The Latin Accent

Notwithstanding the large number of scholars who have made researches into the nature of the Latin accent, we are nowadays as far from a agreement as 50 years ago. And yet every Latinist who takes an interest in the study of Latin metre or of Latin proserhythm must ascertain his standpoint with respect to this most important problem. Let us begin with a statement of the different opinions concerning the Latin accent. The French standpoint has been formulated very clearly by Prof. M. Niedermann in his excellent 'Phon?tique historique du Latin'x), pp. 12 and 13: ?L'accent et le ton peuvent exister simultan?ment ? l'int?rieur d'une m?me langue. C'?tait le cas du latin pr?litt?raire, o?, ind?pendamment de l'alternance de syllabes aigu?s et graves que cette langue avait h?rit?e de l'indo-europ?en, une intensit? tr?s forte s'?tait d?velopp?e sur la syllabe initiale des mots. Mais, au d?but de la p?riode litt?raire, cette intensit? initiale qui s'adaptait mal ? une langue, o? la quantit? des syllabes ?tait rigoureusement observ?e, a ?t? ?limin?e, et depuis le deuxi?me si?cle av. J.-C. jusqu'au quatri?me si?cle de notre ?re, le latin n'a plus eu qu'un ton, dont la place ?tait d?termin?e par la quantit? de la syllabe p?nulti?me. In the second edition (1931, pp. 16-32) of this book Mr. Niedermann states that the Latin accent was ?essentiellement un accent de hauteur (p. 16), but that there was, especially in popular pronunciation, a certain stress ?t?moins des cas de syncope attest?s par les inscriptions pari?taires de Pompei (p. 18). Lindsay in his great work The Latin Language'2) p. 152, expresses his opinion in these words: We may believe the Latin accent to have been in the main an accent of stress, like that of modern Italian, though like it, the stress-accent may have been accompanied by

Humanities · Linguistics · Stress (linguistics · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Medieval European Literature and History · Philosophy

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