Late Latin

In this paper I investigate the diachronic development of the "fratris me pudet" (Ter. Ad. 391) construction type in Late Latin, with a view to exploring the factors that played a significant role in the analogical process that lead this impersonal pattern to be reinterpreted as personal and transitive over centuries. By comparing the kind of Stimuli typically associated with the pudet-type verbs and their specific meaning, I show that they differ in view of different degrees of agentivity, control and volitionality exerted by the Experiencer. Paenitet ‘to repent’ reveals itself as being the most agentive verb and this is why it underwent an early process of personalization, achieved only later by those verbs whose semantics implied a lower degree of rational involvement and control over the experience. This paper shows that semantic factors may influence the formal coding of a given verb and accelerate its syntactic reinterpretation, and explores in what terms such constructional changes took place in Late Latin.

Een vraag die men zich bij de nieuwe eindtermen voor het klassieke talenonderwijs in de tweede graad zou kunnen stellen, is hoe we onze leerlingen niet-klassieke teksten kunnen voorschotelen op een moment waarop velen van hen zelfs de klassieke grammaticaregels nog onvoldoende beheersen. De voornaamste doelstelling van dit hoofdstuk is dan ook enerzijds om leerkrachten gerust te stellen dat het lezen van zulke teksten haalbaar is voor leerlingen en anderzijds om hen te overtuigen van de meerwaarde van taalvariatie bij het afbakenen van de norm. Een centraal uitgangspunt daarbij in onze uiteenzetting is het feit dat taal altijd een natuurlijk gegeven is, of tenminste ooit geweest is voor haar sprekers: het Latijn werd net als het Nederlands ooit gebruikt om op een eenvoudige en effectieve manier communicatie in alle domeinen van het menselijke bestaan tot stand te brengen. Dat Marcus-met-de-pet in de 1ste eeuw v.C. geen brood bestelde met Ciceroniaanse volzinnen is tegenwoordig gelukkig een evidentie, maar we moeten ook beseffen dat het Latijn net als alle talen mee-evolueerde met zijn tijd en met de veranderende noden van haar sprekers. We kunnen dus net zomin de geschoolde 6de-eeuwse Gregorius van Tours verwijten dat hij 'zijn Latijn niet kent' als we onszelf kunnen verwijten dat we niet meer zoals Joost van den Vondel schrijven. Als dode taal heeft het Latijn zijn norm toegewezen gekregen in de 'klassieke' variant van Cicero, Caesar, Vergilius en hun tijdgenoten. In het vak Grieks krijgen onze leerlingen ook enkel de grammatica onderwezen van het Klassieke Attisch dat we kennen van Xenophon, de tragedies en Thucydides. Nochtans vinden we het op taalkundig vlak geen probleem om de Grieken al in het vierde jaar het Nieuwe Testament en Herodotus te laten lezen. Akkoord, we geven hen bijvoorbeeld voor die laatste een lijstje met

Gli agiotoponimi friulani San(t) Andrat e San Tomat e i veneti Santandrà, Sandrà, San Tomà  conservano traccia della flessione nominale latina in -ās/āti- che integrava nel sistema tardo-latino elementi allotri, in particolare gli antroponimi d’origine greca (o mediati dal greco) terminanti in -ās, come Andreās, Cosmās, Thōmās, Babylās ecc. Le attestazioni tardo-antiche e mediolatine documentano tale uso, che si fossilizzò nei toponimi: es. 539 fundum ... Andreatis ... praepositi, 745 ex dictatu Andreati refer(endarii), 746 p(er) Andreatem, 747 ex d(ictatu) Andreatis, ecc.

En este trabajo, primero se explica el sistema vocálico del latín, para luego estudiar la evolución de las vocales átonas al español desde el punto de vista fonológico. Se presenta el análisis vocálico de segmentos átonas y tónicas, limitándose a la influencia de la yod en la evolución de estas últimas, y un posterior resumen de la evolución del sistema vocálico átono de acuerdo con la posición de cada segmento.

