Early Latin – Phonology, Part 1
Pezzini, Giuseppe
Introduction to the phonemic inventory of Early Latin, with a discussion of important phonological processes.
 Hello and welcome to our first lesson on early Latin phonology. My name is Giuseppe Pepezzini and I teach and research on early Latin language and literature at the University of San Andrews in Scotland. Today I will mainly talk about the phoneme system of early Latin, while also introducing some phonological changes, processes and variants attested in early Latin. Syllabification, prosody and accentuation will be discussed in the second lesson on phonology. Before I delve into my topic, I want to stress two important points. First, most of the phonological features of early Latin, which we will analyse today, are attested at all stages of the history of Latin. That is, we may say, they are typical of Latin phonology in general. Given the constraints of time, I won't be able to repeat this point all the times for each of the features I will discuss. Second, there are some features indeed that are instead only or at least mainly attested in early Latin, but these features are often not the only ones attested. They occur together, at times in the same text, in the same author, with other more classical features. Early Latin was a period marked by a degree of linguistic hierarchy. In the absence of a strictly codified grammar, users could choose between different forms of pronunciations of the same phonological entity, according to factors related to context of use, social class, style, genre, medical suitability, fashion or even just fancy. This kind of linguistic hierarchy is not only typical of early Latin, it's found if you want in the whole history of the Latin language, but it is certainly an important trait of the early Latin language. I think we are ready to start. In addition to the above plosives, early Latin also featured three aspirated voiceless plosives. The sound P spelled as either P or Ph, the sound T spelled either as T or TH, and the sound K spelled as C or CH. These were not original Latin sounds, but except in some few cases, they were all imported from Greek phonology, a use for Greek lexical borrowings in a period which was marked, as I said in the first class, by a massive process of Greek inculturation. In the first stages of the early period, these aspirated sounds were represented in Latin by the corresponding non-aspirated graphemes, like P, T or C, as suggested by some spellings actually attested. However, by the end of the second century BC, aspirated graphemes, Ph, TH and CH, are also well attested in descriptions, and sometimes extended to Latin words which did not have aspiration, like Ankara with CH. Besides plosives, early Latin had two nasal phonemes, the labial n and the dental n, erotic r, something like that, and the lateral liquid, l, appearing into allophones. In addition, early Latin had two frecatives, labiodental Ph and the cibilan S, which were always voileous in early Latin. That's an important point. There was an intervocalic voice cibilan Z, which can be reconstructed in the early stages of Latin, but it disappeared by the early 4th century BC by the phenomenon which is known as rotacism, according to which all intervocalic S became R. Early Latin also had two important semi-consonants, y, not spelled as I, and w, spelled as U. All early Latin consonants could be found germinated with phonemic value, but it is not before the mid-second century BC that germination is also standardly represented in the spelling, with the exception of semi-consonant y, which in termocalic is always germinated in pronunciation, but is not found in the spelling. Escriptions before the 3rd century BC, and also some later descriptions, dating even to the early 1st century BC, display the degeminated spelling, only one consonant, even if in pronunciation were certainly two. A very famous example is the Senatus consultum de baccan allivus, or 184 BC, in which all double consonants are spelled as single consonants. It is not even impossible that it was Greek spelling itself which served as a model, since the very first attestation of a germinated consonant is found in a Greek borrowing found in an inscription at 101 BC. As in most languages, in early Latin, consonants were exposed to a vast range of phonological simplification, especially when appearing in consonant cluster. This is also reflected in some cases in the spelling. Among these I can mention in particular the loss of the sound n before s, that is, the vowel or the vowel is a standard, and this loss of n presently resulted in another realization of the preceding vowel. A second important phonological change is the vowel pronunciation of n before a vowel sound, and we know that also because the spelling with gc is attested in some text. There is also a vast range of consonants' assimilations, especially for nasal, fricatives, l and r, and also the word end, consonants were exposed to simplification of loss. A typical feature of early Latin is the disappearance of the old endings in final d of the ablatives and the loss of final s before a following consonant, and we know called this sigmatic