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Vulgar Latin and the origins of the Romance Languages
BASIC INFORMATION
Although Classical Latin (seen at its fullest in the works of Cicero and his
contemporaries) may boast its title as the “true Latin” that carries the most
prestige and is recognized commonly with the simple title of “Latin” above
any other dialect, it is the dialects grouped together under the category
of Late or Vulgar Latin that later developed into the Romance Languages. In
truth, no one Vulgar Latin standard ever existed, for different pronunciations,
vocabularies, and grammatical structures formed and reformed in every area
of the Empire. This section offers a peek at the common and diverse changes that led to the modern
Romance Languages.
PRONUNCIATION
Changes and shifts in pronunciation
are common to every language around the world, and their roots in Latin date
back to the earliest recorded texts. Although conservative literature, even
in the late days of the Roman Empire, always leaned toward a perfect Classical
style, the language of the street and of the common man moved in a much different
direction.
One of the subtler developments was the contraction
of short vowels in speech, common already in Classical Latin. The word perículum
"danger," for example, demonstrates a normal change when it loses an atonic
(unstressed) syllable to become períclum (> Sp. peligro, Port.
perigo). Note, however, that the earlier perículum gave It.
pericolo. Another common feature of Vulgar Latin Pronunciation was
the absolute loss of final -m and -t, important to all of the daughter languages.
In Italo-Romance, the loss of final -s is clear in all contexts as well (affecting
second-person verb forms so that -as/-es/-is > -i).
A common characteristic of Western Romance
is the vocalization of otherwise unvoiced intervocalic consonants (compare
It. tutto, Rom. tot to Sp./Port. todo
< totu[m] "all" (note the loss of final “m” in Vulgar
Latin)). In Gallo-Romance, this led to further weakening after the deletion
of final vowels in pronunciation, leading also to the elision of final consonants
that were, in Latin, medial and unvoiced (hence the lenition and eventual
loss of "t" in French tout /tu/ < totu[m]).
Stress on the penultimate (one syllable back
from the last) became the norm in Italo- and Ibero-Romance (the Romance Languages
of the Italian and the Iberian peninsulas, respectively), as well as for much
of Gallo-Romance (the Romance Languages of Gaul [mainly modern-day France]),
which has consistently headed towards monosyllabic and oxytonic (final-syllable
stress) structures (consider Fr. vrai "true" < Lat. verum, as
well as Occitan avètz "you have", which is stressed on the final syllable,
but òme "man", stressed on the penultimate (cf. French homme,
which is both monosyllabic and oxytonic). Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian,
however, are consistently polysyllabic and paroxytonic (penultimate stress),
although consonant-final endings in Ibero-Romance are stressed on the last
syllable due to the loss of the Latin ending (Sp. situación, Pt. situação,
< Lat. situatione[m], but It. situazione). This has become the
standard in Ibero-Romance, where words originally stressed on the antepenultimate
(three syllables preceding the last) in Latin came to be stressed naturally
on the penultimate through an erosion of the syllables, in the same way that
periculum > periclu[m] > peligro (the metathesis of l > r and r > l and vocalization
of c > g are both characteristic of Ibero-Romance (cf. more radical changes
such as Pt. perigo, where the “l” is deleted after vocalization of
/c/), and can also be seen in other branches of Romance such as dialects of
Occitan).
BASIC GRAMMAR
The Latin noun is categorically
known as having a masculine, feminine, or neuter
gender. Although the nominative form is cited as the base in Classical Latin,
it is the accusative case (i.e. the case defining the noun as the object
of a verb (as well as of many prepositions)) that forms the basis of the great
majority of Romance nouns. At a glance, the Latin first declension, whose
nominative ends in -a and accusative in -am, may lead to the conclusion that
the nominative case is a more plausible origin, further evidence proves quite
to the contrary. Take, for example, the late Latin word amica "(female)
friend", of which the Classical accusative is amicam, and, after the
common standard of elision of final -m in Vulgar Latin, becomes amica
once more. The word passus "step" forms its accusative in passum,
providing passu, a much more likely candidate for Pt./It. passo,
Sp. paso, Fr./Occ./Cat. pas than passus.