This paper presents an overview of the Latin vowel system, and then an analysis of the yod-influenced phonological diachronic change of the stressed vowels from Late Latin to Old Spanish. Additionally, the evolution of the unstressed vowel system as a function of the position of each segment is discussed, in order to round-up the analysis of the evolution of both stressed and unstressed vowels from Late Latin into Spanish.

This paper examines a species of Latin technical terms formulated and employed in the late Roman army, some directly attested in Late Latin sources, others witnessed only as transliterations or loanwords in Greek. The cognates sculca (σκοῦλκα), sculcatorius, σκουλκεύειν and σκουλκάτωρ first emerge in the early sixth century, but clearly have a longer pedigree. They relate to a variety of military operations concerned with intelligence gathering, reconnaissance and defensive surveillance. For the most part these terms occur in non-literary Greek texts, which afford a clearer understanding of their usage, development and currency than do the scantier and generally later Latin sources, which have hitherto been the primary or exclusive focus of interest. Scholarship has long acknowledged an etymological connection with Late Latin exculcator, documented in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, while largely overlooking the significance of analogous proculcator, formerly a hapax but now corroborated by epigraphic discoveries. Since the seventeenth century, conflicting opinions on the etymology of sculca, often marred by erroneous statements and invalid deductions based on incomplete and/or defective evidence, have generated widespread confusion in lexical literature. One school of thought, popularised in the 1930s, endorses a Germanic or specifically Gothic derivation from posited *skulkan, *skulka. This influential thesis, frequently rehearsed uncritically, has sustained preconceptions about the ‘Germanization’ of the late Roman army and contributed to studies of the philological influence of the Goths, particularly on the language and toponymy of early medieval Italy. The following re-evaluation of the evidence and literature exposes the intrinsic tenuity of the Germanic derivation, while demonstrating the cogency of a Latin etymology, which finds direct parallels in phonological and orthographic developments in Late and Vulgar Latin (e.g. excubitor > scubitor/σκουβίτωρ). This case study enhances our understanding of the modality of loans from Late Latin into Greek, specifically in the sphere of technical jargon, and has historical implications for the perceived linguistic and cultural impact of Germanic peoples in Late Antiquity.

ABSTRACT: The continued use of Latin as the official Heeressprache of the East Roman Empire up to the 630s supplies the context for an examination of a text virtually unknown to classical scholarship. Mediceo-Laurentianus graecus LV-4 contains an anonymous and mutilated Greek military treatise, published by Karl Müller in 1880 and subsequently styled De Militari Scientia. Its character, date and textual affinities are briefly considered, concluding that it is an informal epitome or ‘working copy’ of Maurice’s Strategicon (ca. 590s), possibly compiled ca. 630s–640s as an aide-mémoire for a senior officer. This treatise is a unique witness to two loanwords from Latin – παλμάριον (palmarium) and ῥέκαλα (*recala), neither previously documented in lexica, and the latter not directly attested in Latin. The author’s usage of the construction ῥέκαλα δίδωμι  ῥέκαλα ποιέω, with the sense ‘to make a withdrawal’, now permits recognition of the corresponding expression recala facio in the highly corrupted text of a Latin speech preserved in the Strategicon.

KEYWORDS: Maurice’s Strategikon / Strategicon, Müller Fragment, De Militari Scientia, Late Roman army, Latin Language, Vulgar Latin