eclipses. In the final part of the early phonemic table, I also list the graph mh, which however already in early Latin did not represent any sound. It was also only used in some artificial speech in imitation of the Greek, and there were some authors like Lusagius who make fun of people who would use aspiration in their speech. There are finally two consonantal sounds which deserve to be mentioned. These are double consonantal sounds, the sound x and the sound z, or z, we are not really sure about the pronunciation of this. Both of these sounds were derived from Greek. The former x as a mere graphical loan to represent the Latin cluster k, z, the latter z, instead merely to render in writing the corresponding Greek phoneme. Interestingly, in some early descriptions, the phoneme z in Greek is realized either as s or as s. I will now move on to the vowel system. Early Latin had a typologically common system with five short vowels, aeou, aeio, in the writing, and five corresponding long vowels. I have excluded the letter y, which was not native to Latin, and the inscription is only rarely attested to represent the sound of the epsilon in Greek borrowings. The distinction between long and short vowels had an important phonemic value, but was not normally represented in the spelling. Although in early Latin sources, we do find some experiments in this sense to do with the vowels what early Latin did, eventually with consonants. The most important of these experiments consist in the spelling of long vowels and ae, especially, as germinated vowels. This is a practice which is attested in some descriptions dating especially to the second half of the second century BC, it is even attributed to a literary author, the poet Achius. Other experiments had the practice to use epics to mark double vowels, that's an example from an inscription 104 BC, or the use of a sort of long i to mark long e. As you can see from that description, the long i in feliiki, both of them long. Apart from the standard phonemic vowels which I've listed in the triangle, early Latin had a number of other vowel sounds which normally represented the intermediary stages in the phenomenological development of the language. A very important one, the first one in the slide, was described by ancient sources as a sort of middle sound, an intermediate vowel between the i and the u, between the i and the u, a sort of more front variant of a short u symbolized by some scholar with those two symbols. The middle sound is reflected by the variety in spelling in forms such as optimus and optimus, or maximus and maximus, which is in fact attested in all through the history of Latin. There are some trends of standardization even in early Latin, but in general both spellings are attested down to the late antiquity. Another important sound, more typical of early Latin phonology, is the long e, spelled as i, a sort of intermediate vowel between e and e, which represents the stage between the diphthong a and was monochrom guys into i along i. Monotonguisation is an important language change still undergoing in early Latin. Many diphthongs were possible in early Latin, but all of these were exposed to a process of vocal simplification and ultimately monotonguisation, according to the patterns you see in the slide. All these diphthongs and their developments are attested in early Latin, some of them gather in the early stages of the period, like for instance the spelling or u, for what is then monotonguised into a single u sound, other instead are found all across the period. It's quite difficult to give precise dates, but it seems likely that by the end of the period all the final forms in the sequence had become well established, at least in the spoken language. Monotonguisation is not the only vocaliic change attested in early Latin. The whole history of prehistoric Latin language is characterized by a process of vowel weakening related to tonic factors. Many of these phenomena were completely before the early period, but others are still in operation and produced optional variants. Among these I can refer in particular, number one, to the closure of o into u, of a into e in final syllables. For instance, if you remember the description from the rostrum had quintio pro baruet, but the spelling with u quintus and e pro baruet is also attested in later early descriptions. Second phenomenon is the change of o into u before a consonant cluster beginning with l, like the duplet volt into volt. You can see that here I've spelled this sound with a v instead of u with a u. This is just a convention. In early Latin there was not a particular graphem to spell this labiavella sound. In this particular lecture I have used the more conventional spelling v found in some modern editions, but my colleague Rolf van der Melon, I know that he will do it in a different way. A third phenomenon will be the change of o into e in initial syllables before l and labiavella, and in early Latin we find duplets libet and lubet. I think it is now time to end our class. In the next class I will focus on syllables, prosody and a situation. Thank you very much, thanks for listening and gracias, tibis, obis, ago.
