Intellegere vs intelligere and other compound verbs

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hello,

There is something I don’t understand.

In compound verbs with prefixes, the root’s vowel is usually lowered because of the primitive position of the tonic accent (the first syllabe), such as cadere > in-cidere, agere > ab-igere, salīre > īn-silīre, and so on. That makes sense.

But there is a verb for which things aren’t the same, it’s the verb intellegere. The expected form is legere > intel-ligere, which we can find in various texts, mostly old printed books, but the standard spelling, such as in modern dictionaries, is intel-legere, which isn’t consistent.. Why is that? Is there some special reason for that, or is it just arbitrary?

2

I don’t know. The same thing can be wondered about circumdare, circumdedisse, circumdatum, which properly should be -dere, -didisse, -ditum.

3

True.

Does that mean “intelligere” is an example of hypercorrection (and as such shouldn’t be used) and “intellegere” the standard form?

4

It would seems so. Lewis & Short lists, “intellĕgo (less correctly intellĭgo)”.