The Grammar of Imitation

A Corpus Linguistic Investigation of Morpho-Syntactic Phenomena in Fifteenth-Century Italian Neo-Latin

PhD dissertation Camilla Plesner Hor er

Supervisors: George Hinge Marianne Pade

Aarhus University 2013 Frontpage illustration: Vincenzo Foppa, Il Fanciullo che legge Cicerone, 1464 The Grammar of Imitation: a Corpus Linguistic Investigation of Morpho-Syntactic Phenomena in Fifteenth-Century Italian Neo-Latin

Imitation og grammatik: en korpuslingvistisk undersøgelse af morfosyntaktiske fænomener på italiensk nylatin fra 1400-tallet

PhD dissertation by: Camilla Plesner Horster

Principal supervisor: George Hinge

Aarhus University Classical Studies Department of Culture and Society December 2013

Abbreviations

AT Actualization Theory (see p. 41) C# Reference to search results, common (see Appendix F) H0 The null hypothesis (see p. 104) HA The alternative hypothesis (see p. 104) L1 First language (see p. 35) L2 Second language (see p. 35) (m) Marked (see p. 43) M1, M2 etc. The four measures of natural language use (see pp. 39–44) MOS Moment of speech (see p. 261) PMA Principle of Markedness Agreement (see p. 43) POS tag Part-of-Speech tag (see p. 96) R Relative time (see p. 262) SLA Second language acquisition (see p. 57) TL Target language (see p. 35) TSP The Transfer to Somewhere Principle (see p. 36) (u) Unmarked (see p. 43) V# Reference to search results, Valla (see Appendix F) χ2 Result of chi-squared test (see p. 105)

iii

Contents

Abbreviations iii

1 Introduction: the Study of Neo-Latin 1 1.1 An Overview of the Neo-Latin Language ...... 4 1.2 A Modiﬁed View on the Neo-Latin Language ...... 9

Part I: A Language Between Grammar and Imitation 15

2 A Living Language in Change 17 2.1 Language Change and Language Formation ...... 19 2.1.1 What is Change? ...... 20 2.1.2 Linguistic Change in Progress ...... 21 2.1.3 Diﬀerent Views on the Formation of Neo-Latin ...... 25 2.2 Two Languages in Contact ...... 31 2.2.1 Language Contact Forming the Language ...... 35 2.3 Measures of Natural Language Use ...... 37 2.3.1 Individual or Collective Language Use ...... 38 2.3.2 Complexity and Variation ...... 39 2.3.3 Linguistic Universals ...... 40 2.3.4 Patterns of Actualization ...... 41

3 On Will and Ability 47 3.1 Deliberate Language Change ...... 48 3.1.1 Social Factors ...... 49 3.2 Grammatical Knowledge and Language Proﬁciency ...... 57

v Contents

3.2.1 Teaching Latin ...... 58 3.2.2 Grammatical Tradition ...... 63

4 Humanist Style 69 4.1 Imitatio ...... 71 4.1.1 Ciceronians and Eclectics ...... 73 4.2 Linguistic Intertextuality ...... 75 4.2.1 Diﬀerences between Literary and Linguistic Intertextuality . . . . 77 4.2.2 Criteria for Speciﬁc Linguistic Intertextuality ...... 78 4.3 Errors ...... 80 4.4 Norm and Ideals ...... 83 4.5 Genres ...... 86

Part II: Methods and Corpora 93

5 Quantitative Methods 95 5.1 A Corpus Based Method ...... 96 5.1.1 Manual and Automatic Data Handling ...... 97 5.2 Presentation of Quantitative Information ...... 102 5.2.1 Tests Statistics ...... 104 5.2.2 Some Thoughts on Statistic Representativity ...... 109

6 Corpora and Data 111 6.1 Corpora ...... 111 6.1.1 Neo-Latin Corpora ...... 111 6.1.2 The L.A.S.L.A. Project ...... 113 6.1.3 The Perseus Dependency Treebank ...... 116 6.2 Handling of Data ...... 118 6.2.1 Data Model ...... 118 6.2.2 Storing Data ...... 123 6.2.3 Extracting Data ...... 124 6.2.4 Particulars in the Construction of Information ...... 126

vi Contents

Part III: Mood and Time in Subordinate Clauses 131

7 Mood Variations According to Genre and Author 133 7.1 The Finite Moods in Latin ...... 135 7.2 Genres ...... 137 7.3 Authors ...... 142 7.3.1 Individual ‘Genre Sensitivity’ ...... 142

8 Mood in Various Clause Types 147 8.1 Valla’s Language and Renaissance Grammars ...... 149 8.1.1 On Etsi, Quamquam, Quamvis, and Licet ...... 150 8.1.2 On Interrogative Clauses ...... 153 8.1.3 On Cum, Dum, Quia, and Quoniam ...... 157 8.2 Clause Types in Neo-Latin ...... 160 8.2.1 Quia ...... 161 8.2.2 Interrogative Clauses ...... 163 8.2.3 Variation due to Genres and Authors ...... 166

9 Some Other Factors Aﬀecting Mood 169 9.1 Person ...... 170 9.2 Voice ...... 174 9.3 Negations ...... 175 9.4 Time in the Context ...... 177 9.4.1 When there is Future in the Context ...... 181 9.4.2 Future in the Dialogues ...... 182 9.4.3 The Individual Authors ...... 185 9.5 Finite Moods in the Context ...... 188 9.6 Degree of Subordination ...... 193 9.6.1 The Frequency of Second Degree Clauses ...... 195 9.6.2 The Relation between Mood and Degree of Subordination . . . . . 198 9.7 On Markedness Agreement ...... 204

10 Constructing Indirect Discourse 209

vii Contents

10.1 Quia, Quod, and The Accusative with Infinitive ...... 214 10.2 Mood and Clause Types Subordinate to Infinite Constructions ...... 219 10.2.1 Some Examples from the Most Common Combinations ...... 223 10.3 Mood in Indirect Discourse ...... 226 10.4 Clause Types and First Person Expressions ...... 228 10.4.1 An Overview of Four Clause Types ...... 230 10.5 Defining the Value of The Subjunctive in Neo-Latin Indirect Discourse . . 233 10.5.1 The Subjunctive in 1st Person Indirect Discourse ...... 234 10.5.2 The Subjunctive in Indirect Discourse of 2nd and 3rd person . . . . 238 10.5.3 A Concluding Characterization ...... 244

11 The Nature of Tenses 251 11.1 Uncovering ‘The Sequence Of Tenses’ ...... 254 11.1.1 Three Basic Times ...... 256 11.1.2 Relative and Absolute Time ...... 258 11.1.3 The Nature of Tenses in Diﬀerent Moods ...... 259 11.2 Modern Views on Grammatical Time ...... 261 11.2.1 Considering the Sequence of Tenses ...... 264

12 A Fundamental Characterization of the Neo-Latin Tenses 267 12.1 A Fundamental Diﬀerence Between Indicative and Subjunctive Tenses . . 267 12.1.1 Stability and Variation across Genres and Authors ...... 271 12.2 The Tenses in Various Clause Types ...... 279 12.2.1 Clause Types Compared to Classical Latin ...... 283 12.3 The Future Tenses ...... 286 12.3.1 Future as a Zeitsphäre ...... 288 12.3.2 The Form Amavero ...... 291 12.3.3 The Periphrastic Future Subjunctive ...... 295 12.3.4 Explicit Expression of Future ...... 296 12.4 The Present Perfect and the Historical Present ...... 301 12.4.1 The Historical Tenses as Linguistic Intertextuality ...... 305

viii Contents

13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference 311 13.1 The Imperfect Subjunctive in Primary Contexts ...... 312 13.2 Aspectual Variation of Indicative Tenses ...... 315 13.2.1 The Perfect Indicative ...... 316 13.2.2 The Imperfect Indicative ...... 319 13.2.3 The Pluperfect Indicative ...... 321 13.3 Relative Time in Subjunctive Tenses ...... 322 13.3.1 The Perfect in the Future ...... 322 13.3.2 The Imperfect in the Present or the Future ...... 324 13.3.3 The Present Subjunctive ...... 327 13.4 The Origin of the Neo-Latin Tense System ...... 330 13.4.1 The Classical Latin Tense System ...... 330 13.4.2 The Medieval Italian Tense System ...... 339

14 Conclusions: the Nature of Neo-Latin 345 14.1 A Language of Natural Linguistic Mechanisms ...... 345 14.2 Stability and Change ...... 348 14.3 Deliberate Imitation and Unconscious Grammar ...... 351 14.4 Classical Latin, Volgare, and Medieval Latin ...... 354

References 359 Bibliography ...... 359 List of Figures ...... 375 List of Tables ...... 379

Summaries 381 English Summary ...... 381 Dansk Resumé ...... 387

Appendices 395 A Texts and Editions ...... 395

ix Contents

B Timeline of Authors ...... 401 C Corpus Details ...... 403 D L.A.S.L.A. Corpus Details ...... 407 E Search Expressions and Data Sets ...... 411 F Data Files ...... 419 G Application Flows ...... 421 H Base Rates ...... 427 I Figures of Moods and Tenses ...... 445

x Chapter 1

Introduction: the Study of Neo-Latin

Quousque tandem, Quirites (litteratos appello et romane lingue cultores, qui et vere et soli Quirites sunt, ceteri enim potius inquilini), quousque, inquam, Quirites, urbem nostram, non dico domicilium imperii, sed parentem litterarum, a Gallis captam esse patiemini? id est latinitatem a barbaria oppressam? Lorenzo Valla, Elegantiae linguae Latinae, I. proh. 35–36

So ran Lorenzo Valla’s call to arms when he in 1444 ﬁnished his masterwork, the Elegan- tiae linguae Latinae, a comprehensive manual on the Latin language and style, composed of many years’ observations on the Classical Latin literature and with an understanding of the nuances of the Ancient language such as had not been described for centuries. Valla’s grammatical work was a weapon forged for winning back the Latin language of Antiquity to the rightful heirs, the educated Italians who cared for the Classical Latin language, literature, and culture. For Latinity had been oppressed during centuries by the barbarities of Medieval Latin and a French grammatical tradition which cared more for philosophical linguistic speculations than for reading the Classical works and learning from the beauty and wisdom in literature itself. Here we see one person playing his part in the major linguistic project that was unfolding during the early Renaissance, namely the feat of changing the language which was associated with the most prestige and status, the Latin language. The result was to become what is now known as neo-Latin, or humanist Latin, a Latin that should dis-

1 1 Introdu ion: the Study of Neo-Latin

tinguish itself from the existing Latin of their days by imitating the Latin of the ancient writers. This was a project of prestige, and it was carried out among the educated strata of society, by the literate class who held positions of influence as teachers, secretaries, and chancellors in the city states of Italy, and within the church. They had learned Latin as part of, for instance, a legal education, and their language proficiency was to a great extent linked to their skills as rhetoricians, able to compose compelling letters while enjoying the respect of their surroundings. They learned Latin as a means of promoting themselves. And their Latin was about to become an even more personal matter, an even more detailed part of their identity. Throughout Italy, the position was established that the Latin of their days was contaminated by barbarian influence, that the language of the ancient Romans—their birthright as Italians—was spoiled by Germanic and French influence, and had been neglected by the uncaring scholastic tradition. They set out to reclaim the language of the Romans—their language—and change it into a new form that respected the Latin of the ancients.1 This was an important part of a major argument that was meant to secure them as the heirs to the Roman language, the Roman literature, culture, and empire, and these skilled rhetoricians started a movement that managed to bend every aspect of the Roman legacy to their personal gain. They strove to see the ancient culture reborn, in themselves, and their movement was later called the Renaissance. As much as it can be said that the Renaissance and the renewal of Latin served the individual in gaining a better status in society, it first and foremost sprang from genuine fascination with the Antiquity and with Classical Latin. The reform of the Latin language is a crucial part of this entire cultural Renaissance movement,2 and this linguistic project is especially closely connected to the literary activities referred to as Renaissance humanism.3 Since Petrarch (1304–74) in his younger days strayed from the path of a legal education in favor of his passion for Classical Latin language and literature—recovering lost texts, reading, emending, and commenting on them, and not least imitating them in his own Latin composition—his activities became the model

1Introductions to Renaissance, humanism, and neo-Latin, see Rabil (1988); Mann (1996); Reeve (1996); Jensen (1996); Tunberg (1999); Pade (to appear 2013). 2Pade (2012). 3For a deﬁnition of Renaissance humanism, see Petersen (1978).

2 1 Introdu ion: the Study of Neo-Latin of the nascent humanism, and from the intense studies of the Classical Latin texts arose the norm of the new Latin, an imitation of the Classical Latin. The term studia humanitatis,4 also used by Cicero, was resumed by Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406) to denote the education in Classical literature, and a new educational program was formed in the studies of language, literature, history, and moral philosophy, based on rhetoric rather than the dialectic that was the basis of scholastic education. Latin was the central language in this programme and the Renaissance humanism, though the rediscovering of the Greek language and literature may be seen as a dividing line in the return to ancient literature. I regard the development of the neo-Latin language as very strongly stimulated by the personal opportunity, status, and identity that it could provide for the humanists, and as inseparably intertwined with other disciplines of the studia humanitatis. I consider early humanists such as Petrarch and Salutati as pioneers on whose ideologies humanism is based, and the later humanists who wrote in the 15th c. Italy as the forces who gradually developed and stabilized the neo-Latin norm, concurrently with the rediscovering of lost Classical Latin texts. This study will focus on the 15th c. Italian development of a common neo-Latin language norm and form, in the knowledge that the 15th c. humanists are only in charge of the firm establishing of the still young language, and not the actual origin of the language, which should be attributed to Petrarch and efforts throughout the Middle Ages which had made the Renaissance possible.5 So this is neither a study of the beginning of neo-Latin, nor of the final form of neo-Latin, for neo-Latin in the sense of all post-Medieval Latin was to develop further through the next centuries, being adopted and adapted to provide the rest of Europe—and even America as well as some colonies—with a share of the legacy of Antiquity. Based on the assumption that the humanist norms of 15th c. Italy were the source of the humanist movement that spread (if one accepts the term ‘humanism’ to be applied to later stages, outside of Italy), this is a study of the language, not where it started nor what it became, rather where it developed its norm and was established. This is a study of a language: a living language that developed in the area of tension

4On the word humanitas, see Pade (2010, esp. V, used on 25.11.2013). 5Such as the Carolingian Renaissance in the 9th c. and the 12th c. Renaissance, where many ancient texts were secured and copied.

3 1 Introdu ion: the Study of Neo-Latin

between the continuity from the Middle Ages and the renewal of the humanists; between the will and determination to reﬁne the language in imitation of the Classical Latin model and the practical circumstances of not yet having rediscovered and described all aspects of that model; between the scholastic tradition that it seeks to separate itself from and the more distant Classical Latin that it is modelled upon; between a very focused, conscious grammatical debate, a deliberate desicion to build Latin composition on imitatio, and the unseen forces of unconscious language change. I believe that a linguistic characterization of neo-Latin can be found in examining these factors and their inﬂuence on the actual form that neo-Latin was to take.

1.1 An Overview of the Neo-Latin Language

I see neo-Latin as a Latin variant which is in constant and intended dialogue with the Classical Latin variant. This dialogue with Classical Latin was originally part of the Renaissance humanism and contributed to the idea of reviving Antiquity. Neo-Latin is not only the linguistic form, but also a literary and cultural concept, because the humanists attribute to the linguistic form a relation to the particular literary tradition of Antiquity and to the actual Classical Latin texts from which they extract the linguistic norm. Because of its imitative base in literature with regard to particular authors, genres, and texts/works ‘neo-Latin’ can be deﬁned as a stylistic term. The stylistic nature of neo-Latin also shows in the humanists’ own texts: they imitate the Classical literary tradition by writing in the same genres, and the linguistic characteristics of a particular genre in Antiquity are intendedly transferred to the corresponding genres in humanist writings. The term ‘neo-Latin’ has a chronological implication as well as a stylistic since it deﬁnes the Latin variants developed after Medieval Latin.6 As already mentioned, neo-Latin is part of Renaissance humanism, and therefore originates in Italy and spreads through Europe over time. This dissertation concerns only the neo-Latin of 15th century Italy, even though it would spread to other counties and endure and develop through centuries to come. And we shall study only the language of literary prose in genres that correspond to

6Thereby I follow Ramminger (to appear 2013) who states that ‘neo-Latin’ is both a chronological and a stylistic term.

4 1.1 An Overview of the Neo-Latin Language

Classical Latin genres, even though neo-Latin would also spread to other spheres of written language, such as administration.7 There is an international and widespread scholarly interest for the field of neo-Latin which is traditionally focused on investigations, translations, and editions of the writings of individual authors, often writers of particular interest to the history or literary tradition of their nations.8 Many linguistic observations are therefore sporadic and linked to a broader interest in a certain authorship, such as a major tradition for the study of Petrarch’s writings, and his Latin.9 Such studies have revealed that he deliberately revised his own Latin from earlier times when later editing his writings, to get rid of expressions that he had since learned to be unclassical. But despite this gradual development towards the Classical Latin norm, studies of Petrarch also reveal several traits from Medieval Latin, such as the declarative quod used interchangeably with the accusative with infinitive for expressing indirect discourse. So the Latin of individuals represents a ‘battle’ between the aim at writing like the Classical Latin authors and the presence of other words in the literature from the Middle Ages. There is therefore a complex relationship in the neo-Latin language between the formulated linguistic norm and the actual linguistic practice. The neo-Latin linguistic norm is studied basically from two different points of view, a stylistic and a grammatical. The stylistic debate in the Renaissance concerned the proper nature of imitatio.10 The two central questions discussed in the Renaissance were 1) which Classical Latin author(s) were good enough to be imitated: Most agreed that Cicero was the best author, but some pled for the imitation of several good authors. Then it was discussed also 2) how precisely the Classical Latin authors should be imitated, and whether the humanist writer ought to add something new, his own ingenio, to the Latin language. Some humanists agreed that at least things that had been invented since Antiquity could be called by new words, neologisms, while other humanists thought that only words found in the texts of Cicero should be used in humanist Latin.

7Ramminger (to appear 2013). 8Haskell and Feros Ruys (2010); Helander (2001). 9On Petrarch’s language, see Rizzo (1988, 1992, 1994, 2002), Bufano (1961), and Martellotti (1956, 1961). 10On the debate on imitatio, see McLaughlin (1995) and the collection of humanist writings in Del- laNeva (2007).

5 1 Introdu ion: the Study of Neo-Latin

Studies in the grammatical writings of the humanists by Percival (2004) and Black (2001) reveal that the basic teaching of grammar did not change dramatically after the Middle Ages, and that the Latin taught to young boys was essentially Medieval. The innovation of humanist Latin seems to be a stylistic addition to the basic knowledge, a stylistic level of the language based on careful readings and reuse of Classical Latin.11 This return to the Classical Latin language appears in quotations of actual Classical Latin sentences in the first complete humanist grammar for school use, Niccolò Perotti’s Rudimenta grammatices, and particularly in manuals of style such as Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae. So that which makes neo-Latin different from Medieval Latin, the foundation in studies of Classical Latin texts, was not considered part of the basic grammatical education, but part of a literary and stylistic education which the student could move on to after having learned the basic rules. So the humanist debate and writing on the Latin grammar was basically concerned with this stylistic level. Therefore, even though the grammatical education was based on Medieval grammars, the humanist theory was uncompromisingly Classical. The practice was much more nuanced.12 Studies by Ramminger (2011, 2012) of the linguistic theory and practice of Perotti shows the complex nature of the relationship between the two. Ramminger (2011, pp. 174–75) shows for example how Perotti’s rejection of the word complurimus as unclassical spread to the somewhat later dictionary by Ambrogio Calepino, while it remained in use in the texts of the humanists. So while Perotti’s stance to complurimus did influence the lexicography of his contemporaries, it did not influence the actual language use, and the word is found also in a text by Perotti himself. Except for the studies mentioned above of the linguistic practice of individual authors, we now have the most detailed knowledge on the general neo-Latin characteristics in the field of lexicography. On the syntactic aspects of the language the evidence is sparse and not built on larger studies dedicated to the syntax. The focus on morpho- syntactic questions in the present study takes as its starting point some observations in Companion to Neo-Latin Studies by Jozef IJsewijn (1998, p. 410–11). He points out that neo-Latin authors do not, generally speaking, depart fundamentally from the syntax of

11See further discussions in 3.2. 12See also Ramminger (2009).

6 1.1 An Overview of the Neo-Latin Language

Classical Latin, or at least not from what they think is Classical Latin. He mentions some general features that characterize neo-Latin, either in comparison with Medieval Latin or Classical Latin, among others the revival of the accusative with inﬁnitive instead of quod + indicative in the literary language, a slight preference for periphrastic forms of the kind amatus fui, a continued confusion of cum and dum, some looseness in use of the moods in subordinate clauses, indirect questions with the indicative, looseness in the sequence of tenses, and ﬁnally a more analytical and paratactical phrase structure in some texts.

A study of the neo-Latin morpho-syntax can therefore in the existing knowledge on neo-Latin merely be pointed to possible ﬁelds of interest, while more detailed indications of the several factors that determine the neo-Latin language can be obtained from the well-established ﬁeld of neo-Latin lexicography. One characteristic which may be transferred to the study of neo-Latin syntax is the tendency to build new words according to the patterns for word formation known from antiquity but with an over representation of certain forms that seemingly appealed more to humanists than others, such as nouns ending in –ista (e.g. humanista) or adverbs in –iter (ruditer).13 The return to reading the Ancient Greek texts is a source for neo-Latin neologisms, and the Medieval vocabulary is constantly present in the linguistic practice of the humanists, though they work hard to weed out those words, and basically the vocabulary is Classical Latin.14

Many neologisms in neo-Latin can be traced back to corresponding words in the vernacular languages, and similarly some neo-Latin words or meanings of words which are not attested in earlier Latin variants are known to have entered the vernaculars, like the word ‘vernacula’ itself.15 The realization that neo-Latin was not just a fossilized language from Antiquity, but a language which inﬂuenced and was itself inﬂuenced by the world it developed in, has for some time been central to studies in neo-Latin. This has given rise to a discussion of how equal the neo-Latin language is to the Classical Latin or other Latin variants such as Late or Medieval Latin, and how much the neo-Latin

13There are 336 lemmata in the Neulateinische Wortliste, Ramminger (2003–), ending in –ista and 367 in –iter, out of a total of 18,542 lemmata (used on 15.12.2013). See also Ramminger (to appear 2013). 14Ramminger (2011). 15Ramminger (2010).

