Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Chapter I Introduction
- Chapter II The Republic: inscriptions
- Chapter III Explicit evidence for regional variation: the Republic
- Chapter IV Explicit evidence: the Empire
- Chapter V Regionalisms in provincial texts: Gaul
- Chapter VI Spain
- Chapter VII Italy
- Chapter VIII Africa
- Chapter IX Britain
- Chapter X Inscriptions
- Chapter XI Conclusion
- Maps
- Bibliography
- Index verborum
- Subject index
- Index locorum
Chapter X - Inscriptions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Chapter I Introduction
- Chapter II The Republic: inscriptions
- Chapter III Explicit evidence for regional variation: the Republic
- Chapter IV Explicit evidence: the Empire
- Chapter V Regionalisms in provincial texts: Gaul
- Chapter VI Spain
- Chapter VII Italy
- Chapter VIII Africa
- Chapter IX Britain
- Chapter X Inscriptions
- Chapter XI Conclusion
- Maps
- Bibliography
- Index verborum
- Subject index
- Index locorum
Summary
INTRODUCTION
In Chapter II republican inscriptions were discussed. Most inscriptions are from the Empire, and I now turn to these. I will also consider what I call ‘non-literary’ evidence, that is informal writing (some of it newly discovered) on materials other than stone (curse tablets, writing tablets, ostraca, papyri), which has not been exploited in the discussion of regional diversification, though the evidence of such texts is in some ways superior to that of inscriptions.
Spellings, particularly misspellings, as possible indicators of the phonological system have been the usual subject of surveys of inscriptions, and I will be dealing mainly with spelling here. There has been optimism that by comparing the incidence of misspellings area by area it might be possible to finds signs of the dialectalisation of Latin. Statistical surveys have been made, for example, by Gaeng (1968) (of spellings and misspellings to do with the vowel system), Omeltchenko (1977) (of spellings to do with the vowel system in areas not covered by Gaeng), Barbarino (1978) (of B and V, that is of B written for CL [w] or V written for B), Herman (of a variety of phenomena in a series of papers) and Gratwick (1982) (of B and V again). It is, for instance, conceivable that a misspelling of peculiar type indicative of a feature of pronunciation might be attested in just one area (and the pronunciation reflected in the same area in Romance). But evidence of this type is lacking.
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- The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC - AD 600 , pp. 624 - 683Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007