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Discontinuity of the noun phrase in Roman statutes from the Republican period

  • Olga Spevak ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: January 13, 2025
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Abstract

This article discusses discontinuity of the noun phrase, i.e. the separation of adjectival, genitival, or other modifiers from their head noun in Latin legal texts from the Republican period. Despite the common view that discontinuity, often termed ‘hyperbaton’, is a stylistic device, the study shows that discontinuity is also found in legal texts. Discontinuity mainly occurs with relative and indefinite pronouns as well as with genitival modifiers, and it is pragmatically motivated. Additionally, noun and prepositional phrases are regularly split by the enclitic coordinators -que ‘and’ and -ve ‘or’ in legal texts.


Corresponding author: Olga Spevak, University Toulouse Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France, E-mail:

Acknowledgements

I thank two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments, which allowed me to improve this article.

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Published Online: 2025-01-13
Published in Print: 2024-05-27

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