 Hello and welcome to our first lesson on early Latin phonology.  My name is Giuseppe Pepezzini and I teach and research on early Latin language and literature at the University of San Andrews in Scotland.  Today I will mainly talk about the phoneme system of early Latin, while also introducing some phonological changes, processes and variants attested in early Latin.  Syllabification, prosody and accentuation will be discussed in the second lesson on phonology.  Before I delve into my topic, I want to stress two important points.  First, most of the phonological features of early Latin, which we will analyse today, are attested at all stages of the history of Latin.  That is, we may say, they are typical of Latin phonology in general.  Given the constraints of time, I won't be able to repeat this point all the times for each of the features I will discuss.  Second, there are some features indeed that are instead only or at least mainly attested in early Latin, but these features are often not the only ones attested.  They occur together, at times in the same text, in the same author, with other more classical features.  Early Latin was a period marked by a degree of linguistic hierarchy.  In the absence of a strictly codified grammar, users could choose between different forms of pronunciations of the same phonological entity,  according to factors related to context of use, social class, style, genre, medical suitability, fashion or even just fancy.  This kind of linguistic hierarchy is not only typical of early Latin, it's found if you want in the whole history of the Latin language,  but it is certainly an important trait of the early Latin language.  I think we are ready to start.  In addition to the above plosives, early Latin also featured three aspirated voiceless plosives.  The sound P spelled as either P or Ph, the sound T spelled either as T or TH, and the sound K spelled as C or CH.  These were not original Latin sounds, but except in some few cases, they were all imported from Greek phonology,  a use for Greek lexical borrowings in a period which was marked, as I said in the first class, by a massive process of Greek inculturation.  In the first stages of the early period, these aspirated sounds were represented in Latin by the corresponding non-aspirated graphemes,  like P, T or C, as suggested by some spellings actually attested.  However, by the end of the second century BC, aspirated graphemes, Ph, TH and CH, are also well attested in descriptions,  and sometimes extended to Latin words which did not have aspiration, like Ankara with CH.  Besides plosives, early Latin had two nasal phonemes, the labial n and the dental n, erotic r, something like that,  and the lateral liquid, l, appearing into allophones.  In addition, early Latin had two frecatives, labiodental Ph and the cibilan S, which were always voileous in early Latin.  That's an important point.  There was an intervocalic voice cibilan Z, which can be reconstructed in the early stages of Latin,  but it disappeared by the early 4th century BC by the phenomenon which is known as rotacism,  according to which all intervocalic S became R.  Early Latin also had two important semi-consonants, y, not spelled as I, and w, spelled as U.  All early Latin consonants could be found germinated with phonemic value,  but it is not before the mid-second century BC that germination is also standardly represented in the spelling,  with the exception of semi-consonant y, which in termocalic is always germinated in pronunciation,  but is not found in the spelling.  Escriptions before the 3rd century BC, and also some later descriptions, dating even to the early 1st century BC,  display the degeminated spelling, only one consonant, even if in pronunciation were certainly two.  A very famous example is the Senatus consultum de baccan allivus, or 184 BC, in which all double consonants are spelled as single consonants.  It is not even impossible that it was Greek spelling itself which served as a model,  since the very first attestation of a germinated consonant is found in a Greek borrowing found in an inscription at 101 BC.  As in most languages, in early Latin, consonants were exposed to a vast range of phonological simplification,  especially when appearing in consonant cluster.  This is also reflected in some cases in the spelling.  Among these I can mention in particular the loss of the sound n before s, that is,  the vowel or the vowel is a standard, and this loss of n presently resulted in another realization of the preceding vowel.  A second important phonological change is the vowel pronunciation of n before a vowel sound,  and we know that also because the spelling with gc is attested in some text.  There is also a vast range of consonants' assimilations, especially for nasal, fricatives, l and r,  and also the word end, consonants were exposed to simplification of loss.  A typical feature of early Latin is the disappearance of the old endings in final d of the ablatives  and the loss of final s before a following consonant, and we know called this sigmatic eclipses.  In the final part of the early phonemic table, I also list the graph mh,  which however already in early Latin did not represent any sound.  