Vulgar Latin

Template:Short description Template:For Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox language Vulgar Latin, also known as Colloquial, Popular, Spoken or Vernacular Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Vulgar Latin as a term is both controversial and imprecise. Spoken Latin existed for a long time and in many places. Scholars have differed in opinion as to the extent of the differences, and whether Vulgar Latin was in some sense a different language. This was developed as a theory in the nineteenth century by Raynouard. At its extreme, the theory suggested that the written register formed an elite language distinct from common speech, but this is now rejected.<ref>Template:Harvnb "Comparative scholars, especially in the nineteenth century … tended to see Vulgar Latin and literary Latin as two very different kinds of language, or even two different languages altogether … but [this] is now out of date"</ref>

The current consensus is that the written and spoken languages formed a continuity much as they do in modern languages, with speech tending to evolve faster than the written language, and the written, formalised language exerting pressure back on speech.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Vulgar Latin is used in different ways by different scholars, applying it to mean spoken Latin of differing types, or from different social classes and time periods.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Nevertheless, interest in the shifts in the spoken forms remains very important to understand the transition from Latin or Late Latin through to Proto-Romance and Romance languages. To make matters more complicated, evidence for spoken forms can be found only through examination of written Classical Latin, Late Latin, or early Romance, depending on the time period.

History of the Vulgar Latin controversy

During the Classical period, Roman authors referred to the informal, everyday variety of their own language as sermo plebeius or sermo vulgaris, meaning "common speech".<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> This could simply refer to unadorned speech without the use of rhetoric, or even plain speaking. The modern usage of the term Vulgar Latin dates to the Renaissance, when Italian thinkers began to theorize that their own language originated in a sort of "corrupted" Latin that they assumed formed an entity distinct from the literary Classical variety, though opinions differed greatly on the nature of this "vulgar" dialect.<ref>Template:Harvnb, §6</ref>

The early 19th-century French linguist François-Just-Marie Raynouard is often regarded as the father of modern Romance philology. Observing that the Romance languages have many features in common that are not found in Latin, at least not in "proper" or Classical Latin, he concluded that the former must have all had some common ancestor (which he believed most closely resembled Old Occitan) that replaced Latin some time before the year 1000. This he dubbed la langue romane or "the Romance language".<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

The first truly modern treatise on Romance linguistics and the first to apply the comparative method was Friedrich Christian Diez's seminal Grammar of the Romance Languages.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Researchers such as Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke characterised Vulgar Latin as to a great extent a separate language, that was more or less distinct from the written form. To Meyer-Lübke, the spoken Vulgar form was the genuine and continuous form, while Classical Latin was a kind of artificial idealised language imposed upon it; thus Romance languages were derived from the "real" Vulgar form, which had to be reconstructed from remaining evidence.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Others that followed this approach divided Vulgar from Classical Latin by education or class. Other views of "Vulgar Latin" include defining it as uneducated speech, slang, or in effect, Proto-Romance.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

The result is that the term "Vulgar Latin" is regarded by some modern philologists as essentially meaningless, but unfortunately very persistent:

the continued use of "Vulgar Latin" is not only no aid to thought, but is, on the contrary, a positive barrier to a clear understanding of Latin and Romance.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>...

I wish it were possible to hope the term might fall out of use. Many scholars have stated that "Vulgar Latin" is a useless and dangerously misleading term ... To abandon it once and for all can only benefit scholarship.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Lloyd called to replace the use of "Vulgar Latin" with a series of more precise definitions, such as the spoken Latin of a particular time and place.

Research in the twentieth century has in any case shifted the view to consider the differences between written and spoken Latin in more moderate terms. Just as in modern languages, speech patterns are different from written forms, and vary with education, the same can be said of Latin. For instance, philologist József Herman agrees that the term is problematic, and therefore limits it in his work to mean the innovations and changes that turn up in spoken or written Latin that were relatively uninfluenced by educated forms of Latin. Herman states:

it is completely clear from the texts during the time that Latin was a living language, there was never an unbridgeable gap between the written and spoken, nor between the language of the social elites and that of the middle, lower, or disadvantaged groups of the same society.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Herman also makes it clear that Vulgar Latin, in this view, is a varied and unstable phenomenon, crossing many centuries of usage where any generalisations are bound to cover up variations and differences.

Sources

Evidence for the features of non-literary Latin comes from the following sources:<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Explicit mention of certain constructions or pronunciation habits by Roman grammarians.
Recurrent grammatical, syntactic, or orthographic mistakes in Latin epigraphy.
- Curse tablets, as a special kind of inscription.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
The insertion, whether intentional or not, of colloquial terms or constructions into contemporary texts. Special interest is given to:
- Private letters and documents from an ordinary context such as business records, lists and school exercises; these are rare but papyri from Egypt and tablets from Hadrian's Wall have been found.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
- Technical works on medicine, agriculture and similar, where the demand for grammatical accuracy was lower, such as the Mulomedicina Chironis, a veterinary treatise.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
- Christian texts, as many originated from marginalised communities; including early Bible translations and funeral inscriptions.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
- Late Latin texts from the sixth century onwards, which show changes, or the absence thereof, in local Latin under the influence of new educational practices and social structures.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
The pronunciation of Roman-era lexical borrowings into neighboring languages such as Basque, Albanian, or Welsh.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
Modern Romance languages, the comparative analysis of which can be used to validate or disprove hypotheses about earlier changes in spoken Latin.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Fragmentation

An oft-posed question is why (or when, or how) Latin “fragmented” into several different languages. Current hypotheses contrast the centralizing and homogenizing socio-economic, cultural, and political forces that characterized the Roman Empire with the centrifugal forces that prevailed afterwards.

