Volume 22, Issue 1

While formal variation in Latin’s numerals is generally acknowledged, little is known about (relative) incidence, distribution, context, or linguistic productivity. Addressing this lacuna, this article examines “decads + ” in Latin, which convey the numbers between the full decads: the teens (‘eleven’ through ‘nineteen’) as well as the numerals between the higher decads starting at ‘twenty-one’ through ‘ninety-nine’. Latin’s decads + are compounds and prone to variation. The data, which are drawn from a variety of sources, reveal (a) substantial formal variation in Latin, both internally and typologically; (b) co-existence of several types of formation; (c) productivity of potential borrowings; (d) resilience of early formations; (e) patterns in structure and incidence that anticipate the Romance numerals; and (f) historical trends. From a typological and general linguistic perspective as well, Latin’s decads + are most relevant because their formal variation involves sequence, connector, and arithmetical operations and because their historical depth shows a gradual shift away from widespread formal variation, eventually resulting in the relatively rigid system found in Romance. Moreover, the combined system attested in decads + in Latin – based on a combination of inherited, innovative and borrowed patterns and reflecting different stages of development – presents a number of typological inconsistencies that require further assessment.

The paper examines the relationship between vowel quantity, syllable structure and lexical stress in Latin through a quantitative analysis carried out on a corpus of literary texts taken from Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares and Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis . Each word of the corpus was split into syllables and phonemes. Then, the corpus was annotated with phonological and prosodic information pertaining to vowel length, syllable structure, stress and word length. Finally, the data collected were analyzed at different levels. The results are discussed in light of the findings of a previous analysis carried out on dictionary entries, confirming a close correlation between syllable structure and lexical stress, since the great majority of stressed syllables are heavy both in the literary corpus and in the dictionary. Moreover, long vowels are more frequently found in open and stressed syllables, particularly in paroxytones. The data suggest that the process leading to the loss of vowel quantity was already active (at least in some strata of Roman society) in the Latin of the Classical age, since a prosodic template similar to that occurring in many Romance developments emerges even in literary Latin texts.

According to a phonetic rule commonly referred to as Eichner’s law , the quality of a long * ē was not affected by an adjacent laryngeal * h 2 or * h 3 in the prehistory of the individual Indo-European languages: Latin spērāre ‘hope’ < * spēh 2 -s- (desiderative), Old Slavic spěti ‘be successful’ < * spēh 2 - (cf. * sph 2 -ró- in Ved. sphirá- and Lat. prosperus ; * speh 2 -i-s- in Old Slavic spěxŭ ); Tocharian B yerpe < *h 3 ērb h -o- ‘disk, orb’ (without colouration) versus Latin orbis < * h 3 orb h -i- ‘circle’. The purpose of the article is not to reassess the value of all reconstructions involving Eichner’s law, but to focus primarily on two neglected examples supporting its validity: Latin īdūs < * h 2 ēid- ‘Ides’, a term originally referring to the full moon, for which a connection with aemidus < * h 2 eid- (a term glossed as tumidus ) can plausibly be argued; Greek ἔγκατα < * h 2 ēnk- ‘mass of the inner organs of the thorax and of the upper part of the abdomen’ related to ὄγκος ‘swelling, tumour, bulk’ (from an older meaning ‘curvature’; the word constantly refers to volume , not to weight). The striking structural parallelism between ἔγκατα < * h 2 ḗnk-r/n- ‘pluck’ (with Osthoff-shortening) and ἧπαρ < * (H)yḗk w -r/n- ‘liver’ requires a close reexamination of the latter word and a detailed discussion of the puzzling vocalism of Lat. iecur , gen. iocineris . The study aims at offering a careful analysis of these items, taking into account their precise semantics and the relevant comparative data. Particular emphasis will be laid upon the derivational processes responsible for the morphological shape of the lexemes under discussion. It will appear that the Classical languages, especially Latin, can make a decisive contribution to the understanding of the morphology of lengthened-grade formations, which in turn offer new insights into the history of the Latin and Greek lexicons.