This paper examines the number, sources, etymology and chronology of Germanic loanwords in Roman military vocabulary with a view to establishing what these lexical influences can reveal about intercultural contact in this sphere during Late Antiquity. While loanwords have long been recognised as a fertile source of cultural information, the purpose here is to chart the linguistic impact of Germani within one particular Roman institution. Most of the linguistic borrowings examined occurred originally in Vulgar Latin, or specifically its lexical subset “sermo castrensis”, the sociolect of Roman soldiers, but they are often documented primarily or solely as transliterations or secondary loans into Greek. Specimens are categorised according to the dynamics of loanword traffic: 1. borrowed names for borrowed things (tufa/toupha,-ion, carrago, armilaus(i)a/armilausion); 2. nominal borrowings (framea, *fulcum/phoulkon); 3. uncertain loan-object or nominal borrowing (bandum/bandon, punga/poungion, phlaskion); 4. uncertain Germanic derivation (burgus, barritus, *cautia, hornatores, touldos,-on, caput porci(num)); 5. demonstrably erroneous Germanic derivation (drungus/droungos, chouzion, sculca/skoulka). Concluding remarks attempt a periodization and consider the overall character and motivation of these loanwords as ingredients of the institutional Mischkultur of the Late Roman army.

Estudio sobre las obras gramaticales de Isidoro de Sevilla: Differentiae, Synonima y Etymologiae, desde la perspectiva de la información que ofrecen sobre la lengua latina hablada y escrita en tiempos de Isidoro de Sevilla. La segunda parte es un glosario de los términos que Isidoro de Sevilla estudia en las Etymologiae y que presentan una innovación léxica, porque se documentan por primera vez en la obra, o una innovación semántica porque muestran un significado diferente al que tenían en sus usos habituales anteriores.
La obra se completa con índices de términos y fuentes.

è particolarmente grata l'opportunità offertami dai curatori di questa miscellanea di rendere omaggio ad un maestro come Giuseppe Scarpat, cui mi legano profonde ragioni di riconoscenza. Se non avessi casualmente incontrato sulla mia strada di studente liceale (non particolarmente diligente) la figura di Rutilio Namaziano, difficilmente mi sarei mai appassionato all'antichità; parallelamente, nel mio quotidiano lavoro di antichista, non dimentico che fu una commissione di concorso presieduta dal professor Giuseppe Scarpat a ritenermi degno di esercitarlo. Con la più viva gratitudine gli offro dunque questo esperimento rutiliano, nell'auspicio che non abbia a deluderlo.

The article provides the first critical edition of ch. 11 (περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρωπίνης) of the late antique Latin-Greek glossary of the so-called Hermeneumata Celtis (Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, suppl. gr. 43, ff. 22v-23v). A commentary compares each entry with the analogous pairs contained in the glossaries of the Corpus glossariorum Latinorum.

The se vivo fecit formula (or any variants of it) occurs almost 1400 times in the Latin epigraphic corpus. This fact attracts our attention, because, according to the rules of the classical grammar , the expression should be seen as incorrect, since the semantic subject of the ablative absolute construction corresponds to the subject of the main clause. This incorrect formula was nevertheless part of the Latin funerary epigraphic language for more than five hundred years. We can find it in inscriptions from the Iberian Peninsula to the Balkans, from Africa up to Gallia, and the form was considerably widespread in the area of Rome, in the west side of North-Africa, and in the Balkan provinces. It is remarkable that (especially in Rome) the phonetic and morpho-syntactic changes of the Latin language have induced further interior mutations of the formula. We have many examples in which the adjective of the expression (vivus) stands in the nominative or in the accusative instead of the morphologically correct ablative. Therefore, we can find variants as se vivus, se vivum, etc. The aim of this paper is to explore the spread of each variant of the se vivo fecit formula, and to give a possible explanation for the occurrence of trends that do not meet our expectations. Keywords funerary inscriptions; dialectology; the language of Rome; ablative absolute; formular language ; se vivo fecit

The prose and poetry of Ennodius show that he is a careful reader of classical authors and in the last years critics have clearly demonstrated this aspect of the culture of the bishop of Pavia. The present study aims to illustrate the importance of Ovid’s poetry in the literary memory of Ennodius, demonstrating that in his works there are direct references according to the usual criteria of intertextuality, but, especially in his poetic works, Ennodius assimilates the Ovidian stylistic lesson using of various linguistic and phraseological elements from his model and so adopting a recognizable “ovidian color”.

