Re: VIRGIL: sicque/quicquid
I think this must be right. And we should remember that even dysphony has its place. throughout this discussion a line from the Georgics has been ringing (or clanging) in my ears: et quid quaeque ferat regio et quid quaeque recuset (1.53) No -cqu- here, but -d qu- twice, and an insistent alliteration of a very percussive sound. I consider it one of the hardest lines in Vergil to read aloud quid quaeque may have been pronounced quicquaeque by assimilation thus making the pronounciation considerably easier. Docent Arne Jönsson Klassiska institutionen Sölvegatan 2 S-223 62 LUND Sweden Tel: + 46 (0)46 222 34 23 Fax: + 46 (0)46 222 42 27 --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
Re: VIRGIL: sicque/quicquid
Arne Jönsson wrote: quid quaeque may have been pronounced quicquaeque by assimilation thus making the pronounciation considerably easier. Yes, I've wondered about this. It may have been pronounced thus colloquially, but a declaimer of epic poetry might be expected to enunciate more carefully. If the assimilation did take place, however, then add -cqu- twice to the cacophonous clash of consonants that make up the line. --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
Re: VIRGIL: sicque/quicquid
RANDI C ELDEVIK wrote: It's a bit hard for me to believe that the -cqu- combination would have been considered difficult to pronounce, when that very combination is what resulted when prefixes such as ad were added to words beginning with qu-. For example, ad + quiescere = acquiescere. That kind of assimilation was done for greater ease in pronunciation. Evidently sicque was avoided by classical poets, but it can't have been because of difficulty of pronunciation. I think this must be right. And we should remember that even dysphony has its place. throughout this discussion a line from the Georgics has been ringing (or clanging) in my ears: et quid quaeque ferat regio et quid quaeque recuset (1.53) No -cqu- here, but -d qu- twice, and an insistent alliteration of a very percussive sound. I consider it one of the hardest lines in Vergil to read aloud (it's almost a tongue-twister), and I find it difficult to believe that his Roman readers didn't consider it harsh-sounding. Why did he do it? One possible reason: he wants to recall the rugged, repetitive prosody of Lucretius, and may even be combining a pair of Lucretian lines into one: et quid quaeque queant per foedera naturai quid porro nequeant sancitum quandoquidem exstat (drn 1.586-7) To bring in the other thread on jokes, I can't help but think that Vergil enjoyed writing this outrageous line and expected to raise a smile among readers who were on to his game. --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
Re: VIRGIL: sicque/quicquid
I think I would now agree. It is avoidance of dysphony, not ambiguity,
that motivates the preference for et sic. There are cases where authors
mention forms which are avoided because of their ambiguity, but these are
distinct from discussions of euphony and dysphony. But then what is it
that makes -cqu- dysphonous? For I don't think that we want to say that it
is just somehow dysphonous by nature. Wilkinson, in his Golden Latin
Artistry, suggests what I think is a good explanation: Latin tended to
discard such tongue-twisting words as the early 'stlites' and 'stlocus'...
Cicero preferred the words 'formarum', 'formis' to their synonyms
'specierum', 'speciebus' on grounds of comfort in utterance ('commoditatem
in dicendo'). Further, it has been noted that when a Latin critic or
grammarian says a word is, or is not, euphonious, he often seems to mean
that it slips more, or less, easily from the mouth... Indeed, someone
criticized by Philodemus... held that the *only* form of cacophony was that
caused by difficulty of enunciation, (p.18). So -cqu-, as a rare
consonant cluster, would be comparatively hard to pronounce, esp. in
comparison with the much more common -ts- of 'et sic'. In other words, it
is not the ear that is offended, but the tongue.
Philip Thibodeau
Brown University
for a full-corpus search on the Latin CDrom yielded about 25 instances of
sicque, all fairly late, as has been noted, vs. well over a thousand
instances of the alternative, et sic; so sicque definitely seems to have
been avoided But then I mentioned this to a colleague, and he suggested
that I look up plain -cq- . And there were very nearly 1500 instances of
words containing that pair -cq-; about 90% of these were the two pronouns
quicquam and quicquid, which are of course common in classical Latin
authors. So this would seem to tell against the theory that -cq- was
avoided for reasons of dysphony.
Bear in mind that it is relatively easy to avoid sicque by saying et sic (vel
sim.), whereas quicquid is not so easily dispensed with. I would conclude that
-cq- is avoided *where possible* for reasons of dysphony in this
consonant-cluster per se, rather than tracing the pattern of
avoidance/non-avoidance to concern over what the sound might or might not be
taken to represent.
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VIRGIL: sicque/quicquid
Philip Thibodeau wrote: for a full-corpus search on the Latin CDrom yielded about 25 instances of sicque, all fairly late, as has been noted, vs. well over a thousand instances of the alternative, et sic; so sicque definitely seems to have been avoided But then I mentioned this to a colleague, and he suggested that I look up plain -cq- . And there were very nearly 1500 instances of words containing that pair -cq-; about 90% of these were the two pronouns quicquam and quicquid, which are of course common in classical Latin authors. So this would seem to tell against the theory that -cq- was avoided for reasons of dysphony. Bear in mind that it is relatively easy to avoid sicque by saying et sic (vel sim.), whereas quicquid is not so easily dispensed with. I would conclude that -cq- is avoided *where possible* for reasons of dysphony in this consonant-cluster per se, rather than tracing the pattern of avoidance/non-avoidance to concern over what the sound might or might not be taken to represent. --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