The clearest examples, however, are the "irregular"
nouns, such as the above-cited situatio, whose accusative is situationem
> situatione > It. situazione, Sp. situación, Fr. situation,
Cat. situació, etc. Similarly, homo "man" has the accusative
hominem > hom[i]ne > Old Sp. homne (>homre>hombre),
Port. homem, Fr. homme, Cat. home, Occ. hòme,
etc. The plural formations all come from the accusative plural, with the typical
ending formed in -s (-as, -os, -es). So, Lat. situationes > Sp. situaciones,
Fr. situations (note the loss of final vowel "e" both in singular and
plural, a phenomenon typical of French), Cat. situacions (following
properties of Gallo-Romance, not Ibero-Romance). In Italo- and Balkan Romance
(the Latin province of Dacia, now Romania, being the main source of the latter,
although other dialects of Romanian spoken throughout the Balkan Peninsula
form parts of this subgrouping), where the loss of final -s negated the accusative
plural, the nominative plural in -i and -ae remained (It. amico, amici
"friend, friends" (masc.), Rom. prietena, prietene "friend, friends"
(fem.)).
The definite articles (="the") were
not present in Classical Latin, but they began to develop out of the demonstrative
pronouns that indicated a large distance from the speaker "that [which lies
over there]," namely ille (masc.) and illa (fem.), whereas the
indefinite articles (="a, an") logically generated from unus "one"
(> unu, fem. una). Initially, ipse was in more widespread distribution
than ille, at least in late Latin texts, but its forms remain preeminent
only in Sardinian and some dialects of Catalan and Italian (>issu, issa>Sardinian
su, sa). The accusatives of ille are illu[m] (masc. sing.),
illos (masc. plural), illa[m] (fem. sing.), illas (fem.
plural). The expected pattern, consequently, is lo, los, la, las. In
Portuguese, this pattern is clear, where deletion of "l" yielded o, os,
a, as. In Catalan and Occitan, lo, los, la, las became the standard
(but note Cat. la, les), but, in much of present-day Catalonia, lo
and los have been suppleted by el and els. French has
le and la in the singular, but les for both in the plural
(due to final vowel deletion). Romanian had ul, i, a, le, all of which
came to follow the noun and are now attached to it as inflections. Italian,
following its inclusion of nominative plurals, has il, i, la, le (and
further developed lo, gli before s+consonant or z). The
Spanish system is expected, excluding el for masc. sing., giving el,
los, la, las. Sardinian, as explained before, inherited ipse, and
has su, sos, sa, sas. The definite article is less varied, and always
comes from unus, giving Spanish un (also numerical uno),
unos, una, unas; Portuguese um, uns, uma (Old Port. (h)ua),
umas; Galician un, uns, unha, unhas. Many of the other Romance
Languages stray from the plural indefinite, forming their own structures (French
and Italian partitive with Fr. de, It. di, Romanian use of nis¸te,
etc.), but, nevertheless, retain their singular forms, such as Fr. un,
une; It. un, una; Rom. un, o, etc. Contracting the definite
article to l’ (common especially to French, Italian, Catalan, Occitan)
and the indefinite to un’ (esp. Italian) before a vowel (and, dependant
on the language, following certain rules) has become quite common in every
branch of Romance (even with su/sa > s’).
Neuter plurals (which, when regular in Latin, resemble feminine
singular in -a, ex.: bellum, bella "war, wars") remain in a
few of the Romance Languages, such as Italian (seen in the singular and plural
of parts of the body, such as il braccio "the arm", but le
braccia "the arms", taking the feminine plural definite article,
but, at the same time, resembling a feminine singular noun). This is most
apparent, in fact, in Romanian, where nouns classified as "neuter"
resemble certain classes of masculine nouns in the singular and feminine in the
plural.
The Vulgar Latin verb changed only rigidly in some Romance Languages, and fluidly in others, along much the same lines as changes in regional pronunciation allowed. Perhaps the most solid evidence of this comes through examples of deterioration of verb forms (bold letters are used to show stress):
Late Latin cantare "to
chant, to sing"
canto
cantas
cantat
cantamus
cantatis
cantant
The Sardinian verb is closest in structure,
showing only deletion of final "t" in the third person plural of some dialects
and the reconstruction of -atis to -adzis in the second person plural in some
dialects:
kantare (to sing)
canto
cantas
cantat
cantamus
cantadzis (also cantates)
cantan (also cántanta)
Spanish and Portuguese both
show similar structures, specifically the deletion of final and intervocalic
"t".
cantar cantar
canto canto
cantas cantas
canta canta
cantamos cantamos
cantáis cantais
cantan cantam
In Italian, the second-person singular
is replaced by -i after the loss of final -s, and the subjunctive suppletes
the first-person plural ("we") form.