(1a) Dumnorix… Heluetiis erat amicus quod ex ea ciuitate Orgetorigis filiam in matrimonium duxerat ("Dumnórix…era aliado de los helvecios por haberse casado con la hija de Orgetórix que era de aquel país", Caes. Gall. 1,9,3) (1b) uxor me excruciat quia uiuit ("Mi mujer me atormenta porque está viva", Plaut. Cas. 227) (2a) At quae dea est? Bonam esse oportet, quoniam quidem est abs te dedicata. ("¿De qué diosa se trata? Debe ser buena, ya que ha sido consagrada por ti", Cic. dom. 110) (2b) quoniam iam nox est, …in uestra tecta discedite ("puesto que ya es de noche, …retiraos a vuestras casas", Cic. Cat. 3,29)

Etymology of Romanian ”rece” - cold.
Although there is an abundant scholarship around Lat. recens and its family (recentatus, recentarius) it lacks in rigor. 
We try to argument that the word belongs to an already dialectalized Late Latin in North Italy, from which French,  Lombard, Veneto and Romanian come.

De coniunctione: Donatus and the grammar tradition.

In the ars grammatica the definition of conjunction reflects the Greek heritage and the evolution of the Latin linguistic reflection. In this gradual process a relevant figure is Donatus, who, by selecting a precise typology of definition, contributes to its permanent inclusion in the grammar tradition. But the influence of Donatus’ works continues in the following centuries through his commentators, who, by  interpreting his works, outline new approaches to the grammar praxis.

The 105 Latin notarial documents of the 9th century stored in the Archive of the Badia della S.ma Trinità of Cava de’ Tirreni represent a fundamental source for the history of the Langobardia minor. The language of these documents is also interesting, in that it constitutes an extraordinary field for the study of the complex linguistic and cultural phenomena that took place in the transition from Latin to the Romance varieties in Southern Italy. The questions that arise when analyzing the language of these chartae are a challenge for historical sociolinguistics, and in particular for its methods and interpretative tools. For instance, it has been shown that the language of these texts cannot be easily interpreted in the framework of classic analytic categories such as bilingualism or diglossia.
From a linguistic point of view, these documents represent an important source for the study of the development of certain linguistic structures in the transition from Latin to the Romance languages. The language of these chartae is in fact a system that has some points in common both with the Latin of the previous centuries and with the subjacent Romance varieties. Though, it is also often irreducibly different from both the Latin models and the Romance outcomes. Some mechanisms of this language are more oriented towards the Latin system, some others are more oriented towards the Romance systems; many can be interpreted neither in one sense, nor in the other, and need to be interpreted within a different analytic framework.
In this paper, we discuss some linguistic issues (mainly, but not only) related to the analysis of the syntax of the defensio, a very common formula in these documents, and we aim at showing that the syntax of these texts can only be interpreted in a framework in which the interactions of syntax, semantics and textuality are considered of crucial importance. Moreover, we highlight that a fine-grained linguistic analysis of the micro-variations in the linguistic realization of the formula of the defensio can provide useful information for a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms underlying the process of writing the texts of our corpus. In particular, some hypotheses on the characteristics of the formularies used by certain notaries are formulated. Finally, a discussion on the meaning of the verb antestare is also provided, with some indications of possible paths for a clear identification of the meaning of this predicate.

This study aims to examine some more significant texts of the Latin historiographical tradition of the imperial age to identify the features and possibilities of the short form of writing in prose. In fact, the short form is not imposed by the limits and difficulties of the writer or by the incompetence and haste of the public, but corresponds to a precise determination of the author in accordance with a rhetorical approach and in response to the literary taste of the time, which can be documented in several areas and particularly in the encyclopaedic genre. Considered in these respects, the work of Eutropius and the whole tradition of breviarii appears, both from a literary and rhetoric point of view, a very interesting laboratory of writing and style, and not just a repertoire of texts for school use only.

