The Early Latin Verb System: Archaic Forms in Plautus, Terence, and Beyond

de Melo, Wolfgang David Cirilo

ISBN 10: 0199209022 / ISBN 13: 9780199209026

Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007

About this Item

Highly technical study comparing Archaic Latin extra-paradigmatic verbs to those of Classical Latin, which the author hopes will be of interest to scholars of both. One of the Oxford Classical Monographs series. Hardcover in jacket, as pictured. Light wear to book & jacket; minor pencil noted & erased. Text believed clean; xviii, 413 pages; tables, references, indexes. Size: Octavo. Seller Inventory # x1267

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Early Latin Verb System: Archaic Forms ...

Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford

Publication Date: 2007

Binding: Hard Cover

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Edition: First Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

This is the first comprehensive treatment of Latin extra-paradigmatic verb forms, that is, verb forms which cannot easily be assigned to any particular tense in the Latin verbal system. In order to see what functions such forms fulfil, one has to compare their usage to that of the regular verb forms. In Part 1, Wolfgang de Melo outlines the usage of regular verb forms, which, surprisingly, has not always been described adequately in the standard grammars. In Part 2, the central part of the book, he compares the usage of the extra-paradigmatic verb forms to that of the regular ones, restricting himself to Archaic Latin (roughly before 100 BC); here he makes many new and unexpected discoveries. In Part 3, de Melo shows how synchronic usage can help us to reconstruct earlier stages of the language which are not attested; he also points out that, while most of the extra-paradigmatic forms die out after 100 BC, some survive - and that such survival is by no means a matter of chance.

About the Author:

Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo is a post-doctoral research fellow at All Souls, University of Oxford.