In this way we might amplify examples, and it should not escape notice that we have to deal chiefly with substantives, with few adjectives and hardly any verbs.[1]
In precisely the same way the Spanish vocabulary must have been seamed with traces of Iberian elements. But the process of elimination took place more rapidly and thoroughly in this case, so that the number of Iberian or Celtic-Iberian words that have resisted time and change is small. On a Latin inscription from Spain we find paramus, “plain,” and paramo occurs to this day in this sense. As the Iberian does not know the sound p, the word cannot be Iberian, and must be Celtic.
In Isidore we find baia, “bay,” which should be read baía, as Sp. and Port. bahia prove—doubtless an Iberian word, since Fr. baie and Ital. baia are forms quite recently borrowed from Spanish. This baia is perhaps somehow connected with the place-name Bayona. Again, the lapides lausiae of the Lex Metalli Vipascensis are Celtic rather than Iberian (cf. Sp. losa, Port. lousa, as well as Prov. lausa, Piedm. losa). Considering our ignorance of Iberian, and the pronounced colouring of Basque by Spanish words, it is not often easy to decide on which side the indebtedness lies when we meet with a word in Spanish and Basque whose etymology is still uncertain.
Much discussion centres round the question as to how far the pre-Romanic nations influenced the phonology of the Romans in the process of their assimilation. Opinions are strongly divergent. While G. I. Ascoli has repeatedly assumed influences of this kind on a large scale, the present writer is very sceptical.[2] It may be well to give the essential points.
Plautus uses distennite and dispennite instead of distendite and dispendite—forms he imported from his native Umbria. And like the Umbrians, the Oscans too pronounced nn instead of nd. Later we find this same change throughout the whole of south and central Italy, and even in Rome, whereas it is not observed in Tuscany, north Italy and other Romanic countries. We may therefore confidently assume that this is due to a reaction of the Oscan-Umbrian dialects. Similarly it is in accordance with Umbrian pronunciation to convert breathed plosives into voiced after nasals, e.g. iuenga = Lat. juvenca; and similarly we have čingue in central and south Italy beside Tusc. cinque (quinque). But even in this particular the change affects not only the regions of ancient Umbria, but also those of the Oscans and Messapians, though again it must be admitted that we do not know what the pronunciation of the ancient Messapians was. And finally, we find the Latin d represented in Umbrian between vowels by a sound which has a separate sign in the national alphabets and which in Latin is reproduced as -rs. And since the Paelignan alphabet too has a sign for a modified d, one may perhaps assume that in these districts d had a specialized sound as th, or r; and this view agrees with the fact that in the dialects of central and southern Italy d was pronounced sometimes like r, sometimes like th. And probably this sums up all we can say with certainty.
It has always been maintained that French u (pronounced as German ü), derived from ū, is due to the influence of Gallic. The u (with modern sound) is identified with the whole area of the French language except part of the Walloon, part of French Switzerland, and Piedmont, Genoa, Lombardy, the Grisons, Tirol and the northern part of the Emilia; but not Friuli, Venetia and Istria. On the other hand, the ancient ū became i in Cymric, to which ü must be regarded as an intermediary step, that may therefore have existed in Gallic. But in the first place we must observe that Greek writers always render the Gallic ū by ου, never by υ; that the Romans too write ū, never y; and further, that over a large part of the area ü came in comparatively recently. Secondly, in Gallic inscriptions the combination CT is frequently replaced by XT, so that the Irish pronunciation cht (Ir. nocht, “night”) is as old as Ancient Gallic. And since the preliminary stage of the Fr. fait from factum, nuit from nocte, is likewise cht, it is natural to suppose a relation between these facts, and all the more because the Iberian Peninsula on the one hand, and a large part of the western and central area of upper Italy on the other, show an identical process; but in Venetian, central and southern Italy ct became tt. Thirdly, nasalized vowels are in evidence chiefly in the ancient seats of the Celts—in northern and southern France, in Piedmont, Genoa, Lombardy and partly in Raetia, also in Portugal, but not as far as southern Emilia. At this point again evidence from the Gallic fails completely. Finally, an attempt has been made to trace back the general characteristics of the French and the Gallo-Romanic dialects of Italy to the peculiarities of the Gallic accent. It is assumed that there was a decided stress-accent, which brought about an over-emphasis of the stressed syllable at the expense of the unaccented ones, with the result of a marked weakening of the unaccented vowels, and particularly of those following the stressed syllable. Here again we can only say that Gallic itself affords no evidence for this assumption, and that, on the contrary, this peculiar accentuation may be due to other reasons, unknown to us. To turn to morphology, the method of enumerating—as we find it, for example, in Fr. quatre-vingts, &c.—would seem to be Gallic, since it is common to all the Celts.