Quello che vediamo quando guardiamo un qualunque testo latino a noi trasmesso è la facciata grafica che nasconde dietro a sé la lingua "reale", la lingua parlata all'epoca. Alcuni dei fenomeni anomali percepiti in quella facciata derivano in maniera più o meno diretta dalla lingua parlata, altri invece rappresentano le convenzioni – eventualmente malintese – della lingua scritta la cui distanza da quella parlata era diventata considerevole nel latino tardo. Indizi piuttosto diretti si incontrano particolarmente nel caso degli scrittori che non avevano una padronanza profonda del registro scritto, mentre gli indizi indiretti si fanno rintracciare tramite le tendenze statistiche attestate nell'uso delle forme grafiche più pronte a riflettere il cambiamento linguistico supposto. Una delle grandi sfide per lo studio del latino tardo è, in primo luogo, discernere gli indizi diretti da quelli indiretti e, in secondo luogo, interpretare i dati sulle tendenze degli indizi indiretti in modo plausibile.

The study deals with the problem of the availability in the network of instruments to access the Latin texts of late antiquity. It illustrates the existing databases and their characteristics. Then moves to the illustration of the project of the Digital Library of Late Latin Texts (digilibLT: http://www.digiliblt.unipmn.it/) active at the University of Eastern Piedmont, at the Department of Humanities, which provides prose texts written in Latin in the late antiquity of pagan content (from the 2nd to the 7th century AD), giving its setting characteristics and ways of consultation.

This study traces the textual history of the Old Latin, or Vetus Latina, version of the Book of Daniel and its additions (Sus-Dn-Bel), from the turn of the third century in North Africa to AD 360. The work focuses on the patristic evidence, dedicating a chapter to each of the following: Tertullian, the Adversus Iudaeos attributed to him, Cyprian of Carthage, minor witnesses to Dn, and Lucifer of Cagliari in Sardinia, Italy. The fragmentary manuscript evidence and other Fathers’ citations are treated in relation to the Fathers just listed. Each chapter presents the results of text-critical analysis, which situate the Old Latin texts under consideration within the broader context of other witnesses to Old Latin and Greek scriptures. This approach allows one to recognize, for example, the increasing prominence of the Theodotionic Greek text of Sus-Dn-Bel over the Septuagintal one as the Vorlage for Latin biblical texts. Linguistic analyses inform and complement the text-critical ones. Within the entire span of Latin citations from Tertullian to Lucifer, one encounters remarkable linguistic characteristics, some morphological, many lexical, and still others syntactical.

This paper aims to present some observations on the methods used to assemble and organise collections of texts, i.e. the corpora of what are wrongly known as the dead languages. Although more technical aspects such as how to format or check the corpus are not dealt with here, representativeness, adequate corpus size and effectiveness are three essential features that must be taken into consideration for any late Latin corpus.

This paper is a contribution to the theory and history of the notion of "vulgarism". Starting from a critical reflection on the concepts of Volkssprache, Umgangssprache, Vulgärsprache, gesprochene Sprache, and the analysis of the semantic values of the lexical family of vulgus in grammatical, rhetorical and literary sources, it focuses on the function of the expression vulgō dicitur in legal texts, especially Gaius' Institutes, the Theodosian Code and the Justinian corpus. This expression introduces words or sentences that belong to different social and cultural domains of Latin but all pertain to common and general use. This seems to reflect the influence of the rhetorical principles of clarity (luciditas) and propriety (proprietas) of expression on both the ideology and practice of legal language. Such principles had profoundly moulded the classical ideals of composition and in the legal context (especially in Justinian's corpus) became enriched by the crucial requirements of a successful public communication of the Empire which needed to reach the whole of the population within the Roman orbit with all its cultural and juridical diversity. The paper concludes by posing the problem of understanding the correspondence between the ideology unveiled by the expression vulgō dicitur and the effective use of the linguistic units of various rank it introduces. It is suggested that the meaning and function of the expression may have changed over time and that this could betray the deeper fragmentation of Latin that paved the way to the Romance volgari .