By the end of the first century CE the Romans had seized the entire Mediterranean Basin and established hundreds of colonies in the conquered provinces. Over time this—along with other factors that encouraged linguistic and cultural assimilation, such as political unity, frequent travel and commerce, military service, etc.—led to Latin becoming the predominant language throughout the western Mediterranean.<ref>Grandgent 1907: 2–3</ref> Latin itself was subject to the same assimilatory tendencies, such that its varieties had probably become more uniform by the time the Empire fell than they had been before it. That is not to say that the language had been static for all those years, but rather that ongoing changes tended to spread to all regions.<ref>Wright 2002: 27–28; Pei 1941: 16, 23</ref>

The rise of the first Arab caliphate in the seventh century marked the definitive end of Roman dominance over the Mediterranean.<ref>Treadgold 1997: 371–372</ref> It is from approximately that century onward that regional differences proliferate in Latin documents, indicating the fragmentation of Latin into the incipient Romance languages.<ref>Carlton 1973: 237. According to Pei & Gaeng (1976: 76–81), the decisive moment came with the Islamic conquest of North Africa and Iberia, which was followed by numerous raids on land and by sea. All this had the effect of disrupting connections between the western Romance-speaking regions.</ref> Until then Latin appears to have been remarkably homogeneous, as far as can be judged from its written records,<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> although careful statistical analysis reveals regional differences in the treatment of the vowel /ĭ/, and in the frequency of the merger of (original) intervocalic /b/ and /w/, by about the fifth century CE.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Phonological development

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Consonantism

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Loss of nasals

Word-final /m/ was lost in polysyllabic words.<ref>Pope 1934: §156.2</ref> In monosyllables it tended to survive as /n/.<ref>Hall 1976: 180</ref>
/n/ was usually lost before fricatives, resulting in compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel (e.g. sponsa 'fiancée' > spōsa).<ref>Allen 1965: 27–29</ref>

Palatalization

Front vowels in hiatus (after a consonant and before another vowel) became [j], which palatalized preceding consonants.<ref>Gouvert 2015: 83</ref>

Fricativization

/w/ (except after /k/) and intervocalic /b/ merge as the bilabial fricative /β/.<ref>Pope 1934: §155; Gouvert 2016: 48</ref>

Simplification of consonant clusters

The cluster /nkt/ reduced to [ŋt].<ref>Grandgent 1907: §267; Pope 1934: §156.3</ref>
/kw/ delabialized to /k/ before back vowels.<ref>Grandgent 1907: §226; Pope 1934: §187.b</ref>
/ks/ before or after a consonant, or at the end of a word, reduced to /s/.<ref>Grandgent 1907: §255</ref>

Vocalism

Template:See also

Monophthongization

/ae̯/ and /oe̯/ monophthongized to [ɛː] and [eː] respectively by around the second century AD.<ref>Palmer 1988: 157</ref>

Loss of vowel quantity

The system of phonemic vowel length collapsed by the fifth century AD, leaving quality differences as the distinguishing factor between vowels; the paradigm thus changed from /ī ĭ ē ĕ ā ă ŏ ō ŭ ū/ to /i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/. Concurrently, stressed vowels in open syllables lengthened.<ref>Leppänen & Alho 2018: 21–22</ref>

Loss of near-close front vowel

Towards the end of the Roman Empire /ɪ/ merged with /e/ in most regions,<ref>Adams 2013: 60–1, 67</ref> although not in Africa or a few peripheral areas in Italy.<ref>Adams 2007: 626–9</ref>

Grammar

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Romance articles

It is difficult to place the point in which the definite article, absent in Latin but present in all Romance languages, arose, largely because the highly colloquial speech in which it arose was seldom written down until the daughter languages had strongly diverged; most surviving texts in early Romance show the articles fully developed.

Definite articles evolved from demonstrative pronouns or adjectives (an analogous development is found in many Indo-European languages, including Greek, Celtic and Germanic); compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative adjective Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang "that", in the Romance languages, becoming French Template:Wikt-lang and Template:Wikt-lang (Old French li, lo, la), Catalan and Spanish Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang and Template:Wikt-lang, Occitan Template:Wikt-lang and Template:Wikt-lang, Portuguese and Galician Template:Wikt-lang and Template:Wikt-lang (elision of -l- is a common feature of Galician-Portuguese) and Italian Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang and Template:Wikt-lang. Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article from Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang an intensive adjective (su, sa); some Catalan and Occitan dialects have articles from the same source. While most of the Romance languages put the article before the noun, Romanian has its own way, by putting the article after the noun, e.g. lupul ("the wolf" – from *lupum illum) and omul ("the man" – *homo illum),<ref name="Vincent2">Vincent (1990).</ref> possibly a result of being within the Balkan sprachbund.

