The Early Latin Verb System: Archaic Forms in Plautus, Terence, and Beyond
Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo
Abstract
Early Latin has archaic futures like faxō ‘I shall do’, archaic subjunctives like faxim I may do’, duim ‘I may give’, or attigās ‘you may touch’, and archaic infinitives like impetrāssere ‘to achieve’. These forms are already quite rare in Plautus; a generation later, in Terence, they are almost non-existent. This study focuses on such forms from a synchronic perspective. It examines their meaning, distribution over clause types, register, and productivity. In order to reach reliable conclusions, the book looks at the usage of ‘regular’ futures, subjunctives, and infinitives in the early perio ... More
Early Latin has archaic futures like faxō ‘I shall do’, archaic subjunctives like faxim I may do’, duim ‘I may give’, or attigās ‘you may touch’, and archaic infinitives like impetrāssere ‘to achieve’. These forms are already quite rare in Plautus; a generation later, in Terence, they are almost non-existent. This study focuses on such forms from a synchronic perspective. It examines their meaning, distribution over clause types, register, and productivity. In order to reach reliable conclusions, the book looks at the usage of ‘regular’ futures, subjunctives, and infinitives in the early period. Thus, morphosyntactic phenomena such as the sequence of tenses and the use of subjunctives in prohibitions are examined and compared with classical practice. The work contains diachronic elements as well. Not only does it discuss the reconstruction of elements of the Proto-Italic and Proto-Indo-European verb systems, but it also shows the patterns by which archaic forms were lost in classical and later Latin.
Keywords:
future tenses,
subjunctives,
infinitives,
morphosyntax,
sequence of tenses,
prohibitions,
reconstruction,
diachronic patterns,
productivity,
register
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2007 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199209026 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199209026.001.0001 |