У овом прилогу реч је о једном латинском поздраву који се јавља у сцени погубљења вероучитеља Сатура у Мучеништву Перпетуином и Филикитатином, гл. 21. Аутор подсећа да је поздравна формула ту искоришћена сасвим необично, јер уместо љубазности служи свирепом сарказму. Затим испитује сведочанства њене нормалне употребе. Тврдећи да је, упркос ситуационој и функционалној еквиваленцији поздрава salvum lotum и καλῶς ἐλούσω, латинска формула у самој основи друкчија од грчке, аутор разматра њен системски положај међу поздравима који су се по античком обичају упућивали пре и после купања, и расправља логику елипсе која је у salvum lotum. --- Кључне речи: римско купатило, ранохришћанско мучеништво, латинске полилексеме, елипса.

The gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French iii This dissertation is the result of a long and intense journey. It started the first of July 2015 in Ghent, a few days before obtaining my Master's degree in Latin and French linguistics and literature. I had just finished my last exams and begun my annual student job as a lifeguard at the beach of Middelkerke. Despite my holiday mood and the long, warm, and busy day at the beach, I opened my UGent mailbox in the evening, in order to check whether I had received the reports of my MA thesis. I got a message from Marleen Van Peteghem, my MA thesis supervisor, and so I expected to have received the reports that I was thrilling to read. However, the message was about something completely different. Peter Lauwers, one of my professors of French linguistics, had told her about a PhD position available at the University of Lille, under the supervision of Anne Carlier. She did not yet have detailed information xvii project in general. At the same time, I want to express many thanks to the coordinators of the PaLaFra project: Anne Carlier, Céline Guillot-Barbance, Maria Selig, Rembert Eufe, and Christian Wolf. They set up a pioneering international project and succeeded in bringing together specialists of historical Latin and historical French linguistics. They welcomed me with open arms as a new member, and immediately invited me to contribute wherever I could. A word of thanks is also in place for the other members of the PaLaFra project, who contributed in many different ways to the successful completion of the project:

Dans le carm. 1,1 H. (= 245 V.: Itinerarium Brigantionis castelli) Ennode décrit les moments marquants d’un voyage comme d’un chemin formatif. En particulier, la représentation du dépassement des Alpes à travers le col de Montgenèvre devient un moment littéraire plein d’allusivité et susceptible dans les intentions d’une lecture
supra-littérale basée sur l’étiologie et sur le  lusus  linguistique et littéraire sur l’oronyme Matronae, non dépourvu de résonances personnelles.

In the Justinianic Novellae, repeated occurrences of the phrase πάτριος φωνή, meaning the Latin language, are generally believed to be indicative of Justinian' s favourable stance towards Latin culture, Roman tradition, and his own roots. Per se, the importance and dignity of Latin needed no advocacy in the actual environment of the sixth-century Constantinople: not only was the idiom in wide official use, but a fair share of literary production was in Latin, and proficiency in that language was normal with the many admirers and connoisseurs of Roman antiquities. The usual understanding is that by calling Latin the "father tongue" Justinian never emphasized the contingent fact of its being his own first language, but rather referred to Latin as the primary language of the Roman people and the traditional vehicle of high administration throughout the Empire. In the present paper the use of πάτριος φωνή (or π. γλῶττα) is examined in the wider context of earlier, contemporary and later Greek sources, in which it normally means the native language of a foreign individual or ethnicity as opposed to the Greek of the author and his readers; the instances involve a large number of foreign languages, including contemporary spoken idioms as well as traditional languages of different communities. However, the question whether πάτριος φωνή ever became a context-free denotation of Latin viewed as the traditional language, by all appearances, is to be answered to the negative. On the other hand, the phrase πάτριος φωνή often assumes the specific task of 'flagging' instances of code-switching in Greek texts, and it is this special purpose that it seems to fulfill more than once in the Novellae as well.