The term Template:Lang may have evolved from its initial demonstrative function, broadening to convey semantic prominence by directing the attention of the audience towards particular referents which the speaker intended to highlight. This usage of the term is found in the Template:Lang, which recounts the travels of the Christian pilgrim—and the author—Egeria: the author utilizes the demonstrative to mark words that are crucial to the meaning of the text. For instance, when noting the location of a cave by a church, Egeria clarifies that she is referring to "Template:Lang" ("that church"). The usage of Template:Lang typically occurs alongside nouns that have previously been identified with the text: Egeria, when describing a church near Mount Olivet, initially describes it merely as an "Template:Lang," but later refers to it as "Template:Lang." The usage of the demonstratives to denote prominent parts of discourse may have predicated the eventual transformation of the term into a definite article. Once speakers began prefacing sentences with the term, they began utilizing it in a manner similar to an article; therefore, the article-like features of the word eventually become normalized and then incorporated into the standard grammar of the language.Template:Sfn

In Late Latin writings, Template:Lang was often used by writers in relative clauses to establish the identity of subjects not previously mentioned in the text.Template:Sfn The 7th-century Chronicle of Fredegar clarifies that it is discussing "Template:Lang" ("those men") before introducing a relative clause in which they are the subject.Template:Sfn During this time period, the term also developed anaphoric functions as an extension of the original demonstrative usage: Late Latin authors would substitute more basic mentions of a referent with Template:Lang and added more descriptive information.Template:Sfn For instance, the Chronicle of Fredegar refers to a "Template:Lang" ("queen") as "Template:Lang," meaning "that relative of the Franks. From this usage of the Template:Lang, in which it functioned help identify a specific referent, the term may have generalized to adopt more features associated with definite articles. One example of such a development appears in the writings of the 6th-century Gallo-Roman historian Gregory of Tours, who wrote "Template:Lang," meaning "The holy Eugenius was led to the king, and debated with that Arrian bishop in defense of the Catholic faith."<ref>Gregory of Tours. Sancti Georgii Florentii Gregorii, espiscopi turonensis, Historiæ ecclesiasticæ Francorum libri decem. 2.3.2.</ref> Within this passage, the ablative form of the pronoun, Template:Lang, is utilized to denote the Arrian bishop, however it appears to function for more like the English article "the" rather than the original Classical Latin Template:Lang: the sentence could be understood equally as well if rendered as "The holy Eugenius was led to the king, and debated with the Arrian bishop in defense of the Catholic faith."Template:Sfn Another indication of the weakening of the demonstratives can be inferred from the fact that at this time, legal and similar texts begin to swarm with Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang, and so forth (all meaning, essentially, "aforesaid"), which seem to mean little more than "this" or "that". Gregory of Tours writes, Erat autem... beatissimus Anianus in supradicta civitate episcopus ("Blessed Anianus was bishop in that city.") The original Latin demonstrative adjectives were no longer felt to be strong or specific enough.<ref name="Harrington2">Harrington et al. (1997).</ref>

The Latin pronoun Template:Lang, which was initially used to emphasize specific referents, also developed functions similar to a definite article. However, it retained some of its original emphatic properties: it was also used anaphorically to highlight prominent referents. In one 9th-10th century text from the Diocese of Urgell they utilize the phrase Template:Lang to identify the church the entire paragraph referred to while identifying a unique river, not mentioned previously in the text, as "Template:Lang" ("that river").Template:Sfn Alongside its emphatic usage, the original Classical Latin Template:Lang was also used to clarify referents if the text risked introducing ambiguity regarding the subjects and objects involved.Template:Sfn However, in Late Latin literature Template:Lang appears in scenarios in which its presence was not necessary: In the Chronicle of Fredegar, a character is introduced as "Template:Lang" ("Waiofar) before—in the next sentence—being described as "Template:Lang" ("the very same Waiofar").Template:Sfn Other documents suggest that Template:Lang and Template:Lang may have eventually assumed practically identical meanings: the 11th-12th century text, the Template:Lang utilizes both terms like definite articles, mentioning "Template:Lang" and "Template:Lang," both meaning "the authority."Template:Sfn

In the less formal speech, reconstructed forms suggest that the inherited Latin demonstratives were made more forceful by being compounded with Template:Wikt-lang (originally an interjection: "behold!"), which also spawned Italian Template:Wikt-lang through Template:Wikt-lang, a contracted form of ecce eum. This is the origin of Old French Template:Wikt-lang (*ecce ille), Template:Wikt-lang (*ecce iste) and Template:Wikt-lang (*ecce hic); Italian Template:Wikt-lang (*eccum istum), Template:Wikt-lang (*eccum illum) and (now mainly Tuscan) Template:Wikt-lang (*eccum tibi istum), as well as Template:Wikt-lang (*eccu hic), Template:Wikt-lang (*eccum hac); Spanish and Occitan Template:Wikt-lang and Portuguese Template:Wikt-lang (*eccum ille); Spanish Template:Wikt-lang and Portuguese Template:Wikt-lang (*eccum hac); Spanish Template:Wikt-lang and Portuguese Template:Wikt-lang (*eccum hic); Portuguese Template:Wikt-lang (*eccum illac) and Template:Wikt-lang (*eccum inde); Romanian Template:Wikt-lang (*ecce iste) and Template:Wikt-lang (*ecce ille), and many other forms.

On the other hand, even in the Oaths of Strasbourg, dictated in Old French in AD 842, no demonstrative appears even in places where one would clearly be called for in all the later languages (pro christian poblo – "for the Christian people"). Using the demonstratives as articles may have still been considered overly informal for a royal oath in the 9th century. Considerable variation exists in all of the Romance vernaculars as to their actual use:Template:Citation needed in Romanian, the articles are suffixed to the noun (or an adjective preceding it), as in other languages of the Balkan sprachbund and the North Germanic languages.

The numeral Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang (one) supplies the indefinite article in all cases (again, this is a common semantic development across Europe). This is anticipated in Classical Latin; Cicero writes cum uno gladiatore nequissimo<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> ("with a most immoral gladiator"). This suggests that Template:Lang was beginning to supplant Template:Wikt-lang in the meaning of "a certain" or "some" by the 1st century BC.Template:Dubious

Loss of neuter gender

1st and 2nd adjectival declension paradigm in Classical Latin:
e.g. *altus* ("tall")
Excludes vocative.
	singular			plural
	masculine	neuter	feminine	masculine	neuter	feminine
nominative	Template:Wikt-lang	altum	alta	altī	alta	altae
accusative	altum		altam	altōs	alta	altās
dative	altō		altae	altīs
ablative	altō		altā	altīs
genitive	altī		altae	altōrum		altārum

The three grammatical genders of Classical Latin were replaced by a two-gender system in most Romance languages.

