about introduction sounds words structures texts references



AI Grammars
Mayan languages
Anatolia, Caucasus, Iran, Mesopotamia

about

Early Latin

is the Latin language before Classical Latin. In its most archaic attestations, the language differs strikingly from its later descendent (see introduction). Until around 250 BCE the language still had word-initial stress which led to raising or deletion of unaccented vowels. Rhotacism, i.e. the change of s to r between vowels, did not take place before 350 BCE (see sounds). The language is highly inflectional and at times preserves endings inherited from Proto-Indo-European which were ousted in a later stage (see words). The syntax of Early Latin prose makes it abundantly clear that despite word order variation the language was configurational and OV (see structures).

Lecturers

Wolfgang de Melo

University of Oxford

Giuseppe Pezzini

University of St Andrews

introduction

Early Latin, intro, unit 1

LAT-INT-001

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49067

language and speakers: what is Early Latin? who were its users? when was it spoken/written? where?

 slides

Early Latin, intro, unit 2

LAT-INT-002

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49066

writing and sources: Early Latin writing, sources (epigraphic, literary), resources

 slides

sounds

Early Latin, sounds, unit 1

LAT-PHO-001

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49065

phonemes, phonological changes: phoneme system of Early Latin, changes, processes, variants

 slides

Early Latin, sounds, unit 2

LAT-PHO-002

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49064

syllables, constraints and phonotactics, sandhi, Early Latin accentuation, iambic shortening

 slides

words

Early Latin, words, unit 1

LAT-MOR-001

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49063

word formation: overview, derivational morphology, compounding, agglutination, recategorisation

 slides

Early Latin, words, unit 2

LAT-MOR-002

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49062

nominal inflection: patterns of inflexion of nouns (= declensions), adjectives, pronouns, adverbs

 slides

Early Latin, words, unit 3

LAT-MOR-003

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49061

verbal inflection: affixation, conjugation, stem formation, tense and mood, Early Latin variation

slides

structures

Early Latin, structures, unit 1

LAT-STR-001

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49060

overview of morphosyntactic structures, arguments, word/clitic/affix, predication

 slides

Early Latin, structures, unit 2

LAT-STR-002

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49059

nominal and adpositional structure: IE cases, syncretisms, functions of cases, prepositional phrases

 slides

Early Latin, structures, unit 3

LAT-STR-003

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49058

predication: valency, promotion and demotion, impersonal passives, agentivity

 slides

Early Latin, structures, unit 4

LAT-STR-004

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49057

clause 1: modality, grammaticalization, sequence of tenses, subordination, mood in relative clauses

 slides

Early Latin, structures, unit 5

LAT-STR-005

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49056

clause 2: AcP and AcI, tenses, pre-latin infinitives, telicity, omission of subject accusatives

 slides

texts

Early Latin, texts, unit 1

LAT-TXT-001

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/49081

Plautus, Aulularia 1—5

 slides

references

Lecturers' references

selection out of the lecturers’ references, enriched by Lars Ahrens and project members.


general

general introductions, encyclopedias, literature, writing, history, miscellaneous


Niedermann, Max & Strong, H. A. & Stewart, H. (eds.). 1910. Outlines of Latin Phonetics. London: Routledge; New York: Dutton. (digitized version at the Internet Archive) (Accessed 2021-07-05.)
Wachter, Rudolf. 1987. Altlateinische Inschriften. Bern: Lang.
Lexicity. 2016. Latin. (Accessed 2021-06-24.)


grammar

grammars, treatments of major grammatical domains


Bennett, Charles E. 1910. Syntax of Early Latin. 2 Vols. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. (digitized version at the Internet Archive) (Accessed 2021-05-27.)
Sihler, Andrew L. 1995. New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weiss, Michael. 2009. Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin. Ann Arbor: Beech Stave Press.

See also a list of grammars on Lexicity 2016.


lexicon

dictionaries, headword search tools, further sources of information about the lexicon


Lewis, Charles T. & Short, Charles. 1879. A Latin Dictionary Founded on Andrews' Edition of Freund's Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Glare, P. G. W. (ed.). 1968. Oxford Latin Dictionary.. 2 Vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
de Vaan, Michiel. 2008. Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic languages. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

See headword search in various dictionaries in the Perseus Digital Library and in Lexilogos, as well as a list of dictionaries on Lexicity 2016.


text

text collections, corpora, treebanks


Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Vols I–XVII. 1862-1986. Berlin: Reimer, de Gruyter (since 1925) (searchably digitized at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften).
Degrassi, Atilius (ed.). 1957-1965. Inscriptiones Latinae liberae rei publicae. 2 Vols. Florence: La Nuova Italia & Berlin: de Gruyter.
Gippert, Jost & Martinez, Javier & Korn, Agnes & Mittmann, Roland. 2016. TITUS TEXTUS: Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien.. Frankfurt: University of Frankfurt. (Accessed 2021-06-25.)

See also the large searchable text collections of the Perseus Digital Library and listing of text collections in The Latin Library, Lexicity 2016 and in the University of Chicago Library.


teaching material

coursebooks, exercises, materials or introductions supporting teaching


Diehl, Ernst (1964). Altlateinische Inschriften. 5. Auflage, Berlin: De Gruyter.
Krause, Todd B. & Slocum, Jonathan. 2004. Early Indo-European Online: Latin Online. University of Texas: Linguistics Research Centre. (Accessed 2021-06-24.)

See also discussions and materials in the Textkit Greek and Latin Forums: A Classical Language Learning Forum.