But even if we admit certain regional variations, all these were overlaid by an “Average Latin” which presents a number of essential features uniformly over the whole area, and which differed from the literary language. These characteristics (in historical sequence) are as follows: (1) Loss of final m in polysyllabic words (which we find exemplified in the very oldest inscriptions); (2) loss of the h- sound, a loss which outside the towns was of great antiquity (cf. anser), and at the beginning of imperial times was fairly common; (3) loss of n before s coupled with the lengthening of the vowel, for which Varro is evidence in his alternations of mensa and mesa; (4) the assimilation of rs to ss—e.g. sursum from sursum (Ital. suso, O. Fr. sus, Mod. Fr. dessus). Toward the end of the Republic v is lost before u—e.g. vius instead of vivus, rius instead of rivus (Ital. Sp. rio), anticus instead of antiquus (Ital. antico). In the first century a.d. b became v between vowels, thus merging itself into the latter sound, so that in examining the Romance languages it is impossible to decide whether the original was v or b. And this change spreads in sentences to the initial b (as in the inscription manduca vibe lude e beni at me), which leads in some cases to some uncertainty in the use of v and b. And lastly, we have the case of cl and tl—e.g. veclus (Ital. vecchio, Fr. vieil, Sp. viejo, Port. velho, Rum. viechiu) instead of vetulus; the reduction of di before vowels, of j, g before e, i, and of z to a single sound j, or rather dj, in consequence of which we have diurnum (Ital. giorno, Fr. jour); juvenis (Ital. giovane, Fr. jeune); gener (Ital. genero, Fr. gendre); zelosus (Ital. geloso, Fr. jaloux), all represented by the same initial.
To turn to vowels, we must first notice that, according to Varro, ae was pronounced e in the country, but that in the cities the diphthong was maintained at first, while the simple sound was only admitted during the course of the 1st century a.d. If this is an instance of an early spreading of a rustic pronunciation, we have in another case a victory for that of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. O for au belongs to Umbrian, Volscian and vulgar Latin, which explains why Appius Claudius Pulcher changed his name to Clōdius when he deserted the patricians and went over to the plebeians. And there is other evidence of this change of sound. But in the inscriptions of the Empire o for au is very rare, save in proper names, and the Romance languages have partly preserved the au to this day with little or no change (cf. Rum. auzí, Prov. auzir, Port. ouvir from audire), or only changed it to o at a later stage (cf. Fr. chose, where ch could only have arisen before a, not o), so that one may assume that the “Average Latin” always preserved the au.
Then, without entering into detail, we must mention the prothesis of i before st, sp, sc, a phenomenon which arose, judging from the inscriptions, in the 2nd century a.d. We find it at the beginning of the sentence, and also within it after consonants, but not after vowels; e.g. illa spata, but illas ispatas; istáre, istá, but tu istás, &c.
Most important of all are the modifications that affect the accented vowels, which give a new look to the language as a whole. In Old Latin and even towards the end of the Republican age, vowels varied solely according to their quantity, e.g. ā was longer than ă, ē longer than ĕ, but the vowel sound was the same, or at any rate the difference in quality between long and short must have been quite insignificant, seeing that Cicero and Quintilian wished the word divisio to be avoided in speech from motives of decorum, because of the likeness in sound to vissio. Quantity was not influenced by the number of the consonants following: actus was pronounced with ā, factus with ă, &c. In the course of the 1st century approximately quality was differentiated in addition to quantity in all vowels except a—short vowels being pronounced with an open, long ones with a close, sound. The written language expresses this change by writing ae for ĕ, i for ē, e for ĭ, u for ō, o for ŭ. In addition there are statements of the grammarians, though they mention only the double pronunciation of e and o, not that of i and u. It was probably in the course of the 4th century that the further change took place, by which all vowels were lengthened before a single consonant, and shortened before two or more, e.g. sĭtis became sītis, while tĕ̬ctum became tĕctum. But the older qualitative variations were maintained so that even now sītis and vītis, or tẹ̄ctum and lĕ̬ctum did not contain the same vowel-sound, the former having a close, the latter an open, vowel. (Cf. Ital. sete, vite, Fr. soif, vis, Sp. sed, vid; or Ital. te̬tto and le̬tto, Fr. toit and lit.) . It is at the end of the 4th century that Augustine says: “Afrae aures de corruptione vocalium vel productione non judicant,” and the uncertain practice of the poets in the matter of quantity points to the breaking down of the old conditions. This was not the end of the process of development; but the most important stages were already accomplished. In this, too, we are concerned with changes affecting the whole Romance region. The final step was taken when open i and close e, open u and close o, were reduced to one sound which may be called close e (or o). This step was not taken by the eastern regions, excepting as to e, and Sardinia remained completely unaffected (v. infra).
- ↑ Cf. R. Thurneysen, Keltoromanisches (Halle, 1885); W. Meyer-Lübke, Einführung in die romanische Sprachwissenschaft, p. 38 ff.
- ↑ G. I. Ascoli, Una Lettera glottologica (1880); Archivio glottologico italiano, x. 260; Sprachwissenschaftliche Briefe (1887; cf. H. Schuchardt, Zeitschrift für rom. Phil. iv. 140 and elsewhere); and Meyer-Lübke, loc. cit. 205 ff.