The neuter gender of classical Latin was in most cases identical with the masculine both syntactically and morphologically. The confusion had already started in Pompeian graffiti, e.g. cadaver mortuus for cadaver mortuum ("dead body"), and hoc locum for hunc locum ("this place"). The morphological confusion shows primarily in the adoption of the nominative ending -us (-Ø after -r) in the o-declension.

In Petronius's work, one can find balneus for Template:Wikt-lang ("bath"), fatus for Template:Wikt-lang ("fate"), caelus for Template:Wikt-lang ("heaven"), amphitheater for Template:Wikt-lang ("amphitheatre"), vinus for Template:Wikt-lang ("wine"), and conversely, thesaurum for Template:Wikt-lang ("treasure"). Most of these forms occur in the speech of one man: Trimalchion, an uneducated Greek (i.e. foreign) freedman.

In modern Romance languages, the nominative s-ending has been largely abandoned, and all substantives of the o-declension have an ending derived from -um: -u, -o, or -Ø. E.g., masculine Template:Wikt-lang ("wall"), and neuter Template:Wikt-lang ("sky") have evolved to: Italian Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang; Portuguese Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang; Spanish Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang, Catalan Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang; Romanian Template:Wikt-lang, cieru>Template:Wikt-lang; French Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang. However, Old French still had -s in the nominative and -Ø in the accusative in both words: murs, ciels [nominative] – mur, ciel [oblique].Template:Efn

For some neuter nouns of the third declension, the oblique stem was productive; for others, the nominative/accusative form, (the two were identical in Classical Latin). Evidence suggests that the neuter gender was under pressure well back into the imperial period. French (le) Template:Wikt-lang, Catalan (la) Template:Wikt-lang, Occitan (lo) Template:Wikt-lang, Spanish (la) Template:Wikt-lang, Portuguese (o) Template:Wikt-lang, Italian language (il) Template:Wikt-lang, Leonese (el) lleche and Romanian Template:Wikt-lang(le) ("milk"), all derive from the non-standard but attested Latin nominative/accusative neuter Template:Wikt-lang or accusative masculine Template:Wikt-lang. In Spanish the word became feminine, while in French, Portuguese and Italian it became masculine (in Romanian it remained neuter, Template:Wikt-lang/Template:Wikt-lang). Other neuter forms, however, were preserved in Romance; Catalan and French Template:Wikt-lang, Leonese, Portuguese and Italian Template:Wikt-lang, Romanian Template:Wikt-lang ("name") all preserve the Latin nominative/accusative nomen, rather than the oblique stem form *nomin- (which nevertheless produced Spanish Template:Wikt-lang).<ref name="Vincent">Vincent (1990).</ref> Template:Clear right

Typical Italian endings
	Nouns		Adjectives and determiners
	singular	plural	singular	plural
masculine	Template:Wikt-lang	giardini	Template:Wikt-lang	buoni
feminine	Template:Wikt-lang	donne	Template:Wikt-lang	buone
neuter	Template:Wikt-lang	uova	Template:Wikt-lang	buone

Most neuter nouns had plural forms ending in -A or -IA; some of these were reanalysed as feminine singulars, such as Template:Wikt-lang ("joy"), plural gaudia; the plural form lies at the root of the French feminine singular (la) Template:Wikt-lang, as well as of Catalan and Occitan (la) Template:Wikt-lang (Italian la Template:Wikt-lang is a borrowing from French); the same for Template:Wikt-lang ("wood stick"), plural ligna, that originated the Catalan feminine singular noun (la) Template:Wikt-lang, Portuguese (a) Template:Wikt-lang, Spanish (la) Template:Wikt-lang and Italian (la) Template:Wikt-lang. Some Romance languages still have a special form derived from the ancient neuter plural which is treated grammatically as feminine: e.g., Template:Wikt-lang : BRACCHIA "arm(s)" → Italian (il) Template:Wikt-lang : (le) braccia, Romanian Template:Wikt-lang : brațe(le). Cf. also Merovingian Latin ipsa animalia aliquas mortas fuerant.

Alternations in Italian heteroclitic nouns such as l'uovo fresco ("the fresh egg") / le uova fresche ("the fresh eggs") are usually analysed as masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, with an irregular plural in -a. However, it is also consistent with their historical development to say that Template:Wikt-lang is simply a regular neuter noun (Template:Wikt-lang, plural ova) and that the characteristic ending for words agreeing with these nouns is -o in the singular and -e in the plural. The same alternation in gender exists in certain Romanian nouns, but is considered regular as it is more common than in Italian. Thus, a relict neuter gender can arguably be said to persist in Italian and Romanian.

In Portuguese, traces of the neuter plural can be found in collective formations and words meant to inform a bigger size or sturdiness. Thus, one can use Template:Wikt-lang(s) ("egg(s)") and Template:Wikt-lang(s) ("roe", "collection(s) of eggs"), Template:Wikt-lang(s) ("section(s) of an edge") and Template:Wikt-lang(s) ("edge(s)"), Template:Wikt-lang(s) ("bag(s)") and Template:Wikt-lang(s) ("sack(s)"), Template:Wikt-lang(s) ("cloak(s)") and Template:Wikt-lang(s) ("blanket(s)"). Other times, it resulted in words whose gender may be changed more or less arbitrarily, like Template:Wikt-lang / Template:Wikt-lang ("fruit"), Template:Wikt-lang / Template:Wikt-lang ("broth"), etc.

