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    The Phonemic Interpretation of Late Latin Orthography Robert L. Politzer Language, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 1951), pp. 151-154, Stable URL http: flinks.jstor-org/sicisici=0097-8507% 28195 104% 2F06%2927%3A2%3C151%3ATPIOLL%3E2: |.CO%3B2-1 Language is currently published by Linguistic Society of America, Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hupulwww.jstor.orgijournals/Isahtml ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ ‘Sun Jun 4 11:43:18 2006 MISCELLANEA ‘THE PHONEMIC INTERPRETATION OF LATE LATIN ORTHOGRAPHY ‘ROBERT L. POLITZER, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON Robert A. Hall Jr. is to be thanked for his interesting programmatic state- ‘ment on the reconstruction of Proto-Romance.!I find myself in complete agree- ment with many of the points set forth in Hall's article, especially with hi sistence on the necessity for reintegrating synchronic analysis into historical linguisties and his proposal that all available linguistie methods be used for the reconstruction of past linguistic stages. I should like, however, to take excep- tion to one point which appears very minor in the overall representation of Hall's arguments, but which, if consistently maintained, may defeat precisely that program of a combined use of all linguistic methods on which Hall is in- sistent. Hall refers to the written material available from the Late Latin period as ‘so confused and untrustworthy that it would be unrealistic to interpret it literalistically and consider it a faithful reflection of popular speech’? As a result, he concludes that this material eannot be used in his program of recon- structing Romance speech. Now itis of course perfectly true that Late Latin documents appear confused ‘it first glance, and it is also true that they should not be interpreted literalis- tically. But this does not mean that the existing confusion, especially in the ‘orthography of these documents, cannot be analyzed and reduced to principles. Unfortunately, in the United States those linguists who are most interested in a phonemic approach have shown little concern for Late Latin documents, while those who have studied these documents—myself? included—have often failed ‘to make their findings convincing and meaningful for lack of a statement of the linguistic principles underlying their analysis. In this article T shall attempt to bridge the gap between the two groups by formulating the main principles wi ‘which to interpret the apparently confused orthography of the Late Latin period. I. The first and most obvious principle governing the orthographic practice of the Late Latin scribes is that of sunstrrvrtoy. If a Classical Latin phoneme a in certain of its occurrences (in certain positions) has been replaced in Late Latin by a different phoneme b, such that b was already @ phoneme in Classi- cal Latin, the new occurrences of 6 are written with the symbol used for b in Clas- sical Latin. Thus, when Classical Latin voiceless stops become voiced, they come to be written with letters denoting voieed stops: marcadus (T 44), vigo (P 67), elidigatas (T 43). ‘Lg 286-27 1980. 2g. 26.21. ‘Robert L. Politaer, ‘The language of the eighth century Lombardie documents (New ‘York, 1040), “ Bxamples are taken from Jules Tardif, Monuments historiques (Paris, 1806), and L. Schiaparli, Codie diplomatioo longobardo (2 vals-; Rome, 1929 and 193). "The abbrevia- tions T and 8 refer to the works by ‘Tardif and Sebiapareli respectively. Some of Tardis ‘examples are quoted from Mario A. Pei, The language of the eighth century texts in north- fem France (New York, 1982) 181 152 ‘MISCELLANEA TI. The second principle T should like to eall the principle of weno. If a Late Latin phoneme results from the merger of two or more Classical Latin phonemes, any of the Classical Latin symbols for those phonemes can be used to represent the Late Latin phoneme. I give some well-known examples. In accented positions, Classical Latin /1/ (written #) and /€/ (written e) merge in Late Latin /e/; Classical Latin /1/ (written u) and /0/ (written 0) merge in Late Latin /o/. The new /e/ is written either ¥ or e: rigni (T 42), pareclo (T 40); the new /o/ is written either w or 0: negucia (T 44), stodeat (T 40). Th unaccented positions, Classical Latin /1/ and /8/ (as above) merge with /8/ im Late Latin /e/; Clessieal Latin /%/ and /3/ (as above) merge with /8/ in Late Latin /o/. In such positions, the reflexes of Classical Latin /é/ and /6/ are written with either i or ¢ and with either 1 or o respectively: habit (8 129), ‘mpidimento (L 50), genitur (8 29), corpure (T 46). On the other hand, the use of 4 for Classical Latin /8/ or of w for Classical Latin /8/ in accented positions is very rare, and can usually be accounted for by special circumstances; e.g. mun- tem pattemed on mans, where u stands for the reflex of Classical Latin /0/: TIT, The third main’ principle covers the so-alled REVERSE PHENOMENA, which, as Muller and Taylor put it,* are ‘due to the uncertainty in the seribe’s mind caused by the confusion in the current pronunciation.’ Several different types should be distinguished under this head. (2) Ifa Classical Latin phoneme is lost in some positions or (like /h/) in all positions, the symbol for that phoneme will alternate with zero, not only in forms where the phoneme once occurred but in other forms as well. Thus, the loss of /b/, of /s/ and /t/ in final position in central Ttaly, and of /n/ in the cluster /ns/ results in spellings such as these: onurem (S 95), hederiam ( 234), quacsicrimu (8 44), dunares (infinitive! 