The Deletion of s in Plautus

Wallace, Rex

doi:10.2307/294876

Cited by 4 publications

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“…In middle and late Republican Latin final -s was lost after short vowels if the next word began with a consonant. For discussion see Allen (1988:36-37) and Wallace (1984).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socially determined variation in ancient Rome

Joseph

Wallace

1992

Lang Var Change

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Phonological and morphological variation in Classical Latin (e.g., diphthongs ae/au vs. monophthongs e/o, retention vs. loss of final consonants and initial h-, GEN SG -is vs. -us/-os, DAT SG in -ae vs. -a, etc.) has typically been treated as regional in nature. However, these seemingly “rural” features cannot be considered instances of purely geographically based variation, for they also occur both on inscriptions from within Rome and in Roman literary usage. Coleman (1990:14) hinted at “a social dimension” to this variation, but only for au versus o variation. We argue, however, that a distinctly social dimension must be recognized for much of this variation, based on: (a) instances of hypercorrection; (b) the observation that datives in -a occur only in private, primarily domestic, inscriptions and never in public or official inscriptions; (c) Augustus's use of “rural” domos for domus, in keeping with the populist image he cultivated upon his return to Rome. This dialectal/sociolectal situation can be best understood, we argue, in terms of the model of urbanization of Milroy (1980) and Bortoni-Ricardo (1985). The transformation of originally geographic variation into socially determined variation in an urban setting resulted from migrations into Rome and the expansion of Rome after the 4th century b.c.

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“…In middle and late Republican Latin final -s was lost after short vowels if the next word began with a consonant. For discussion see Allen (1988:36-37) and Wallace (1984).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socially determined variation in ancient Rome

Joseph

Wallace

1992

Lang Var Change

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“…(10) a. c e.l a 'conceal.IMP' c e.l a.re 'conceal.INF' c e.l a.tis 'conceal.2.PL' c e.l a.bam 'conceal.1.SG.IMP' 6 Some scholars have argued that the tendencies in (7b) and (7c) are not separate phenomena (cf. inter alios Wallace 1984 andAdams 2013). Rather, they see light scansion as evidence for deletion.…”

Section: Underapplied Shortening Before Final [S]mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…On the behaviour of word‐final [s] in (7a) and (7b), Wallace (: 214), scanning the line in (8a) (Pl. Aul.…”

Section: The Extrametricality Of Word‐final [S] Throughout Latin Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That variability has to do with the extent to which Old Latin authors ignore prosodic word boundaries while composing poetic meter. To make this point clear, consider Wallace's (1984) scansion of the following verse repeated from (8) The six feet in (42b) fall under larger phrases with the so-called caesura corresponding to the division between those phrases. The feet can be parsed into syllables, which in turn dominate moras, as shown in (43).…”

Section: Phonotactics Of Final [S]mentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Some scholars have argued that the tendencies in (7b) and (7c) are not separate phenomena (cf. inter alios Wallace and Adams ). Rather, they see light scansion as evidence for deletion.…”

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Extrametricality in Latin

Kostakis

2017

Trans of the Philol Soc

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It is generally claimed that all coda consonants in Latin are moraic and therefore contribute to the weight of a syllable. Contrary to that characterisation, however, I argue that word‐final [s] was always extrametrical – as were all consonants after long vowels. That claim accounts for a number of phonological patterns that are poorly understood. Those patterns range from vowel length alternations in words like sūs ‘swine.nom.sg’ and suis ‘swine.gen.sg’ to underapplied rhotacism in words like opus ‘work’, which resists the analogical shift from [s] to [r] that is found in words like honour (< honōs) ‘honour.nom.sg’. In addition, extrametricality clarifies the idiosyncratic behaviour of word‐final [s] in Old Latin verse, in which the final syllable of a word like minus ‘less’ scans as light more often than it scans as heavy. Extrametrical consonants furthermore exhibit anomalous phonotactic patterns. For example, only word‐final [s] can create a coda with rising sonority. The resulting optimality theoretic analysis advances a detailed account of moraicity in Latin phonology and more generally informs our understanding of complex patterns in moraic structure that fall out from constraint interaction.

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Contraction ofESTin Latin

Pezzini

2011

Trans of the Philol Soc

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The paper analyses the contraction of est (‐st). This phenomenon is generally known as ‘prodelision’ or ‘aphaeresis’ and is considered a metrical sandhi phenomenon, graphically expressed only in early Latin texts. After the introduction (1), the paper presents the first systematic collection of the evidence for this form (2), followed by a phonological discussion (3), and by the conclusions (4), which aim to show that this was a more complex and widespread phenomenon than is normally believed, and to introduce its significance for other general linguistic topics such as cliticisation, the semantics of sum, and the position of the Latin verb in the clause.1

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The Deletion of s in Plautus

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Socially determined variation in ancient Rome

Socially determined variation in ancient Rome

Extrametricality in Latin

Contraction ofESTin Latin

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