These formations were especially common when they could be used to avoid irregular forms. In Latin, the names of trees were usually feminine, but many were declined in the second declension paradigm, which was dominated by masculine or neuter nouns. Latin Template:Wikt-lang ("pear tree"), a feminine noun with a masculine-looking ending, became masculine in Italian (il) Template:Wikt-lang and Romanian Template:Wikt-lang; in French and Spanish it was replaced by the masculine derivations (le) Template:Wikt-lang, (el) Template:Wikt-lang; and in Portuguese and Catalan by the feminine derivations (a) Template:Wikt-lang, (la) Template:Wikt-lang.

As usual, irregularities persisted longest in frequently used forms. From the fourth declension noun manus ("hand"), another feminine noun with the ending -us, Italian and Spanish derived (la) Template:Wikt-lang, Romanian mânu>Template:Wikt-lang, pl. Template:Wikt-lang / (reg.) mâni, Catalan (la) Template:Wikt-lang, and Portuguese (a) Template:Wikt-lang, which preserve the feminine gender along with the masculine appearance.

Except for the Italian and Romanian heteroclitic nouns, other major Romance languages have no trace of neuter nouns, but still have neuter pronouns. French Template:Wikt-lang / Template:Wikt-lang / Template:Wikt-lang ("this"), Spanish Template:Wikt-lang / Template:Wikt-lang / Template:Wikt-lang ("this"), Italian: Template:Wikt-lang / Template:Wikt-lang / Template:Wikt-lang ("to him" /"to her" / "to it"), Catalan: Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang ("it" / this / this-that / that over there); Portuguese: Template:Wikt-lang / Template:Wikt-lang / Template:Wikt-lang ("all of him" / "all of her" / "all of it").

In Spanish, a three-way contrast is also made with the definite articles Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang, and Template:Wikt-lang. The last is used with nouns denoting abstract categories: lo bueno, literally "that which is good", from Template:Wikt-lang: good.

Template:Notelist

Loss of oblique cases

The Vulgar Latin vowel shifts caused the merger of several case endings in the nominal and adjectival declensions.Template:Sfn Some of the causes include: the loss of final m, the merger of ă with ā, and the merger of ŭ with ō (see tables).Template:Sfn Thus, by the 5th century, the number of case contrasts had been drastically reduced.Template:Sfn

Evolution of a 1st declension noun:
*caepa/cēpa* ("onion") (feminine singular)
	Classical (c. 1st century)	VulgarTemplate:Sfn (c. 5th cent.)	Modern Romanian
nominative	caepa, cēpa	*cépa	ceapă
accusative	caepam, cēpam
ablative	caepā, cēpā
dative	caepae, cēpae	*cépe	cepe
genitive	caepae, cēpae	*cépe	cepe

Evolution of a 2nd declension noun:
*mūrus* ("wall") (masculine singular)
	Classical (c. 1st cent.)	VulgarTemplate:Sfn (c. 5th cent.)	Old French (c. 11th cent.)
nominative	mūrus	*múros	murs
accusative	mūrum	*múru	mur
ablative	mūrō	*múro
dative	mūrō	*múro
genitive	mūrī	*múri

There also seems to be a marked tendency to confuse different forms even when they had not become homophonous (like the generally more distinct plurals), which indicates that nominal declension was shaped not only by phonetic mergers, but also by structural factors.Template:Sfn As a result of the untenability of the noun case system after these phonetic changes, Vulgar Latin shifted from a markedly synthetic language to a more analytic one.

The genitive case died out around the 3rd century AD, according to Meyer-Lübke Template:Obsolete source, and began to be replaced by "de" + noun (which originally meant "about/concerning", weakened to "of") as early as the 2nd century BC.Template:Citation needed Exceptions of remaining genitive forms are some pronouns, certain fossilized expressions and some proper names. For example, French Template:Wikt-lang ("Thursday") < Old French juesdi < Vulgar Latin "Template:Wikt-lang"; Spanish es Template:Wikt-lang ("it is necessary") < "est Template:Wikt-lang"; and Italian Template:Wikt-lang ("earthquake") < "Template:Wikt-lang" as well as names like Paoli, Pieri.Template:Sfn

The dative case lasted longer than the genitive, even though Plautus, in the 2nd century BC, already shows some instances of substitution by the construction "ad" + accusative. For example, "ad carnuficem dabo".Template:Sfn<ref>Captivi, 1019.</ref>

The accusative case developed as a prepositional case, displacing many instances of the ablative.Template:Sfn Towards the end of the imperial period, the accusative came to be used more and more as a general oblique case.Template:Sfn

Despite increasing case mergers, nominative and accusative forms seem to have remained distinct for much longer, since they are rarely confused in inscriptions.Template:Sfn Even though Gaulish texts from the 7th century rarely confuse both forms, it is believed that both cases began to merge in Africa by the end of the empire, and a bit later in parts of Italy and Iberia.Template:Sfn Nowadays, Romanian maintains a two-case system, while Old French and Old Occitan had a two-case subject-oblique system.

This Old French system was based largely on whether or not the Latin case ending contained an "s" or not, with the "s" being retained but all vowels in the ending being lost (as with veisin below). But since this meant that it was easy to confuse the singular nominative with the plural oblique, and the plural nominative with the singular oblique, this case system ultimately collapsed as well, and Middle French adopted one case (usually the oblique) for all purposes.

