V. EARLIER BEHAVIOUR OF THE LATIN ACCENT
§ 86. We have now seen something of the nature of the Accent in the Indo-European language just before the Italic branch separated from the others; and also in the Latin of Cicero’s time. The course of its development in between these two epochs has been cleared up by recent study; and as the facts throw great light on the derivation of a great many Latin words it will be well to state them briefly here.
§ 87. In pro-ethnic Italic, that is before Latin and other dialects (§ 9) had become separate, the chief Accent of every word was shifted to the first syllable, no matter what its place had been in Indo-European.
To this was due the degradation of the vowels (§ 120) in such forms as acceptus, from *ád-captos, contingo from *cón-tango.
Accent in Plautine Latin
§ 88. By the 3rd Century (300-200) B.C., this system had given way to one which limited the place of the word-accent to one of the last four syllables of the word, and made it depend upon the quantities of the second, third, and fourth syllables from the end. The following are the rules (determined by Prof. Chas. Exon) which describe the system as it was in the time of Plautus (say about 200 B.C.).
- (1) If the Penult was long, it bore the accent (amābā́mus).
- (2) If the Penult was short, then
- (a) if the Ante-penult was long, it bore the accent (amā́bimus).
- (b) if the Ante-penult as well as the Penult was short, then (1) if the Ante-ante-penult was long, then the accent was on the Ante-penult (amīcítia); but (ii) if the Ante-ante-penult was also short it bore the accent (cólumine, puéritia).
Syncope in Latin
§ 89. With these facts are linked what may be called Exon’s Laws of Syncope, i.e. of contraction causing the loss of a whole syllable. The first of these may be stated as follows:
In pre-Plautine Latin in all words or word-groups of four or more syllables whose chief accent was on a long syllable, a short unaccented medial vowel was syncopated: *cóntetulī, *conteténdī (§ 298) became contulī, contendī; *quinquedecem became *quínqdecem and thence quíndecim (for the -im see § 122); *súpsemere became *súpsmere and that sūmere (on -psm- see § 191); *súrregere, *surregḗmus and the like became súrgere, surgḗmus, and the rest of the verb followed; so *supo-téndo became sub-tendo,[1] *āridḗre, *avidḗre (from āridus, avidus) became ārdḗre, audére. In phrases also similar changes arose; probably válidē mágnus became váldē-ma̋gnus, extera viam became extrā́ viam, aqua calida became aqua-cálda.
§ 90. But the influence of cognate forms often interfered; posterī́diē became postrī́diē; but in posterṓrum, posterarum the short syllable was restored by the influence of the trisyllabic cases like pósterā to which the law did not apply. Conversely the Nom. *āridor, which, as it had only three syllables, would not have been contracted, followed the form of ārdṓrem (from *āridṓrem), ārdḗre, and the like, which to start with had four.
§ 91. The same change produced the monosyllabic forms nec, ac, neu, seu, from neque, etc., before consonants, since they had often no strong accent of their own, but were commonly pronounced in one breath with the following word, neque tantum becoming nec tantum and the like. So in Plautus (and probably always in spoken Latin) the words nemp(e), ind(e), ill(e) were regularly pronounced as monosyllables.
§ 92. It is possible that the frequent (but far from universal) syncope of final short syllables in Latin (especially before -s, as in méns which may stand for both *menos and *mentis and represent both Greek μένος ‘spirit, force’ and Sanskrit matís, I.Eu. *mn̥tís, Eng. mind) is due also to this law operating on such combinations as bona mēns and the like; but the conditions of this change have not yet been clearly shown. That some such change, however, was regular in early Latin appears probable from the many examples of words which in other languages appear as -o- stems but which in Latin have been shifted to the consonantal declension; for example pons ‘causeway, bridge’ beside Gr. πόντος ‘strait, sea’ (both meaning properly ‘a crossing’—cf. Sansk. panthan-‘road’); and glans beside Gr. βάλανος both meaning ‘acorn, nut’ (see §170). In many words the effects of this phonetic change, if it took place, must have been very greatly modified by analogy.
§ 93. The second law states the syncope which took place later than the time of Plautus.
In post-Plautine spoken Latin before Cicero’s time words accented on the Ante-ante-penult suffered syncope of the short syllable following the accented syllable; bálineae became bálneae, puéritia became puértia, cólumine tégimine, etc., became cúlmine tégmine, etc. (beside the trisyllabic Nominatives cólumen, tégimen), except in the one case described in the next section.
§ 94. When the short vowel was e or i or u followed by another vowel (as in párietem, múlierem, Púteoli) the word was not contracted, but the accent was shifted to the Penult, which at a later stage of the language became lengthened. Thus late Latin pariḗtem gave Italian parḗte, Fr. paroi; late Latin Puteṓli gave Italn. Pozzuōli. The restriction of the accent to the three last syllables was completed by these changes which did away with all the cases in which it had stood on the fourth syllable from the end.
Brevis Brevians
§ 95. Next must be mentioned another phonetic change, also dependent upon Accent, which had come about before the time of Plautus, the law long known as the Brevis Brevians which may be stated as follows: A syllable long by nature or position, and preceded by a short syllable, was itself shortened if the accent of the word fell immediately before or immediately after it,—that is, on the preceding short syllable or on the next following syllable. The set of syllables need not be in the same word, but must be as closely connected in utterance as if they were. Thus mŏ́dō became módŏ, ŏ́dōr became ŏ́dŏr, vŏluptā́tem became vŏlŭ’tā́tem, est in quĭ́d est? became a short syllable (either the s or the t or both being only faintly pronounced).
§ 96. It is clear that a great number of Inflexional syllables which had been shortened by this Phonetic Change, must have had their quantity immediately restored on the pattern of the same inflexion when it occurred in words not of this particular shape; thus, for instance, the long vowel of ắmā is due to that in other verbs (pulsā, agitā) not of iambic shape. So Ablatives like modō, sonō got back their -ō as we have seen (§ 15), though in Adverbs like modo ‘only,’ quōmodo ‘how’ the shortened form remained. Conversely the shortening of the final -a in the Nom. Sing. Fem. of the a-declension (contrast lūna with Gr, χώρᾱ) was due to the influence of common forms like ĕă bŏnă, mălă, which had come under the Law because they were disyllables with their first syllable short.
§ 97. These processes had far-reaching effects on Latin Inflexion. The chief of these was the establishment of the type of Conjugation known as the capio-class. All these verbs were originally inflected like audio; but the accident of their short root-syllable (in such early forms as *fúgīs, *fugītū́rus *fugisétis which later on became fúgĭs, fugĭtū́rus fugĕrētīs[2]) brought great parts of their paradigm under this Law, and the rest followed suit; but true forms like fugīre, cupīre, morīrī never altogether died out of the spoken language; St. Augustine, for instance, confesses in 387 A.D. (Epist. iii. 5) that he does not know whether cupi or cupiri is the Pass. Inf. of cupio; hence Italn. fuggire ‘to flee,’ morīre ‘to die,’ Fr. fuir, mourir.