7 1 Introdu ion: the Study of Neo-Latin

language actually owes to the vernaculars. As the present study intends to contribute to this discussion, some positions to the question are presented in the following.

IJsewijn (1998, p. 410–11) notes that while the intuitive first place to look for differences between neo-Latin and Classical Latin would be in peculiarities and oddities, one in fact rarely encounters something in neo-Latin which is not found also in Classical Latin works, though perhaps in works that were more popular in the Renaissance than today. Some peculiarities that cannot be accounted for in the Classical Latin language, and neither as influence from the vernaculars may be due to incorrect Renaissance editions of Classical Latin texts, such as a few examples from Francisci Francorum regis et Henrici Anglorum Colloquium by Jacobus Sylvius or Dubois: subnixi for subnexi (v. 48), finguut for fingunt (v. 82), or conivia for convivia (v. 275). Such peculiarities do not correspond to Classical Latin, but to that which the humanist thought to be Classical Latin.

This position, that most peculiarities in neo-Latin can be accounted for in Classical Latin works as well, is supported by Tunberg (1999, p. 291) and displayed in the article “On the Margins of Latinity? Neo-Latin and the Vernacular Languages” by Tournoy and Tunberg (1996). They revise a number of such peculiarities that have previously been explained as influence from the vernacular languages. By examining the Medieval Latin tradition, the possibilities in pre-Classical, Classical, and Silver Latin, and the lexicography of the humanists, they conclude that such peculiarities only very seldom violate that which was possible also in the preceding and contemporary Latin tradition, and so the influence of the vernacular languages is rare and difficult to prove. Quoting IJsewijn, they agree that “It is only when no reasonable explanation within the Latin language can be given that one should start searching for vernacular influences.” (Jozef IJsewijn (1977, p. 248)).

They propose as a central reason for some of the diﬀerences that we today see between neo-Latin and Classical Latin that “The margins of latinity were much wider for the humanists than for modern classical scholars.” (Tournoy and Tunberg (1996, p. 173)), as the Latin of the humanists is inspired also by, for instance, Late Latin and Christian Latin. As the basic reason why humanist Latin almost never reveals something which

8 1.2 A Modified View on the Neo-Latin Language was not allowed in some other Latin variant before, they give the exemplary, imitative learning strategies of the humanists

1.2 A Modiﬁed View on the Neo-Latin Language

The approach of the present study is in several respects inspired by Tournoy and Tunberg (1996), and I wish to contribute to the practice of studying the wider margins of Latinity in explaining the peculiarities of neo-Latin, as well as the explanations revealed by the humanists themselves in their grammatical writings. But there is one modification to the basic nature of the neo-Latin language that I wish to make in this dissertation. While IJsewijn, Tournoy, and Tunberg seem to view the possibilities of influence from either the vernacular or from the Latin tradition as mutually exclusive, I see such coincidences as mutually supportive: When a peculiarity can be explained both as influence from the vernacular languages and as inspired by earlier Latin variants, both explanations are likely true. We should not expect to find, in general, expressions which were not allowed in Classical Latin—or in that which the humanists considered Classical Latin— but perhaps the higher frequency in neo-Latin of expressions which are in Classical Latin merely peripheral may be explained as an overgeneralization of those Classical Latin elements which come more naturally to a humanist author with a particular mother tongue.

A hypothesis of overgeneralization of certain linguistic elements which correspond to the use in the vernacular languages extends such observations as those by Tournoy and Tunberg who for example in treating a preference of Charles de Bovelles to accumulate the habitual use of the present participle conclude that: “To a lover of Cicero this would undoubtedly seem excessive, but there is nothing in this passage which actually violates the possibilities of the Latin language.” (Tournoy and Tunberg (1996, p. 142)). The relationship between possibility and preference in this discussion reﬂects the distinction made by the humanists between regule and consuetudo/usus (to be discussed in 4.3), and Valla states that he in his Elegantiae presents the Classical Latin language according to usus rather than regule, which means that he does not describe words that are only

9 1 Introdu ion: the Study of Neo-Latin

found once in Antiquity, but those words and meanings of words which were generally used.

Methodologically this study is therefore based on usus, both in Classical Latin and in neo-Latin, and we shall examine the neo-Latin language from a quantitative point of view and compare the distribution of certain constructions in neo-Latin to the distribution in Classical Latin. For based on presentations of neo-Latin such as those by IJsewijn, Tournoy, and Tunberg I believe that the basic differences between neo-Latin and Classical Latin are not to be found in peculiarities that do not exist at all in Classical Latin. I propose that the nature of neo-Latin, as opposed to Classical Latin, is to be found in a different distribution of all the expressions possible in Classical Latin. An implication of this is that I do not agree that the influence from the vernacular languages on neo-Latin is rare. Rather, I propose that the influence from the vernacular languages is seen in the most frequent expressions, in those expressions that are significantly more frequent in neo-Latin than in Classical Latin. The influence is to be found in that which is allowed but uncommon in Classical Latin, but which becomes the preferred means of expression in neo-Latin. Therefore we shall look for the explanation for a neo-Latin construction in the possibilities in earlier Latin, while looking for the explanation for high frequencies in also the vernacular—well aware that not all ‘peculiar’ preferences are based on the vernacular, as neo-Latin is a complex of several factors.

This approach is theoretically based on the field of contact linguistics, which describes languages that develop in the contact with other languages. My approach is speaker- oriented and with a foundation in sociolinguistic theories, inspired among others by the analysis by Steffen Höder (2010) of Medieval Swedish as a contact language which developed in a similar contact situation under the influence of Medieval Latin and Low German. A second language or a foreign language, such as neo-Latin, exists side by side with the mother tongue in the mind of the language user who is able to process both languages, and this coexistence may be described as a contact situation (to be discussed in 2.2). Seen from the point of view of contact languages and language acquisition it is more likely than not that two languages in contact influence each other. But influence from the first language may not only be negative and work against correct use of a second language, it may also support the acquisition of a second language, as we shall see. The

10 1.2 A Modified View on the Neo-Latin Language application of the theories of contact linguistics can give a more nuanced view on the mechanisms that govern the inﬂuence from the vernaculars on the neo-Latin language. The application of general linguistic theories to the neo-Latin language raises the important question of whether neo-Latin can be studied as a natural language which conforms to the general theories of language use. As a central part of this investigation of the neo-Latin language, we shall consider this question both with respect to the mechanisms that form the language and with respect to the actual static form of the language. Some elements of producing language may happen with the full awareness of the language user, while other elements happen unconsciously. We cannot say for sure what the humanists thought and were aware of while writing their Latin texts, but we can determine which parts of the language were most explicitly discussed, and which were largely ignored. This may be an indication of diﬀerent approaches to language production. Large works on the Latin language such as Valla’s Elegantiae and Perotti’s Cornu copiae are to a large extent dedicated to describing the individual Latin words and their nuances in meaning and use. On the other hand, the more pervasive grammatical systems are not generally treated, not even in grammatical works such as Perotti’s Rudimenta grammatices (to be discussed in 3.2), and their approach to some grammatical systems seems to be more intuitive than based on explicit knowledge:

. . . although the functions of individual Latin tenses were reasonably well understood, rules for sequence of tenses were not fully formulated in grammar books until much later times. Accordingly, humanist authors, as far as tense sequence was concerned, proceeded by intuition gained from reading, listening and a store of memorized phrases. Tournoy and Tunberg (1996, p. 170)

Based on an assumption that the unconscious mechanisms of language use—such as interference from the mother tongue—may be more outspoken in those parts of the language use which the humanists were not explicitly aware of, the present study is based on such morpho-syntactic mechanisms as the sequence of tenses, namely an examination of the use of moods and tenses in a number of neo-Latin subordinate clause types written by 13 Italian humanists. This study is therefore focused on the more intuitive grammatical systems than on the very deliberate elements that are also found in neo-Latin, and the

11 1 Introdu ion: the Study of Neo-Latin

study is intended to give the most consistent view on the interplay between deliberate linguistic/stylistic strategies and the unconscious mechanisms of (natural) language use. Because of the quantitative approach in the present investigation, the methodology is based on corpus linguistics. A corpus can be used to produce comparable quantitative data to describe the usus in various contexts, and because we shall look for evidence not in the single appearance of a peculiarity but in its frequency, the corpus linguistic approach can provide different views on the neo-Latin language than a qualitative approach to linguistic studies.16 This study is not so much concerned with the question of what can be written in neo-Latin, but with what is usually written. As a result of the retrospective nature of neo-Latin, a language in constant dialogue with Classical Latin, the comparison of the neo-Latin language to the Classical Latin is central in many respects. Such comparisons serve the purpose of explaining the nature of the mechanisms that govern the neo-Latin language, particularly the power of imitative writing. But first and foremost this is a study of the nature and the mechanisms of neo- Latin, also the internal mechanisms that govern the language when seen as an individual language. Such analyses of the static form of neo-Latin also benefit from the quantitative approach which can be used to establish whether there are dependencies between certain language internal elements, such as between the mood of a verb and the clause type in which it appears. Further more, quantitative data is a valuable tool in establishing if a language is changing over time, and so we shall also investigate whether the morpho- syntactic parts of neo-Latin were stable or changing during the 15th century. So this is primarily a detailed examination of one part of neo-Latin which seems particularly suited for revealing new elements of the nature of the language. Neo-Latin is a complex language which develops in the contact to several other Latin variants as well as to the vernaculars, not to mention Greek. To the reader who is primarily interested in one or several of the contact zones of neo-Latin, the information on these languages or variants will seem sparse. However, the information on other language variants does not serve to give an exhaustive analysis of the precise origin and all precedents of a certain

16In addition, Bungarten (1979) notes that a corpus represents the entire language, and not only exemplary sentences as formulated in a grammatical description of a given language. Therefore a corpus is an appropriate source when studying not only the actual language knowledge of the humanists, but the overall product of their entire language competence.

12 1.2 A Modified View on the Neo-Latin Language construction, but is meant to exemplify the mechanisms of influence on the neo-Latin language, focusing on the neo-Latin language form and language formation. A similar restriction to this study is the fact that it is based only on the language of Italian humanists. As Tournoy and Tunberg (1996, p. 173–74) rightly point out, a linguistic study which aims at determining the influence from the vernaculars on neo- Latin should not be based only on one region, but also consider texts from elsewhere. Without a similar study of neo-Latin from another region, we cannot know for certain if different distributions would be found in the Latin of authors with typologically different vernaculars. This question will be left to later studies of neo-Latin. The present study intends, despite lacking this piece of information, to determine certain mechanisms and different kinds of influence on the neo-Latin language.

Therefore, through a corpus linguistic quantitative analysis of the moods and tenses in neo-Latin subordinate clauses, the present dissertation intends to describe the properties and gradual development of 15th c. Italian neo-Latin and its status as a natural language. It will be shown that this part of the language is particularly determined by subconscious language use, and that several mechanisms of subconscious influence from other language variants can therefore be determined by studying this. The study intends to reveal that neo-Latin is based on language mechanisms known from contact languages, that neo- Latin is influenced by a complex of different contact zones, particularly that which the humanists consider Classical Latin (including Silver, Late, and Early Christian Latin), their mother tongue, and Medieval Latin, and finally that this influence results in a different distribution of constructions than what is seen in other Latin variants, and not generally in actual innovations.

Part I

A Language Between Grammar and Imitation

Chapter 2

A Living Language in Change

Latin has often been labeled a ‘dead language’ based on the deﬁnition that a language has died when it is no longer spoken naturally by anyone, and is no longer the mother tongue of any people. By the time of the 9th century, the spoken language of the former Roman Empire had developed into new individual Romance languages, and speakers of one of the languages would not immediately understand speakers of another.1 Latin as a natural spoken language was dead. But the Latin language was more fortunate than the innumerable small, native languages that now suﬀer the faith of language attrition around the world, their only chance of any kind of survival being that linguists will manage to document them while there is still someone alive who remembers them. Latin, if we consider it as if it died as the spoken variant gradually turned into the romance languages, had positioned itself for a more splendid ‘life after death’, the survival of a literary prestige language.2 After Antiquity, the language had developed throughout the Middle Ages to meet new requirements from the sciences and a changing world. Then in the 14th and 15th century, humanists performed a regular paradigm shift, actively distancing themselves from the Latin that had become during the Middle Ages and actively seeking to revive the Latin that once was. Some of the changes and adaptations that happened to the Latin language during the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance were dramatic, and not all of those changes were the changes of a dying or a dead language, as this thesis will show.

1Hagège (2000). 2Kahane and Kahane (1979).

17 2 A Living Language in Change

Admittedly, Latin did not again become an entire language spoken in all socioeconomic parts of society. In addition, the Latin language of the Renaissance diﬀers from other living languages in one central thing, namely that its primary form was not spoken but written, as the language norm sprang from the literary language of the ancients. Latin was also a spoken language in the Renaissance, but that which distinguishes neo- Latin from Medieval Latin was a shift in the written norm, in the literary language. The domain of neo-Latin is peculiar in comparison with other languages, because of this foundation in the written language, and its primary use and development in institutional settings—such as church, school, and diplomacy—as opposed to vernacular languages that exist everywhere in society. I see the neo-Latin language as an incomplete language, because it lacks some basic features of natural languages, as we shall see in this chapter. But those parts of the language that exist and can be accounted for today, primarily the literary language, were not entirely dead in the Renaissance. The written Latin was undergoing heavy change when the humanists undertook the change of the language norm, and those changes were not the kinds that characterize languages dying from attrition, namely becoming more simple in all respects,3 but changes that were supposed to make it a more rich literary language and to add linguistic nuances that the humanists felt had been lost in the centuries before them. Neo-Latin may not be as complex as the original Classical Latin language (it is one of the purposes of this thesis to say whether or not), but this alone would not disqualify it as a living language, as other of the world’s languages may be characterized as less complex without being denoted ‘dead’ for that reason.4 I hope that this dissertation, together with much research on the neo-Latin language before mine, will leave no doubt that the Latin language changed, also after it ‘died’. I cannot think of a language which was used as the primary language in entire Europe and which changed dramatically, as truly dead—though I would neither claim that it was truly the native language of anyone. Whether it is a natural language is another question. That is, whether neo-Latin develops and is used and learned in accordance with common mechanisms that are shared

3Thomason (2003, p. 705); Winford (2003, pp. 256–64). 4We shall return to the matter of linguistic complexity in 2.3.2.

18 2.1 Language Change and Language Formation by human languages all over the world. The almost exclusively institutional frame of the neo-Latin language, the fact that it was not the spoken mother tongue of anybody, and the way it was the result of a deliberate linguistic strategy among educated men leads the mind to artificial, constructed languages such as Esperanto and Volapük, or even more so to other koiné’s for distance communication, such as Old Belarusian—also called the ‘Western Russian Chancellory Language’—which “. . . was not the native tongue of anybody who used it, but was taught at schools and used in all spheres of life except for liturgy.” (Björn Wiemer (2003, p. 110)). This particular position surely may have given the neo-Latin language some characteristics of a constructed language, which may result in a language more under the control of the language user, and outside of the reach of the invisible hand of natural language change.5 But this thesis will show that some parts of the neo-Latin language were formed without the explicit awareness of the humanists, and that the neo-Latin language was not a language completely under control, but a language which was in many respects used as a natural language influenced by subconscious mechanisms. It is the aim of this thesis to determine where to plot neo-Latin on the scale from natural language to artificial language, and to plot the changes made to the language on a scale from subconscious to conscious. This first part of the thesis aims at characterizing the neo-Latin language with respect to the several different factors that influence its form and in comparison with the knowledge on how natural languages are used, and how they change.

2.1 Language Change and Language Formation

The ﬁeld of historical linguistics6—the study of language change—has gained much from the discovery of the relatedness of languages, that some languages are genetically related and one language derived from another. From that historical discovery, the Comparative Method has emerged, a method for comparing languages focused on determining systematic relationships between them as well as regularities in language change. Thus, the well known Regularity Hypothesis concerning sound changes states that “if x changes

5The term used by Keller (1994). 6Joseph (2008).

19 2 A Living Language in Change

to y in lang. A, environment z, every x in environment z in A will change into y if not disturbed.” (Cited from Sarah Thomason (2007, p. 42)). These regular sound changes, used for example for reconstructing proto-languages, concern changes that happen over long time spans, and changes that happen inside the grammatical system of the language, so to speak; they are internally motivated and happen, apparently, by themselves.7 The regularity of sound change is one major part of language change, which has been shown to have formed many languages of the world. However, regularities apply only to sound changes and not to the morphology and the syntax, and the condition “. . . if not disturbed” is not a minor addition. Rather, such disturbances have formed entire new languages, such as creoles that emerge when two speech communities meet and create new means for communicating with each other, a language that becomes the mother tongue of new generations. In such cases the regularities of evolutive change are dramatically disturbed. Such changes are described as contact induced, and they are externally motivated by social factors (the meeting of language communities). Before returning to the mechanisms that govern contact induced languages, we shall deﬁne language change in general and see how language change is detected and studied.

2.1.1 What is Change?

Whether considering internally or externally motivated changes, it is necessary to answer the question “What is language change?” In this thesis, we shall distinguish between innovation—the single use of a new form by one writer, or more writers individually— and change—the spread and generalization of an innovation to the speech community as a result of the acceptance of the new form. Both innovations and actual change may be of interest, as innovations show future possible changes and may be a key to describing how and why a language changes the way it does. In the discussion of how much power the language user has to change his language, the distinction between innovation and change is important, as it is generally held that the ordinary speaker can purposely inﬂuence only his own language (innovation), and not the language of the entire speech community (change). In the case of neo-Latin, it seems that a group of people have had

7See Klima (1964) for a method, within this tradition, for determining regular relatedness between grammatical systems, a task less straightforward than comparing phonological systems.

20 2.1 Language Change and Language Formation more influence than what is normal on the language, primarily via the conceptual shift in paradigm, and even direct influence on the vocabulary. In 3.1 we shall return to the nature of this influence on the language. The question of deliberate or unconscious language use is central to this thesis, and the linguistic practice will be compared to the metadiscourse we have available, such as grammars, commentaries, and grammatical treatises, that may tell us why some authors use their Latin language in certain ways, when their innovations are intended, and whether the particular part of the language is within the grammatical focus in the Renaissance. What may in the case of ‘normal’ languages be considered limited spread, because it is only accepted in one specific dialect, may in the case of neo-Latin be considered as accepted by the entire speech community, because the linguistic community that uses the neo-Latin language norm is itself limited to specific social classes. In the present study, we shall consider the linguistic practice of a number of neo-Latin writers, both individually and in common, which will give us some idea of whether a linguistic element is author specific or generally neo-Latin, or perhaps on the way to being accepted in the general neo-Latin linguistic community, thus becoming actual language changes. Within the common language system, the individual can vary his own language, and often innovations and old expressions exist at the same time. When the same thing can be expressed in two or several ways, there will therefore be variation between old expressions and corresponding innovations. Linguists see this synchronic variation as a source to linguistic change, and observing variation synchronically can be a window into ‘linguistic change in progress’.

2.1.2 Linguistic Change in Progress

By comparing similar pictures of synchronic variation from at least two diﬀerent stages, we can see a diachronic correspondence. This correspondence may show that, in the meantime, a shift has happened in primary form; that for instance the older element was the primary form at the early stage, and the newer form was the primary form at the later stage. In this study, we shall look at two consecutive stages of 15th c. neo-Latin. In this way, we can study the language in real time, that is to see if the language actually changes between the two stages. When two states of the language cannot be studied,

21 2 A Living Language in Change

language change can be studied in apparent time, which is concerned with indications in the synchronic variation that a change is happening. Change in apparent time is normally studied as follows.8

Linguistic change typically first spreads in the younger generations who have acquired the innovations as part of their language. Therefore the examination of children and young speakers can normally provide a knowledge on in which direction the language is changing. The difference between younger and older generations provides us with knowledge on language change in apparent time, older generations representing the past and younger generations the future language stages. William Labov (1994, p. 49) uses age as a window to sound changes in American dialects and recommends studying subjects from the age of c. eight years. It should be obvious that his studies are very different from studies of neo-Latin, and that we cannot include the language of young children in a study of literary neo-Latin texts.9

In stead we shall consider the observation made by Henning Andersen that some linguistic environments (such as genres) seem more suited for certain kinds of linguistic change; that changes may actualize and spread through certain patterns.10 His actualization theory, which we shall return to in 2.3.4, will be tried out as a source to viewing linguistic change in progress in apparent time. In stead of viewing the younger generations as a picture of the future language, we shall view linguistic features in certain genres as indications of tendencies that may spread to the entire language in future states. Thus, by combining the real time study between two stages of 15th c. neo-Latin with apparent time studies we should be able to get an idea of any changes that might happen, and the paths they follow.11

8Introductions to change in progress in e.g. Labov (1994, pp. 43–112). 9In addition, biological age probably has much more influence on sound changes than on written morpho-syntactic elements. 10See, for example, Andersen (2001a,b). 11According to Labov, “Since a trend study includes two studies of apparent time, it will both detect unstable behavior of individuals and distinguish stable from unstable communities, differentiating all four of these patterns.” (William Labov (1994, p. 84)), i.e. stability (no change), age-grading (all people speaking differently while young), generational change (changes introduced with new generations), and communal changes (entire community alters language simultaneous).