cantare
canto
canti
canta
cantiamo
cantate
cantano
Catalan shows a further stage of weakening,
where unstressed -a >-e before a consonant and posttonic -us is removed
from the first-person plural.
cantar ("r" not pronounced)
canto
cantes
canta
cantem
canteu
canten
Finally, in French, initial "c" becomes
"ch" before a hard vowel (a, o, u), altering the stem, and -ar verbs
become -er.
chanter ("r" not pronounced)
chante (-e not pronounced)
chantes (-es not pronounced)
chante (-e not pronounced)
chantons (nasal "o", unpronounced "s")
chantez (unpronounced "z")
chantent (-ent not pronounced)
Subject pronouns have undergone many
changes as well. The very conservative Sardinian has jeo or dego
"I" < ego; tue "you (singular, informal) " < tu; isse,
issa "him, her" < ipse, ipsa; nois "we" < nos; vois
"all of you" < vos; and issos, issas "them (male or mixed),
them (all f.)" < ipsos, ipsas.
It has also borrowed bosté(s)
< Catalan Vostè(s) as a term of formal address ("You", cf. Sp. Usted,
Fr. vous, etc.). French has formed je, tu, il
(< ille), elle (< illa), nous, vous, ils
(< illos), and elles (< illas), although vous
has come f to mean both "all oyou" and "(formal) you". Portuguese yields eu
(deletion of intervocalic "g" from ego), tu, ele, ela,
nós, vós, eles, and elas from precisely the same
sources as French, although it has also created você(s) as a term of
formal address (now the only acceptable form in Brazil, where both tu
and vós are archaic (tu is still commonly used in Portugal)).
Although Latin had four classes of verbs: -áre, -ére, -íre, and -ere, the common Romance trisystem came from the integration of -ere and -ére to -ér(e), providing all verbs with ultimate stress. Thus, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Occitan have -ar, -er (also -re in Catalan and Occitan, where traces of the unstressed -ere still exist in so-called "irregular verbs"), and -ir, whereas French, after reanalyzing -ar > -er and -er > -re, now has -er, -re, and -ir. Italian never lost the distinction between unstressed -ere and stressed -ére (ex.: mettere "to put, to place" < mittere "to send" (cf. Fr. mettre "to put"), but volere < Late Lat. volere < verre "to want"), but did lose many unstressed -ere verbs (ex.: dire, fare < dicere, facere "to say", "to do").
Adjectives agree with the noun in all Romance Languages, and, as a general rule, they follow it: Spanish el perro contento, French le chien content, Italian il cane contento, Portuguese o cão contente, Galician o can contento, Occitan lo gos content, Catalan el gos content, Romanian cîinele content, Rhaeto-Romance il caun content, Sardinian su cane cuntentu, "the happy/content dog," is expected in all contexts. Adjectives can be placed before the noun in for purposes of emphasis or to shift the semantic value (cf. Fr. le grand homme, Sp. el gran hombre "the great man" versus Fr. l’homme grand, Sp. el hombre grande "the big man"). Superlatives are also commonly placed before the noun (ex.: It. il migliore zio "the best uncle", Cat. el major germà "the oldest brother", Rom. cel mai rau prieten "the worst friend").
The Proto-Romance adverb developed from a system that combined the Latin noun, mens "mind", a feminine noun whose accusative is mente[m], with the adjective (Classical Latin consisted of a more complex system). Since the adjective modifies the noun mentem, it is feminine in gender and accusative in case, and this principle survives in the Romance Languages, where "ment(e)" is attached to a feminine adjective to form the adverb (Sp., Port. rápido "fast", but rápidamente "quickly", Fr. lent "slow" but lentement "slowly", Cat. car "dear, nice" but carament "dearly, nicely"). Adjectives with an invariable form in the singular need not be modified before the addition of inflective -ment(e) (Sp. fácil "easy, simple", fácilmente "easily", but note that Fr. profond, gentil "deep" and "gentle" are irregularly modified as profondément and gentiment "deeply" and "gently").
I sincerely hope that you find your studies
of the Romance Languages both educating and enjoyable. If you have any questions,
or would like more information on Romance linguistics, feel free to contact
me at talktume@hotmail.com.
Valete, arrivaderci, au revoir, hasta
luego, até logo, a reveure, la revedere!
Joshua Rudder