AUTHOR: Morani, Moreno TITLE: Introduzione alla linguistica latina SERIES: LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 08 PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH YEAR: 2007
Anne Mahoney, Department of Classics, Tufts University
SUMMARY Morani's book covers Latin linguistics from Indo-European down to the modern Romance languages. The book therefore describes not only the literary Latin of Cicero and Vergil but the language as used by ordinary Romans, citizens of the Roman provinces, scholars in late antiquity, and medieval speakers. The focus is on historical morphology and phonology. Along the way, Morani reviews and engages with much current scholarship in the area, making the book a useful introduction to some current controversies.
The book is organized in four large chapters, covering the Indo-European antecedents and relatives of Latin, phonetics and phonology, morphology, and lexicon. Although syntax does not receive a separate systematic treatment, it is mentioned where appropriate in the other chapters. Within each chapter after the first, the treatment is chronological, with sections on Indo-European, classical Latin, and Romance.
The first chapter, ''Il latino tra le lingue indeuropee'' (pp. 1-118), begins with an overview of the Indo-European family and the general principles of reconstruction in comparative linguistics. Morani argues that Latin is conservative relative to the rest of the family, preserving archaisms that have been replaced in more central areas, such as the old third person plural perfect ending in -ere, the perfect stems in -v-, and religious vocabulary (pp. 7-9). He suggests that the ''family tree'' model for Indo-European is oversimplified and argues instead for the ''wave'' model (p. 6) of innovations moving outward from a central area, though he observes that neither model can do full justice to the history of Latin (p. 7). Moreover, he follows other Italian scholars, notably Giacomo Devoto, in treating Latin as separate from Oscan and Umbrian, rather than closely related in a single ''Italic branch'' as Anglophone scholars usually present them. Latin has some features in common with Celtic that Oscan and Umbrian do not share, so the old and largely discredited idea of an ''Italo-Celtic'' subgroup can be replaced by ''speciali rapporti latino-celtici'' (p. 18). Venetic, too, seems to have a closer relationship to Latin than to other Indo-European languages like Illyrian or Messapic (p. 42). Thus instead of a close inherited relationship between Latin and Oscan-Umbrian, we have a group of languages in contact in the Italian peninsula forming a Sprachbund within Indo-European (pp. 22, 52-53). Morani's careful examination of the various isoglosses that separate Latin from some of its near neighbors (particularly pp. 31-39) is illuminating.
After considering the antecedents of Latin, Morani looks at varieties of Latin, in a particularly strong section (pp. 59-103). Variation takes place on diachronic, diatopic, and diaphasic axes: across time, space, and register. Morani's diachronic scheme includes the earliest stages of Latin, down to the third century BC; the archaic period from the third to the first centuries BC; the classical period; later Latin, from the early third century AD through late antiquity; and medieval Latin. He treats regional variations in chronological groups as well. In the earliest period, Latin is confined to a small area around the city, so the major varieties are urban and Praenestine. By the imperial period, however, the language has been spread over much of Europe. The most useful part of this section is the discussion of register variations. Here Morani covers the conversational Latin of the educated classes (sermo familiaris), for which Cicero's letters are a major source; Latin of the lower classes (sermo plebeius and, slightly higher on the social scale, sermo vulgaris), which we see in inscriptions and in comedy; language of specialized groups such as the jargon of a profession; and Christian Latin. Professional groups develop their own vocabularies for the tools, materials, and techniques they work with. Morani shows that, in Latin, various groups favor particular suffixes for creating their specialized words, for example -tura in agricultural language, or -atio in military and medical language.
The last part of the first chapter covers the evolution of the Romance languages from Latin, a process which may have begun as early as the end of the third century AD (p. 107), though the main period of change was between about AD 600 and 800 (p. 111). Here and throughout the book, Morani's treatment of Romance focuses primarily on Italian, naturally enough, though he gives examples from the other languages as well.
Chapter two, ''Problemi de fonetica e fonologica latina'' (pp. 119-192), describes the sound system of Latin and its evolution. Like the first chapter, this one begins from Indo-European and proceeds toward Romance. Morani reconstructs Indo-European with no laryngeals, though he does admit a schwa; he reconstructs three series of guttural stops, the velar, palatal, and labiovelar, making five stop series in all (chart p. 119). He gives the Latin reflexes of every single Indo-European phoneme, with examples, in one succinct list (pp. 127-135); this may sound tedious, but it's highly useful. After the historical section, Morani goes on to a synchronic description of the classical Latin sound system (chart p. 136), including minimal pairs to demonstrate which sounds are phonemes.
One problem in Latin phonology is whether there were nasalized vowels in the classical language. A final syllable of the form vowel plus ''-m'' is elided in verse before a word beginning with a vowel. The standard abbreviation ''cos.'' for ''consul,'' omitting the ''n,'' and forms like ''cesor'' for ''censor'' that appear in inscriptions suggest a nasalized vowel rather than a plain vowel followed by a nasal consonant. Morani concludes that the nasal sounds do exist, but as allophones rather than independent phonemes (pp. 142-147).
Another problem is the status of the velar nasal consonant (as at the end of English ''sing''). In Latin this sound occurs in words like ''anguis'' (''narrow''). Although it is sometimes treated as an allophone of /n/ or of /g/, Morani considers it a separate phoneme (pp. 160-161), based on contrasting sets like ''agnus'' (''lamb'') and ''annus'' (''year'').