22 2.1 Language Change and Language Formation

2.1.2.1 Unstability in Newly Constructed Neo-Latin

In the study of the development of neo-Latin, we seemingly encounter one central paradox when we wish to put a newly constructed language norm into the framework of natural language development: the history of the language proceeds at a speed which is much faster than the majority of known language changes and does not in all respects meet the general requirements for being called ‘language change’. Greenberg et al. (1966), while deﬁning some universals for language change and the history of languages, state that:

. . . no synchronic state can exist which is not the outcome of possible diachronic processes (except perhaps de novo for artiﬁcial and pidgin languages) and no diachronical process can be posited which could lead to a synchronic state which violates a universally valid synchronic norm. Greenberg et al. (1966, xxiii) Whether or not the processes that formed neo-Latin are ‘possible’, is a central theme for this thesis. For now, let us say that some parts of the formation will seem normal and natural, while there are also factors that seem unnatural. The same holds for the ‘synchronic state’ that is called 15th c. neo-Latin. This probably places neo-Latin partly within the category of de novo languages, a category of chronologically abrupt languages, rather ﬁtting for neo-Latin when viewed as the language reform project described by the humanists. For us to be able to describe the language change of neo-Latin, we need to rewrite in particular one central concept: variation between old and new forms. Variation, the source of language change, is not random but based on some agreement in the speech community on the values of the possible expressions, and it seams reasonable to conclude the following:

If two linguistic forms in a speciﬁc language co-occur at a given time, it is from the point of view of economy in language very likely that they are not semantically identical, at least in their connotations. Ulrich Busse (2001, p. 120) Tunberg (1999) describes a gradual stabilization of the linguistic norm during the 15th century, and works such as Valla’s Elegantiae linguae Latinae may be an indication that there was also unstability in the Latin vocabulary at the time when neo-Latin was formed. While Valla may simply disagree with the common distinctions in the Latin

23 2 A Living Language in Change

of his contemporaries, there may also be cases of synonyms being used without a consistent system of unspoken semantic nuances, such as normally distinguishes synonyms in natural languages. The purpose in Elegantiae is to determine such distinctions, like abundant examples of word pairs for which their relationship is described by Valla as “idem signiﬁcant . . . tamen”:

Vero et Autem idem signiﬁcant, et eodem in loco poni possunt antecedente utique aliqua dictione; nunquam enim ab his sententia incipit. . . . Habent tamen aliquando nescio quid diﬀerentiae in utendo. Cur nanque non dicimus neque autem, sicut neque vero? Lorenzo Valla, Elegantiae linguae Latinae, II.24

A work such as this—and its immense influence and popularity—shows us that we cannot assume that there existed in neo-Latin, as in natural languages, some collective agreement on these nuances in the speech community. In a way, we can say that the natural system of variations between older and newer forms may have been obstructed by the unnatural process of reviving an existing vocabulary without a common understanding of different connotations of similar words. This situation is not identical to the natural situation of language change where innovations spread, because the composition of the entire new neo-Latin vocabulary can be considered an innovation. And yet, we may consider the words that were ‘rediscovered’ as Classical variants particularly innovative—though this classification, based on coincidence and transmission, may be in contrast to the actual development of the Latin language in Antiquity. In this thesis, our focus is on grammatical systems, not on vocabulary. Because the grammatical systems are in the Renaissance grammatical tradition closely connected to the individual words, as we shall see, we shall investigate whether there is also some unstability in the grammatical systems, like those Valla tries to sort out in the vocabulary, and how this unstability stabilizes. Stabilization in neo-Latin would be an indication of natural language use, because the language of individuals naturally approach each other according to Bloomfield’s principle of accommodation saying that “Every speaker is constantly adapting his speech-habits to those of his interlocutors.” (Bloomfield (1933, p. 476) cited after Labov (2010, p. 5)). Therefore we should expect that unstability—such as individual constructions that depart from that of the others—are stabilized over time,

24 2.1 Language Change and Language Formation if the humanists conceive their Latin language as part of a language community, and if they reﬂect in their own Latin the Latin of the others.

2.1.3 Diﬀerent Views on the Formation of Neo-Latin

William Labov (1994, p. 78) distinguishes between changes from above and changes from below, socioeconomically speaking. ‘Changes from below’ roughly correspond to those evolutive changes that follow regularities, invisibly and without the intended intervention of members of the speech community, as the changes come from the masses of people who use the language.12 They will often be internally motivated, that is, happen within the language system itself, and therefore also influence the deeper layers of the language. ‘Changes from above’ happen more overtly as influence from the higher strata in society, and, having some relation to establishment of societal identity, they will often be the ‘disturbances’ of the evolutive language change. These changes are typically externally motivated by social factors such as bilingualism or social status in part of society, and so, they are often contact induced. They happen directly to the surface structures of the language (consider, for example, the systematic change to the sound system vs. the use of a new loan word). Naturally, not all language change falls within this preliminary categorization. With relevance to this study, there is the type of contact change called interference, the unintended adoption of elements from a speaker’s first language to his second language. This happens mostly without the attention of the speaker and is determined by other factors, both internal and external, which will be elaborated shortly. If we consider neo-Latin, we should expect elements from the writers’ mother tongue, the Volgare,13 to enter their neo-Latin writing unintendedly. The neo-Latin language is peculiar in not being formed by all different kinds of speakers in society. Although the humanists come from various strata of society, they are all among those with the best education. Consequently, if we wish to distinguish between different kinds of influence on the language formation, we cannot simply distinguish between changes from above and from below in the study of neo-Latin. In stead, we will have to distinguish between, on

12For the classiﬁcation of linguistic changes, see also Andersen (2001a); Joseph (2008). 13For a discussion of the use of the term ‘Volgare’, see p. 2.1.3.

25 2 A Living Language in Change

the one hand, that which apparently happens without the attention of the humanists, investigating whether such influence behaves like changes from below, and on the other hand, that which is somehow connected to the linguistic project and identity of the humanists, which in turn is expected to behave like changes from above.14 We shall refer to this as having neutral and identity related motivation, respectively. The formation of neo-Latin is complex and does not represent a normal development from one language variant to another, as phrased in a recent inroduction to the neo-Latin language: By virtue of its inherently retrospective nature and the keen desire of its practitioners to restore the defining features of Classical Latin as far as was possible, Neo-Latin generally exhibits very few discrepancies with, and deviations from, literary Latin of the Classical period. It cannot be regarded, therefore, despite the artificially crafted nature of its formulation, as a natural, linear development of the Latin language from any given period of its history. David Butterfield (2011, p. 303) Figure 2.1 illustrates my view on the asymmetric contact situations involved, with the mother language, Classical Latin, as the dominant factor: There is a one-way influence from the professed model, Classical Latin, to the neo-Latin language, the chronology obviously preventing neo-Latin from influencing Classical Latin directly—though the humanist activities have influenced the modern editions of Classical Latin texts that we have available, and possibly also our modern conception of its form. Classical Latin as the mother language has also influenced the tradition of both the scholastic and the Medieval Latin, as well as the Volgare. Both the Volgare, the Medieval Latin and the scholastic Latin may influence neo-Latin, and neo-Latin in turn may influence both the Volgare and the contemporary scholastic Latin (the Medieval Latin, being chronologically earlier, is not influenced directly by neo-Latin). Since there are no native speakers, in the traditional sense, of neo-Latin, it can be considered to exist entirely as a second language. Second languages are closely connected to contact languages: in the mind of the language user they co-exist with the first language. This is a very close contact situation, when two languages do not only meet when two peoples with different languages interact, but when two or more languages exist in the mind of the same individual. So essentially, 14Resembling the distinction made by Andersen (2001a, p. 230) between pragmatically and not pragmatically motivated.

26 2.1 Language Change and Language Formation most elements of neo-Latin should be expected to be contact features, taking form in the meeting of Classical Latin and the Volgare, as well as the other surrounding Latin variants. However, the neo-Latin language has its own metadiscourse and its own domain (literary language, educated elite, diplomatic medium), and it is not impossible to think that it may have its own ‘will’ and that it may change outside the inﬂuence from these contact zones.

Figure 2.1: Contact zones

What has been sketched so far is the contact zones for neo-Latin. We have not yet explained what changes to expect, overall. Several different language variants have come into play, variants that are different due to many centuries of language change, as they all originate from Classical Latin. Because of the many contact zones, the formation of neo-Latin can be seen from different points of view, and each contact zone influences the neo-Latin language in different ways. In the following, these contact zones are outlined individually.

27 2 A Living Language in Change

From Classical Latin to neo-Latin: The relationship between Classical Latin and neo-Latin is the main focus of this thesis, because returning to the Classical Latin norms was the reason for forming neo-Latin. Chronologically, this development of the Latin language is discontinuous, because the language does not develop continuously from Classical Latin to neo-Latin, but is ‘interrupted’ by the stage called Medieval Latin. The intended onset of this change can be described as convergent.15 The intention of the humanists is to bring their Latin language closer to Classical Latin, to restore it and bring it back to an earlier stage.16 But the relationship between Classical Latin and neo-Latin also has a divergent character, as there are, primarily unintended, differences between the two variants, caused both by the two languages being separated from each other in time and by the influence from the Volgare. This divergence of the neo-Latin from the Classical Latin is chronologically more straightforward, and does not contain the contradiction of developing into an older stage. These are more natural mechanisms of change, that languages diverge over time when separated from each other. In this investigation, the differences between these two variants, neo-Latin and Classical Latin, are studied via their diachronic correspondence, based on similar studies of each stage, and based on comparisons of the neo-Latin language to modern grammatical descriptions of Classical Latin. This will show that change has happened between the two stages, that the neo-Latin language is in some respects different from the Classical Latin language. But this does not show what kinds of change happened, and why the changes happened. These reasons for the differences between neo-Latin and Classical Latin are found by studying the other contact zones that constitute neo-Latin.

Direction Chronology Motivation Type of investigation Convergent ← Chieﬂy identity related Diachronic correspondence Divergent → Chieﬂy neutral Grammatical readings

Table 2.1: Classical Latin changing into neo-Latin

From Medieval and Scholastic to neo-Latin: Changing the language away from the Latin of the Medieval and Scholastic Latin is, as a central part of the language 15For convergence and divergence, see Labov (2010, pp. 4–5). 16With some exceptions; see 4.1.1.

28 2.1 Language Change and Language Formation program, generally driven by identity related motivations. This change corresponds to the ideology in the convergent part of the change described in the paragraph above: a change away from contemporary and Medieval Latin and towards Classical Latin. However, it follows a natural chronology, as the Medieval variant of Latin is changed directly into neo-Latin, so this is the most extant language change in our scenario. There are also elements from this negative example that still exist in the neo-Latin language, though this is rather to be considered non-change, unintended stability. The diﬀerences and similarities between Medieval and neo-Latin, though very important, cannot be investigated as systematically as the diﬀerences between Classical Latin and neo-Latin within the scope of this study, and will thus be based on modern grammars of the Medieval Latin.

Direction Chronology Motivation Type of investigation Divergent → Chieﬂy identity related Grammatical descriptions Convergent = Chieﬂy neutral

Table 2.2: Medieval and Scholastic Latin changing into neo-Latin

Change inside Neo-Latin: The neo-Latin language is expected to change even after it has been established, and consequently, changes may occur within neo-Latin. In the present study, we shall divide the texts into two groups, illustrated in Appendix B: an early group educated before Valla wrote Elegantiae linguae Latinae in the 1440’s,17 and a later group of authors who were still young at that time, or not yet born.18 This major grammatical work is used as a dividing line, representing the gradual development of the grammatical competences of the humanists as well as the heavy debates on correctness and style in Latin prose composition,19 which may cause the language to change gradually to match better the Classical Latin model—or the linguistic ideals of the humanists. Thus, change with identity related motivation may be tracked between these two stages of neo-Latin. On the other hand, neo-Latin may also, as mentioned, show changes internally with neutral motivation, perhaps both contact induced interference 17I.e. Bruni, Guarino Veronese, Poggio, Manetti, Filelfo, and Alberti (a total of 661 clauses examined). 18I.e. Pontano, Perotti, Ficino, Battista Guarini, Barbaro, and Poliziano (a total of 721 clauses examined). Note that Valla himself is kept out of this division. 19See DellaNeva (2007); McLaughlin (1995).

29 2 A Living Language in Change

from the Volgare and actual evolutive changes. The design of the study makes it possible to try to see the changes as they unfold, to watch the changes in progress, following the theory proposed by Henning Andersen (2001a,b), which we will return to in 2.3.4. But as it will appear during the analysis, only very limited change actually happens within the morpho-syntax of neo-Latin during the 15th century.

Chronology Motivation Type of investigation → Identity related Diachronic correspondence → Neutral Change in progress

Table 2.3: Changes inside neo-Latin

The Volgare: The relationship to the Volgare is a central factor in the formation of neo-Latin, and much can be learned from studying interference from the Volgare to neo- Latin, as well as subconscious transfer and conscious loans of elements from neo-Latin to the Volgare.20 In this thesis, I use the term ‘Volgare’ to refer to the vernacular language of the humanists. At their time, the Italian language consisted of various dialects that had not yet been standardized.21 For gaining some insight into the nature of the diverse dialects of the time, we shall consult a recent comprehensive work on the somewhat older Medieval Italian, the Grammatica dell’italiano antico, edited by Salvi and Renzi (2010). Therefore, the accessible knowledge on the vernacular language of the neo-Latin authors is not precise and does not reﬂect the varying nature of the diﬀerent humanists’ mother tongues. Therefore ‘Volgare’ will be used as a somewhat conceptual term which does not refer to the actual vernacular, which is by nature very varied. Medieval Italian on the other hand refers to precise linguistic observations, though of linguistic evidence a couple of centuries older. So Medieval Italian will serve for giving a general idea of what was possible in the Italian dialects of the time, not as a direct description of the vernacular of the humanists. I do not consider the relation between the Volgare and neo-Latin an actual language change from one variant into another, because I do not strictly see the Volgare and

20This question is unfortunately outside the scope of this study. A few examples are mentioned in Migliorini (1995, p. 277). 21Migliorini (1995).

30 2.2 Two Languages in Conta neo-Latin as two variants of the same language, and because there is a chronological problem in the fact that Latin is the older language, when considering the relatedness of the languages, while the speciﬁc variant neo-Latin came to exist later than its daughter language Volgare. Labov states that

. . . the observation of a change in a language . . . requires observations of two states of a language and a guarantee of some continuity between the two – an assurance that in some sense, these are two states of the same language. William Labov (1994, p. 43)

There is indeed continuity between the Latin language and the Volgare, in the sense that the ancient Vulgar Latin changed into the Volgare, but it should be obvious that this continuity must also be chronologically correct. The case of Volgare developing into the neo-Latin language cannot be said to meet the requirement of continuity, not because the two stages are not two stages of the same language, but because it is anachronistic. It is agreed that the Volgare developed from Latin, not the other way around. In addition, the diﬀerences between the two variants are so widespread that an analysis based on evidence from the span of only one century cannot technically account for them. Many of the diﬀerences between the Volgare and the Latin language, in any form, belong to the study of changes from within the linguistic system that happened during several centuries, and they are not the rapid results of a changed linguistic norm. However, the relationship between the two variants is intricate and decisive for the neo-Latin language, as we shall see in the following.

2.2 Two Languages in Contact

I analyze the neo-Latin language as language that develops in the contact situation between, primarily, two languages: the literary Latin language and the mother tongue of the Italian humanists, the Volgare. In addition, there are possible distinctions between diﬀerent variants of both the Italian Volgare and the Latin language. Those we shall return to during the analysis of subordination later. Here, we shalll consider the relationship between the Volgare and neo-Latin. The Volgare is a term for the spoken dialects that had developed in Italy from the original spoken Vulgar Latin. At the onset of the Renaissance, it was not yet a standardized

31 2 A Living Language in Change

literary language, though in had begun developing as a literary with Florentine writers such as Dante (c. 1265—1321), Boccaccio (1313–1375), and Petrarch (1304–1374). When considering the linguistic similarities and differences between the Volgare and the literary Latin, they should be considered two different languages, as there are fundamental grammatical differences between the two.22 When it comes to the use and the humanists’ conception of the two, however, it seems that they complement each other in such a way that we might consider Latin to be the written equivalent of the spoken Vol- gare: Latin functions as the literary language that the Volgare has not yet developed.23 The Italian Renaissance humanists were aware of the close relation between their spoken dialects and the Latin language, and, in line with the general struggle to reserve the legacy of Antiquity for themselves, they managed to establish Italian neo-Latin as the most outstanding, international version,24 for the two reasons that the Renaissance movement began in Italy, and that the Italian language was actually considered the spoken version of Latin. This we see in a letter by Guarino Veronese to one of his sons, from 1452:

idque nobis obveniebat, quod e Germania proficiscentibus in Italiam percipi- endae linguae latinae causa: qui si ad inculti et horridi oris populos divertant, imbibita locutionis sorde et spinosa verborum asperitate offendunt potius au- rem quam alliciant; sin ad innatae facundiae et ingenitae dulcedinis linguas transmigrent, gustata mellitae dictionis suavitate cultus mox sermo suscip- itur et vox ipsa cygnea. Guarino Veronese, Epistole, 862 From this, we can deduce that people would go to Italy to learn Latin, and that the dialect spoken in the region they went to would influence their Latin language. This implies a close relationship between Latin and Volgare, if the spoken dialect of the Volgare should directly influence the pronunciation of Latin. As well as the literary Volgare in time sprang from the Florentine tradition, it was probably the Tuscan dialect which was here considered the dialect of “innatae facundiae et ingenitae dulcedinis”,25 and the two literary forms, the traditional Latin and the new literary Volgare, developed

22On the early Italian language, see Salvi and Renzi (2010). 23The literary languages, as they developed from the new Romance languages, were dramatically diﬀerent from the spoken dialects. Perhaps the relationship between the Italian Volgare and written Latin was not so much diﬀerent from the relationship between, say, spoken and literary Early French. 24According to Tunberg (1999), Erasmus and John Milton held that the Italian pronunciation of Latin enjoyed the highest prestige, why humanists would go to Italy to learn a pronunciation that was understood internationally. 25See the commentary to the text edition.

32 2.2 Two Languages in Conta dependent on each other, the Latin norm enjoying the prestige of Florentine pioneers, and the literary Volgare drawing upon the forms of the supreme literary language of the time.26 In a way, the two literary languages may be thought to share each others’ fates. Just like we saw that Guarino Veronese did not distinguish clearly between Latin and Volgare, the two are neither considered completely separate from each other, nor truly variants of the same language. In considering the progression of teaching the Classical languages in school, Battista Guarino argues: Nec sane me fugit Quintilianum ut ab illis (the greek authors) sumatur ex- ordium praecipere, quod mihi ea ratione difficilius videtur: quia, cum ea nobis lingua naturalis non sit, nisi prius aliquod loquendi principium ex nostra habuerint, in ea perdiscenda pueri nescio quo modo deferentur. Atque ita mihi persuadeo Quintilianum sic praecepisse, quia suis temporibus latinam linguam omnes haberent, nec in ea tanta eleboratione opus esset. Battista Guarini, De ordine docendi et studendi, §18 By saying about the Greek language that it is not a lingua naturalis to Renaissance humanists, wherefore they should first learn Latin, he must, in turn, consider Latin a lingua naturalis. On the other hand, one difference between the Renaissance and the time of Quintilian is that by Quintilian’s time, “latinam linguam omnes haberent”. Consequently, he thinks of Latin as a natural language to him and his contemporaries, though not everybody knows it, and at a later place, he mentions the possibility that their own language, Latin, can slip away from them through disuse.27 This places Latin as not quite their mother tongue, yet more natural than other languages: more or less a second language.28 This is probably partly due to the near linguistic relationship between the languages resulting in many similarities, and partly due to the role, already mentioned, of Latin being the only actual literary and educational language of the time. This is also supported by the fact that, when Guarino finds that before learning Greek they must first learn aliquod loquendi principium, he does not consider first learning the Volgare, as the Volgare was not taught as a written language, not even in the first years of school.29 26Migliorini (1995, pp. 223–79); Black (2001, p. 98–124). 27“Frequentanda erit in primis graecarum litterarum lectio, nam si nostra temporis desuetudine dilabitur, quid de ea iudicandum est, quae nobis naturalis non est?” (B. Guarini, Ord. doc., §33) 28Though, there are also situations where Latin may be considered more. For example, Michel de Montaigne was raised with the intention to teach him Latin as his first language, by exposing him only to Latin during his first years. 29Black (2001, p. 34–60).

33 2 A Living Language in Change

Thus, we witness a very deliberate use of the similarities between the languages as they use their Italian mother tongue as a deliberate learning strategy. In this way, it may seem, they intend to let their first language influence their second language. In the Renaissance, some of the humanists considered whether the Latin language had ever been spoken as the mother tongue of the ancient Romans, and believed that the relationship between their own Volgare and their literary Latin resembled that between ancient Vulgar Latin and literary Latin, or if the spoken language in Antiquity was even the same as their own.30 This theory emphasizes the role of the Italian humanist as the true heirs to the legacy of Antiquity, placing their language as almost equally related to the prestigious literary form. Also in practical usage, we see a high degree of contact between the two languages, in the form of code-switching. The first manifestations of literature in the Volgare tend to maintain Latin in salient positions such as titles and formulaic expressions, and many letters, for example, switch between the two languages. Migliorini (1995, p. 236) quotes, for example, this mixed text from 1464: “cosa ad nuy non mediocriter molesta duplici ratione, perché il non se può negare che . . . ”. Also in the spoken language at institutions where Latin was the primary teaching language,31 there is evidence that Latin was used along with the vernaculars through different code-mixing phenomena (i.e. the use of two languages within one sentence). For example, Peter Zeeberg has studied notes in almanacs from 17th c. Denmark and found both insertion, alternation, and congruent lexicalization32 in notes that he holds to reflect the actual speech patterns to some degree.33 He notes that, in many instances, the speakers seem to chose the language according to the content, that for example things concerning the daily life are in Danish, and academic content in Latin. Especially interesting for this study, though, is the very close connection between the two languages in the mind and use of the speaker that allows for structural mix such as this:34 Sed tandem illuc venit (Dibvadio negante simpliciter), at di in gratiam Mag- (that they) 30See Ramminger (2010) on the conception of the vernacular in the Renaissance. 31Tunberg (1999). 32Following the typology proposed by Muysken (2000). 33In his presentation titled “Code-switching in Latin from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” at the IANLS congress in Uppsala, 2009. 34Quoted after Zeeberg, and with translations by Zeeberg.