It was also only used in some artificial speech in imitation of the Greek,  and there were some authors like Lusagius who make fun of people who would use aspiration in their speech.  There are finally two consonantal sounds which deserve to be mentioned.  These are double consonantal sounds, the sound x and the sound z, or z, we are not really sure about the pronunciation of this.  Both of these sounds were derived from Greek.  The former x as a mere graphical loan to represent the Latin cluster k, z, the latter z,  instead merely to render in writing the corresponding Greek phoneme.  Interestingly, in some early descriptions, the phoneme z in Greek is realized either as s or as s.  I will now move on to the vowel system.  Early Latin had a typologically common system with five short vowels, aeou, aeio, in the writing,  and five corresponding long vowels.  I have excluded the letter y, which was not native to Latin,  and the inscription is only rarely attested to represent the sound of the epsilon in Greek borrowings.  The distinction between long and short vowels had an important phonemic value, but was not normally represented in the spelling.  Although in early Latin sources, we do find some experiments in this sense to do with the vowels what early Latin did, eventually with consonants.  The most important of these experiments consist in the spelling of long vowels and ae, especially, as germinated vowels.  This is a practice which is attested in some descriptions dating especially to the second half of the second century BC,  it is even attributed to a literary author, the poet Achius.  Other experiments had the practice to use epics to mark double vowels,  that's an example from an inscription 104 BC, or the use of a sort of long i to mark long e.  As you can see from that description, the long i in feliiki, both of them long.  Apart from the standard phonemic vowels which I've listed in the triangle,  early Latin had a number of other vowel sounds which normally represented the intermediary stages in the phenomenological development of the language.  A very important one, the first one in the slide, was described by ancient sources as a sort of middle sound,  an intermediate vowel between the i and the u, between the i and the u,  a sort of more front variant of a short u symbolized by some scholar with those two symbols.  The middle sound is reflected by the variety in spelling in forms such as optimus and optimus,  or maximus and maximus, which is in fact attested in all through the history of Latin.  There are some trends of standardization even in early Latin,  but in general both spellings are attested down to the late antiquity.  Another important sound, more typical of early Latin phonology, is the long e, spelled as i,  a sort of intermediate vowel between e and e, which represents the stage between the diphthong a  and was monochrom guys into i along i.  Monotonguisation is an important language change still undergoing in early Latin.  Many diphthongs were possible in early Latin, but all of these were exposed to a process of vocal simplification  and ultimately monotonguisation, according to the patterns you see in the slide.  All these diphthongs and their developments are attested in early Latin,  some of them gather in the early stages of the period, like for instance the spelling or u,  for what is then monotonguised into a single u sound, other instead are found all across the period.  It's quite difficult to give precise dates, but it seems likely that by the end of the period  all the final forms in the sequence had become well established, at least in the spoken language.  Monotonguisation is not the only vocaliic change attested in early Latin.  The whole history of prehistoric Latin language is characterized by a process of vowel weakening  related to tonic factors.  Many of these phenomena were completely before the early period, but others are still in operation  and produced optional variants.  Among these I can refer in particular, number one, to the closure of o into u,  of a into e in final syllables.  For instance, if you remember the description from the rostrum had quintio pro baruet,  but the spelling with u quintus and e pro baruet is also attested in later early descriptions.  Second phenomenon is the change of o into u before a consonant cluster beginning with l,  like the duplet volt into volt.  You can see that here I've spelled this sound with a v instead of u with a u.  This is just a convention.  In early Latin there was not a particular graphem to spell this labiavella sound.  In this particular lecture I have used the more conventional spelling v found in some modern editions,  but my colleague Rolf van der Melon, I know that he will do it in a different way.  A third phenomenon will be the change of o into e in initial syllables before l and labiavella,  and in early Latin we find duplets libet and lubet.  I think it is now time to end our class.  In the next class I will focus on syllables, prosody and a situation.  Thank you very much, thanks for listening and gracias, tibis, obis, ago.
