BMCR 2009.03.58, Johannes Kramer, Vulgaerlateinische Alltagsdokumente

Johannes Kramer, Vulgaerlateinische Alltagsdokumente auf Papyri,
Ostraka, Taefelchen und Inschriften. Archiv fuer Papyrusforschung und
verwandte Gebiete. Beiheft; 23.  Berlin/New York:  Walter de Gruyter,
2007.  Pp. 182.  ISBN 9783110202243.  $109.00.

Reviewed by Kalle Korhonen, University of Helsinki
([email protected])
Word count:  1332 words
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To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2009/2009-03-58.html
To comment on this review, see
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Johannes Kramer's (= K.) work is a new edition of 12 ancient documents
in Latin, with Greek elements in a few of them. The documents have been
chosen because they all illustrate, on the one hand, everyday life in
antiquity, and on the other, Vulgar Latin. They include letters, a list
of soldiers, funerary inscriptions and graffiti, the purchase document
of a slave, the translation of a Greek fable, and two glossaries. The
collection is mainly intended for the purposes of instruction, because,
as Kramer puts it, "die meisten Studierenden des Lateinischen oder der
Romanistik erfahren am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts weit weniger ueber
das Vulgaerlateinische, als Romanisten oder Latinisten zu Beginn des
20. Jahrhunderts vermittelt wurde" (p. 14). This is not necessarily an
exaggeration. As a collection of teaching materials, the work is
useful, and it will most likely be used in courses which cover the
history of Latin, Vulgar Latin, or variation and change in Latin,
although the relatively high price may prevent students from acquiring
it.

But what is Vulgar Latin? K.'s definition of it runs as follows: "die
... schriftsprachenfernen Varianten der lateinischen Umgangssprache,
also die Varianten, die nur in geringem Umfang von schulischer Bildung
und Anlehnung an literarische Muster gepraegt sind" (p. 13). One could
obviously point out that these are all written documents, so the
language used in them must be a form of written language. K.'s
framework is, unfortunately, somewhat primitive: all ancient Latin is
divided in two, Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin; the vulgar
characteristics of the documents are then pointed out. However, of the
documents discussed in the book, some can be labelled as colloquial,
whereas others were produced by people who had learned Latin as a
second language. Furthermore, they belong to different genres: included
are letters, street graffiti (from different genres), lists, even
funerary inscriptions. Putting them all in the category of "Vulgar",
following the scholarly tradition of the 20th century, is not very
useful for intelligent students, but these documents should rather be
presented as evidence of the many registers and codes in the history of
Latin.[[1]] K. even narrates the history of Vulgar Latin (Einleitung,
Ch. 3) divided into phases such as prisca Latinitas,
"fruehrepublikanisches Vulgaerlatein", "spaetrepublikanisches
Vulgaerlatein", etc.[[2]] The student is left with one of the following
false impressions: either 1) morphology and syntax (and what about
pragmatics?) are not important in the study of the phenomena filed
under "Vulgar Latin", or 2) morphology and syntax in other registers of
Latin differ very little from Classical Latin. Instead of simple
dichotomies, 21st-century students need more refined analyses.

This might also have been a good place to teach currently used terms to
students, who are now left with terms such as Betazismus, s impurum,
etc.[[3]] In all, the introduction cannot be recommended to students;
they should rather consult the recent Blackwell History of the Latin
Language, by Geoffrey Horrocks and James Clackson (2007), which
appeared after the book went to press (see now  the review in BMCR
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2009/2009-03-21.html) .).

As is suitable for a volume appearing in the prestigious series Archiv
fuer Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete, the texts of the documents
are not simply reprinted from previous editions. Instead, the author,
who is well-known for his editions of bilingual glossaries and other
texts which illustrate ancient bilingualism, puts forward some new
readings, which are conveniently listed on p. 12. In all, the readings
seem very accurate. The volume does not contain photographs, but this
is not a problem, because good line drawings are included instead.

The commentaries are thorough and follow the tradition of klassische
Philologie. They contain references to recent scholarly works, often
with long quotations. The commentaries suffer to some extent from the
limitations of K.'s framework: all phenomena are classified either as
literary, which makes all the explanations unnecessary, or as
"vulgaersprachlich" / "umgangssprachlich" / "volkssprachlich" / "der
gesprochenen Sprache".[[4]] Furthermore, in any edition of ancient
documents, the commentary should take into consideration the genre of
the text, and give the reader an overview of the features which
characterize the genre.

The bibliographies are very useful, especially as far as older
scholarship is concerned. In order to facilitate access for beginners,
few abbreviations are used, which is good. In the discussions on
onomastics, one misses references to the Lexicon of Greek Personal
Names and to Heikki Solin's Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom
(1982, 2003), or to recent scholarship on Latin cognomina. (Solin's Die
stadtroemischen Sklavennamen (1996) is occasionally referred to.)
Fortunately, K. devotes some space to discussing non-Latin names.[[5]]

Now, some detailed comments and corrections.