34 2.2 Two Languages in Conta

nifici Domini Cancellarii villde tillade hende dette vden festing ... (would allow her this without a fee) Peder Hegelunds almanakoptegnelser 1565-1613, ed. Bue Kaae (1976, 19.04.1605) In terms of contact linguistics, it is not necessary to distinguish between the relationships between languages as either different dialects or entirely different languages, because the mechanisms, which we shall return to shortly, are of the same kind. Distinctions are a matter of degree. The impact of the language contact and the degree to which these mechanisms change the languages in contact depend on the degree of contact and similarity between the language variants in contact. In the case of neo-Latin and Volgare, we can conclude that there are, as they are actually closely related, many similarities between the language variants, though they are more different from each other than merely dialects. In the humanists’ conception of the languages, they are also in close contact to each other as each others’ spoken and written counterparts, respectively. Finally, we see also a high degree of contact in the code-mixing in active use, an indication of strong bilingualism.35

2.2.1 Language Contact Forming the Language

Language contact can form a language in several ways, from superficial lexical borrowings to actual creolization, depending on the degree of contact. That is, the more intense the contact, the more radical the influence.36 As mentioned, the kind of contact induced change we shall consider in this thesis is interference from the first language (L1) to the second language (L2), or target language (TL). This section considers the possibilities and probabilities of different kinds of innovations to appear under specific linguistic circumstances, and assumes that every innovation that can occur in the use of a single speaker can also spread to the speech community, following the principle for variation between older and newer elements described in 2.1. The nature of neo-Latin as being an L2 to the humanists places the development of the language within the influence from situations such as language shift and imperfect learning. The degree and kind of contact induced changes is, therefore, dependent on the language proficiency that humanists writers could, and would, achieve in studying 35See also Höder (2010) on the influence of Latin and Low German on the Swedish language in the late Middle Ages. 36For introductions to contact linguistics, see e.g.: Thomason (2003); Winford (2003).

35 2 A Living Language in Change

Latin. In 3.2, we shall go into a deeper analysis of this aspect and see why we can expect a rather high degree of language proﬁciency, and expect that neo-Latin is, in many respects, a close approximation to Classical Latin. Nonetheless, there is still evidence of imperfect learning. Imperfect learning of the TL will typically result in another version, TL2, of the native speakers’ TL1,37 because the language learner fails to learn some features— especially those typologically distant from the L1 features—and carries over features from his L1, either as a learning strategy or subconsciously, and perhaps to maintain a semantic distinction from his L1 that cannot be expressed in the TL. Social factors such as geographical—in our case, rather chronological—isolation from the TL1 and bilingualism are factors present in the case of neo-Latin which help the TL2 establish itself as a language variant diﬀerent from the original TL1.

2.2.1.1 The Transfer to Somewhere Principle

Though there is basically no constraints on what features of a language can be transferred to another language in contact, linguistic interference typically happens according to specific principles. Transfer related to second language acquisition (see ahead 3.2) is typically induced by learning strategies based on processes of simplification and generalization, both generalization of features from L1 to L2 and generalization of rules within the L2 to fill a gap in the grammatical knowledge with a rule that the learner knows to apply to a somewhat similar situation. The typological differences and similarities between L1 and L2 direct these patterns of generalization due to The Transfer to Somewhere Principle (TSP—formulated by Roger Andersen, 1983). According to the TSP, a grammatical form from the L1 will only occur—to a significant extent—if there already exists in the L2 the potential for misgeneralization. That is, an L1 feature will not be transferred to an L2 if a similar feature does not already exist in the L2. Transfer of features from the L1 may support correct language usage in the L2 if the feature in question is the same in both language variants. This is positive transfer, and in 13.4.2 we shall see that it seems to play some part in the formation of the neo-Latin

37For examples of known languages showing signs of adult, imperfect learning, see McWhorter (2007).

36 2.3 Measures of Natural Language Use tense system that the tenses are in many respects used in similar ways in Classical Latin and in the mother tongue of the humanists. On the other hand, misgeneralizations of features in the L2 to areas where they do not originally apply may be instances of negative transfer, happening when the language learner thinks to recognize a feature from his L1 in the L2, because something similar exists somewhere else in the L2.

These principles concern the subconscious L1 interference and depend, as we have seen, to a large extent on linguistic similarities and the actual typological character of the languages. They do not—on the level of the individual interference—have any identity related motivation. Though, as we have seen that the humanists used the relatedness of the two languages as an actual deliberate learning strategy,38 interference may be further facilitated by their conception of Latin as the literary register of the Volgare. In this way, instances of positive transfer may be said to be the result of a deliberate teaching program and language conception, with the cost of allowing also negative transfer to give their neo-Latin a feeling of diﬀerence that was probably not intended.39

2.3 Measures of Natural Language Use

With the aim in view to describe the neo-Latin language with respect to its nature as a natural or constructed language, we need to establish some measure for natural language use. The term ‘natural’ spans wide, as many human languages have developed literary languages as well as colloquial variants, and we need measures that acknowledge the literary language as part of natural human language use. The four general approaches that I shall take to this question range from quite practical and philological to more speculative and based on general linguistics. Common is it that the measures should be applicable to neo-Latin independent of the actual form of Classical Latin. That is, we shall not evaluate whether or not neo-Latin is equal to Classical Latin, but rather

38In addition, it should be noted that the Renaissance school grammars for a large part used the vernacular vocabulary for explaining semantic nuances etc. See Black (2001, p. 98–124). 39See further reﬂections on intention in 4.3.

37 2 A Living Language in Change

whether or not neo-Latin in itself can be qualiﬁed as a natural language. This, however, may build on similar analyses of Classical Latin, without using the exact form of Classical Latin as the ‘correct answer’. We shall refer to these measures as the M1, M2 etc.

2.3.1 Individual or Collective Language Use

The first question to be asked of the neo-Latin language is whether or not the data show neo-Latin as a collective, homogeneous form across texts of different authors. In natural speech communities, individual speakers show some individual style in their language, though in general, linguistic trends can be identified as belonging to a specific group, be it a geographic dialect, the language of a generation, or of a social class. Speakers will normally adapt to each others’ speech-habits. Thus, variation in language use between the authors is expected. But it should not be expected for natural language users not to share their conception of language with others. Consequently, to the extent that variation in linguistic practice can be grouped in a meaningful way according to generations of humanists or other professed differences, such as that between Ciceronians and eclectics (see 4.1.1), we shall take it as an indication of natural language use. On the other hand, linguistic practice which might be scattered sporadically across the individual authors, or perhaps found only in the language of a single author, we should probably consider as evidence of an ‘unnatural’ use of language, separated from the natural influence of the community. These considerations are strongly related to the stabilization that, as described in 2.1.2.1, is expected to happen within neo-Latin. Though, it must be carried out with a thought to the nature of the data: Is the corpus simply so small and sporadic that it fails to show coherence that is actually there? In the present study, this is checked for in two ways: 1) Using the division of the corpus into an earlier and a later part, as described on page 29, and information from the debate concerning Ciceronianism, results from different subsets of the corpus can be considered separately, as well as each author can be studied alone. Then 2) these differences can in some cases be compared to patterns found in the corpora of Classical Latin texts, in order to establish whether or not variation between individual neo-Latin authors is of the same nature and extent as found in the Classical Latin language use.

38 2.3 Measures of Natural Language Use

Does neo-Latin form as one language or as several diﬀerent communicative means of individuals, only formerly based on a natural language? First measure of natural language use (M1)

2.3.2 Complexity and Variation

At least within the field of contact linguistics, it is a matter of discussion, whether or not one natural language can be overall less complex than another. It is generally held that a natural language cannot loose complexity—i.e. the possibility to express semantic nuances somehow (not necessarily inflectionally coded)—without gaining the possibility to express the same nuance or its like by some other means.40 On the other hand, McWhorter (2007, 2001, 2005) among others, argues that especially creoles can show signs of non-native learning resulting in simplifications that are not counterbalanced by more complexity in another part of the language. Without taking a stance in this intricate ongoing typological debate between contact linguists, we shall use their writings on complexity as inspiration to investigate the linguistic variation in neo-Latin, as opposed to Classical Latin, assuming that high complexity would, in every case, indicate natural language use, while low complexity may either indicate neo-Latin being used as constructed language or simply sharing some features with creoles (if it is true that creoles are less complex). Consequently, this measure cannot truly be used as an opposing argument, but rather as further supportive evidence, when other factors indicate natural language use. In addition, a fundamental difference may be expected between a primarily spoken creole and a primarily literary prestige language. Because linguistic complexity has to do with the potential of the entire language, an ideal analysis would go across all the levels of the language. As such, the material in this dissertation (centered around verbal inflection in subordinate clauses) is too limited. However, as we shall see in Chapter 4, variatio is a stylistic ideal close to some of the humanists’ hearts. Thus, checking for the degree of variation within the different factors that we have available, for now, should provide a fair measure of the complexity in part of their neo-Latin language, especially because we can in some cases compare the neo-Latin practice to a similar literary language variant, the Classical Latin. 40E.g. Mufwene (2001).

39 2 A Living Language in Change

Especially, we shall consider if some contexts are more varied than others, for example: if there are clause types in which humanists use as many different verb forms as the ancient writers or even more,41 if the use of verb forms seems to primarily reflect fixed expressions, how stylistic variation such as the historic present is used in different genres, and how variation is influenced by being subordinate to less complex clause types, such as the accusative with infinitive.

Does neo-Latin show a natural variation across diﬀerent stylistic and linguistic environments? Second measure of natural language use (M2)

2.3.3 Linguistic Universals

The third measure for natural language use is found within the field of language typology, the comparative studies of languages across the world. With Joseph Greenberg (1966b,a) arose the modern discipline of finding linguistic universals, features that are common for all natural languages. My initial assumption, that neo-Latin does not dramatically and generally present any linguistic features that are not at all found in Classical Latin as well, but that the difference between the two language variants are to be found in the distributions of features, could appear to prohibit inclusion of language universals in the study: If all parts of neo-Latin are also found in Classical Latin, which is considered a natural language, how could anything within neo-Latin possibly go against universals which have taken the natural language Classical Latin into account? My answer is that it may very well be the case that all within this study of neo-Latin can be accounted for within the known universals. Universals do not, however, merely state simple facts such as “All languages have pronominal categories involving at least three persons and two numbers.” (Joseph H. Greenberg (1966a, p. 11, Universal 42)). Such fundamental differences, of course, should not be expected between the two Latin variants. But there has also been identified implications that might be different in neo-Latin from Classical Latin, such as a relation between basic SOV word order (such as Classical Latin, the so-called ordo artificalis) and the possibility to put relative clauses before the clause with its correlate,

41Note, it is not, in this respect, interesting to see if it is the same variation, only if it is equally varied.

40 2.3 Measures of Natural Language Use which should not be normal in languages with SVO as the primary word order (such as Italian, the so-called ordo naturalis).42 Such an implication could be thought to result in ‘unnatural’ relations, where there has been a shift in language type (e.g. SOV→SVO language) between two stages of the language. The literature on linguistic universals can also teach us that some linguistic elements are naturally related to each other, so that for example the subjunctive will appear more often in the context of past tenses than of present tenses (to be discussed in 9.4). Such relationships are more or less ‘invisible’ in reading Classical Latin without a statistical approach and may therefore be diﬀerent in neo-Latin and Classical Latin without neo- Latin ever violating the possibilities of Classical Latin. The theoretical descriptions of mood and grammatical time in Part III are partly based on the literature on linguistic universals, and the particular universals to consider will be mentioned as we go along in the analysis.

Can neo-Latin be described within the frame of previously identiﬁed linguistic universals? Third measure of natural language use (M3)

2.3.4 Patterns of Actualization

As mentioned, Henning Andersen in Actualization: Linguistic Change in Progress,43 describes some observations concerning language change: that changes of particular kinds have a tendency to appear first in particular environments and later spread to the other parts of the language.44 The Actualization Theory (AT) does not describe an unyielding principle, but a tendency that fits many known linguistic changes, while not being applicable to all—which is also evident from the several examples presented by a number of linguists specialized in different languages in the same volume.45 At the few occasions where some change appears to happen to the morpho-syntactic layer of neo- Latin we shall use Andersen’s observations to analyze the possible change in progress, 42See Downing (1978), and a more nuanced description in Keenan (1985). The question of word order unfortunately cannot be investigated with my current data, and it must be up to later studies to map the distributions in Classical Latin and neo-Latin. 43Andersen (2001c). 44Andersen (2001b,a). 45Most relevant for this study are: Bergs and Stein (2001); Busse (2001); Schøsler (2001). See also Nørgård-Sørensen et al. (2011).

41 2 A Living Language in Change

both to see if neo-Latin language change conforms to such observations made in other languages, and in order to analyze whether the change is likely to have happened with some degree of awareness and with relation to the identity of the central language project, the restoration of Classical Latin (as discussed in 2.1.3). Andersen suggests that linguistic innovations—in the process of being accepted in the speech community—actualize differently dependent on whether they are externally or internally motivated (cf. 2.1). That is, innovations start being manifested in actual observable usage in different contexts according to the motivation for the innovation. Consequently, externally motivated innovations will occur first in environments such as written language, more complicated genres, subordinate clauses, preterite tenses, and the subjunctive mood; introduced by speakers who

. . . want to express a particularly aﬀective stance towards the situation or the object referred to, and . . . diﬀerentiate themselves from those speakers that are not expected to follow this trend. Bergs and Stein (2001, p. 84)

In the beginning, such innovations will tend to be used in the most salient environments. For example, the form who being an imitation of Latin qui/quod ﬁrst appeared in formulaic expressions concerning God, then noblemen, and later all humans.46

Actuation, i.e. real change in the linguistic system, however, only occurs when the marked status of both the signifiant and the signifié are somewhat reduced to a ‘normal’ level, and the innovation is actualized in different contexts, styles, and so on. Bergs and Stein (2001, p. 79)

That is, as speakers get used to the new form, it will spread to spoken language, simpler genres, main clauses, present tense, and the indicative, and so on. On the contrary, internally motivated innovations will spread in the opposite direction, ﬁrst appearing in the environments most characteristic of the spoken language. Table 2.4 shows the distinctions in environments proposed by Andersen (2001b, p. 32). Emphasized are the distinctions that we shall be considering in this study: Now, recall that the patterns proposed by Andersen is an alternative way to gain insight into change in progress in apparent time—assuming that innovations appear ﬁrst in certain environments instead of in the language of children. While the patterns

46Bergs and Stein (2001).

42 2.3 Measures of Natural Language Use

Internally motivated Externally motivated present preterite indicative subjunctive 1st person 2nd person singular plural main clause subordinate clause asyndetic syndetic lexical np pronoun prose poetry expository artistic speech writing casual formal

Table 2.4: Environments suitable for language change described by Labov may be more thoroughly tested and generally accepted, it is clear that they cannot successfully by applied to neo-Latin.47 Andersen’s AT, on the other hand, depends on information more suited for a philological investigation, and particularly interesting is it that his observations acknowledge literary language as an equal part of the natural language and relate to literary and stylistic categories such as registers and genres; categories of which many are checked for in the present study. Therefore the theories have been applied meaningfully to texts by for example Shakespeare, in Busse (2001). Andersen introduces the Principle of Markedness Agreement (PMA), according to which marked features in language use will often go together with other marked features (e.g. more preterite and subjunctive in subordinate clauses and in formal registers), and unmarked with unmarked. Based on this, he explains how the environments that seem suitable for externally motivated change can all be characterized as marked (m) , and those for internally motivated change as unmarked (u). Though the terminology of (m) and (u) will not generally be applied to these studies,48 we must—in the process of transferring the theory to the case of neo-Latin—acknowledge that markedness is

47Differences in Latin texts by younger and older humanists are probably not due to biological age but rather differences in education, though it is known that Renaissance humanists developed their language throughout their carrier: Petrarch was known for having edited his own letters when publishing them years later, and Guarino Veronese was blamed by his son for having written poor Latin in his younger days. 48For definitions and discussions of markedness, see Andersen (2001b); Bergs and Stein (2001). I also use the general characterization in Jensen (2012) of unmarked forms as can-something-more forms (i.e.

43 2 A Living Language in Change

a relative and inconstant category which changes according to diﬀerent contexts and languages. We can therefore not blindly assume the categorizations from Figure 2.4 to hold for neo-Latin. This is considered by Lene Schøsler in her attempt to apply the AT to the development of Modern French from Latin.

However, I have problems with the attribution of markedness to genres and registers in older languages. One could imagine that direct discourse is unmarked and closer to ordinary speech. On the other hand, one could imagine, to the contrary, that direct discourse is marked since written text in medieval times is essentially an artiﬁcial language, which causes spoken language inside a written text to be doubly marked. Can we directly project our feelings of what is marked and what is unmarked onto older languages? Lene Schøsler (2001, p. 175) During her investigations, Schøsler concludes that her ﬁrst intuition seems to hold, and so the direct discourse can be considered unmarked in the stage of the French literature that she studied. Because the case of neo-Latin is in many respects similar to that of early French literature, I shall cautiously follow this line and assume that neo-Latin— in so far as it is used as a natural language—will behave according to the original categorizations by Andersen summarized in Table 2.4. A hierarchy of the genres studied in this investigation will be explained in 4.5. Finally, Andersen holds that, in the distinction between evolutive and contact changes, evolutive changes are unmarked, and contact changes marked. In accordance with my considerations in 2.1.3, however, I shall investigate whether changes in neo-Latin that are motivated with relation to identity may follow paths similar to those Andersen has observed for externally motivated, contact induced changes. Such relations would indeed show some similarities in the language use of authors writing in neo-Latin and authors writing in other, natural literary languages. But actual changes to the use of moods and tenses are rare in 15th c. neo-Latin, and we shall also use Andersen’s observations to check if static analyses of neo-Latin show that the language conforms to the PMA.

Can changes to neo-Latin be explained with the Actualization Theory, and can static relations between linguistic factors be described with the Principle of Markedness Agreement? Fourth measure of natural language use (M4)

having a larger domain of use) and marked forms as has-something-more (i.e. a more speciﬁc meaning, or a more complex form).

44 2.3 Measures of Natural Language Use

It is clear that variation is a window into linguistic change, and even that change is sometimes the result of deliberate variation.49 Variation is one central linguistic ideal of the Renaissance humanist, and much eﬀort has gone into developing a varied language, with respect for proprietas. We shall soon return to considerations on style, genre, register etc. which contributed widely to forming the neo-Latin language, on a very deliberate level. First, we shall consider the notion ‘deliberate’ in relation to linguistic change.

49As also mentioned by Busse (2001, p. 91).

Chapter 3

On Will and Ability

Seen from the point of view of a scholar, we can describe the humanist language-project thus: Humanists wish to revive the Classical Latin, and so they change their language so that it meets their new linguistic norm. Within linguistics, some theorists consider the act of deliberately forming your language according to language norm. Among historical linguists, it has long been agreed that linguistic change is not subject to speakers’ conscious manipulations. For example, Henning Andersen recently stated that:

Surely no individual has the power to change a language, deliberately or otherwise, nor are languages known to change as the result of speakers’ collective deliberate decision. Henning Andersen (2005)

This, the researcher of neo-Latin would probably state, has to be possible in order to explain the fact that the neo-Latin language was changed in reference to Classical Latin, as part of a deliberate linguistic program. I consider this discussion as one of terminology and linguistic deﬁnitions, not one of facts. I generally agree that no individual can deliberately change the language on behalf of the entire speech community, in the sense that he cannot force the acceptance and acquisition of his personal innovations in the linguistic behavior of other users of the language. Nevertheless, I believe that circumstances can be such that an individual or a group are extraordinarily well positioned for making their intended innovations known to the community which in turn increases the chances that they will be accepted in the speech community and become actual linguistic changes. Though not necessarily in the exact form that they intended, as they can only

47 3 On Will and Ability

try to inspire, not force language change completely under their control. Consequent- ly, we shall, in the following, study ‘deliberate language change’, deﬁned as striving to inﬂuence the language according to a new norm through changing one’s own language (individually or collectively as Renaissance humanists), and not as directly changing the linguistic habits of others.

3.1 Deliberate Language Change

It is traditionally accepted within historical linguistics that the individual speaker can choose to borrow or invent new words or adopt a few structural features from a prestige dialect, but that speakers cannot deliberately do more than make a few trivial innovations which do not spread to the entire speech community. But this is exactly what I, and others with me, claim that the Renaissance humanists did. Some of these lexical changes would probably be accepted within traditional historical linguistics, but in neo-Latin, the deliberate lexical innovations are not few, but rather the result of a very systematic and widespread language project, and they are not unstable and limited to the few people who invented them, but have spread throughout Europe, and some even entered the vernacular languages. An example is one of the most famous semantic innovations of the 15th century, the verb traducere with the meaning to translate which originates with Leonardo Bruni in the beginning of the 15th century, and is widely used in subsequent Latin and still survives today in French and Italian.1 However—and this is one of the points I wish to make in this thesis—the deliberate adaption of the Latin language to the Classical Latin norm is not limited to lexical innovations, but also produces non-trivial structural changes, for example within the morpho-syntactic verbal system. Traditional historical linguistics is mostly concerned with what has been called ‘natural’ change, the changes of a language that come from below in the socioeconomic systems. These changes are also below the level of social awareness and appear ﬁrst in the spoken language. They are systematic changes that follow the rules stated by the comparative method, and so they are subject primarily to linguistic factors. Latin

1Ramminger (2011, 2003–, lemma: ‘traduco’ (used on 10.10.2013)).

48 3.1 Deliberate Language Change in the phase we call neo-Latin was, however, not a language changed from below, as it only existed in higher socioeconomic levels, and was supported by a dominant social class. This kind of changes is known to happen with full public awareness, and perhaps dependent on social rather than linguistic factors.2

3.1.1 Social Factors

The statement by Andersen, that no individual can change a language consciously, was formulated as an objection to Sarah Thomason’s preceding claims that languages can be changed deliberately by multilingual speakers.3 She asserted this in the article “Lan- guage Contact and Deliberate Change”4 where she lists some social, external factors that make deliberate language change possible. By applying her observations to the settings in which the neo-Latin language was developed,5 I wish not to argue that the Latin language was, in the Renaissance, changed under the full control of some humanists, but rather to outline some social factors that, in my opinion, facilitated some spread of linguistic manifestations that were a result of the conscious language norm formulated and developed by the humanists. Based on examples of deliberate language change from all over the world, Thomason proposes that the presence of some of these social factors is necessary for deliberate change to spread to an entire speech community. We shall consider her observations in relation to neo-Latin and with a view to some similar observations by William Labov (2010, 2001). The factors that she mentions can be summed up thus:

• a small speech community

• very widespread multilingualism

– other-directed world view

– self-directed world view

2Labov (1994, p. 78). 3Thomason (2003, pp. 703–04). 4Thomason (2007). 5The application of Thomason’s theory was presented and discussed in a session on “Referentiality in neo-Latin Language and Literature” at the Inaugural Conference for The Nordic Network for Renaissance Studies in Copenhagen, October 2012.