Today, Romanian is generally considered the only Romance language with a surviving case system. However, some dialects of Romansh retain a special predicative form of the masculine singular identical to the plural: il bien vin ("the good wine") vs. il vin ei buns ("the wine is good"). This "predicative case" (as it is sometimes called) is a remnant of the Latin nominative in -us.

Evolution of a masculine noun
in Old French: *veisin* ("neighbor").
(definite article in parentheses).
		Classical Latin (1st cent.)	Old French (11th cent.)
singular	nominative	"vīcīnus"	(li) veisins
	accusative	"vīcīnum"	(le) veisin
	genitive	"vīcīnī"
	dative	"vīcīnō"
	ablative	"vīcīnō"
plural	nominative	"vīcīnī"	(li) veisin
	accusative	"vīcīnōs"	(les) veisins
	genitive	"vīcīnōrum"
	dative	"vīcīnīs"
	ablative	"vīcīnīs"

Wider use of prepositions

The loss of a productive noun case system meant that the syntactic purposes it formerly served now had to be performed by prepositions and other paraphrases. These particles increased in number, and many new ones were formed by compounding old ones. The descendant Romance languages are full of grammatical particles such as Spanish Template:Wikt-lang, "where", from Latin Template:Wikt-lang + Template:Wikt-lang (which in Romanian literally means "from where"/"where from"), or French Template:Wikt-lang, "since", from Template:Wikt-lang + Template:Wikt-lang, while the equivalent Spanish and Portuguese Template:Wikt-lang is de + ex + de. Spanish Template:Wikt-lang and Portuguese Template:Wikt-lang, "after", represent de + ex + Template:Wikt-lang.

Some of these new compounds appear in literary texts during the late empire; French Template:Wikt-lang, Spanish de Template:Wikt-lang and Portuguese de Template:Wikt-lang ("outside") all represent de + Template:Wikt-lang (Romanian Template:Wikt-lang – ad + foris), and we find Jerome writing stulti, nonne qui fecit, quod de foris est, etiam id, quod de intus est fecit? (Luke 11.40: "ye fools, did not he, that made which is without, make that which is within also?"). In some cases, compounds were created by combining a large number of particles, such as the Romanian Template:Wikt-lang ("just recently") from ad + de + in + illa + hora.<ref>Romanian Explanatory Dictionary (DEXOnline.ro)</ref>

Classical Latin:

Marcus patrī librum dat. "Marcus is giving [his] father [a/the] book."

Vulgar Latin:

*Marcos da libru a patre. "Marcus is giving [a/the] book to [his] father."Template:Citation needed

Just as in the disappearing dative case, colloquial Latin sometimes replaced the disappearing genitive case with the preposition de followed by the ablative, then eventually the accusative (oblique).

Classical Latin:

Marcus mihi librum patris dat. "Marcus is giving me [his] father's book.

Vulgar Latin:

*Marcos mi da libru de patre. "Marcus is giving me [the] book of [his] father."Template:Citation needed

Pronouns

Unlike in the nominal and adjectival inflections, pronouns kept a great part of the case distinctions. However, many changes happened. For example, the Template:IPA of ego was lost by the end of the empire, and eo appears in manuscripts from the 6th century.Template:Which Template:Sfn

Reconstructed pronominal system of Vulgar LatinTemplate:Sfn
	1st person		2nd person		3rd person
	singular	plural	singular	plural	3rd person
Nominative	*éo	*nọs	*tu	*vọs
Dative	*mi	*nọ́be(s)	ti, tẹ́be	*vọ́be(s)	si, sẹ́be
Accusative	*mẹ	*nọs	*tẹ	*vọs	*sẹ

Adverbs

Classical Latin had a number of different suffixes that made adverbs from adjectives: Template:Wikt-lang, "dear", formed Template:Wikt-lang, "dearly"; Template:Wikt-lang, "fiercely", from Template:Wikt-lang; Template:Wikt-lang, "often", from Template:Wikt-lang. All of these derivational suffixes were lost in Vulgar Latin.

An alternative formation with a feminine ablative form modifying Template:Wikt-lang (originally the ablative of mēns, and so meaning "with a ... mind") gave rise to a widespread rule for forming adverbs in many Romance languages: adding the suffix -ment(e) to the feminine form of the adjective. So Template:Wikt-lang ("quick") instead of Template:Wikt-lang ("quickly") gave veloci mente (originally "with a quick mind", "quick-mindedly"), and -mente became a productive suffix for forming adverbs in Romance such as Italian Template:Wikt-lang, Spanish Template:Wikt-lang 'clearly'. The development of an originally autonomous form (the noun mente, meaning 'mind') into a suffix (although remaining in free lexical use in other contexts e.g. Italian venire in mente 'come to mind') is a textbook case of grammaticalization.

Verbs

File:Page of Lay of the Cid.jpg

The Cantar de Mio Cid (Song of my Cid) is the earliest Spanish text

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In general, the verbal system in the Romance languages changed less from Classical Latin than did the nominal system.

