Latin Word Order: A Glimpse into the Vaults

[Carolus Raeticus]

Salvete,

As a small side project (and preparation for my first attempts at prose composition) I transcribed a few primary texts about Latin word order (and in one case lifted it from Project Gutenberg). I find the treatment of normal word order in Latin textbooks rather "underwhelming". This small sample of texts are hopefully of use. You can download the the transcription (html, about 178 kb) from the Download-section of my homepage.

Valete,

Carolus Raeticus

[truks]

Thank you for this invaluable collection of sources.

There's also a very useful chapter on syntax, called 'The Order of Words', in North & Hillard's Latin Prose Composition (pp. 196-203).

http://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/160/author_id/11/

[Carolus Raeticus]

There's also a very useful chapter on syntax, called 'The Order of Words', in North & Hillard's Latin Prose Composition (pp. 196-203).

I will add that one. I will probably upload v1.1 sometime next week.

Vale,

Carolus Raeticus

[Carolus Raeticus]

Warning,

I had to temporarily remove the file due to severe problems with the html-code. I do not write the html-code by hand but rather use simplified formatting tags of my own and then use a script to do the conversion. The script seemed to work fine, but that was a wrong impression. I did not notice before because the page is displayed for the most part correctly, but it has some serious issues (kudos to the programmers of the Internet browser, they are able to deal with quite a bit of stupidity on side of the web-creators).

I hope to be able to upload v1.1 (correct html, additional North/Hillard-section, removal of some typos) later this week.

Sorry for the nuisance,

Carolus Raeticus

[Carolus Raeticus]

Salvete,

I just uploaded v1.1 of Latin Word Order: A Glimpse into the Vaults. This version passed W3-validation (XHTML 1.1). So no more problems with wrong html. You can download it from the respective section of my homepage.

Valete,

Carolus Raeticus

[ÓBuadhaigh]

Thank you for your labours. I hope to get good use out of your site very soon.

[truks]

Many thanks!

[Damoetas]

For those who are interested in a modern linguistic treatment of this problem, see Olga Spevak, Constituent Order in Classical Latin Prose (Benjamins, 2010). The Bryn Mawr review online has a helpful summary: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011-06-30.html.

[Carolus Raeticus]

Salvete,

I added a pdf-version (0.5 MB) of Latin Word Order: A Glimpse into the Vaults to the download section of my homepage to make it look better when printed. Apart from page numbers and some deliberate page breaks it is the same as the html-version.

Valete,

Carolus Raeticu

[seneca2008]

I find the treatment of normal word order in Latin textbooks rather "underwhelming".

I had a quick look through your admirable summary. A lot of work seems to have gone into it and its helpful to have this.

I think it does lead us to consider what "normal" means in this context. Tacitus is only mentioned twice and the claims about his clearness seem to be entirely misplaced. There are of course passages where he is deliberately ambiguous but I think generally his meaning is very clear even if one has to struggle to understand it. (this may seem like a contradiction). Also I think that Quintilian has a lot to answer for in his criticism of Seneca.

Prose composition books tend to favour an imitation of Ciceronian practise. There is no reason why we have to follow this uncritically.

[Carolus Raeticus]

Salve!

Please don't shoot the messenger. The "Glimpse" is only a repository for primary texts about a specific topic. I chose them because they were either reasonably well known texts or seemed to me to cover the topic enough to merit to be included (but not too much as to be complete monographs).

I am not qualified to embrace any specific approach and am rather wary of any hard and fast rules. All the more so since some people seem to frown on any Latin besides that of Cicero. Latin's career spans about two thousand years. A language is bound to change somewhat. I like the following saying:

"Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds."

Still, some rules (or at least guidelines) are necessary, otherwise chaos will reign supreme. These texts are supposed to help with learning how to avoid the worst blunders when it comes to Latin word order, nothing more. I would be glad if I could learn to write Latin grammatically correctly. That in itself is enough of a challenge. The idea (some of these LPC books seem to have) that one can learn to write like Cicero (if one were even so inclined) is rather "optimistic".

Vale,

Carolus Raeticus

[seneca2008]

Please don't shoot the messenger.

I am sorry if this is the impression I gave.

I think we agree that hard and fast rules can only take you so far. I was not criticising your approach merely observing that we need to think about it. For pedagogical purposes as you say we have to start somewhere to avoid chaos. As long as we dont give the impression that somehow the way Cicero (for example) writes is correct and Seneca (say) represents a falling off from previous high standards. Perhaps I am thinking more about our critical approach to style rather than exemplars for prose composition.