49 3 On Will and Ability

• the emergence of a new ethnic group

– language to symbolize its new identity

• the deliberate actions of language standardizers

A small speech community: Firstly, Thomason notes that successful deliberate language change almost always is introduced within a small speech community. Among her examples are speech communities of for example 1500 speakers. In comparison with other speech communities, Renaissance humanists who write in Latin are not a very large group of people. Even though they were, as opposed to most small speech communities, scattered throughout Italy—and, with the spread of humanism, Europe—communication between the diﬀerent humanist writers was ensured because Latin was used primarily as a written language. In this way, they read each others’ texts and taught in school using each others’ books. This immediately ensured some measure of ‘coherence’ resembling that of a small speech community—even over large distances—perhaps making it possible to agree on a changed linguistic norm. Thomason’s mentioning a small speech community as a social factor that makes deliberate change possible somehow mirrors Labov’s observation that systematic linguistic change is the result of face-to-face interaction, as opposed to the apparently sparse in- ﬂuence from mass media. Both of these observations concerning speech communities seem to build on the fact that linguistic change and linguistic identity in general are social mechanisms that are negotiated as part of social behavior, and thus presuppose social interaction (traditionally face-to-face, but with the social media of today perhaps with wider margins?). Though we can argue that humanists had good conditions for making their language norm spread and inspire in schools etc., this primarily written, institutional practice does not seem the ordinary social setting suited for linguistic change. Undoubtedly, many humanists shared actual social environments, and thus the linguistic community that exists between friends and between teachers and their students, such as that between Valla and Perotti, probably lives up to the requirement of social interaction in a more or less direct way. But what if we try to consider neo-Latin as one linguistic community?

50 3.1 Deliberate Language Change

Labov adds that “. . . large-scale linguistic change implies that interaction of the orig- inating group with outsiders does not decrease but increase over time.” (William Labov (2001, p. 229)). That is, direct contact is necessary for a change to spread from the original small community to larger communities—in our case all texts in the corpus, or even the Latin language that was to be developed in Northern Europe? Today, one can easily gain access to texts from all over the world without ever leaving home. In the Renaissance, however, some actual traveling was a necessity for gaining access to new books, and it is well known how humanists traveled to other libraries in searching for texts, just as they went to study with acknowledged scholars. In fact, actual social contact was essential for the humanism itself and the norm of neo-Latin to spread, and even the ‘virtual’ contact through books and teachers may have had the role of social contact to some degree. Especially when we consider the widespread metalinguistic discourse which—though it was written and not face-to-face—may have helped humanists to somehow align their position on language so as to build up a common linguistic form in the humanist society. The value of this intellectual interaction, and whether it can actually substitute social face-to-face interaction because of the more considered and ‘slow’ language form of literary neo-Latin, is an interesting question, which we shall eventually evaluate through studying whether neo-Latin develops as a consistent language that seems to be agreed upon in the community, or whether it seems to be ‘scattered’ linguistic forms too individual to reﬂect social linguistic agreement.6

Very widespread multilingualism: Sarah Thomason finds that often, but not necessarily, deliberate language change is found where different languages come into contact, that is, where speakers of one language or one dialect learn another language, or commu- nicate with people who speak another language or dialect, as we saw for the neo-Latin language in 2.2. In establishing the motivations for conscious language change, it seems a rather important factor that the speakers often seek to identify themselves with a community that has another language or dialect. This other-directed world-view, as Thomason calls it, is, in the case of humanist Latin, represented by the strong identifica-

6As discussed in 2.3.1.

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tion with Ancient Rome and the Classical Latin language, and the humanists themselves connect the revival of the Classical Latin with the restoration of Classical literature and knowledge (e.g. in the natural sciences), and position themselves as the heirs of Ancient Rome and ancient culture. Additionally, a self-directed world-view can also be a motivation strong enough to change a language at will, that is, to change a language in a way that makes it diﬀerent from the language or dialect of the neighbors. The wish to distance oneself from neighbors must be strong in order to actually ‘resist’ the expected and normal convergence between two neighboring dialects in close contact.7 And the contact to their ‘bad’ contemporary Latin was close, as the two norms meet in, for instance, the Papal Court, or even within the individual in cases where humanists are known to have switched different Latin norms in diﬀerent contexts. And the motivation among the humanists for distancing themselves from Scholastic Latin is indeed strong: According to humanists, the Classical Latin language has degenerated from its best state and thus is in need of extensive repairs and restoration. The major obstacle to this process of renovation is Scholastic Latin which is considered corrupt and barbarian by humanists. The humanist ‘mission’—if we can call it that—was formulated as a call to arms in a famous passage in Lorenzo Valla’s preface to his Elegantiae:

. . . confido propediem linguam romanam vere plus quam urbem, et cum ea disciplinas omnes, iri restitutum. Quare pro mea in patriam pietate, immo adeo in omnes homines, et pro rei magnitudine cunctos facundie studiosos velut ex superiore loco libet adhortari evocareque et illis, ut aiunt, bellicum canere. Quousque tandem, Quirites (litteratos appello et romane lingue cultores, qui et vere et soli Quirites sunt, ceteri enim potius inquilini), quousque, inquam, Quirites, urbem nostram, non dico domicilium imperii, sed parentem litterarum, a Gallis captam esse patiemini? id est latinitatem a barbaria oppressam? Lorenzo Valla, Elegantiae linguae Latinae, Praef. 33–36 Valla laments the fact that Latin has suffered the same fate as the Roman Empire itself. How long, he asks, will learned men suffer that their city, the foundation of all learning, is held captive by the Gauls, that is, how long will Rome, that is Classical culture, be oppressed by Paris, that is scholastic culture? Still, he is confident that—if not the city—its language, the lingua Romana, will soon be revived, and thus will form the 7Cf. the Principle of Accommodation, Labov (2010, pp. 4–7).

52 3.1 Deliberate Language Change basis of a renewal of all the disciplines. Since the humanists were the heirs to the Latin language, they were ﬁghting for nothing less than their own property; Latin culture, as they saw it, depended on their success. The Scholastic Latin is the neighbors that humanists would not be associated with, this indicates a very strong feeling of ‘us against them’.8 The entire idea of wanting to change a language goes against the “. . . general, conscious consensus . . . that language should not change, and that any changes that have occurred are bad.” (William Labov (2001, p. 222)). According to Labov, most changes, as soon as they rise to the level of consciousness, are stigmatized and sought prevented.9 Interestingly, this is also the case with the humanists. Only, it is not their own changes to the language that are bad, but the changes that have happened earlier throughout centuries. So, we can describe their intended language change as ‘unchange’, only it has taken centuries for the changes to rise to the level of consciousness, or at least for the speech community to react to them. In any respect, their attitude to their ‘academic neighbors’ seems closely related to their attitude to the ‘bad change’ which has happened to Latin, both being well known reactions to language and identity.

The emergence of a new ethnic group: The next factor, the emergence of a new ethnic group, is by Thomason meant literally, that when a new people emerges, they may want to establish themselves with their own language. Humanists are no such actual new ethnic group. However, as it is argued by Marianne Pade (among others), it seems that “. . . the development of humanist Latin in the fourteenth and ﬁfteenth centuries was also a means to constitute an Italian cultural identity.” (Marianne Pade (2012, p. 18)). Pade argues that Italian humanists in their argumentations characterize the Latin language as belonging to themselves because they claim to literally descend from the ancient Romans, like we saw in Valla’s text above. Their Classical heritage is not merely considered to be intellectual, but an actual ethnic claim. And the revival of Classical Latin was probably an important part of their national identity. Further more, some mechanisms can be found in the writings of the humanists that resemble mechanisms that have been identiﬁed in the process of formation of the modern

8See also Johnson (1978). 9Labov (2010, p. 186).

53 3 On Will and Ability

national states.10 And even though the humanists are rather an international group than national, this early use of neo-Latin, to establish an Italian national identity, remains a central part of neo-Latin literature, which is used throughout Europe in constructing national identities.11 Curiously, Labov (2001, pp. 245–341) who studies the impact of diﬀerent social factors on linguistic change ﬁnds that the ethnic identity among speakers of Northern American dialects is a weaker factor than both gender, age, and social class or networks. This indicates that it is perhaps not the construction of particularly ethnic new identity that facilitates deliberate change, but merely the construction of new community identity. In Thomason’s examples, actual new ethnic groups have emerged, all striving to identify themselves as a group having some linguistic features in common. Humanists express an equally strong need to distinguish themselves as a group, and they put particularly much emphasis on the role that their linguistic consensus plays in forming their identity. In conclusion, though humanists speak of neo-Latin in terms of nationalism, this mostly emphasizes the strong feeling of identity that they associate with being part of the emerging humanism, the social network in which their language develops.

The deliberate actions of language standardizers: Finally, Thomason mentions that, in some cases, a language standardizer can deliberately want to change the language, officially and on behalf of, for example, an entire nation, and some are known to have succeeded in making their linguistic innovations spread to most of the users of their language. Renaissance humanism had not only one such language standardizer, but several, who all—despite differences in the details—worked towards more or less the same goal: to change the Latin language and make the Classical Latin reappear in their own Latin. Among others, Valla’s Elegantiae and Perotti’s Cornu copiae served as manuals intended, not only for reading Classical Latin, but also, and especially, for writing a modern Latin that matched their standards and ambitions for the language. Such leading grammarians also held the position to influence the education, as new manuals, treatises, and grammars were written and introduced into the school curriculum. And 10Pade (2012). 11For example as far away from the Ancient Roman Empire as in Denmark, national identity is established, paradoxically by justifying national literature as the heir to Classical Latin literature. See Hass (2011, 2012, to appearb).

54 3.1 Deliberate Language Change so, the language standards of several language standardizers, in the Renaissance, had especially good conditions for establishing and spreading the norm in the entire educated circle around the humanists. The relation between the will of such humanist grammarians and the actual change in the language is illustrated by Johann Ramminger (2012) in his account of the success of some words that Perotti presented as Classical in his Cornu copiae, though they had no Classical Latin precedence. According to Ramminger, Perotti introduces seven new words of the type ending in –loquus which were not, or only very rarely, used in earlier Latin variants. Of these seven innovations, two become very popular in later humanist writings, while the remaining five see no increase in use. This I believe is a clear example on how an individual grammarian can present his own stance on the language to others and provide the basis and the inspiration for language change, but cannot force the acceptance, and cannot decide or predict which elements will be accepted by others and gradually spread. But it also definitely shows the possibility for grammarians to affect the entire language; to affect it but not to force it.

When Thomason’s observations concerning deliberate change are applied to neo-Latin, it is evident that the situation of the Renaissance humanists was an ideal setting for deliberate change. Inspired by these observations, we see that the new identity that humanists strongly sought to establish with the help from neo-Latin was of great importance for their linguistic project to succeed. This relation between language and identity will be further exempliﬁed in terms of humanist style in the following Chapter. In addition, the practical situation seems important too, and so their linguistic project is helped by their status in society as teachers and diplomats, their relatively small number being a rather restricted community, and their means of communication. Still, the neo-Latin language probably cannot be expected to be used completely like a natural language. One additional factor, neither mentioned by Thomason nor usually in connection with language change in general, seems to play its (sometimes decisive) part in the formation of neo-Latin: the actual grammatical knowledge of humanists and the grammatical

55 3 On Will and Ability

tradition in Renaissance schools. The necessity of being able to learn is probably a matter of course in the case of ﬁrst languages. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985, p. 14) describe how linguistic behavior can be seen as acts of identity, that is as revealing one’s personal identity as well as search for social roles. One conclusion drawn from experience with creoles and linguistic change that has reached a high degree of social awareness is:

The individual creates his system of verbal behavior so as to resemble those common to the group or groups with which he wishes from time to time to be identiﬁed, to the extent that: ...(a) he is able to identify those groups ...(b) his motives are suﬃciently clear-cut and powerful ...(c) his opportunities for learning are adequate ...(d) his ability to learn—that is, to change his habits where necessary—is unimpaired. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985, p. 115) cited after Labov (2010, p. 193)

While the identification of the group ‘humanists’ has not been considered explicitly, we have just identified the rather powerful and clear-cut motives that spurred the humanists to identify them as a group, and this constraint somewhat mirrors Thomason’s findings. The last two items, however, suggest—as I would to someone studying neo-Latin—to consider the possibility of learning language and the linguistic nuances that are implicat- ed in the identity constructing linguistic behavior. My studies in neo-Latin indicate that this is an important additional factor in the process of first establishing a new language norm to identify this intellectual group, the humanists, under full public awareness, and then actually changing one’s language according to the norm. Especially because neo- Latin is not the native language of its users, so that native-like proficiency cannot be expected. Note, that this ‘grammatical knowledge constraint’ does not alone affect the possibility to make intended innovations spread to the entire speech community. It even decides whether or not an individual is able to decipher and produce what language the community agrees on, and thus the ability to form his own language according to will. In the following, consider ‘opportunities for learning’ to be expressed as the actual, collective grammatical knowledge in the Renaissance, and the ‘ability to learn’ to be the result of Latin teaching and studying and general constraints on second language acquisition.

56 3.2 Grammatical Knowledge and Language Proficiency

3.2 Grammatical Knowledge and Language Proﬁciency

The situation of the neo-Latin language is peculiar because of its heavily institutionalized setting. Most of what we know about second language and foreign language acquisition is based on either people migrating to a community where another language is spoken— they learn the new language in its ‘natural’ setting—or otherwise children learning a foreign language in school—under overt instruction.12 Neo-Latin is learned and used primarily within learned circles, and primarily in the written form, not the spoken. This definitely places the language as a school language, but probably also more than that. It is not learned away from its natural setting, which is normally the case when one thinks of language teaching in school. Academia is the natural environment of Latin, in the Renaissance,13 and the literary form is its primary existence. This is probably why, in studying neo-Latin, the linguistic knowledge seems to have more influence on the language than is normally attributed to it in studies of language change. A written language is different from a spoken in some fundamental respects.14 One is the time spent on the language produced. In spoken language, at least in normal conversation, the time spent on producing a sentence more or less corresponds to the time it takes uttering it, and the utterance exists for as long as well. A written sentence will remain to exist long beyond, and more thought can be put into it, as real time has no influence on the final sentence, which exists in a spatial representation on the paper, not a temporal. In short, more deliberate thought can be put into the written language, and perhaps that is why the grammatical knowledge seems to influence the institutional language of neo-Latin in seemingly unusual ways. Modern scholars in second language acquisition (SLA) are aware that some L2 users may surpass native speakers in language knowledge, for example making fewer spelling mistakes than some native users of the language, such as children or less educated people.15 The distinction between linguistic and metalinguistic competences—i.e. what one knows and what one knows that he knows—may result both in L2 users that master

12Cook (2001); Winford (2003, pp. 208–34). 13One can think of parallels in the English language spoken in the educated strata in present time India, or Swiss German. 14Garton and Pratt (1989). 15Cook (2001).

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even parts of the language that they were never taught, and in L2 users that do not command parts of a language actively, even though they were taught, say, grammatical rules on that part of the language. In the following, we shall consider the linguistic as well as metalinguistic qualiﬁcations that Renaissance humanists acquired through teaching in school and through studying the Classical Latin literature and language.

3.2.1 Teaching Latin

Robert Black describes in his Humanism and Education16 the teaching of Latin in the Renaissance. Black points out that Latin teaching was clearly divided into the elementary and the secondary grammar education, and there was a clear distinction between the topics taught before and after passing from elementary to secondary grammar school, between the grammars used, the authors that the students read, and even their teachers. The boys had learned their vernacular language first as a spoken language,17 and their firs encounter with written language (in a school room context) was in elementary schools where they until around the age of 11 years were taught written Latin by doctores puerorum, teachers whose Latin proficiency was sometimes very poor. Here they learned first the alphabet, and then syllables, words, and finally phrases. By the end of the elementary school, they were expected to know the conjunctions and declinations, and to master the eight parts of speech as presented by Late Latin Donatus in the Ars minor or one of its many alternatives. Only then the c. 12-years old18 boy could go on to the secondary education, the grammar school, where they were taught by the magister grammatice, an actual grammarian. Now they could learn the advanced grammatical rules, concentrate on syntax, stylistic details, read the Classical authors, and refine their composition. An interesting question then is to what extent their Latin is influenced by the variant

16Black (2001). 17With a few exceptions, such as Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) who was deliberately taught Latin as his ﬁrst language. 18Note, that c. 12 years of age is often mentioned as a possible critical age before which learning an L2 should have begun in order to have the possibility to ever reach near-native proﬁciency. This, however, holds primarily for spoken languages and in cases of migration. See e.g. Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2006). However, the age of eight years is mentioned by Labov (2010, p. 8). In the Renaissance, school age was normally 6 through 15 years. See Grendler (1991, p. 44).

58 3.2 Grammatical Knowledge and Language Proficiency of Latin that they were taught in their younger days: The new norms of the humanist Latin, namely, were not considered to be part of the elementary education, but rather the stylistic program of the grammar schools. Robert Black (2001) describes in his Hu- manism and Education a rather conservative approach to elementary language teaching, as the Ars minor was the model for elementary grammar teaching from late Medieval schools to Renaissance schools. Throughout the Middle Ages, it had been adapted to non-native learners of Latin, for instance in various kinds of Ianua, reading books that treated, along with the eight parts of speech described in Donatus, rules for recognizing the individual declensions, which would not be necessary to teach native speakers of Latin.19 The books used in the elementary school of the Renaissance had somehow lost their character as grammar manuals, as they had been shortened, not intended for full command of all the rules, but rather as actual reading books. This corresponds with the new kind of teachers, the doctores puerorum, who taught the boys to read, pronounce, and memorize texts, rather than teaching an active knowledge of Latin grammar. Thus, the basic Latin language learned in elementary school was more or less the same as the Latin that was developed throughout the Middle Ages, at least until 1468, when Niccolò Perotti published Rudimenta grammatices, the ﬁrst humanist grammar to combine elementary and secondary Latin education, beginning with the alphabet and ending with a treatise on letter writing. Until then, the Classicized language norm was taught by humanist teachers in the place of the Medieval secondary grammar teaching—the study of ars dictaminis (elegant letter writing) and especially the 13th century Doctrinale20 by Alexandre de Villedieu. Humanist grammars, therefore, belonged to this secondary program. The ﬁrst humanist grammar, Regulae grammaticales by Guarino Veronese, was published in 1418, a treatise on syntax that was intended for the student who already commanded the basic morphology, and the next generation of humanist manuals for advanced grammar was lead on

19These grammars were largely inspired by the ﬁrst sixteen books of Late Latin Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae, the Priscianus maior that was itself popular as well, which presented the syllabus taught in elementary schools and further more was intended for non-native learners of Latin, namely students in Constantinople. 20The most popular secondary grammar for centuries, a comprehensive, systematic textbook, for a part build on Priscian’s Institutiones, while containing new aspects especially on syntax. It introduced mnemonic verses and organized the information for easier use in the schools. Many humanist teachers even kept recommending that students consulted Alexandre for further knowledge.

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by Lorenzo Valla who in 1444 published the Elegantiae linguae Latinae, an influential account of the style in the Latin language that took its departure in quoting sentences by the Classical Latin authors, describing why this use was the most elegant. Where the elementary level taught the ordo naturalis (the word order known from their vernacular languages) and what Quintilian calls recte loquendi scientia (correct orthography, morphology and syntax), the grammar level taught the ordo artificalis (Classical Latin word order) and Classical Latin vocabulary and composition. Consequently, secondary grammar education was an education in style, not in grammar as such, and was based on the Classical Latin language rather than the Medieval Latin that was taught in the elementary education. However, is this change in language variant in reality a dramatic change resulting in adults using an entirely different language variant than they were taught in elementary school? Or is it merely to be considered a change in style that resembles the natural increase in the complexity of the language input that older students—learning all kinds of languages—are confronted with, when they develop register—the stylistic difference between actual literacy and merely ‘putting speech into text’?21 Perhaps the analysis of the neo-Latin language in Part III will give some indication.

3.2.1.1 Studying Techniques

What causes a high level of proficiency in writing is not easily determined. It is generally agreed that, in learning a spoken L2, it is crucial to begin learning the language at a young age. However, in learning a written foreign language, age may not be the dominant factor. It may as well be the effect of education and the amount of text that the L2 learner encounters, as well as the kinds of text and situations of reading, rather than it depends on age in a biological sense.22 Most important, probably, in the case of the Renaissance humanists, is the question of actually reading texts. I came to think of the Renaissance humanists when Vivian Cook (2001) mentioned the Polish author of English literature Joseph Conrad as a modern example of the differences between proficiency in a spoken and a written L2. He did not learn English

21Garton and Pratt (1989, p. 181). 22I depend in this respect on valuable advice from Anne Holmen, Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use, University of Copenhagen.

60 3.2 Grammatical Knowledge and Language Proficiency until he was an adult and is said to have had a foreign accent in his spoken English while his written English was native-like. It was not the fact that he was an adult learner that caught my attention—as this was not the case for the Renaissance humanists—but the learning strategies that lead to this acclaimed ﬂuent proﬁciency in written English despite his late onset. Joseph Conrad himself should have mentioned that reading was the best way to pick up a language, himself having read among others Dickens and Shakespeare. On the contrary, he refused to learn grammar.23

Though Renaissance humanists deﬁnitely did not refuse to learn grammar, they were, at least in theory, reluctant to overload the students with innumerable, obscure grammatical rules, and it was their very conscious learning strategy to get on from elementary grammar to actually reading the ancient models,24 and to read with the intention of learning the language, to notice sententiae that could be used in their own Latin language. In the Renaissance, an actual practice of ‘imitative reading’ was established.25 This practice was expressed, for instance, in changes in the use of commentaries in the Renaissance, which now became collections of commonplaces that were written down and memorized while reading the Classical Latin texts, designed for use in the humanists’ own compositions.26 This is closely connected to the imitative principles of the humanist Latin style, as we shall discuss in 4.1, and linguistic education should not, in the grammar school, be separated from stylistic education.