The four conjugational classes generally survived. The second and third conjugations already had identical imperfect tense forms in Latin, and also shared a common present participle. Because of the merging of short i with long ē in most of Vulgar Latin, these two conjugations grew even closer together. Several of the most frequently-used forms became indistinguishable, while others became distinguished only by stress placement:

	Infinitive	1st	2nd	3rd	1st	2nd	3rd	Imperative singular
	Infinitive	singular			plural			Imperative singular
Second conjugation (Classical)	-ēre	-eō	-ēs	-et	-ēmus	-ētis	-ent	-ē
Second conjugation (Vulgar)	*-ẹ́re	*-(j)o	*-es	*-e(t)	*-ẹ́mos	*-ẹ́tes	*-en(t)	*-e
Third conjugation (Classical)	-ere	-ō	-is	-it	-imus	-itis	-unt	-e
Third conjugation (Vulgar)	*-ere	*-o	*-es	*-e(t)	*-emos	*-etes	*-on(t)	*-e

These two conjugations came to be conflated in many of the Romance languages, often by merging them into a single class while taking endings from each of the original two conjugations. Which endings survived was different for each language, although most tended to favour second conjugation endings over the third conjugation. Spanish, for example, mostly eliminated the third conjugation forms in favour of the second conjugation forms.

French and Catalan did the same, but tended to generalise the third conjugation infinitive instead. Catalan in particular almost eliminated the second conjugation ending over time, reducing it to a small relic class. In Italian, the two infinitive endings remained separate (but spelled identically), while the conjugations merged in most other respects much as in the other languages. However, the third-conjugation third-person plural present ending survived in favour of the second conjugation version, and was even extended to the fourth conjugation. Romanian also maintained the distinction between the second and third conjugation endings.

In the perfect, many languages generalized the -aui ending most frequently found in the first conjugation. This led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending was treated as the diphthong Template:IPA rather than containing a semivowel Template:IPA, and in other cases the Template:IPA sound was simply dropped. We know this because it did not participate in the sound shift from Template:IPA to Template:IPA. Thus Latin amaui, amauit ("I loved; he/she loved") in many areas became proto-Romance *amai and *amaut, yielding for example Portuguese amei, amou. This suggests that in the spoken language, these changes in conjugation preceded the loss of Template:IPA.<ref name="Vincent" />

Another major systemic change was to the future tense, remodelled in Vulgar Latin with auxiliary verbs. A new future was originally formed with the auxiliary verb Template:Wikt-lang, *amare habeo, literally "to love I have" (cf. English "I have to love", which has shades of a future meaning). This was contracted into a new future suffix in Western Romance forms, which can be seen in the following modern examples of "I will love":

Template:Langx (je + aimer + ai) ← aimer ["to love"] + ai ["I have"].
Portuguese and Template:Langx (amar + [h]ei) ← amar ["to love"] + hei ["I have"]
Spanish and Template:Langx (amar + [h]e) ← amar ["to love"] + he ["I have"].
Template:Langx (amar + [h]o) ← amare ["to love"] + ho ["I have"].

The first historical attestation of this new future can be found in a 7th-century Latin text, the Chronicle of Fredegar<ref>Peter Nahon (2017).Paléoroman Daras (Pseudo-Frédégaire, VIIe siècle) : de la bonne interprétation d’un jalon de la romanistique. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 112/1, p. 123-130.</ref>

A periphrastic construction of the form 'to have to' (late Latin habere ad) used as future is characteristic of Sardinian:

Ap'a istàre < apo a istàre 'I will stay'
Ap'a nàrrere < apo a nàrrer 'I will say'

An innovative conditional (distinct from the subjunctive) also developed in the same way (infinitive + conjugated form of habere). The fact that the future and conditional endings were originally independent words is still evident in literary Portuguese, which in these tenses allows clitic object pronouns to be incorporated between the root of the verb and its ending: "I will love" (eu) amarei, but "I will love you" amar-te-ei, from amar + te ["you"] + (eu) hei = amar + te + [h]ei = amar-te-ei.

In Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese, personal pronouns can still be omitted from verb phrases as in Latin, as the endings are still distinct enough to convey that information: venio > Sp vengo ("I come"). In French, however, all the endings are typically homophonous except the first and second person (and occasionally also third person) plural, so the pronouns are always used (je viens) except in the imperative.

Contrary to the millennia-long continuity of much of the active verb system, which has now survived 6000 years of known evolution,Template:Citation needed the synthetic passive voice was utterly lost in Romance, being replaced with periphrastic verb forms—composed of the verb "to be" plus a passive participle—or impersonal reflexive forms—composed of a verb and a passivizing pronoun.

Apart from the grammatical and phonetic developments there were many cases of verbs merging as complex subtletiesTemplate:Clarification needed in Latin were reduced to simplified verbs in Romance. A classic example of this are the verbs expressing the concept "to go". Consider three particular verbs in Classical Latin expressing concepts of "going": Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang, and *ambitare.Template:Citation needed In Spanish and Portuguese ire and vadere merged into the verb ir, which derives some conjugated forms from ire and some from vadere. andar was maintained as a separate verb derived from ambitare.

Italian instead merged vadere and ambitare into the verb Template:Wikt-lang. At the extreme French merged three Latin verbs with, for example, the present tense deriving from vadere and another verb ambulare (or something like it) and the future tense deriving from ire. Similarly the Romance distinction between the Romance verbs for "to be", Template:Wikt-lang and Template:Wikt-lang, was lost in French as these merged into the verb Template:Wikt-lang. In Italian, the verb Template:Wikt-lang inherited both Romance meanings of "being essentially" and "being temporarily of the quality of", while Template:Wikt-lang specialized into a verb denoting location or dwelling, or state of health.

Copula

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The copula (that is, the verb signifying "to be") of Classical Latin was Template:Wikt-lang. This evolved to *essere in Vulgar Latin by attaching the common infinitive suffix -re to the classical infinitive; this produced Italian Template:Wikt-lang and French Template:Wikt-lang through Proto-Gallo-Romance *essre and Old French Template:Wikt-lang as well as Spanish and Portuguese Template:Wikt-lang (Romanian a Template:Wikt-lang derives from fieri, which means "to become").

