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In Vulgar Latin, the nominative and the accusative are used as neutral forms of nouns to replace the oblique cases, whose meaning and functions they can duly acquire. In this paper, I analyse the examples of such uses in the epigraphic corpus of early and late Lusitania, with special attention to the development of the Ibero-Romance system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with some particularly interesting o-spellings attested in Latin inscriptions dating back to the late Republican age (and to the first Imperial period) and attempts to determine whether they may provide some evidence of an anticipation of the (Proto) Romance merger of the Classical Latin back-vowels /oː/ and /u/ as a close /o/. All the inscriptions have been analysed in detail by taking into account the dating, geographical origin and typology of the single epigraph, while particular attention has been paid to the possible presence (or absence) of other deviant spellings within the same texts. The results suggest that the phenomenon investigated here might actually date back to the late Republican age, at least within some substandard varieties of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1912, during the dredging works of the river Kupa (in Sisak, today Croatia) a curse tablet was found by workers. Its text was published several times which showed differences in certain sections. On one hand it was due to the poor legibility of the text. On the other hand the reason of the discrepancies is that only some of the researchers could examine the tablet personally, the rest of them applied photographs or previous editors' sketches which they interpreted in their own way. Because of the divergent readings, even establishing the correct text order of the outer and the inner side of the tablet has given rise to much controversy. Despite these problems, the text of this curse tablet has become a standing exemplar of vulgar Latin features on the course of the past 100 years, handbooks and publications on the Latin of imperial times refer its well-known "mistakes". For obvious reasons, a new autopsy could not be delayed any longer. This paper aims to present a revised and interpreted reading of the Latin curse tablet from Siscia based on a recent autopsy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper consists of some considerations arising before the start of an ambitious project in connection with the research desideratum to produce an augmented and 'updated' version of Kristian Sandfeld Jensen's pioneering Linguistique balkanique, which appeared in French in 1930. This investigation will provide a prolegomena to this edition which should encompass an account of the historical and geographical background as well as studies providing an adequate explanatory theoretical framework. It includes a state-of-the-art survey of the most influential contributions that led to progress in the domain of Balkan linguistics. Our starting points will be based on significant reference books inspired by Sandfeld's approach that date from the last decades of the 20th century. Among them are, in particular, Schaller's monograph on Balkan languages, Mihăescu's work on Vulgar Latin in South-East Europe, Radoslav Katičić's two volumes on ancient languages in the Balkan Area, some publications by Harald Haarmann and, above all, Georg Renatus Solta's Einführung in die Balkanlinguistik. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Herman (2000: 28) "in the late third century the grammarian Sacerdos mentions the tendency to shorten long vowels in the final syllable of words and calls it a barbarism of our time, barbarismus nostri temporis (GL, VI. 493-94)." In the opinion of Adams (2007: 264), however, "this passage and its surrounds are misinterpreted by [...] Herman (2000: 28). [...] The passage of Sacerdos has nothing to do with the loss of vowel length or with the shortening of long final vowels. It is about clausulae acceptable in an earlier age and those acceptable at the time of Sacerdos. In the context the expression structura nostri temporis (493.16) means a clausula approved at the present time, and barbarismus nostri temporis (several times) means a clausula not approved at the present time (i.e. one now considered a barbarism)." In this paper, surveying all the related passages of Sacerdos in detail, it will be demonstrated that (1) the expression barbarismus nostri temporis does indeed refer to the loss of phonemic length (vowel quantity), i.e. the shortening of long unstressed (final) vowels and the lengthening of short stressed vowels in Sacerdos' age and (2) Sacerdos' expression for a clausula not approved at his present time is vitiosa structura. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to classify the geographical variants of Vulgar Latin found in the inscriptions of Pannonia Inferior, Dalmatia and Venetia et Histria, and their provincial capitals Aquincum, Salona and Aquileia, based on the changes of their consonant system in order to investigate the possibilities whether a regional dialect area over the Alps-Danube-Adria region of the Roman Empire could have existed as suggested by József Herman. For the analysis, the provincial countryside and the provincial capitals are contrasted to each other as well as to the rest of the Latin speaking provinces of the Roman Empire. The relevant linguistic data are taken from the Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age, and the statistical analysis applies the Herman method of calculating the relative distribution of diverse types of non-standard data found in the inscriptions. After the comparison of the phenomena of sonorization, degemination, assimilation and /b/~/w/ fusion between an earlier and later chronological period, a suggested map of dialectal variants of Vulgar Latin in the region will be hypothesized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Related to Herman (2000) and Herman (1987=2006), the present study deals with the problem of the deletion of word-final -s as evidenced in Latin inscriptions of the Empire. By reconsidering all items of the omission of -s recorded to date in the Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age, the morphosyntactic explanation proposed by Herman (1987=2006) as for relevant omissions will be replaced by a phonetic and phonosyntactic approach which evidences the all-time prevalence of the consonantal environment in the omission of word final -s. Accordingly, the phonosyntactically determined deletion of word final -s before a subsequent consonant existed continuously but to various degrees from the Old Latin age onward all along the history of Latin. This situation might have been inherited by the Romance languages, where different and complex morphological innovations led either to the discontinuation of the phenomenon of phonosyntactically determined deletion and the stabilization of word final -s (as in Western Romance), or to the completion of the deletion process and the complete loss of word final -s (as in Eastern Romance). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]