The paper considers the problem of the importance of the lost Disciplinae of Varro for Augustine’s intellectual formation and above all for his own project of composing an encyclopaedia with the same title, by first setting it within the broader debate about the adoption and controlled reuse of materials from pagan learning in a Christian sphere and so observing the peculiarities of Augustine’s approach in that respect. The analysis and discussion of the testimony of Claudianus Mamertus (anim. 2.8), re-read in light of some passages of Augustine (retr. 1.6; ord. 1.1.2–3; epist. 26), helps illustrate Augustine’s encyclopaedic project in its specific historical and cultural force; that is, he adopts an approach to research and the systematization of knowledge, without detaching it from the originating, fundamentally ethical motivation, that evaluates it from – and hence integrates it into – the Christian pointof view.

Nell’ambito delle attività relative alla collana “Nuova Biblioteca di Cultura Romanobarbarica” – SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, il Dipartimento di Storia, Scienze dell’Uomo e della Formazione dell’Università di Sassari e il Dipartimento di Filologia e Critica delle Letterature Antiche e Moderne dell’Università di Siena hanno organizzato un Convegno internazionale: “Metamorfosi del classico in età romanobarbarica”, che si terrà online nei giorni di giovedì 17 e venerdì 18 giugno 2021.

Per il programma si veda la locandina in allegato.

Link per seguire i lavori:
https://unisi.webex.com/meet/metamorfosidelclassico

Northwest Africa was a part of the Roman Empire and the Roman World
between the 3rd century B.C. and 7th century A.D. Many cities and cultural resorts were built or developed between Tripoli, in Libya, and Volubilis in Morocco. In spite of that and during many years, a cast had been thrown upon the Romanitas of what was then called Africa and its continuity. New developments have contributed to a substantial change of the paradigm. Among others, let these be highlighted: 1) A big step beyond a twisted approach to History as a justification of colonialism,
and the Berber myth as that of a people permanently opposed to civilization; 2) the outcome of archaeological work providing historians and linguists with new or better analyzed data; 3) new issues in the studies of bilingualism in the Latin World, allowing a scientific reformulation of the problem and a re-categorization of data. A new approach to the relationship between Afro-Romanic and Andalusi
Romance –wrongly called Mozarabic– is proposed, in a double framework, that of Romance and Arabic.

Some Romance outcomes of Latin proparoxytona such as íntĕgrum > intéro can be explained, according to Timpanaro (1965), by a late Latin heterosyllabism of the sequence muta cum liquida (C+R). The rising of this pattern cannot be traced back to a change at the syllable structure level, since a syllable contact C$R is clearly unnatural according to Vennemann’s Preference Laws (1988). In a similar way, Pensado (1988) considers the late Latin heterosyllabic sequences C + glide as conditioned by a morphological constraint. Thus, the recent debate on Timpanaro’s reconstruction leads us to reconsider the late Latin heterosyllabism of muta cum liquida as an epiphenomenon of a general reassessment of the prosodic structure, which affects Latin at least starting from the third Century AD.

This paper analyzes the poem In refectorio (CPL 1087) by Martin of Braga (c. 515-579 AD) from a philological, literary and aesthetic point of view. This short piece has a striking peculiarity: almost 8 of its 10 verses are taken unchanged from Sidonius Apollinaris’ carm. 17, written around one century before. The few «original» passages combine several Sidonian terms (borrowed from the same poem) with strong intertextual echos of Sedulius’ Carmen paschale (CPL 1447). This study explores the meaning of such an unusual modus operandi, surprisingly similar to that of postmodern ready-mades.