🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C0pzMG.HFn@athena.cs.uga.edu>, mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) writes:
> In article <1993Jan12.015941.23724@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan8.151334.6482@desire.wright.edu>, w0318@desire writes:
>>
>>>Also, for you Latin buffs, what are the general differences between Classical
>>>Latin (of Cicero, say) and the Vulgate?
>>
>>Subject matter.
> 
> Also, different ways of introducing subordinate clauses.  Less use
> of _cum_, more use of _ut_ and _quod_ (if memory serves me right).

A key syntactic point: abandonment of the accusative + infinitive con-
struction, used in CL for indirect discourse, in favor of noun clauses.

A full discussion would take a book.  Here are a few points off the top of
my head:

	1. The syntax of the Vulgate is always somewhat suspect because
	   it is a translation, and not always a successful one.  O'Neill
	   (did I get that right?) noted that the Vulgate is much easier
	   to read than Cicero.  True, except for the Psalms, which are
	   so scrambled as to be quite unintelligible in spots.  (If
	   memory serves, the reason is that St. Jerome never touched
	   them, retaining the older translations that Christians were
	   used to, whether they understood them or not.)  The Psalms are
	   so bad that the Vatican actually released a new Latin transla-
	   tion of them about 1950, which was intelligible but didn't
	   flow.

	2. The phonology of the Vulgate was quite different, but this is
	   difficult to see from printed editions, which use classical
	   spelling.  Some changes: loss of h, oe > e:, ae > E: (open),
	   assibilation of ti before vowels, palatalization and affri-
	   cation of /k g/ before front vowels (old or new), [w] > v,
	   fricative realization of /b d g/ between vowels, lengthening
	   of stressed short vowels, with various mergers occurring in 
	   different parts of the Roman world.  This is more thorough-
	   going than the syntax, but it's largely invisible to the
	   modern reader.

	3. Many changes in vocabulary.  Usually the new word is retained
	   in Romance, while the classical one is lost.  Instead of
	   _edere_ 'eat' we find _manducare_ (Fr. _manger_, Ital.
	   _mangiare_) and _comedere_ (Sp. _comer_).

	4. Classical forms of nouns, adjectives, and verbs are retained
	   in the Vulgate, though there is some reason to think that
	   this did not reflect everyday speech, which may already
	   have been down to a two-case system.

This is a very incomplete list, but it gives some idea.

-Leo Connolly