Early_Latin_2_0_4619.png Early_Latin_2_4620_4775.png Early_Latin_2_4776_5771.png Early_Latin_2_5772_5903.png Early_Latin_2_5904_7391.png Early_Latin_2_7392_9191.png Early_Latin_2_9192_10715.png Early_Latin_2_10716_10883.png Early_Latin_2_10884_10931.png Early_Latin_2_10932_11063.png Early_Latin_2_11064_14843.png Early_Latin_2_14844_15023.png Early_Latin_2_15024_18107.png Early_Latin_2_18108_18155.png Early_Latin_2_18156_18203.png Early_Latin_2_18204_18323.png Early_Latin_2_18324_18383.png Early_Latin_2_18384_18503.png Early_Latin_2_18504_18627.png
Hello and welcome to our first lesson on early Latin phonology. My name is Giuseppe Pepezzini and I teach and research on early Latin language and literature at the University of San Andrews in Scotland. Today I will mainly talk about the phoneme system of early Latin, while also introducing some phonological changes, processes and variants attested in early Latin. Syllabification, prosody and accentuation will be discussed in the second lesson on phonology. Before I delve into my topic, I want to stress two important points. First, most of the phonological features of early Latin, which we will analyse today, are attested at all stages of the history of Latin. That is, we may say, they are typical of Latin phonology in general. Given the constraints of time, I won't be able to repeat this point all the times for each of the features I will discuss. Second, there are some features indeed that are instead only or at least mainly attested in early Latin, but these features are often not the only ones attested. They occur together, at times in the same text, in the same author, with other more classical features. Early Latin was a period marked by a degree of linguistic hierarchy. In the absence of a strictly codified grammar, users could choose between different forms of pronunciations of the same phonological entity, according to factors related to context of use, social class, style, genre, medical suitability, fashion or even just fancy. This kind of linguistic hierarchy is not only typical of early Latin, it's found if you want in the whole history of the Latin language, but it is certainly an important trait of the early Latin language. I think we are ready to start. In addition to the above plosives, early Latin also featured three aspirated voiceless plosives. The sound P spelled as either P or Ph, the sound T spelled either as T or TH, and the sound K spelled as C or CH. These were not original Latin sounds, but except in some few cases, they were all imported from Greek phonology, a use for Greek lexical borrowings in a period which was marked, as I said in the first class, by a massive process of Greek inculturation. In the first stages of the early period, these aspirated sounds were represented in Latin by the corresponding non-aspirated graphemes, like P, T or C, as suggested by some spellings actually attested. However, by the end of the second century BC, aspirated graphemes, Ph, TH and CH, are also well attested in descriptions, and sometimes extended to Latin words which did not have aspiration, like Ankara with CH. Besides plosives, early Latin had two nasal phonemes, the labial n and the dental n, erotic r, something like that, and the lateral liquid, l, appearing into allophones. In addition, early Latin had two frecatives, labiodental Ph and the cibilan S, which were always voileous in early Latin. That's an important point. There was an intervocalic voice cibilan Z, which can be reconstructed in the early stages of Latin, but it disappeared by the early 4th century BC by the phenomenon which is known as rotacism, according to which all intervocalic S became R. Early Latin also had two important semi-consonants, y, not spelled as I, and w, spelled as U. All early Latin consonants could be found germinated with phonemic value, but it is not before the mid-second century BC that germination is also standardly represented in the spelling, with the exception of semi-consonant y, which in termocalic is always germinated in pronunciation, but is not found in the spelling. Escriptions before the 3rd century BC, and also some later descriptions, dating even to the early 1st century BC, display the degeminated spelling, only one consonant, even if in pronunciation were certainly two. A very famous example is the Senatus consultum de baccan allivus, or 184 BC, in which all double consonants are spelled as single consonants. It is not even impossible that it was Greek spelling itself which served as a model, since the very first attestation of a germinated consonant is found in a Greek borrowing found in an inscription at 101 BC. As in most languages, in early Latin, consonants were exposed to a vast range of phonological simplification, especially when appearing in consonant cluster. This is also reflected in some cases in the spelling. Among these I can mention in particular the loss of the sound n before s, that is, the vowel or the vowel is a standard, and this loss of n presently resulted in another realization of the preceding vowel. A second important phonological change is the vowel pronunciation of n before a vowel sound, and we know that also because the spelling with gc is attested in some text. There is also a vast range of consonants' assimilations, especially for nasal, fricatives, l and r, and also the word end, consonants were exposed to simplification of loss. A typical feature of early Latin is the disappearance of the