Equipped with strategies for improving their memory, such as reading out loud and

23Ray (2007). 24Jensen (1996). Leonardo Bruni, for example, recognizes the necessity of grammars, but emphasizes how diligentia in studying gives a true and complete feeling of the language and literature: “Est aliud genus praeceptionis robustius, ne tam pueris quam adultis perutile; eorum scilicet, qui grammatici appellantur . . . Sed omnia (mihi crede) superat ac vincit diligentia nostra. Haec enim non verba solum et syllabas, sed tropos et figuras et omnem ornatum pulchritudinemque orationis aperit nobis atque ostendit. Ab hac informamur ac velut instituimur, denique per hanc multa discimus, quae doceri a praeceptore vix possunt: sonum, elegantiam, concinnitatem, venustatem.” (Bruni, Stud., § 4–5). These ideas, still young in the Renaissance, to some extent resemble modern discussions of which methods most effectively teach literacy to children in the school room, where most seem to recommend a balance between both rich immersion into real, social language use and overt teaching of grammar to construct a meta-language and a reflected understanding of the mechanisms of language. See e.g. Gee (2001); Rees-Miller (2001); Garton and Pratt (1989). 25Inspired by James Hankins, Marianne Pade (2005a, 2011) describes the concept. 26As proposed by Craig Kallendorf in his talk on “Commentaries, Commonplaces, and Neo-Latin Studies” at the Fourteenth International Congress of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies, 2009 in Uppsala, Sweden, as well as in his introduction in Kallendorf (2002). See also Grafton (1988).

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writing down and rereading sententiae during the night,27 the humanist students read and ‘absorbed’ immense amounts of Latin literature, with the goal in view to improve their own Latin. In the writings of the humanists, such as De ordine docendi et studendi, Battista Guarini’s (1538–1612) treatise on language teaching, we often encounter an emphasis on the amounts of text to be studied: Sed omnino illud teneant ut semper ex iis quae legunt conentur excerpere sibique persuadeant quod Plinius dictitare solebat nullum esse librum tam malum ut non in aliqua parte prosit. Battista Guarini, De ordine docendi et studendi, § 31 Similarly, in the dedicatory letter to his Cornu copiae (proh. 4,9–12), Niccolò Perotti underlines his fascination with the literature by Martial because of its “et uocabulorum et sententiarum et rerum omnium copia, tanta ubertas”. This emphasis on the amounts of Classical Latin text to be studied is closely connected to the act of reading during the night, expressed—twice in Perotti’s dedicatory letter, as well as in several other humanist writings28—in the topos-like constellation of the words labore, studia, and uigilantia. The concept of sleepless nights had been a topos in Latin prose prefaces since Cicero, serving to stress the hard work of the author.29 Now, the humanist addition of studia to the topos indicates the central role of these nightly eﬀorts to the studia humanitatis.30 It is my conviction that this comprehensive reading of the Classical literature, though intended for remembering the wise meanings and obtaining the style contained in the sententiae of the ancients, also may have lead to some subconscious adaptation of their own language to the literature they read—even in the deeper structural, grammatical layers of the language that they were not aware of. This subconscious adaption is not complete, and it does not result in humanists copying everything from the Classical Latin language that they are not aware of, but I believe that it is a factor that plays its part in forming the neo-Latin language. Remembering the discussion above of the school room being the ‘natural’ milieu of Latin in the Renaissance, this learning strategy—based on reading, absorbing, and 27B. Guarini, Ord. doc., § 29–31. 28E.g. Alberti, Comm. litt., 2.4; 3.19; 4.36; Alberti, Intercen., IV.218; Decembrio, Pol., III.28.18.35; Veronese, Ep., I.313.45; I.585.15; I.628; II.494.30; Salutati, Ep.. 29Janson (1964, 155–57). 30As well as it, in the preface, serves Perotti to place him and his work in the new tradition of commentaries that were strongly inspired by Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae. Grafton (1988); Cavazza (1987).

62 3.2 Grammatical Knowledge and Language Proficiency interacting with original text—is perhaps the closest one can come to the modern concept of ‘immersion in socialized language use’ with a language that exists as a primarily literary form. In any case, it oﬀers some parallel that at the same time adds subconscious as well as conscious linguistic knowledge.

3.2.2 Grammatical Tradition

From learning Latin, we shall now move on to discussing a few fundamental characteristics of the grammatical tradition and the metalinguistic discourse in the Renaissance, which had some impact on the neo-Latin language. Especially, we shall focus on the description of syntax and morpho-syntax.31 Even though the Classical Latin language has not changed in the time that has passed since the Renaissance, there are some remarkable differences between the way Renaissance humanists and we today describe and explain its grammar. Jozef IJsewijn, in his Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, explains the difference between our modern knowledge on the Classical Latin language and “what they (Neo-Latin authors) thought or knew to be classical Latin” in terms of the different resources that the early humanists had at their disposal, at a time when they were struggling to establish the tradition that was to become Classical Philology:

In our appreciation of their style we should never forget that only since the late nineteenth century detailed repertories of grammatical and stylistic usage in Roman authors have become available. No humanist ever had a Kühner on his desk, nor a critical Bibliotheca Teubneriana! If, therefore, one comes across grammatical oddities (from our point of view) one can better look up the problem in the grammars of Perottus and Despauterius, or in one of the many other humanist manuals. Jozef IJsewijn (1998, p. 410) In addition to these obvious misunderstandings of what was Classical Latin, also the overall focus of grammatical interest is fundamentally diﬀerent from today’s. As Alexandre’s Doctrinale spread to the Italian school room, came with it the novel linguistic theories conceived in the learned circles of France, especially Paris, in the 31Keith Percival (2004) who studies innumerable aspects of language and grammar has provided an abundance of analyses of historical grammatical works, especially those of the Renaissance humanists. In this section, I am deeply indebted to his detailed accounts of the terminology, the linguistic theories, and the grammatical tradition on which the Renaissance grammarians based their school books, treatises, and grammars. See also Campbell (2001); Taylor (1987b); Black (2001); Hovdhaugen (1987).

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12th century. This new northern grammatical tradition came with the invention of logic, which had established a desire to describe the language due to categorical logical causes. The notions of subjectum and praedicatum were invented, though they were logical categories and not grammatical terms. The grammatical terminology was in large dependent on the conception of word order. In this respect, the ordo naturalis was described not only as the word order that was natural in the vernacular languages (SVO) but also as the logical word order, as the subject was thought to come logically before the verb, and the constituents logically after the verb. From this came the grammatical terms ante se denoting what case the verb governed on the place before it—that is the case of the subject—and post se denoting the cases found after the verb—typically objects.32 The discovery that all words in a sentence were related and the concept of governing, for which the main term now became regere after centuries of vague denominations, became central to the new interest in syntax, and thus verbal syntax at the time of the Renaissance humanists was still mainly concerned with categorizing the verbs due to the cases that they govern, as is seen in for instance a sentence in the Rudimenta grammatices by Niccoló Perotti:

Quae sunt verba quae tam ante se quam post se exigunt nominativum casum? Duo substantia verba sum et existo, ut sum bonus, sum doctus. Perotti, Rud., fol. 44v quoted after: Percival (1981, p. 248)

Also semantic categories, such as res agens and res patiens, were studied, as well as the genus of the verb, a category rising in the tension field between morphological difference between active and passive, the syntactic difference between verbs governing the nominative, accusative, or a/ab with the ablative, and the semantic difference between res agens and res patiens.33 Among other advanced topics treated in these new secondary grammars are agreement, infinite verbal forms, negatives, impersonals, and conjunctions. Based on the accounts by Black (2001) and Percival (2004) and readings of the actual Renaissance grammars, such as Elegantiae and Rudimenta grammatices, one can observe that the syntactic treatment in the Renaissance is radically different from that of the present day, as it has its roots in Medieval French traditions of logical thought.

32Alternative terms were suppositum and appositum. 33Hovdhaugen (1987).

64 3.2 Grammatical Knowledge and Language Proficiency

Meanwhile, the novel interest in verbal governance results in a focus on the cases governed by the individual verbs. For the sake of this thesis, I would like to emphasize two tendencies apparent in Renaissance grammars, namely that 1) the focus in describing the governing of verbs is on case, more than on tense and mood, and that 2) it is based on the individual verbs, more than on general syntactic structures such as indirect discourse or main clause vs. subordinate clause, which is in fact shown very little interest. For instance, Valla was recognized as extremely skilled in phraseology and thus treats an abundance of words in his Elegantiae, describing the most elegant use and the most minute semantic nuances between synonyms. Meanwhile, there is not given much thought to more general syntactic patterns that go beyond that individual word (or group of words). Elegantiae was intended as a manual in style. However, even if we consider Perotti’s Rudimenta grammatices, the ﬁrst entire humanists grammar to cover both the elementary and the grammar school curriculum, the major part of the discussion of verbs is concerned with morphology, congruency, governing, and the meanings of individual verbs. Considerations of the general nature of the moods is restricted to a few deﬁnitions, concerned with pointing to a formal and precise way to distinguish between them, such as:

Quis est modus indicatiuus? Quo indicamus quid agitur . . . Quis est modus subiunctiuus? Qui non solum eget aduerbio uel coniunctione, uerum etiam altero uerbo, ut perfectum signiﬁcet sensum. Niccolò Perotti, Rudimenta grammatices, §282–85 In a similar way, some of the tenses are treated sporadically, naming the most basic meaning of an indicative tense. The subjunctive tenses are not described with respect to their semantic values. For example, the imperfect indicative:

Docebam cuius temporis? Praeteriti imperfecti, quia quod coepit geri nondum est perfectum. Vnde formatur? A secunda persona praesentis indicatiui ... idem, §323 This—in comparison with modern grammars and Latin teaching—sparse interest in the functions of moods and tenses makes the humanists’ linguistic practice within these parts of the language an interesting subject of study. As we shall see, there are some diﬀerences between their ability to imitate Classical Latin in parts of the language that can be accounted for by their area of specialization and those that fall outside of their

65 3 On Will and Ability

grammatical field of vision. In some instances, their grammatical awareness, or the lack thereof, is the most plausible explanation why they succeed or fail in imitating a Classical Latin practice. Returning to the cases where Renaissance humanists had another understanding of grammar than we have today, we see the evidence of the ongoing development of grammatical terminology and knowledge, which was gradually established through centuries from the Classical grammarians to the Renaissance, and systematized and refined since then. We shall see an example of such a difference that one must acknowledge before being able to treat the Renaissance grammarians. Remaining with Perotti, his introduction to tenses in the indicative and the subjunctive would surprise most modern Latinists:

Indicatiuus quot tempora habet? Quinque: praesens, praeteritum imperfectum, praeteritum perfectum, praeteritum plusquamperfectum, et futurum.

idem, §288

Subiunctiuus quot tempora habet? Quinque per se sicut indicatiuus. idem, §291

Where is the future perfect, would one ask? And what is this ﬁfth inﬂected subjunctive tense? The answer is obvious. The verbal form amavero. Earlier, it was recognized as the future perfect indicative, by Varro (116-27 BC), but by the time of the early humanists, it was thought of as a future subjunctive,34 which according to modern terminology does not exist. It was recognized, again, as the future perfect indicative by Giulio Pomponio Leto in 1484.35 In doing such research as the present (identifying the humanists’ use of the tenses and moods), it is obviously a matter of consideration to distinguish such fundamental conceptions of the language as the nature of the verbal forms, which we shall look at in the particular situations during the analysis. Regarding the form amavero, it will be called a future perfect, because there is reason to believe that the humanists actually used it as such, which will be discussed in 12.3.2.

34Which is seen, for example, here: “. . . Futurum subiunctiui formatur á praeterito perfecto eiusdem modi mutata rim in ro.” (Perotti, Rud., §328). 35Percival (1983, s. 321); Taylor (1987a, section 0.3).

66 3.2 Grammatical Knowledge and Language Proficiency

The addition of grammatical knowledge as an important factor in forming the language may be very peculiar for the neo-Latin language. And this may be the single most ‘unnatural’ characteristic seen from the point of view of an historical linguist—though probably not at all unexpected to scholars familiar with Renaissance humanism. Despite this immediately unnatural result of neo-Latin being a written, institutional language, the grammatical knowledge is not at all ‘omnipotent’ in the formation of neo-Latin. However unnatural it seems that grammatical knowledge inﬂuences the neo-Latin language that much, it is also closely connected to the prime purpose of neo-Latin as being a literary language. In the following, we shall consider neo-Latin as the intersection between language and literature, as the style of the Humanists.

Chapter 4

Humanist Style

In humanist education and language conception, it is characteristic that literary, stylistic, and linguistic elements form a whole together with the thoughts, knowledge, culture, and history; all of this together is called ‘Latin’ and is more or less synonymous with studia humanitatis,1 an inseparable whole that contains the very thought of the revived culture of Antiquity. Niccolò Perotti, when he wrote his Cornu copiae, had an ambitious goal. He claimed to “. . . non unum Poetam, sed uniuersam Latinam linguam uelle interpretari” (Perotti, Ccopiae., proh. 2), though the work has the form of a commentary to Martial. To exemplify this description of the entire Latin language, he shortly after lists, with awe, a number of diﬀerent writers and disciplines all treated in his work:

Hinc grammatici, hinc rhetores, hinc Poetae, hinc Dialectici, hinc earum ar- tium quas liberales uocant studiosi, hinc medici, hinc philosophi, hinc ciuilis ac pontificii iuris antistites, hinc rei militaris periti, hinc agricolae, hinc pic- tores, hinc architecti, hinc fabri omnes atque opifices multa et pene infinita haurire possunt eorum studiis necessaria . . . Niccolò Perotti, Cornu copiae, proh. 6

The fascination of the humanists for all the knowledge that could be extracted from reading the Classical Latin works is obvious. And it was considered part of learning Latin to extract as much information as possible, because it was a necessity to understand both the context and the language itself if they were to imitate the language properly

1Pade (2010, used on 26.11.2013, esp. V).

69 4 Humani Style

in their own Latin compositions.2 This is one of the reasons why the language cannot be separated from the other related disciplines, least of all stylistics, even in a primarily linguistic investigation.

Today’s Classical philologists still reflect a similar approach to reading the Classical texts, as we are still generally educated in Greek and Latin as a whole, having typically been taught both language, history, philosophy etc. all based on reading literature. Because of the stylistic nature of neo-Latin and because of the Classical philological tradition, this linguistic study is closely related to and based on literary studies of neo- Latin. Therefore the data and the corpus are designed with a great focus on genre, and distinctions between different literary genres represent the basic division of the corpus. My previous studies of the writings of individual humanists reveal a close relationship between their linguistic practice and the stylistic expression, as we shall see for example in Chapter 10. Therefore there is reason to believe that stylistic differences, such as between genre, could prove decisive for the form of the neo-Latin language, even in the morpho-syntactic part of the language.

Therefore this study operates on finer distinctions between genres than in most linguistic studies, as the genres under consideration are five different kinds of literary prose. This positions the present study more as a philological study than a purely linguistic study, with a focus inside the literary genre, and not, say, between literary and adminis- trative neo-Latin. The division of the corpus into five genres is based on an expectation that the use of morpho-syntactic elements with stylistic purposes which I found in detailed studies of humanist Latin may be reflected in the language also when studied with quantitative methods.

But how much the stylistic and literary character of neo-Latin governs its linguistic system is yet unknown. The analysis in the present study is designed for considerations of the relationship between a general linguistic system and individual stylistic expressions, and the data is developed in order to provide information on questions such as these: Is the linguistic system stronger than the stylistic expression? Are stylistic levels reﬂected in the language systems? Are diﬀerent authors’ linguistic preferences and peculiarities

2E.g. Bruni, Stud.; B. Guarini, Ord. doc.

70 4.1 Imitatio based on their conception of the language or the content of their writings? And finally, is the neo-Latin language system primarily style, or language, or both? In the following, we shall consider neo-Latin in its literary and stylistic context, and some basic elements of neo-Latin stylistics will be presented that may be detectable in the actual language, if style is at all detectable in the linguistic system. Much has been written and thought about humanist style, not least by the humanists themselves in the Renaissance. This chapter will not treat as much of this as deserves mentioning. For example, we shall only briefly touch upon the 15th c. debate between Ciceronians and eclectics. However, the stylistic nature of neo-Latin is fundamental for the view on the language in this thesis, and particular stylistic considerations will naturally be a part of the linguistic examinations in Part III. This chapter is but an introduction to a few specific concepts of style that are central to this treatment of neo-Latin. This is based primarily on studies of Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae and Niccolò Perotti’s Rudimenta grammatices and Cornu copiae, as well as two of their primary sources of inspiration from Antiquity, Cicero and Quintilian.

4.1 Imitatio

Imitatio is the literary concept on which the entire idea of humanist Latin was built: forming the language and the literature in constant dialogue with and imitation of other writers, especially from Antiquity, but also other humanist writers. Imitatio belongs not only to the tradition of the humanists, but to the entire Classical tradition, and it had been practiced long before the humanists took up the concept once more for theoretical discussion. With the practice of imitation, the humanists placed themselves in the Classical tradition, not as humble successors to the Classical Latin authors, but as equals who interacted with Antiquity and tradition on the same terms as the Classical writers had done themselves. They were not afraid to aim at surpassing their models, or at least to built on them and bring something new to the tradition, to emulate their Classical models, just like the Classical models had done themselves:

71 4 Humani Style

Turpe etiam illud est, contentum esse id consequi quod imiteris. Nam rursus quid erat futurum, si nemo plus effecisset eo quem sequebatur? M. Fabius Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, II.7 Petrarch read the texts of the ancients, such as Quintilian’s, on the subject of imitatio, and from that sprung the technical terminology, the approaches, and the questions of discussion concerning imitatio which would characterize much of the 15th c. debates on language, literature, and the identity of Renaissance humanists.3 One principle of Petrarch’s is that imitation should result in similitudo and not identitas.4 He adopted this ideal from the ancients’ view on imitation. Seneca, for example, likened the proper resemblance between model and imitation to that between father and son, as distinct from that between sitter and painted portrait. JoAnn DellaNeva (2007, p. xv) Petrarch’s distinction between similitudo and identitas is a matter of refinement on a high literary level; on the level where composing new literature enriches and interacts with the ancient literary tradition.5 Actual identitas, however, was not looked down on as a means of acquiring an idiomatic Classical Latin. This is evident from the practice of ‘imitative reading’ and composing commonplace books with sententiae that could be used in the humanists’ own composition (as mentioned in 3.2.1.1). Perotti expresses directly in his treatise on letter writing how students should first and foremost imitate Cicero, and that they should even reuse entire sentences from Cicero in their own Latin.

Quis maxime proponendus est quem studeant adolescentes imitari? Marcus Cicero. Hic in omni dicendi genere omnium optimus fuit, hunc solum prae- ceptores legant, hunc discipuli imitentur, nec modo uerba eius hauriant, sed etiam clausulas, quin etiam partes ipsas epistolarum interdum furentur et suis inserant. Ita enim ﬁet ut suco Ciceronis quasi lacte nutriti ueri illius imitatores euadant. Niccolò Perotti, Rudimenta grammatices, § 1119 Training to be a true ‘Cicero imitator’ by plagiarizing entire parts of his language is exactly the norm for students. But Perotti believes that afterwards, adults should go on to reading and imitating other good authors. 3See McLaughlin (1995) for an exhaustive survey of literary imitation in Italian Renaissance literature. 4Petrarca, Fam., 22.2. 5In her Ph.D. thesis, Trine Arlund Hass (2011) analyzes the reﬁned mechanisms of literary imitative tradition in bucolic poetry. See also Hass (to appeara).

72 4.1 Imitatio

4.1.1 Ciceronians and Eclectics

Robert Black (2001, Chapter 4) argues that one of the major novelties in the humanists’ approach to the Latin language and language teaching is in the style taught and imitated on the advanced level of grammar teaching, and that this is connected to a radical change in the curriculum read in the advanced level.6 15th c. humanists revive especially Cicero and Vergil as the authors to be imitated on this point of the education where the students study to refine their own stylistic finesse. The humanists were aware that their language and style would be influenced by everything they read, and Perotti’s picture of young students feeding on Cicero’s language was well-established before him, and thus, it was their general opinion that reading the less good authors would in turn result in a less good language, contaminated by the less educated style that they had fed on: Caput vero huius diligentiae fuerit videre primum, ut in eorum tantum librorum, qui ab optimis probatissimisque latinae linguae auctoribus scripti sunt, lectione versemur, ab imperite vero ineleganterque scriptis ita cavea- mus, quasi a calamitate quadam et labe ingenii nostri. Inquinate enim in- epteque scriptorum lectio vitia sua lectori affigit et mentem simili coinquinat tabe. Est enim veluti pabulum animi, quo mens imbuitur atque nutritur. Leonardo Bruni, De studiis et litteris liber ad Babtistam de Malatestis, § 5 This is why the debate that arose during the 15th c. about whom to imitate, was so crucial. Imitatio was the core of their own language and style. Most humanists agreed that Cicero was the primary model for prose eloquence, especially in the schools. Many believed that the best Latin style was achieved by imitating only Cicero, because he was recognized as the most eloquent author, and because it would result in an incoherent style to draw from the language of too dissimilar authors, like Cortesi puts it in his defense of choosing only one good author to imitate:7 Quid enim voluptatis afferre possunt ambiguae vocabulorum significationes, verba transversa, abruptae sententiae, structura salebrosa, audax transla- tio nec felix, ac intercisi de industria numeri, quod necesse est his omnibus accidere qui ex singulis sensus et verba eruunt et neminem imitantur. Paolo Cortesi, Letter to Angelo Poliziano, § 5 In comparison with Petrarch’s approach to imitation, Ciceronians such as Guarino Veronese

6Whereas the curriculum of minor authors, that is the authors usually read on the introductory levels of grammar teaching, stays more or less unchanged after the rise of the humanism. 7See the introduction by JoAnn DellaNeva (2007).