In the introductory section, the figures on p. 26 are misleading,
because both the traditional notation of vowel lengths (a with macron,
a with breve, etc.) and the IPA phonetic alphabet ([a:], [a], etc.) are
used. The figures give the impression that a with breve became a short
back a, and a with macron became a long front a, which both then fused
into [a]. The upmost line of arrows should be removed. Moreover, it
seems unlikely that the phonetic quality of the short /a/ in Latin was
more commonly short back a than [a]. -- K. does not always use a
different notation for letters, phonemes and sounds, which makes him
list c among the word-final consonants in Latin (p. 34): evidently /k/
is meant, not /c/. -- At times, no proper distinction is made between
writing and pronunciation, which leads, e.g., to the following
statement: "Zuweilen wurden jedoch auch normale lateinische Woerter
hyperkorrekt mit y statt i gesprochen: crysta statt crista" (p. 35). We
cannot know with certainty how the writer in this case pronounced the
word: crysta could be a hypercorrect written form (cf. K.'s comment on
the same spelling on p. 169). -- On p. 32, there are no references to
the labiovelar [kw] which probably existed as a phoneme in Latin.[[6]]

In document No. 1, no attention is given to the genre of the text (a
letter), which leads to the generalization "in augusteischer Zeit der
Abstand zwischen die Literatursprache und einer Sprachform, mit der
sich einfache Leute wie etwa Freigelassene im Militaerdienst
identifizieren konnten, nicht allzu gross war". In my view, time is not
the only parameter here, but also the familiarity of the writer with
contemporary literature. -- On the graphic form conlibertus, K. says:
"... die konsonantische Assimilation in der Umgangssprache unbeliebt
ist, sobald sie die semantisch wichtige Zusammensetzung eines Wortes
verdunkelt". Can we conclude in the case of con/collibertus:
"assimilation in Classical - no assimilation in Vulgar"? I think we
cannot.

Whoever teaches text No. 2 (Tab. Vindol. II 310) should also consult
Geoffrey Horrocks' recent commentary, in his and J. Clackson's work
cited above, 244-49. K.'s suggestion on line 18, cumm[odo] seems a
plausible solution for a difficult problem. The URL address given on p.
47 does not work. -- In No. 4, "die Zahlen sind umgangssprachlich",
according to K. (p. 77). The forms are dua, septe, noue, and naginta".
One should mention at least one surviving descendant of the form
naginta, if there are any, before claiming that it is a form of spoken
language, rather than a non-standard spelling (on p. 81, K. calls the
form an "apokopierte Kurzform"). -- Text 5: On line 4, the gentilicium
is most likely the common Caerellius, rather than the rare Cerelleus
proposed by K. -- Line 31: For LOCE, after Licin(i-), a better
explanation should be sought than Loccei(-): it could be a Greek name
beginning with Loch-, or another non-Latin name. -- Line 39: K.
interprets POMPEIEPANE as Pompeii Epane, with a cognomen derived from
<greek>E)PA/NW</greek>. But such a cognomen seems unlikely; EPANE could
in this case even stand for <greek>e)pifa/nhs </greek>. -- The two
glossaries, nos. 11 and 12, are an important and interesting part of
the work.

To conclude, it is necessary to point out that more collections of this
kind would be needed for instruction purposes, as well as a new
handbook on variation and change in ancient Latin.

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Notes:


1.   See, e.g., the lucid discussion of the issue by Paolo Poccetti, in
P. Poccetti - D. Poli - C. Santini, Una storia della lingua latina,
Roma 1999, 22-27.

2.   There are no references to Hannah Rose/n's excellent Latine loqui.
Trends and Directions in the Crystallization of Classical Latin, from
1999, or to David Langslow's recent work on technical Latin prose. K.'s
discussion of the linguistic characteristics of "Vulgar Latin" is what
one might have expected half a century ago: it focuses on phonology (12
of the 14 pages) and the few lines on syntax on p. 36 are unhelpful.

3.   Some terms seem contradictory to the reader: the form pos (for
post) is interpreted both as "eine vulgaere Kurzform" (p. 34) and "die
gelaeufige unbetonte Form" (p. 70), both with reference to the same
document. In such cases, the explanations should have been made more
clear.

4.   These concepts are synonymous. Still, when discussing nos. 5 and
10, K. quotes at length J. N. Adams' plausible analyses of these
documents as written by persons who learned Latin as their second
language.

5.   Finally, a small detail: why is Veikko Vaeaenaenen's Introduction
au latin vulgaire cited in the Spanish translation from 1995? The work
was written in French, and the last edition updated by Vaeaenaenen (who
died in 1997) appeared in French in 1981.

6.   P. Baldi, The Foundations of Latin, Berlin - New York 2002,
277-78, 291.