8 66), consta (S 263), compleri et dedit (§ 259), tensaurum (8 157). @) If a given phonemic opposition plays no part (is neutralized) in a par- ticular position, the orthographic symbols for the members of the neutralized ‘opposition will altemate with each other in that postion. Thus, since there is no contrast between voiced and voiceless sounds before a voiceless consonant, swe find the spellings optulit (T 41), obfatis (47), and the like; since there was also no contrast between such sounds after a vowel and before a liquid, we find inteero ($ 150), sagravit (5 159), noclizerint (S 204), eglesia (S 128). Examples given under the principle of merger can be mentioned here also; for a merger that occurs in only certain positions ean be regarded, from the syn- chronic point of view, a8 a neutralization. Thus, the use of i for /&/ and of for /6/ in unaccented postions is explained diachronically by the merger of Jong and short vowels, but can also be treated synchronically as neutralization of the oppositions /¢/': /e/ and /o/ :/0/. @) If an opposition still current in Late Latin becomes defective in a par- ticular position, the orthographic symbols for the members of the defective opposition may’ be confused. This phenomenon, though rare, must be distin- szuished from neutralization. In neutralization, the phoneme which appears in ® Menti F. Muller and Pauline Taylor, Chrestomathy of Vulgar Latin 45 (New York, 1982) MISCELLANEA, 153 the neutralized position is the representative of both phonemes; in defective di tribution one of the members of the opposition does not appear in the posit at all. In late-7th-century French documents of the Tardif collection, for stance, we find that voicing of intervocalic stops occurs frequently, while sim- plifcation of double consonants is practically absent. In the documents from 650 to 700 the figure for instances of voicing is 19, as against only 2 occurrences of simplification. We ean deduce that during this period the Latin phonemic oppositions of intervocalic stops had changed from double : voiceless : voiced to double : voiced : spirant. Since an opposition of voiced vs. voiceless does not exist during this period in intervocalic position, the symbols for voiced and unvoiced stops appear interchangeably: congrecatio (T 34), vindegatas (TT 32), noncobantis (T 28), opidiencia (T 21). It is of interest to note that in the 8th~ century documents in which simplification of double consonants begins to appear in impressive numbers (30 in the documents from 700 to 717), the ‘re- ‘verse’ phenomenon eeases: a phonemic opposition of voiced vs. voiceless is re- established by the simplification of the Latin geminates. The examples given are of course not exhaustive, but they’ illustrate how ‘most of the confused and irregular spellings of Late Latin can be analyzed by the principles mentioned here. Instances of real misspelling or attempts to imi- tate Classical Latin, which eannot be accounted for by the seribe’s phonemic system, are rare and easy to recognize once the phonemic system is recon- structed. Obviously I do not suggest that the entire reconstruction of the Romance of the 8th or 7th century ean or should be undertaken on the basis of Vulgar Latin documents alone. Here we must keep in mind one important fact: a Late Latin seribe who was not conscious of speaking or writing any language other than Latin would not attempt to represent phonemes for which there was no suitable ‘character in the Latin alphabet. It is at this point that structural analysis must be brought into play. To give an easy example, as soon as we find a substitution of voiced for voiceless intervocalic stop, e.g. d for ¢, in a northern French text, ‘we must assume that an opposition /t/ : /d/ has been replaced by an opposition /A/ +/'5/, and that therefore the symbol d, in a word in which it appears in Classical Latin orthography, represents no longer a stop but @ spirant. On the other hand, if textual analysis of northern French 8th-century texts reveals no interchange between au and 0, while central Italian texts show forms like autivas ($ 227) and nofrancantes (S 36), attesting the monophthongis of /au/, we ean conclude that the change /au/ > /o/ was not completed France during the 8th century as it most certainly was in central Italy. It is from details like this that structuralism and synchronic analysis ean carry us on to further conclusions. It has been proposed in a recent study that the change Ja/ > /e/ in northern French is an effort to restore symmetry to the vocalic system, which was pushed off balance by the incorporation of /au/.1 The lack ‘See N. 8, Trubetskoy, Principes de phonologie 80 (Paris, 1049). A. G. Juilland and A. G. Haudricourt, Basai pour une histoire structurale du phoné- tisme frangais 41-5 (Paria, 1919). 164 ‘MISCELLANEA of any interchange of au and o in Sth-century French documents has furnished us thus with a terminus a quo for the shift from /a/ to /e/ in northern French. ‘No single method can claim to get at the whole truth. The analysis of Late Latin texts is only one of many avenues open to us in the reconstruction of the Romance language. If we exclude it completely, we may very well lay ourselves open to serious error, especially in matters of relative or absolute chronology. THE ETYMOLOGY OF CHINESE ‘Iiu ‘POMEGRANATE! ROY ANDREW MILLER, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA In’ the fifth section of his monumental Sino-Iranica,* Berthold Laufer studied four words for the pomegranate (Punica granatum) appearing in Chinese botan- ical and literary texts. In the third (Can-'shih-liu < *2dn-Sidk-

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