In Vulgar Latin a second copula developed utilizing the verb Template:Wikt-lang, which originally meant (and is cognate with) "to stand", to denote a more temporary meaning. That is, *essere signified the essence, while stare signified the state. Stare evolved to Spanish and Portuguese Template:Wikt-lang and Old French Template:Wikt-lang (both through *estare), Romanian "a sta" ("to stand"), using the original form for the noun ("stare"="state"/"starea"="the state"), while Italian retained the original form.

The semantic shift that underlies this evolution is more or less as follows: A speaker of Classical Latin might have said: vir est in foro, meaning "the man is in/at the marketplace". The same sentence in Vulgar Latin could have been *(h)omo stat in foro,Template:Citation needed "the man stands in/at the marketplace", replacing the est (from esse) with stat (from stare), because "standing" was what was perceived as what the man was actually doing.

The use of stare in this case was still semantically transparent assuming that it meant "to stand", but soon the shift from esse to stare became more widespread. In the Iberian peninsula esse ended up only denoting natural qualities that would not change, while stare was applied to transient qualities and location. In Italian, stare is used mainly for location, transitory state of health (sta male 's/he is ill' but è gracile 's/he is puny') and, as in Spanish, for the eminently transient quality implied in a verb's progressive form, such as sto scrivendo to express 'I am writing'.

The historical development of the stare + ablative gerund progressive tense in those Romance languages that have it seems to have been a passage from a usage such as sto pensando 'I stand/stay (here) in thinking',Template:Citation needed in which the stare form carries the full semantic load of 'stand, stay' to grammaticalization of the construction as expression of progressive aspect (Similar in concept to the Early Modern English construction of "I am a-thinking"). The process of reanalysis that took place over time bleached the semantics of stare so that when used in combination with the gerund the form became solely a grammatical marker of subject and tense (e.g. sto = subject first person singular, present; stavo = subject first person singular, past), no longer a lexical verb with the semantics of 'stand' (not unlike the auxiliary in compound tenses that once meant 'have, possess', but is now semantically empty: j'ai écrit, ho scritto, he escrito, etc.). Whereas sto scappando would once have been semantically strange at best (?'I stay escaping'), once grammaticalization was achieved, collocation with a verb of inherent mobility was no longer contradictory, and sto scappando could and did become the normal way to express 'I am escaping'. (Although it might be objected that in sentences like Spanish la catedral está en la ciudad, "the cathedral is in the city" this is also unlikely to change, but all locations are expressed through estar in Spanish, as this usage originally conveyed the sense of "the cathedral stands in the city").

Word order typology

Classical Latin in most cases adopted an SOV word order in ordinary prose, although other word orders were employed, such as in poetry, euphony, focus, or emphasis, enabled by inflectional marking of the grammatical function of words. However, word order in most of the modern Romance languages generally adopted a standard SVO word order. Relics of SOV word order still survive in the placement of clitic object pronouns (e.g. Spanish Template:Lang 'I love you').

Vocabulary

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Lexical turnover

Over the centuries, spoken Latin lost certain words in favour of coinages; in favour of borrowings from neighbouring languages such as Gaulish, Germanic, or Greek; or in favour of other Latin words that had undergone semantic shift. The “lost” words often continued to enjoy some currency in literary Latin, however.

A commonly-cited example is the replacement of the highly irregular (suppletive) verb ferre, meaning 'to carry', with the entirely regular portare.<ref>Alkire & Rosen 2010: 287</ref> Similarly, the verb loqui, meaning 'to speak', was replaced by a variety of alternatives such as the native fabulari and narrare or the Greek borrowing parabolare.<ref>Herman 2000: 2</ref>

Classical Latin particles fared poorly, with all of the following vanishing in the course of its development to Romance: an, at, autem, donec, enim, etiam, haud, igitur, ita, nam, postquam, quidem, quin, quoad, quoque, sed, sive, utrum, vel.<ref>Harrington et al. 1997: 11</ref>

Semantic drift

Many words experienced a shift in meaning. Some notable cases are civitas ('citizenry' → 'city', replacing urbs); focus ('hearth' → 'fire', replacing ignis); manducare ('chew' → 'eat', replacing edere); causa ('subject matter' → 'thing', competing with res); mittere ('send' → 'put', competing with ponere); necare ('murder' → 'drown', competing with submergere); pacare ('placate' → 'pay', competing with solvere), and totus ('whole' → 'all, every', competing with omnis).<ref>Harrington et al. 1997: 7–10</ref>

References

Citations

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Works consulted

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General

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Carlton, Charles Merritt. 1973. A linguistic analysis of a collection of Late Latin documents composed in Ravenna between A.D. 445–700. The Hague: Mouton.
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Gouvert, Xavier. 2016. Du protoitalique au protoroman: Deux problèmes de reconstruction phonologique. In: Buchi, Éva & Schweickard, Wolfgang (eds.), Dictionnaire étymologique roman 2, 27–51. Berlin: De Gruyter.
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Leppänen, V., & Alho, T. 2018. On the mergers of Latin close-mid vowels. Transactions of the Philological Society 116. 460–483.
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Nandris, Grigore. 1951. The development and structure of Rumanian. The Slavonic and East European Review, 30. 7–39.
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Pei, Mario. 1941. The Italian language. New York: Columbia University Press.
Pei, Mario & Gaeng, Paul A. 1976. The story of Latin and the Romance languages. New York: Harker & Row.
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Treadgold, Warren. 1997. A history of the Byzantine state and society. Stanford University Press.
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Transitions to Romance languages