be objected that in sentences like Spanish la catedral está en la ciudad, "the cathedral is in the city" this is also unlikely to change, but all locations are expressed through estar in Spanish, as this usage originally conveyed the sense of "the cathedral stands in the city").

Notes

  1. ↑ Posner, Rebecca (1996). The Romance Languages. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 98.
  2. ↑ (French) Robert A. Hall, Jr. : Proto-Romance Phonology (review by Michael Herslund). Revue Romane, Bind 13 (1978) 1.
  3. ↑ Meyer (1906), p.239.
  4. ↑ Meyer (1906), pp. 244–5.
  5. ↑ Diez (1882), p. 1.
  6. ↑ Diez (1882), p. 63.
  7. ↑ Grandigent (1907), p.5.
  8. ↑ Herman (2000), p.114.
  9. ↑ Mann, Horace, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, Vol. I: The Popes Under the Lombard Rule, Part 2, 657–795 (1903), pg. 158
  10. ↑ Rickard, Peter (April 27, 1989). A History of the French language. London: Routledge. pp. 21–22. ISBN 041510887X.
  11. ↑ "Les Serments de Strasbourg". Retrieved February 20, 2016.
  12. 1 2 3 Harrington et al. (1997).
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Herman 2000, p. 47.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Herman 2000, p. 48.
  15. ↑ Allen (2003) states: "There appears to have been no great difference in quality between long and short a, but in the case of the close and mid vowels (i and u, e and o) the long appear to have been appreciably closer than the short." He then goes on to the historical development, quotations from various authors (from around the 2nd century AD), and evidence from older inscriptions in which "e" stands for normally short i, "i" for long e, etc.
  16. ↑ Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 11.
  17. 1 2 3 Palmer 1954, p. 157.
  18. ↑ Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 118.
  19. 1 2 Herman 2000, p. 28-29.
  20. 1 2 Palmer 1954, p. 156.
  21. 1 2 3 4 Vincent (1990).
  22. ↑ Michele Loporcaro, “Phonological Processes”, The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages: Structures, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011), 112-4.
  23. 1 2 Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 125.
  24. ↑ In a few isolated masculine nouns, the s has been either preserved or reinstated in the modern languages, for example FILIUS ("son") > French fils, DEUS ("god") > Spanish dios and Portuguese deus, and particularly in proper names: Spanish Carlos, Marcos, in the conservative orthography of French Jacques, Charles, Jules, etc. (Menéndez Pidal 1968, p. 208; Survivances du cas sujet)
  25. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Herman 2000, p. 52.
  26. 1 2 3 Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 82.
  27. ↑ Captivi, 1019.
  28. 1 2 3 Herman 2000, p. 53.
  29. ↑ Romanian Explanatory Dictionary (DEXOnline.ro)
  30. 1 2 Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 238.

See also

History of specific Romance languages

References

General

  • Allen, W. Sidney (2003). Vox Latina – a Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-37936-9. 
  • Boyd-Bowman, Peter (1980). From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. 
  • Diez, Friedrich (1882). Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen (in German) (5 Auflage ed.). Bonn: E. Weber. 
  • Grandgent, C.H. (1907). An Introduction to Vulgar Latin. Boston: D.C. Heath. 
  • Grandgent, Charles Hall (1882). Introducción al latín vulgar (in Spanish) (Spanish translation by Francisco de B. Moll ed.). Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. 
  • Harrington, K. P.; Pucci, J.; Elliott, A. G. (1997). Medieval Latin (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-31712-9. 
  • Herman, József; Wright, Roger (Translator) (2000). Vulgar Latin. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-02001-6. 
  • Meyer, Paul (1906). "Beginnings and Progress of Romance Philology". In Rogers, Howard J. Congress of Arts and Sciences: Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904. Volume III. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. pp. 237–255. 
  • Palmer, L. R. (1988) [1954]. The Latin Language. University of Oklahoma. ISBN 0-8061-2136-X. 
  • Pulgram, Ernst (1950). "Spoken and Written Latin". Language 26 (4): 458–466. doi:10.2307/410397. JSTOR 410397. 
  • Sihler, A. L. (1995). New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508345-8. 
  • Tucker, T. G. (1985) [1931]. Etymological Dictionary of Latin. Ares Publishers. ISBN 0-89005-172-0. 
  • Väänänen, Veikko (1981). Introduction au latin vulgaire. Troisième édition revue et augmentée. Paris: Klincksieck. ISBN 2-252-02360-0. 
  • Vincent, Nigel (1990). "Latin". In Harris, M.; Vincent, N. The Romance Languages. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-520829-3. 
  • von Wartburg, Walther; Chambon, Jean-Pierre (1928). Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch: eine Darstellung des galloromanischen Sprachschatzes (in German and French). Bonn: F. Klopp. 
  • Wright, Roger (1982). Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France. Liverpool: Francis Cairns. 

Transitions to Romance languages

To French

  • Kibler, William W. (1984). An Introduction to Old French. New York: Modern Language Association of America. 
  • Pope, Mildred K. (1934). From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman Phonology and Morphology. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 
  • Price, Glanville (1998). The French language: present and past (Revised ed.). London: Grant and Cutler. 

To Italian

  • Maiden, Martin (1996). A Linguistic History of Italian. New York: Longman. 

To Spanish

  • Lloyd, Paul M. (1987). From Latin to Spanish. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. 
  • Penny, Ralph (2002). A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
  • Pharies, David A. (2007). A Brief History of the Spanish Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
  • Pountain, Christopher J. (2000). A History of the Spanish Language Through Texts. London: Routledge. 

To Portuguese

  • Williams, Edwin B. (1968). From Latin to Portuguese: Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Portuguese Language. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 

To Occitan

  • Paden, William D. (1998). An Introduction to Old Occitan. New York: Modern Language Association of America. 

External links

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