27
votes
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Rhotacism: why?
It's often difficult to say "why" a sound change happened, so I'll focus on your other questions. Rhotacism in Latin happened via a series of sound changes. It only affected inherited *s in specific ...
- 26.6k
26
votes
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Why did the letters in the alphabet shift position?
The letter Γ was sometimes written 𐌂 and was taken into the Latin alphabet as C, so the position did not change. The letter G was only added later (3rd century BC) to the Latin alphabet, to ...
- 1,775
24
votes
Rhotacism: why?
Introduction and Definition
Why questions in linguistics are the hardest because we can only speculate. That being said, there is plenty of evidence to make an educated guess.
Lundquist 2016 defines ...
- 11.6k
22
votes
Why did the letters in the alphabet shift position?
The Etruscan alphabet you presented in your question is actually a transliteration. The actual Etruscan inscriptions are in one of the "Old Italic" alphabets derived from the Greek one.
Unicode now ...
- 26.6k
21
votes
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What is the most common classical Latin word that we don't understand?
This is a great question: it's certainly difficult to find Latin words with uncertain meaning that are not hapax legomena.
My entry is cortumio, -nis.
L&S says that it is "an old word of the ...
- 38.5k
17
votes
What is the most common classical Latin word that we don't understand?
I wouldn't even try to guess which words are most commonly 'not understood'.
The natural world is a rich category here, with many examples of species that cannot be exactly identified: though ...
- 18k
17
votes
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Is there a relationship between the phonology in Old Latin and later Vulgar Latin?
Almost everything in Romance languages that comes from Old Latin passed through Classical Latin.
u/o changes
In the case of u/o, it's probably a coincidence that some Old Latin o corresponds to ...
- 26.6k
14
votes
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Old vs Classical latins
Old Latin bears the same kind of relationship to Classical Latin as English of, a few centuries ago does to modern English. The oldest Old Latin texts we have, unless I'm remembering incorrectly, are ...
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14
votes
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When can "qui" mean "how"?
I found an article that gives some excellent examples of this usage as well as practical tips for how to recognize it: Thomas Nelson, "The Third Qui, and Six Ways to Recognize It, or 'Who Happens, ...
- 38.5k
14
votes
Does D/L variation go back to a dl cluster?
Bibliography on this phenomenon: Poucet 1966: 140, supplemented by Burman 2018; if you have free time, you can also watch "(False) Etymology and ‘Sabine -l-‘" by Nicholas Zair - he presented ...
- 11.6k
11
votes
What is the most common classical Latin word that we don't understand?
As Tom Cotton answered, there are many possible answers in the natural world.
According to Wikipedia, both Virgil and Cicero mention aurichalc, which is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page.
...
- 321
10
votes
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How did PIE *h₂énti-h₃kʷós get lengthened to Proto-Italic *antīkʷos?
A laryngeal following a vowel disappears (after colouring that vowel if it's *e), lengthening that vowel. This process is most prominent within roots, since ablaut means *e ends up next a laryngeal ...
- 8,648
9
votes
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When and how was "bombax!" used?
From the Scholia Graeca in Comoedias Aristophanis, we find the following definition of βομβάξ:
βομβάξ - παρεμβολοειδής ἐστι τοῦτο ἐπίρρημα καὶ σημαίνει διασυρμόν.
βομβάζειν γὰρ δηλοῖ διασύρειν. ...
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8
votes
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When did the infinitive of purpose arise?
It actually does appear in vulgar Latin. Here's Palmer, The Latin Language 319:
[Infinitives], as we saw, are formally either old datives or locatives and both these cases could express purpose. ...
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8
votes
What is the percentage of loan words in Classical Latin?
The following is from Loan-words in Latin (1888) by Edward R. Wharton.
He counted a total of 16,900 words from the following authors: Plautus, Terence, Cicero Caesar, Catullus, Lucretius, Sallust, ...
- 10.7k
8
votes
Littera Canina in Classical Latin and Old Latin
Old Latin /r/ probably had non-trill allophones: at minimum, a tap/flap [ɾ], and likely approximant and fricative allophones as well.
The existence of [ɾ] in Old Latin is supported by rare cases of /d/...
- 26.6k
7
votes
Rhotacism: why?
The reason for rhotacism is I believe ascribed to the fact that there was only one sibilant in latin - /s/, and as such it was not pronounced exactly [s] as in today's English or French. These two ...
- 276
7
votes
Plural in 4th declension
The development of the Latin 4th declension seems to be uncertain in several areas. The PIE ancestors of the G.sg. and the N.pl. of -u stems seem to have been *-ows and *-ewes respectively. The ...
- 4,668
7
votes
Translation of devom
Short answer, dēvom is a pre-Classical and non-standard form; the standard Classical version would be dīvum.
In Old Latin, there were three different long front vowels: a low-mid /ɛː/, written ē, a ...
- 64.6k
6
votes
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Was the old ablative pronoun "med" or "mēd"?
As varro says, the forms are reconstructed with a long vowel, as mēd, tēd, sēd. AFAIK there's no direct evidence for the vowel quantity. The reason for the long-vowel reconstruction is that there ...
- 30.6k
6
votes
What are the most important scholarly resources for Latin and Greek historical linguistics?
De Vaan's Etymological Dictionary of Latin is perhaps the most up to date one. He also bases his articles on the other main etymological dictionaries, like Walde-Hofmann and Ernout-Meillet. Sometimes ...
6
votes
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Mediterranean Sea name in Old Latin
The best reference for such questions is Brills’s New Pauly.
Eckart Olshausen (Universität Stuttgart), the author of the book Einführung in die Historische Geographie der Alten Welt (1991), writes ...
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6
votes
Mediterranean Sea name in Old Latin
Cicero (Att. 8,3) and Pliny (3. 5. 6) each refer to mare superum.
Lemprière's Classical Dictionary, which often has a wealth of detail on such topics, has nothing of direct use, but from its rather ...
- 18k
6
votes
Are there attested prohibition signs?
I don’t think there is any attestation of a direct prohibition of the no smoking type for the classical period. The closest I could find is CIL VI, 2357, from Rome, but it is not a prohibition, it is ...
- 3,246
6
votes
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How did mille get so weird?
The etymology of mille is fairly clear, with cognates in other Indo-European languages. The singular and plural are definitely from the same etymological source. The Proto-Indo-European form would ...
- 30.6k
6
votes
Translation of devom
I'm hardly a Latin scholar but I'm going to hazard a guess, based on the given translation and the propensity on classical writers to abbreviate things, that the first line of the inscription should ...
- 165
6
votes
Littera Canina in Classical Latin and Old Latin
Probably not, but it's hard to be sure.
As far as I've been able to tell, we don't have any grammarians describing the sounds of Latin letters before the Classical period. The phrase littera canīna ...
- 64.6k
5
votes
Rhotacism: why?
This is a partial answer.
I can only tell which words are affected, not why this phenomenon happens.
My understanding is that s turned into an r between two vowels: amase > amare, honose > honore, ...
- 110k
5
votes
When can "qui" mean "how"?
To answer your second question (since brianpck has already given an excellent answer to the first), quī is etymologically an ablative. The paradigm of the interrogatives quī, quis is a bit odd in that ...
- 30.6k
5
votes
Does D/L variation go back to a dl cluster?
I'm not sure how well-accepted this theory is, but Fournet proposes a relationship between [d] (*) and /l/ in Etruscan: Hurrian -da ~ Etruscan -l "[dative marker]", Umbrian *daukomṇ > ...
- 64.6k
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