Perhaps the largest problem in Latin phonology, however, is the nature of the accent. Here Morani's treatment is excellent. He argues, following German and Anglophone scholars, for stress rather than pitch as the defining characteristic of the Latin accent (pp. 174-184). Although the Romans themselves borrowed terminology from Greek to discuss their language, this does not mean the two languages had the same kind of accent. Moreover, even though Roman poets of the classical period used Greek quantitative metrical forms, replacing the accentual meters of archaic Latin, we cannot conclude that the Latin accent was the same as that of Greek, still less that Latin replaced its stress accent with a pitch accent in the second century BC (p. 183, an argument that Morani correctly characterizes as weak and circular). Instead, as Morani observes, the patterns of long and short syllables in classical Latin meter are independent of the accent of the words (p. 183).
The phonological chapter concludes with a brief discussion of Romance phonology, particularly Italian.
In the third chapter, ''Problemi di morfologia latina'' (pp. 193-300), the first section treats the nominal system, including adjectives, pronouns, and what becomes the Romance definite article. The second section is devoted to verbs. Morani takes a long view of nominal inflection, pointing out (p. 195) that in Indo-European itself, there were four ways to distinguish case and number forms: suppletion, apophony (change of vowel in a particular syllable), movement of the accent, or endings. Although all of these have left traces in the daughter languages, endings were the most important and have remained so throughout the family. Latin nouns are traditionally divided into five declensions, based on their stems -- stems ending in ''a'' are the first declension, those in ''o'' are the second, and so on. Textbooks identify them based on the ending of the genitive singular. Morani suggests (p. 207) that it may be more sensible to view the nouns as divided into two major classes, one comprising the traditional first and second declensions, the other comprising the third and fourth. The fifth declension is intermediate between the two types. Morani justifies this classification by analyzing the endings of the various classes. For example, in the genitive plural, the first and second declensions use ''-arum'' and ''-orum'' respectively (the first vowel being long in each case), as in ''feminarum'' (''of the women'') and ''virorum'' (''of the men'') while the third and fourth use just ''-um'' as in ''hominum'' (''of the people'') and ''exercituum'' (''of the armies''). Here the fifth declension is like the first and second, using ''-erum'' as in ''rerum'' (''of the things''). In the dative and ablative plural, the first and second declension form is ''-is'' while the third, fourth, and fifth have a longer form, ''-ibus,'' ''-ubus,'' and ''-ebus'' respectively. Morani goes on to give examples of older forms of the various endings, found primarily in inscriptions, then briefly considers the uses of the cases.
In later Latin, nominal inflection is simplified. As vowel quantities disappear, some endings become identical in sound (for example, short a and long a, respectively nominative and ablative singular in the first declension, p. 233). Prepositional phrases come into use, first supplementing independent uses of the cases, then replacing them altogether. For example, instead of ''Romae'' in the locative for ''in Rome,'' one might say ''in Roma''; ''Romam'' in the accusative for ''to Rome'' can also be expressed as ''ad Romam.'' These uses were always available, but become more prevalent in later Latin (p. 235). The result is a near total collapse of the inflectional system: most of the modern Romance languages still have separate forms for singular and plural, but no longer inflect nouns for case function.
As for verbs, Morani explains how the four traditional conjugations, identified by the Roman grammarians based on the second person singular present form, arose from the various Indo-European present classes (summary pp. 259-260). He also explains the Latin tense and aspect system, made entirely consistent as a result of merging the inherited perfect and aorist into one tense system, the Latin perfect (p. 264). Along the way, he notes how the Latin future continues the Indo-European subjunctive, while the Latin subjunctive is primarily the Indo-European optative (p. 273). The biggest problem in verbal morphology is arguably the second person plural passive ending ''-mini,'' which has never been successfully explained. Morani summarizes the state of scholarship (pp. 285-286) but has no new proposal to make; although none of the proposed solutions is entirely convincing, he suggests that the old idea that this form is related to the participles in ''-menos'' found in Greek, Sanskrit, and Venetic is as good a solution as we have at present (p. 286).
The final chapter, ''Il lessico latino'' (pp. 301-325), is a brisk look at where Latin words come from. Some are inherited from Indo-European, perhaps with slightly different meanings in Latin from elsewhere in the family. Some words presumably come from a substrate, a pan-Mediterranean language spoken before the arrival of the Indo-European speakers; names of several trees may be in this class, for example (p. 315). Latin also has loan words from Etruscan, and from Greek either directly or through Etruscan. As the Romance languages develop, Latin words may be re-borrowed, leading to doublets like Latin ''fiotto'' (''flow, flood''; inherited, with normal development of initial ''fl-'') and ''flutto'' (''wave''; learned borrowing), both from Latin ''fluctus'' (p. 325).
EVALUATION The strengths of ''Introduzione alla linguistica latina'' are its coverage of the entire scope of Latin, from its origins to its present-day descendants, and its review of scholarship on Latin linguistics. The book is clearly structured and lucidly written -- graduate students in classics who are beginners in Italian should not hesitate to pick it up.
Although I do not agree with all of Morani's conclusions, for example his separation of Latin from Oscan-Umbrian, his arguments are well supported and the copious references allow readers to trace the scholarly debate for themselves.
It is unfortunate, however, that the book has no index. Even a more complete table of contents, down to the lowest level of titled sections, would help. It would also have been useful to have running headers on the pages. The major references are in the bibliography but works only cited once or twice appear only in the footnotes.
On balance, this is a strong overview of the Latin language from an Indo-European point of view.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER Anne Mahoney teaches in the classics department at Tufts University. Her research interests include Greek and Latin meter and poetics, Indo-European linguistics, and language pedagogy.
|