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. . . proposed a different understanding of imitative technique, one that emphasized resemblance rather than innovation and stylistic integrity rather than variety. JoAnn DellaNeva (2007, p. xvi) Opposed to the Ciceronians, the Eclectics believed that strict imitation of only one good model would prevent the ingenium of the author, limit the ability of the individual to contribute with anything new to the literary tradition. Thus they advocated for drawing upon the authority of several good authors, being critical towards them and respecting that every style would not fit every use properly. In addition to being a discussion of which particular Classical Latin authors were good and worthy of imitation, the discussion between critic Eclectics and Ciceronians was therefore a discussion of correctness against personal ingenium. The discussion about correctness versus personal style is of particular relevance to our view on the linguistic proficiency of the humanists, and we shall return to this soon, in 4.3. John C. Leeds (2010, pp. 43–80)—inspired by Croll—points out that in having only one model the Ciceronian formalism might have appealed more to the Medieval love of authority, while the individualism of the Renaissance required a new style which was more free and not general. From these different qualities should have sprung the differentiation, which we saw above in Perotti’s praise of imitating Cicero, between Ci- ceronianism suitable for education and critical Eclecticism more suitable for independent authors.8 Martin L. McLaughlin (1995, pp. 126–46) underlines the irony of the early generations of humanists wishing to write true Ciceronian Latin, while the necessary knowledge was not available, because they had only just recovered the texts that so inspired them. The next generation of humanists, such as Lorenzo Valla, did not have this goal, but would have been able to do it, as a result of now several generations of humanists who had studied the texts thoroughly. After Valla, in the 2nd half of the 15th century, the humanism had gained the skill to pursue the theoretical ideal of Ciceronianism also in practice.9

8Which was indeed part of what would in time be compromised on in the debate. See the introduction in DellaNeva (2007). 9Though other approaches to prose imitation arise sporadically, such as the more obscure, archaizing Apuleianism at the end of the 15th c., the prime question was that of Ciceronianism. See Monfasani (1988, p. 194).

74 4.2 Lingui ic Intertextuality

My approach to the grammatical knowledge and the linguistic norms of the humanists is based primarily on the writings of Perotti and Valla, whom I have studied the most— because of their immense inﬂuence on the linguistic norm and not least knowledge in their time. That they are both Eclectics has undoubtedly biased my presentation, which is why we must be aware that some authors, whose language will be studied in the following, had a quite diﬀerent view on language, that of the Ciceronians. For example, Bruni, though he saw the qualities in many good authors,10 mainly strove to imitate Cicero. And Poggio, who opposed Valla’s critical approach to the ancient models,

aﬃrmed the preeminence of Cicero and maintained a high degree of reverence for the model text, which, he maintained, did not require the addition of something new to achieve eloquence. JoAnn DellaNeva (2007, p. xvii)

4.2 Linguistic Intertextuality

In the article “Intertextuality as a Stylistic Device in Niccolò Perotti’s Dedicatory Let- ters” Marianne Pade (2011) proposes a procedure for distinguishing “. . . reference and allusion from accidental confluence resulting from linguistic imitation”. When the very idea of neo-Latin is imitation of Classical Latin, traits of Classical Latin are found everywhere in the neo-Latin language. Because the neo-Latin language is build on reading literature (recall the principle of ‘imitative reading’ presented in 3.2.1.1), neo-Latin texts will inevitably, from time to time, resemble the texts that their authors build their Latin language upon, even specific texts. This is what Pade calls “mere linguistic imitation”, and this is the ground from which she attempts to distinguish the literary, stylistic device of consciously referring to another, specific text and expecting that the receiver will recognize the reference. Pade evaluates six criteria proposed by MacDonald (2001) which make another text probable as a literary model, namely that 1) the proposed model must be accessible to the author and the intended readers and 2) has traditionally been imitated by other authors; the two texts must resemble each other 3) with many and dense parallels, 4) perhaps in similar orders, and 5) sharing unusual characteristics; finally 6) the model

10Bruni, Stud., § 5; 8; 18.

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should add something to the interpretation of the text that uses it. In addition, Pade suggests adding two new criteria, namely 7) whether ancient texts are usually imitated in the genre in question, and 8) that the parallels found in both texts are not merely often-used topoi. The present thesis concerns itself primarily with general language systems of neo- Latin. As indicated in the previous chapter, the neo-Latin language is made up of several components, such as unconscious L1 interference, habits from Medieval Latin, and linguistic imitation of the Classical Latin language. This last ‘component’ is, of course, the link between our linguistic investigation and the literary considerations of intertextuality. It would seem that the concern of this thesis falls entirely within what Pade calls ‘mere linguistic imitation’. However, the close connection between stylistics and the conceptual nature of neo-Latin, that I argue for, raises the question, whether there is some distinction to be made within the ‘mere linguistic imitation’, whether some parts of the language are more intended to be noticed than others. Shortly, we shall return to Pade’s and MacDonald’s criteria, after considering some interesting observations made by Lene Schøsler. In her presentation entitled “Linguistic intertextuality illustrated mainly by Mon- taigne, Rabelais, and Calvin,”11 Schøsler proposes to extend the term ‘intertextuality’ to linguistics. In texts written in French by Renaissance humanists (who were all educated in Latin) she identiﬁes traits of Latin in the syntactic structures, such as heavily hypotactic sentence structures, antithetical structures, separation of elements normally kept together, inﬁnitive constructions with expressed subjects, and imitations of particular participal constructions. Schøsler categorizes these syntactic features as ‘implicit linguistic intertextuality’ of Latin, as opposed to ‘explicit linguistic intertextuality’, such as referring to Latin authors and texts or writing about the Latin language. Further- more, she divides the instances of implicit intertextuality into ‘slips of the tongue’—i.e. unintended transfer from an underlying language structure, as we saw in 2.2.1—and intended intertextuality. She observes that Calvin, in the process of translating his Latin text Institutio Christianae religionis (1559) into the French version Institution de la re-

11Presented at the ‘Inaugural Conference for The Nordic Network for Renaissance Studies’ in Copen- hagen, October 2012.

76 4.2 Lingui ic Intertextuality ligione chrétienne (1560), leaves out most of the explicit references to Latin texts and technical terminology found in the Latin original, and that he even avoids Latinizing syntactic constructions to a remarkable extent. This Schøsler explains in terms of the very diﬀerent intended readers of the two versions: Readers of the Latin original were expected to know Latin and the scholarly tradition, while readers of the French translation would need everything explained. The few traits of Latin that are indeed present in Calvin’s French version are presumably unintended. With some similarity to Pade’s approach, Schøsler’s explanation of intended linguistic intertextuality, as opposed to unintended, is based on whether the reference to Latin was supposed to be understood by the intended readers, as she explains:

As I see it, explicit (and maybe also implicit) linguistic intertextuality in the Renaissance is a sign, a ﬂag waved to the reader / listener from the author pointing to their shared knowledge of Classical models . . . Cases of explicit linguistic intertextuality serve to create a relation of intellectual community based on shared insights between author and reader / listener. Lene Schøsler, from the presentation of Linguistic intertextuality

This eﬀect of creating an intellectual community is, I believe, a very central part of the neo-Latin language, and the constant referentiality and dialogue with the Classical Latin language that makes up neo-Latin is, basically, intended—at least on the level where humanists chose what texts they would read and present to their students, well aware that their language would be aﬀected by everything that they read. We shall now proceed with the kind of linguistic intertextuality that Schøsler labels both ‘implicit’ and ‘intended’.

4.2.1 Diﬀerences between Literary and Linguistic Intertextuality

When we suggest to extend the term ‘intertextuality’ to pure linguistic practice, a few diﬀerences between literary and linguistic intertextuality should be noted. While literary intertextuality refers to the presence of one text within another, linguistic intertextuality must refer to the presence of one language within another, like we saw in Schøsler’s presentation, or to one language variant within another. We can say that literary intertextuality points very speciﬁcally at a unique text or even a unique passage. Linguistic intertextuality, in turn, points more generally to an entire language (variant). Even

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when linguistic intertextuality is found in a very particular and delimited form—such as the infinitive constructions with expressed subjects—it points to a general phenomenon. However, I suggest that linguistic intertextuality can also be intended ‘to be noticed’ in a way that resembles literary intertextuality, and can point at specific areas of the language; that linguistic intertextuality can point not only to another language (variant), but for example to the language of a specific author, register, or genre, even in the case of ‘mere linguistic imitation’, or in Schøsler’s terminology ‘implicit intertextuality’.12 Like literary intertextuality, this can be used as a stylistic device, though basically on another level. Literary intertextuality adds a layer of meaning and interpretation to a text. The layer added by linguistic intertextuality is more comparable to a rhetorical effect or the stylistic devices that support a specific register. In the present study, linguistic intertextuality will be examined primarily on the basis of quantitative information. In this way, the language of entire cross sections of authorships and genres are studied as one, and it is explained whether some linguistic features seem to be accepted as specific intertextual pointers to specific Classical Latin authors etc. This methodological approach inevitably influences the criteria that I shall propose in the following.

4.2.2 Criteria for Speciﬁc Linguistic Intertextuality

We learned from Schøsler’s observations that the author may be less liable to use heavy intertextuality if he cannot expect his reader to decode it because the reader does not belong to the same intellectual community. Like MacDonald’s ﬁrst criterion, we shall therefore consider it a necessity for a certain linguistic feature to be called speciﬁc, intended linguistic intertextuality, that 1) the feature is accessible to at least the author, and that it is likely that he is aware of it.13 Parallel to the second literary criterion, I suggest considering whether 2) there seems to be some consensus in the community that the proposed feature is a characteristic of exactly that genre/author.14 The next three

12More specific linguistic references than such (i.e. to the linguistic character of a specific text) would probably be found in connection with actual literary allusion (of the kind that Pade defines), or be rejected by Pade’s criterion 8), ‘avoidance of dead parallels’. 13As in the distinction between linguistic and metalinguistic competences, cf. 3.2. 14In our case, if more authors seem to use the same linguistic feature to denote a genre, for example; or if it is described as such in manuals on language or the like.

78 4.2 Lingui ic Intertextuality literary criteria, together with Pade’s addition of avoidance of dead parallels, are in our case summed up to the following two, namely 3) the co-occurrence of different linguistic features that point to the same model, and 4) a relatively high concentration, so that the linguistic feature is remarkably more present in the proposed context, both in the model and the target language. Just as literary intertextuality should add something new to the interpretation, specific linguistic intertextuality 5) should add something to the style. However, in the case of neo-Latin, it is reasonable to claim that all parts of the language which imitate Classical Latin constitute the style. This implies that a criterion of added stylistics would always be true for neo-Latin, no matter how specific or deliberate the actual linguistic feature was. However, it may not be in vain to consider whether there is some additional relation between the linguistic element and the author/genre it seemingly points to.15 Finally, when Pade points out that some genres traditionally use intertextuality more than others, which triggers the readers’ expectations to find such, we may as well consider what can trigger the expectation of specific linguistic intertextuality. In Schøsler’s examples, she generally identifies more intended implicit references to Latin in contexts where she also finds explicit mentioning of ‘Latin’ or Classical authors. In line with this observation, I suggest regarding 6) the presence of explicit meta discussion of the proposed model genre/author as a kind of supportive evidence.

Linguistic intertextuality in the broad sense suggested by Schøsler is the core of neo- Latin—a linguistic variant defined as imitation of Classical Latin. The Classical Latin language is everywhere to be found in neo-Latin, in every line, and at every level of the language from the conceptional redefining of the norm to the most peculiar grammatical regule learned in the school room. If we even consider the inevitable interference from the Volgare also as intertextuality, only unconscious, then neo-Latin is truly pure intertextuality. In this study, however, it is important to distinguish between these different forms. Consequently, we shall proceed by referring to ‘slips of the tongue’ by the lin-

15Such as, for instance, causing a prose rhythm suitable for the context (see e.g. Bruni, Stud.).

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guistic terms introduced in Chapter 2, referring to the conceptional nature of neo-Latin as imitatio, and use only ‘linguistic intertextuality’ for this open and conscious allusion to a more speciﬁc genre, author or the like, that I have just proposed. I believe that this kind of linguistic intertextuality is particularly closely connected to the literary levels. In the opposite end of the scale of factors that constitute neo-Latin, we ﬁnd yet another important question: if something seems to be done without the conscious will of the author, and if this is not in line with the Classical Latin practice, is it then to be considered an error?

4.3 Errors

An important question when studying the language of someone who intends to write in the language of others, is how best to describe these differences, which would intuitively look like errors to those who are educated in the Classical Latin language norm. With reference to the humanists’ seemingly strong confidence in their own Latin language and their aims at emulating the Classical Latin model, imitating—not copying—the Language of the ancients, perhaps one should not consider the differences between neo- Latin and Classical Latin as errors. Much the same idea is presented by Vivian Cook in a chapter on SLA:

Virtually all the techniques in the research mentioned here involve an overt or covert comparison of L2 learners with native speakers. The native speaker indeed provides a quick measure of comparison. Taken too seriously, however, this yardstick denies the interlanguage assumption by subordinating L2 users to native speakers. Useful as it may be to compare apples with pears, apples inevitably seem to make poor pears, just as it is persistently claimed that L2 learners make poor native speakers. Vivian Cook (2001)

With this in mind, we should study the language of the humanists as an equal, but different, variant of Latin, and not think of the differences in language as errors. But then another question occurs. Would the humanists have written their Latin language as they did, had they been aware that they differed from the Classical Latin writers in certain respects, also in respects that they were not aware of and did not discuss? Even if we cannot—and do not wish to—establish whether or not the humanists

80 4.3 Errors would recognize their own language as erroneous, this discussion points to an interesting innate contradiction in the question, beginning with Lorenzo Valla. Valla explicitly states that he does not approve of a rule-based imitative practice that is based on expressions that are found only once in the Classical Latin model. Following the ideas of Quintilian, he believes that the Latin language should be based on the usus and consuetudo of the Classical Latin model, that is, on the expressions most often used and representing the norm, rather than on the auctoritas represented by the grammars:16

non legem scribo, quasi numquam aliter factum sit, sed quod frequentissime factitatum est, praesertim a Marco Tullio Marco Fabioque17 Lorenzo Valla, Elegantiae linguae Latinae, I.19 quoted after: McLaughlin (1995, p. 138)

Valla’s ambition is a descriptive—rather than the traditional prescriptive—approach to Latin grammar and style, as he claims that he does not want to eliminate the possibility that expressions alternative to those he suggests may be correct as well. He rather points out that alternative expressions are not usual, they do not correspond with usus of the Classical Latin models. This new view of the Latin language, introduced in the Renaissance by later generations of humanists, such as Valla, can be characterized thus:

For Poggio, all the ancients spoke ‘latine’, while only the learned writers wrote ‘grammatice’; whereas for Valla strict grammatical analogy was what Quintilian meant by ‘grammatice’, while ‘latine’ applied to the genial depar- tures from the norm characteristic of the great stylists in Latin. Martin L. McLaughlin (1995, p. 145)

This standpoint is consistent with Valla’s philosophical view on grammar, as he joins the ancient tradition of anomalists. In the earliest creative period in the history of ars grammatica, in connection with the library at Alexandria, grammarians divided into analogists and anomalists. Belonging to the latter, grammarians such as Cicero, Quintil- ian, and Valla believed that the analogia (i.e. inflectional morphology and grammatical forms) of the language was not predefined by a divine pattern, but that the pattern and the analogia was defined by the language use, and thus they view the language as something man-made. Analogists, on the other hand, considered the analogia a divine

16See also Ramminger (to appear 2013). 17I.e. Cicero and Quintilian.

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making, so that analogies could be drawn between linguistic form and the content, and so a reason could be found for the exact form that languages have.18 It seems important to ascertain that even those Renaissance humanists who consider the language as something adaptable and non-ﬁxed do not argue in favor of relaxing the standards of language, only they deem consuetudo higher than the regule, and so the linguistic standard is based on the actual use of the language rather than on regularities. Shifting the norm from the regule to the usus is ambitious and requires immense studies and a sense of nuances and stylistics. Similarly, Quintilian describes how, even when avoiding positive errors, one can make mistakes in the nuances of language use, for even speaking too perfectly may be a mistake: Sed ea quae de ratione Latine atque emendate loquendi fuerunt dicenda in libro primo, cum de grammatice loqueremur, executi sumus. Verum illic tantum ne uitiosa essent praecepimus: hic non alienum est admonere ut sint quam minime peregrina et externa. Multos enim, quibus loquendi ratio non desit, inuenias quos curiose potius loqui dixeris quam Latine, quo modo et illa Attica anus Theophrastum, hominem alioqui disertissimum, adnotata unius adfectatione uerbi hospitem dixit, nec alio se id deprendisse interrogata respondit quam quod nimium Attice loqueretur: et in Tito Liuio, mirae facundiae uiro, putat inesse Pollio Asinius quandam Patauinitatem. Quare, si ﬁeri potest, et uerba omnia et uox huius alumnum urbis oleant, ut oratio Romana plane uideatur, non ciuitate donata. M. Fabius Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, VIII.1.2–3 Even though some humanists formulate this descriptive ideal for grammatical studies, the tradition preceding them was, as Keith Percival (1996) puts it, prescriptive and rule-obsessed, and they cannot completely let go of this grammatical practice that they were brought up with. They still dictate grammatical rules that are not based on exact quotations of the ancient models. Accordingly, the humanists’ approach to ‘errors’ is a complex of, on the one hand, an anomalist view on language that believes in forming an independent neo-Latin deeming consuetudo higher than the grammatical rules, and, on the other hand, a foundation in a rule-based grammatical tradition resulting in rules having, in practice, a huge impact on the grammatical works and debates of the Renaissance. There are (at least) two kinds of Ciceronians: those who want to write like Cicero, and those who want to write like Cicero would have written in the same situation. Perotti, 18Percival (1996); Taylor (1987a).

82 4.4 Norm and Ideals for example, believed firmly in the possibility and necessity of language change and adaptation. This accept among some of the humanists of the different conditions that the two language variants were built upon means that not all deviations from Classical Latin should be thought of as ‘errors’. And, to recall Cook’s view on comparing the language of L2 learners with that of native speakers, it does not help my analysis of the neo-Latin language to sort differences into errors. However, it is an essential assumption for my analysis, that the Renaissance humanists would make their Latin as close to the ancient model as possible, if they were aware of the particular linguistic characteristics, unless the deviation can be accounted for by described concepts and linguistic or stylistic ideals such as consuetudo, uarietas, elegantia, latine loqui (in Valla’s sense, see McLaughlin above), or the (in the Renaissance) exhaustively discussed concept of neologisms. Some of these ideals that may overrule the primary norm of the neo-Latin language, the imitation of Classical Latin, will be discussed in the following.

4.4 Norm and Ideals

On a conceptual level, the professed norm of the Renaissance humanists can be described simply as imitation of Classical Latin (with all the diﬀerent interpretations discussed above in 4.1.1). Taking the analysis down one level, the language norm is characterized by several value-laden concepts and words attributed to the Latin language. Among many other qualities, Niccolò Perotti praises his own Cornu copiae—in the name of his nephew, Pyrrhus—for its value of “quantum uetustatis . . . quae explicatio elengantiae (sic) ac proprietatis latinae linguae” (Perotti, Ccopiae., praef. 6.3-5). Perotti saw Cornu copiae as the direct successor to Valla’s Elegantiae, and Perotti’s use of the word elengantiae in his preface not only establishes this ambition, but also spells out a central ideal in the Latin norm of the humanists. Elegantiae in both cases mirrors the fact that humanist Latin was not, in the ﬁrst place, a matter of grammar, but a matter of style: both the Elegantiae and the Cornu copiae are handbooks of choosing the most elegant expression and in avoiding non-Classical expressions. Throughout the grammatical works by Valla and Perotti,19 the term elegantia is attributed to the Latin

19The string “ elegan” appears 93 times in Cornu copiae and 38 times in Elegantiae.

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word or construction recommended by the author, as the ultimate argument that does not need further explanation; it is nearly used synonymously with ‘Classical Latin’. What, then, is elegantia? As we saw, Perotti coordinates it with proprietas, the ability to place the language within what is fitting for the genre and the context. This indicates something more sophisticated than merely writing correctly, namely that elegantia is something that is defined according to the situation, and so it seems an extension of Aristotle and Horace’s discussions of the importance of proper style, of τo` πρπoν´ or decorum. As indicated by the nature of Valla’s and Perotti’s works, elegantia has to do with phraseology, with the proper use of words. It follows that elegantia is dependent on relative factors such as genre. Elegantia is also used by Perotti in his De componendis epistolis for referring to several advised expressions, and for referring to differences in constructions following different words. Quomodo eleganter dicemus Io ho receuuta la tua littera? Multis id modis dici potest: Accepi litteras tuas. Accepi abste litteras. Redditae mihi fuerunt litterae tuae . . . Quid interest inter litteras et epistolam? Significatio eadem est, differunt in elegantia. Dicimus enim unam epistolam et unas litteras. Ideo enim pluratiuum numerum habet unus una unum, ut iungi possit cum nominibus carentibus singulari, ut reliqui filio meo ternas aedes, unas in foro, alteras in Ianiculo, tertias in Suburra. Nam si diceremus unam aedem, non domum sed templum significaremus. Item dicimus duas, tres, quatuor, quinque, sex, decem epistolas, et binas, ternas, quaternas, quinas, senas, denas litteras. Nec licet dicere duas litteras, nec binas epistolas. Niccolò Perotti, Rudimenta grammatices, § 1130–32 The context is a manual of letter writing, and so, the genre is set to letters, and considerations on genre is not the matter. First, it is seen that elegantia does not have to do with finding the one single best expression, but is a matter of knowing several equally good expressions (even a few more expressions are mentioned in the text). An then we find elegantia resembling the interpretation correct use, as the two synonyms’ difference in elegantia is exactly that they are not constructed correctly in the same way. Elegantia, here, is the idiomatic maneuvering through multiple possible expressions and synonyms, probably with the goal to master a selection of expressions rather than simply learning one good expression; to obtain variation in the Latin language, the same uarietas20 as we saw Perotti praising in the work of Martial in the discussion above of 20Perotti, Ccopiae., proh. 4,9–12.

84 4.4 Norm and Ideals the ideal studying technique. This uariatio can be identiﬁed in several levels of Perotti’s language practice as a conscious stylistic aim, for example through dramatic changes in clause lengths or clause types according to changes in stylistic register.21 The subjunctive mood may be used as a stylistic device to obtain semantic variation in the language of some neo-Latin authors. There are, however, other authors who would give priority to Classical brevity in composition,22 and according to whom uariatio should not aﬀect the clearness and make the Latin obscure.23

The proper variation necessary to obtain elegantia must, as we saw, be conﬁned within the limits of correct use and construction, and this is determined by auctoritas, by the example of the ancient texts. In spite of the ﬁerce debate on what Classical models to choose for neo-Latin composition and whether or not to accept neologisms— and though Perotti belonged to the moderate eclectics—Perotti distinguishes clearly between what is new, which is often associated with words such as barbaria, stultitia, and ignorantia, and what is found in the Classical texts, as for instance in Perotti’s discussion of one of the more controversial parts of the neo-Latin language norm:

Cuius nomen praeponitur? Scribentis ne an eius ad quem scribitur? Scriben- tis, etiam si ad pontiﬁcem maximum siue regem aut imperatorem scribat homo inﬁmus. Stulta est enim obseruatio quorundam qui dignioris nomen dicunt praeponendum esse. Cauendum praeterea est ne unquam dominum honoris causa nominibus propriis praeponamus, ut domino Pyrrho et domino Nicolao. Barbara est enim ea locutio, et nuper inuenta. Non hoc Latini, non Graeci ueteres fecerunt. Niccolò Perotti, Rudimenta grammatices, § 1121

On this interaction between consuetudo and auctoritas, uarietas and proprietas, uetustas and elegantia, the Renaissance humanists established their language norm. Consequent- ly, we will have to consider whether one of these concepts has been the aim, when we ﬁnd something peculiar in a humanist’s Latin. It may be a conscious attempt at latine loqui rather than strictly grammatice loqui.

