The Early Latin Verb System: Archaic Forms in Plautus, Terence, and Beyond

by Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo

Overview

This is the first comprehensive treatment of Latin extra-paradigmatic verb forms, that is, verb forms which cannot easily be assigned to any particular tense in the Latin verbal system. In order to see what functions such forms fulfil, one has to compare their usage to that of the regular verb forms. In Part 1, Wolfgang de Melo outlines the usage of regular verb forms, which, surprisingly, has not always been described adequately in the standard grammars. In Part 2, the central part of the book, he compares the usage of the extra-paradigmatic verb forms to that of the regular ones, restricting himself to Archaic Latin (roughly before 100 BC); here he makes many new and unexpected discoveries. In Part 3, de Melo shows how synchronic usage can help us to reconstruct earlier stages of the language which are not attested; he also points out that, while most of the extra-paradigmatic forms die out after 100 BC, some survive - and that such survival is by no means a matter of chance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199209026
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/07/2007
Series:	Oxford Classical Monographs
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 5.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo is a post-doctoral research fellow at All Souls, University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: an archaic verbal system?I. Four problems in the Latin verbal system2. Simple future and future perfect in Archaic Latin3. The sequence of tenses in Archaic Latin4. Prohibitions with ‘feceris' and ‘facias' in Archaic Latin5. Infinitivals with future meaning in Archaic LatinII. The extra-paradigmatic verb forms - a synchronic analysis6. The sigmatic future in Archaic Latin7. The sigmatic subjunctive in Archaic Latin8. The sigmatic infinitives9. The type ‘duim' in Archaic Latin10. The type ‘attigas' in Archaic LatinIII. The extra-paradigmatic verb forms - a diachronic analysis11. Some problems of reconstruction12. Extra-paradigmatic forms in classical and later LatinIV. A brief summary of the results