old endings in final d of the ablatives and the loss of final s before a following consonant, and we know called this sigmatic eclipses. In the final part of the early phonemic table, I also list the graph mh, which however already in early Latin did not represent any sound. It was also only used in some artificial speech in imitation of the Greek, and there were some authors like Lusagius who make fun of people who would use aspiration in their speech. There are finally two consonantal sounds which deserve to be mentioned. These are double consonantal sounds, the sound x and the sound z, or z, we are not really sure about the pronunciation of this. Both of these sounds were derived from Greek. The former x as a mere graphical loan to represent the Latin cluster k, z, the latter z, instead merely to render in writing the corresponding Greek phoneme. Interestingly, in some early descriptions, the phoneme z in Greek is realized either as s or as s. I will now move on to the vowel system. Early Latin had a typologically common system with five short vowels, aeou, aeio, in the writing, and five corresponding long vowels. I have excluded the letter y, which was not native to Latin, and the inscription is only rarely attested to represent the sound of the epsilon in Greek borrowings. The distinction between long and short vowels had an important phonemic value, but was not normally represented in the spelling. Although in early Latin sources, we do find some experiments in this sense to do with the vowels what early Latin did, eventually with consonants. The most important of these experiments consist in the spelling of long vowels and ae, especially, as germinated vowels. This is a practice which is attested in some descriptions dating especially to the second half of the second century BC, it is even attributed to a literary author, the poet Achius. Other experiments had the practice to use epics to mark double vowels, that's an example from an inscription 104 BC, or the use of a sort of long i to mark long e. As you can see from that description, the long i in feliiki, both of them long. Apart from the standard phonemic vowels which I've listed in the triangle, early Latin had a number of other vowel sounds which normally represented the intermediary stages in the phenomenological development of the language. A very important one, the first one in the slide, was described by ancient sources as a sort of middle sound, an intermediate vowel between the i and the u, between the i and the u, a sort of more front variant of a short u symbolized by some scholar with those two symbols. The middle sound is reflected by the variety in spelling in forms such as optimus and optimus, or maximus and maximus, which is in fact attested in all through the history of Latin. There are some trends of standardization even in early Latin, but in general both spellings are attested down to the late antiquity. Another important sound, more typical of early Latin phonology, is the long e, spelled as i, a sort of intermediate vowel between e and e, which represents the stage between the diphthong a and was monochrom guys into i along i. Monotonguisation is an important language change still undergoing in early Latin. Many diphthongs were possible in early Latin, but all of these were exposed to a process of vocal simplification and ultimately monotonguisation, according to the patterns you see in the slide. All these diphthongs and their developments are attested in early Latin, some of them gather in the early stages of the period, like for instance the spelling or u, for what is then monotonguised into a single u sound, other instead are found all across the period. It's quite difficult to give precise dates, but it seems likely that by the end of the period all the final forms in the sequence had become well established, at least in the spoken language. Monotonguisation is not the only vocaliic change attested in early Latin. The whole history of prehistoric Latin language is characterized by a process of vowel weakening related to tonic factors. Many of these phenomena were completely before the early period, but others are still in operation and produced optional variants. Among these I can refer in particular, number one, to the closure of o into u, of a into e in final syllables. For instance, if you remember the description from the rostrum had quintio pro baruet, but the spelling with u quintus and e pro baruet is also attested in later early descriptions. Second phenomenon is the change of o into u before a consonant cluster beginning with l, like the duplet volt into volt. You can see that here I've spelled this sound with a v instead of u with a u. This is just a convention. In early Latin there was not a particular graphem to spell this labiavella sound. In this particular lecture I have used the more conventional spelling v found in some modern editions, but my colleague Rolf van der Melon, I know that he will do it in a different way. A third phenomenon will be the change of o into e in initial syllables before l and labiavella, and in early Latin we find duplets libet and lubet. I think it is now time to end our class. In the next class I will focus on syllables, prosody and a situation. Thank you very much, thanks for listening and gracias, tibis, obis, ago.
vowel. A second important phonological change is vowel system. Early Latin had a typologically particular, number one, to the closure of o into