On line 240 of LLPSI Cap XXXIV Orberg gives the following direction about elision:
**Vocalis ultima (item -am, -em, -um, im) ante vocalem primam (vel h-) vocabuli sequentis eliditur
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus: Lesbi’atqu’amemus
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam: Od’et…Quar’id…
I understand what he’s trying to explain but I don’t understand his explanation.
In ‘Vocalis ultima (item, am, -em,..)’ I understand that he’s saying that a final vowel in a word is elided when the first letter of the following word is a vowel .
i.e. ‘atque amemus’ becomes atqu’amemus
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What I don’t understand is why he has ‘item, -am, -em…’ in brackets. These are not examples of words ending in any kind of vowel and they don’t even describe the beginning of words with a vowel.
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Also why does he say ‘vel h’ in brackets after vocalem primum? ‘h’ is neither a vowel and nor is it even used in any of his examples of elision.
I think I’ve figured out what he’s explaining but his explanation makes no sense…?**
It makes very good sense. Cognobilissimum est.
item = the same for words that end in “m”, words ending -am etc. // item -am et sequentia per ‘m’ terminantem
(vel h-) = or words starting h- (which is not considered a letter proper) // vel ante vocabula per h- litteram incipientem (quae littera vera non habetur).
How would it work in practice if you have a word ending in ‘em’ and followed by a word beginning with a vowel such as ‘…quem amemus’ - what is there to elide since the word ending in ‘em’ etc…has no final vowel?
M-final simply modifies the vowel before it, and is not truly a consonant (at least, rarely or never in poetry). That is, it merely indicates that the vowel is to be nasalized - the M is pronounced with the mouth open.
“Quem plus illa oculis suis amabat”
The final m in “quem” is certainly a consonant here, otherwise the first syllable would be short. Certùm consonans hîc est m littera terminans, aliter correpta sit syllaba versûs prima.
“et quantum est hominum venustiorum” Non minùs “-m” littera in “hominum” (etsi eliditur “-m” consonans in “quantum”)
It’s not necessarily the case that the m is fully pronounced before a word beginning with a consonant: another way to analyze it would be to assume that the nasalized vowel is long.
This is why we (Latin teachers) need to start making the nasalized final m a fact from day one—just part of the pronunciation page in any book. I make sure all of my students are aware of this feature, even if we don’t necessarily use it.
Grumble, grumble
Yes. “quem amemus” becomes “qu’amemus” in poetic elision. Though in another example upthread “quantum est” is likely to become “quantum’st” through prodelision. (Aw crud, another ikky elision rule.)
Now that you brought that up - does this only apply to est, or also to some of the other inflections of esse? Also, while I don’t doubt the exception at all, I’ve always been curious about how we know this. Did one of the ancients tell us directly, or is it through some linguistic sorcery that we have come to know this?
I posted it for Sinister Petrus because it discusses the sound of final -m. Plautus contains lots of examples of prodelision, Sceptra Tenens. Sinistro Petro eam misi, quod ea sonum -m terminatis spectat. Apud Plautum sunt multa prodelisionis exempla, Sceptra Tenens.
I have always wondered what happens to the nasalization in synaloephe with -em/-am/-um etc. My impression is that there is no communis opinio on the matter. What do you guys think?
You have Lindsay on this, http://www.archive.org/details/latinlanguagean00lindgoog §§61-65, and Allen, Vox Latina, pp.30-31. I prefer Lindsay. Tractata est res in The Latin Language de Lindsay (qui liber in interrete praebitus) vel in opere Vox Latina nomine de Allen. Illum librum de Lindsay praefero.
My conception of synaloephe is something like the Italian merging of vowels, the fact that two (and even three) vowels can take the place of one beat in poetry, e.g. La donna_è mobile, where a and è take up the space of exactly one note but both are clearly heard. I think most people would agree that’s a fair approximation of the ancient practice; of course with the qualification that some weakly intoned vowels might be completely elided (perhaps in a word like atque). I quote Cat.51,14: otio exsultas nimiumque gestis, where you should be able to discern the case of otio despite the elision or synaloephe (I just realized the normal English spelling is synalepha), just like you should be able to grasp in the next line the case of otium: otium et reges prius et beatas / perdidit urbes. One might argue that the reader’s search for syntactic coherence will lead to the obvious and true conclusion, but the respect of the written word and the no doubt careful pronunciation of a connoisseur in the first century BCE would force a differentiation between the synaloephe in the two quoted verses. Moreover, it would be most disturbing if there was a system with vowel merging that then failed to apply to nasalized vowels.
The problem I didn’t at first read find addressed in Lindsay, or anywhere else, was the question of the nature of pronunciation of these merged nasal vowels. When Lindsay gives the example (p.62) finem onerat = /finewonerat/, I cant see any possibility of keeping that semi-consonantal glide and merging the syllables in question.
You will notice that I use the term synaloephe or synalepha instead of elision; If the time had not long passed my regular observation of bedtime, I would quote examples. I seem to recall this having been continually discussed in this forum a few years ago when I last frequented it, so it depends, would anyone be interested in a longer discussion of the subject (for what I’m worth, which might not be much)?
Completely with you on that, timeodanaos, although my impression (maybe wrong) is that UK/US teachers go for complete elision,—I guess because it’s just simpler to teach. (I don’t teach Latin, though.) Tecum adusquè concurro, timeodaneos. Videtur autem mihi, forsit perperám, magistros americanos regnique unitatis totam elisionem docere—quod facilius est sic facere, conjecto. (Ego autem latinum non doceo.)
I’m not joking but I think if you close your nose on w by scrunching your face you can get what he means. Non jocor cum dico te quod eum dicere velit intelligere posse si w in dicendo per faciem astringendam tu nasum constringes.
There’s not really much evidence at all about how harshly vowels were elided, is there? In the absence of evidence, one way would seem as good as the other, I should think.*
I personally completely elide short E, reduce U and I to light semivowels, and quickly glide from A and O. Not because I have any evidence for this system, but because it seems right to me personally.
*Of course, I speak without real authority on the topic.
In this earlier thread I quoted a passage about something like this from the grammarians, I think. But you’d have to dig for it if you wanted it, and it might not be exactly what you’re talking about. http://discourse.textkit.com/t/um/7548/1 De hâ re, locum aptum apud grammaticos antiquos priore in filo jam citavi, nisi fallor. Opus sit eum quaerere si eo indiges. Sed audeas ne decepturus sis.
Post Scriptum
Ecce locum paenè aptum,sed alius aptior alibi exstat, ut credo. Mentem muto. Benè est quod quaero.
Here’s a vaguely relevant thing but there’s something more relevant, I think, elsewhere. No, this is probably what I was looking for. De vitio hiato apud Quintilianum.