21We shall see an example in the following section, and further discussions are found in Horster (2011). 22McLaughlin (1995, p. 142). 23Clearness, as well as elegantia have been among the language ideals since Antiquity, when purists such as Cicero and Caesar reformed the language according to latinitas, urbanitas, concinnitas, elegantia, and numerus. See Palmer (1954, pp. 123–31) and Quintilian, Inst. Orat., VIII.1.16–22.

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4.5 Genres

In Perotti’s letter to Lorenzo Valla of December 145324 there is a change in style following Perotti’s words “Sed satis est iocorum, nunc serio loquar.” After these words, the sentences become longer, more complex, and more varied. The increased variation is evident in, for instance, the use of many different clause types and of both the indicative and the subjunctive mood. In the first part of the letter, the part characterized by ioci, there is a prevalence of the indicative mood over the subjunctive, and a prevalence of main clauses over embedded clauses. In the second part, when Perotti speaks serio, the opposite is the case. This indicates some kind of relationship between the level of style in the text and the use of the subjunctive and the degree of grammatical subordination. As I elaborate in Horster (2011), there is reason to believe that the use of the subjunctive is to a large extent a stylistic device in Perotti’s neo-Latin language, a matter of variatio. In Perotti’s treatise on letter writing, De componendis epistolis, he characterizes the different levels of style in letters thus as inferior to the corresponding levels of style in speeches and historiography.

Quid in primis obseruandum est in epistolis scribendis? Vt stilus inferior sit et quasi familiarior quam cum uel orationes uel historias scribimus, et tamen sit subiectae materiae conueniens. Nam ut in caeteris tres sunt dicendi caracteres: amplus, medius, et infimus, ita etiam epistolae tres suos caracteres habent, ab illis tamen diuersos, hoc est illis inferiores. Nam qui in aliis mediocris est hic est summus, qui in aliis infimus hic mediocris. Infimus uero in epistolis, quo dicendi genere in familiaribus utimur, erit ab infimo illo omnino diuersus, hoc est leuis, facilis, uerbis quotidianis et quasi uernaculis contextus, in quo tamen nihil barbarum sit aut ineptum. Amplo igitur illo atque sublimi utemur cum de rebus altis atque diuinis epistolas scribemus, ut Plato facit; mediocri cum de moribus, de rebus gestis, de bello, de pace, de consilio capiendo, aut rebus aliis seueris et grauibus tractabimus; infimo cum materia erit de rebus familiaribus atque iocosis. Niccolò Perotti, Rudimenta grammatices, 1117 Strikingly, letters concerning “rebus familiaribus atque iocosis” are characterized as belonging to the stilus infimus, which supports the interpretation of Perotti writing “satis est iocorum” as a stylistic marker.25 Especially taking into consideration that he writes to Lorenzo Valla, his predecessor as authority on the Latin language and style. 24Perotti and Valla (1984). 25Though the Rudimenta grammatices was not printed until nearly twenty years later, in 1473.

86 4.5 Genres

The present study attempts to compare the language of five different prose genres, which were all important genres in the Renaissance and were build on particular Classical Latin models, while some of the other genres that were popular in the Renaissance do not have as extant Classical models.26 The presence or absence of linguistic variation across genres is an important indication of to what degree the neo-Latin language is determined by language internal factors, and to what degree the language is determined by style. Are some uses of moods and tenses considered primarily high or low style, or as appropriate or inappropriate in certain contexts? Can stylistic variation, such as we saw in Perotti’s letter to Valla, be detected only when studying the details, or does it affect the language on a larger scale, visible across different genres and individual authors? Based on Perotti’s letter above, and similar other descriptions of genres, we shall attempt to order the genres in question according to the level of style that can be expected in each. This is outlined briefly below, and the Classical Latin and humanist descriptions of the levels of style are summarized in Figure 4.1. The level of style in a genre is not absolute and cannot be measured, and so the depiction is merely an illustration of the relative differences between genres that may be deduced from Classical and humanist explanations, based on indications of style such as stilus inferior, uber, ornatus, and quotidianus. But the relation between the genres is central to later investigating whether the levels of style are reflected in the language (e.g in 7.2).

Defining the genre of a given text is, more often than not, uncomplicated. However, there are gray areas where, for example, a letter has the content of a treatise, or where a or a written speech has the form of a treatise. In these matters, if possible, I follow the indication by the author who most often names his text as belonging to a specific genre. In Appendix C a comprehensive list is found of the content of each genre in the corpus, from which my categorizations of texts into genres are evident. In this project, texts from five different prose genres are studied: The letter, the dialogue, the speech and the historiographic work are all genres that had been known since Antiquity, and the Renaissance humanists are conscious of the change in level

26Tunberg (1999).

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of style according to genre and content, which was already described by, among many others, Cicero and Quintilian.27

The speeches are the most elaborately described genre, with regard to style, and the matter of elocutio is especially concerned with the balancing of level of style and the character of the speech. It is considered most important to use the style that is proper. Accordingly, Quintilian in his Institutio Oratoria (VIII.2.2) names it a uitium to lack proprietas, such as writing in a style too low to suit the dignity of the case or of one’s rank. He further compares the propriety of style to the three rhetorical divisions and to the actual case and the people involved:

illud obseruatione dignius, quod hic ipse honestus ornatus materiae genere †decidit uariatus†. Atque ut a prima diuisione ordiar, non idem demon- stratiuis et deliberatiuis et iudicialibus causis conueniet. Namque illud genus ostentationi compositum solam petit audientium uoluptatem, ideoque omnes dicendi artes aperit ornatumque orationis exponit . . . At ubi res agitur et uera dimicatio est, ultimus sit famae locus. Praeterea ne decet quidem, ubi maxima rerum momenta uersantur, de uerbis esse sollicitum. Neque hoc eo pertinet, ut in his nullus sit ornatus, sed uti pressior et seuerior et minus confessus, praecipue materiae accomodatus. Nam et suadendo sublim- ius aliquid senatus, concitatius populus, et in iudiciis publicae capitalesque causae poscunt accuratius dicendi genus. At priuatum consilium causasque paucorum, ut frequenter accidit, calculorum purus sermo et dissimilis curae magis decuerit. M. Fabius Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, VIII.3.11–14 Based on this, the rhetorical genre ranges from highly ornate eloquence composed to impress the audience to the concise speech concerning severe cases with only sparse ornamentation.

The letter in the Renaissance is based on the Medieval tradition of ars dictaminis, a sub-category of rhetorical education teaching Latin prose composition for letter-writing, formed after Classical Latin speeches. Letters became one of the most popular genres in the Renaissance.28 Hence, the descriptions of propriety of style in letters by Perotti

27Both Cicero’s De Oratore and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria were, among many other Classical Latin works on rhetoric, available to the humanists, though not the complete versions. See Monfasani (1988, p. 172); McLaughlin (1995, p. 128; 142); Perotti, Rud., 1117; Quintilian, Inst. Orat., 10.1.31-36; Cicero, de Orat.; Cicero, Fam. 28Monfasani (1988); Black (2001).

88 4.5 Genres above echo Quintilian’s description of the proper style in speeches. Only, Perotti says, each of the three stylistic levels in letter-writing corresponds to the level below in other genres, that is, all letters have been taken down one step on the scale of stylistic level. The letter somehow reﬂects the way people speak to each other, and it addresses someone known—or pretended to be known—by the author. Among other things, Cicero characterizes the letter as reﬂecting the everyday speech more than for example speeches:

Verum tamen quid tibi ego videor in epistulis? nonne plebeio sermone agere tecum? nec enim semper eodem modo. Quid enim simile habet epistula aut iudicio aut contioni? quin ipsa iudicia non solemus omnia tractare uno modo. Privatas causas et eas tenuis agimus subtilius, capitis aut famae scilicet ornatius; epistulas vero cotidianis verbis texere solemus. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, 9.21.1

The historiography tolerates a higher level of style and is the one of the prose genres that is most inspired by the language and style of poetry—humanists actually believed the genre to have emerged from poetry—, as well as it shares the narrative nature of the speeches.29 History treats elevate themes such as wars and kings, and the material is ﬁt for an ornamented, high style, as described by Quintilian:

Historia quoque alere oratorem quodam uberi iucundoque suco potest; verum et ipsa sic est legenda ut sciamus plerasque eius virtutes oratori esse vitandas. Est enim proxima poetis et quodam modo carmen solutum, et scribitur ad narrandum, non ad probandum, totumque opus non ad actum rei pugnamque praesentem, sed ad memoriam posteritatis et ingenii famam componitur; ideoque et verbis remotioribus et liberioribus ﬁguris narrandi taedium evitat. M. Fabius Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 10.1.31

The dialogue is, needless to say, inspired by the spoken language, and the level of style should be kept below the level found in the letters of the highest style, that is, letters on elevated subjects. The purpose of the dialogue is to explain a matter in a simple, straightforward manner, a tradition established with Socrates who separated rhetoric from philosophy.

quorum princeps Socrates fuit, is qui omnium eruditorum testimonium totius- que iudicio Graeciae cum prudentia et acumine et venustate et subilitate tum

29Kelley (1988).

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vero eloquentia, varietate, copia, quam se cumque in partem dedisset omnium fuit facile princeps. . . sapienterque sentiendi et ornate dicendi scientiam re cohaerentis disputationibus suis separavit; Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore, 3.60 Renaissance humanism, however, is so closely connected to rhetoric, that even dialogues are not deprived of eloquence and vigor.30

The treatise as a genre designation originates from late Antiquity, but is used also for works of earlier date. The matter of treatises resembles that of dissertations and essays. But in treatises the matter is typically not discussed much, but the opinions of the author usually being presented as a rule or instruction. Stylistically as well as in form and content, the treatise often resembles the letter or the dialogue, and often these genres cannot completely be separated from each other. Modern literature on the treatise describes the language as usually rather sparse and concise,31 but treatises were not discussed as much as a literary genre in the Renaissance as were the other genres that are studied here.

To sum up, Figure 4.1 shows an attempted hierarchy between the genres, based on the described statements on relationships between individual genres. This is not a final picture, as I believe such a thing as level of style cannot be plotted in a chart, not, at least, based only on a few statements from the literature. However, it does illustrate that on the one hand, many genres are overlapping, while on the other hand, some differences may be expected, at least between history and speeches expected to belong to the higher style, and treatises and dialogues belonging to the lower styles. In addition to this scale of stylistic level, the genres differ from each other with respect to various other parameters. Most of the genres are literary genres, while the treatise is a more technical, scientific genre, which may cause differences in language use. Also, stylistic level is to some degree connected to the question of how little or much the language resembles the spoken language. In addition, when regarding especially the use of tenses, the typical topics of the genres will likely result in considerable differences. For example, one would expect historical works to concern past events, and for example

30Kristeller (1988). 31Ueding (2009, pp. 767ﬀ.); Conte (1999, p. 88).

90 4.5 Genres

Figure 4.1: Genre hierarchy letters to be about present or future events more often than historical works, because letters often regard the present situation of the writer or the receiver of the letter. Such differences pertaining to the varying nature of the content of different genres will be considered as related to language internal circumstances: it is a linguistic matter that texts about the past contain more past tenses than texts about the present. Therefore, not all detectable differences between genres should be considered proof that neo-Latin is more stylistically determined than linguistically.

We have now seen how the Latin language of the humanists can be expected both to form like a contact language, primarily in the meeting of the Classical Latin norm and the mother tongue of its users, and in deliberate imitation of the Classical Latin norm as a stylistic, literary expression. The following is an analysis of the use of moods and tenses in neo-Latin subordinate clauses, where we shall investigate how much influence each of the factors described in these first chapters had in the formation of neo-Latin; how much influence the humanists had on these deeper layers of the linguistic structure; if their imitative strategy results in similar language systems or affects only the particular vocabulary that they focus on; and if the humanists behave as a collective speech community or individually form their own Latin. The investigations in of Part III are organized due to the actual grammatical phenomena that are studied and takes

91 4 Humani Style

the form of an analysis of the linguistic form of neo-Latin, often compared to Classi- cal Latin. Therefore considerations on themes from this part, such as L1 interference, stylistics, imitatio, strategies for language acquisition, norms, etc. will appear rather sporadically, where a linguistic mechanism happens to indicate the influence from a certain factor. But all these indications are compared in Chapter 14, where we shall finally define the influence from the various factors on the actual use of moods and tenses in neo-Latin subordinate clauses. In order to sort out these factors, a collection of data on neo-Latin subordinate clauses has been produced particularly for this investigation. Before returning to the actual investigations, the data and the methodological approach to this investigation will be described.

92 Part II

Methods and Corpora

Chapter 5

Quantitative Methods

The following is an analysis of empiric investigations of comprehensive text collections, and the data is evaluated with quantitative analyses of corpus frequencies. It is my experience that this method—using test statistics and presenting quantitative material— evokes some undeserved awe when presented to the common Classical philologist. Per- haps it is thought that my numbers detect and prove regularities and truths about the material, and perhaps we philologists have too much faith in results that are represented as numbers. However, numbers are easily manipulated (even unknowingly), and it is important to acknowledge that my method presupposes readings of texts; a discipline hardly practiced objectively, not even when reading the texts with regard to simple morphological and syntactical classiﬁcation. As will be elaborated, the method aims at systematic, objective counts, presentations, and calculations of linguistic data. This is in stark contrast to the fact that the data behind the investigation inevitably represents subjective interpretation, to diﬀerent degrees, as the production of data is based on human readings. Hence, it is the aim of the following two chapters to explain on which preconditions and assumptions the data is produced, and to clarify how the data is used, presented and calculated. In this way, it is my desire that transparency will give others the possibility to test my results and consider them and their foundations, as a substitute for the objectivity that it is not possible to achieve. Finally, when the analysis has pointed to tendencies and accepted hypotheses, I

95 5 Quantitative Methods

urge the reader too keep in mind the premise of the method: 1) the general problem of empirical and deductive knowledge, that the investigation is not performed on the entire amount of data—here all existing text in neo-Latin—but only a sample, at best a representative sample; and 2) the foundation of the present study on interpretation. Regardless of the investigation being characterized by precise and quantitative argumentation, it does not prove any regularities and theories, only tendencies and hypotheses.1

5.1 A Corpus Based Method

Corpus based methods embrace all studies that are based on a collection of texts (or audio recordings etc.), either plain texts or annotated texts, and they are based on computational linguistics: the field of human language processing, of digitally analyzing and producing natural language.2 The present investigation uses text corpora with varying degrees of computational complexity. All texts are used in digitized formats. The primary, neo-Latin corpora are used in plain, digital text, and methods for text retrieval are used to search through the corpora for locations in the texts with certain words, say, the connectives that introduce the clause types under investigation. This is a rather simple use of a digitized corpus, which does not assume much previous preparation of the texts—except for the initial digitizing of the texts. This was done previously, and only texts that were somehow available in digital form beforehand are used. Thus, the quality of the digital form varies among the texts. Though, as finding a broad body of neo-Latin texts is not easy, one cannot afford to be too critical of the quality. This problem is considered further beneath, in 5.1.1.3. For searching through the plain text of the neo-Latin corpora, the program dtSearch is used in combination with regular expressions;3 an effective tool when searching not only for one exact string (i.e. sequence of characters) but for instance inflected words that one wishes to find—effectively—in all possible forms, or simply words that can be spelled in numerous ways. Many corpora are further provided with Part-of-Speech tags (POS), which involves

1Bungarten (1979); Kjørup (1996). 2Jurafsky and Martin (2008); Sproat et al. (2001). 3Search dtSearch Support Articles (2010); Microsoft (2010); Jurafsky and Martin (2008, Chapter 2).

96 5.1 A Corpus Based Method assigning a label to each word with linguistic information, for example on the word class, morphology, and syntactic function of the word (see, for instance, 6.1.2 on L.A.S.L.A.). POS tagging can be done automatically, though in highly inflected languages, such as Latin, the tagging performance is not as good as in less inflected languages.4 Thus, good Latin corpora require both more help to the tagging algorithm—such as adding a lexicon of Latin words—and some degree of manual control. This being too comprehensive for a single research project like the present, a variety of POS tagging has instead manually been assigned to only the selection of verbs that are actually subject to study. This ‘tag set’ is not applied to the actual texts, but saved in a simple database, and is therefor referred to as a ‘data set’; the database a ‘data collection’ (see more in 6.2). As it is intended exclusively for the present study and not for common use, the data set does not follow existing standards for Latin tag sets. In some respects, it would be insufficient compared to others (most obvious is the fact that only the verbs are annotated); in other respects, it contains complexity that is not found in tag sets designed for common study. The latter is evident in the data set containing information on the context of the verb/clause in question. This is information that cannot be extracted from a corpus that is merely annotated with POS tags, as more complex information on the syntactic structure of the text is needed. Some of this can be obtained in treebanks, which are corpora with parse trees assigned to each sentence that model the syntactic structure, e.g. dependencies between words or phrases. There are a few treebanks to be found on the Latin language (e.g. the PROIEL corpus5 and the Perseus Treebank, decribed in 6.1.3). Treebanks as well as POS tagging is not yet precise enough when processed automatically for the Latin language.6

5.1.1 Manual and Automatic Data Handling

The data from the neo-Latin corpora is mostly based on manual readings, though combined with several automatic tools. This calls for some considerations of advantages and disadvantages of manual and automatic data processing.7 4Jurafsky and Martin (2008, pp. 160-62). 5See http://www.hf.uio.no/iﬁkk/english/research/projects/proiel/. 6See, for instance, Bamman and Crane (2006, Section 2.3). 7The analysis is partly inspired by Meurers and Müller (2009), and based on Jurafsky and Martin (2008).

97 5 Quantitative Methods

5.1.1.1 Disambiguation and Interpretation

The greater part of computational linguistics is about disambiguation, that is, developing methods for computers to decide between two or more possible analyses of a given part of the text, whether it is a word, a morphological form, or a sentence. Consider these two Latin forms: 1) ventus and 2) veniam. Though ventus may either be the mascular noun ventus ∼i, the mascular noun ventus ∼us, or the past participle of venio, a human reader would in most cases not be in any doubt which interpretation is the right one, when found in a specific context, as the meanings of the three interpretations are very different. A computer, though, may have difficulty deciding. For example, the first two forms can both be found in connection with the form est. In this case, manual annotation should result in less errors than automatic processing, as the human mind has a better chance of deciding than computational methods, which would often be based on probability. And human sense would seldomly fail, as choosing the wrong solution would easily result in nonsense. Thus, in such cases, human processing should result in less nonsense errors. In the case of veniam, however, the form is either the present subjunctive or the future indicative, both 1st singular, of the verb venio.8 Those two forms are in many contexts used interchangeably, and which one to choose often depends on fine semantic or grammatical nuances. Philologists would easily have an opinion on which form would be the correct interpretation in a given context, though this decision would depend on earlier experiences with the Latin language in combination with grammatical knowledge (based on grammarians’ experience with the Latin language). This can probably be done fairly correct in Classical Latin corpora, as we have existing knowledge on the tendencies in Classical Latin, and with elaborate algorithms, machines could perhaps calculate rather successful probabilities to base their decision on if they were trained on a Classical Latin corpus. Though, as the actual aim of the present study is to investigate which moods and tenses are used in the neo-Latin language, we do not have descriptions and grammars available to help deciding between the possible choices. An further more, deciding a neo-Latin form based on knowledge from the Classical Latin language would mean undermining the aim of the project, and it would result in circular arguments: By

8As well as the accusative singular of the noun venia.

98 5.1 A Corpus Based Method modeling ambiguous neo-Latin forms on knowledge on Classical Latin, it would enhance the risk of falsely concluding that neo-Latin behaves like Classical Latin. In this case, processing the data manually makes it improbable that I can disambiguate verb forms objectively. Consequently, ambiguous verb forms are not disambiguated but kept and presented as ambiguous.

Especially two values in the data set are only possible because it was processed manually. Namely, the data contains information on whether a sentence is part of indirect discourse or not. This appears in such a diversity of ways in Latin, that it would be rather complex to detect automatically. Secondly, the time of the context (central to studies of the sequence of tenses) is recorded. This is also feasible to extract from a treebank (as we shall see), though it would be too complex to identify cases of the present perfect and the historical present, of which one is morphologically past while semantically present,9 and the other vice versa. As a consequence, these values, while they are treated in the dissertation as important and interesting factors, one must keep in mind that they are—more than any other value used—the result of a subjective interpretation, though often based on certain observations of whether the verb refers to the present or the past.

In this way, there is this hierarchy in the degree of objectivity in the data produced: 1) Morphological analyses are objective, as no interpretation is made when the form is ambiguous.10 2) Distinctions between clause types and, to a large extent, between primary and secondary tenses in the context are rather objective, though there are circumstances that are due to interpretation. 3) Direct or indirect discourse as well as the present perfect and the historic present are to a larger extent based on subjective evaluations.

9In contrast to the distinction between the two Italian forms ‘passato prossimo’ and ‘passato remoto’, the Latin ‘present perfect’ is morphologically an ordinary perfect, and the term is used for referring to situations where the scope of a situation relates to the present as well as to the past, particularly the present result of a past event. 10Further more, almost all nontrivial verb forms have been double-checked with the Perseus Latin Word Study Tool, which uses methods for POS tagging (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph).

99 5 Quantitative Methods

5.1.1.2 Eﬀectivity and the Acceptance of Errors

The perhaps greatest strength of corpus based methods is getting a larger quantity of data to base the studies on. Gaining ample amounts of text consequently results in less precision, whether details are lost in the process of automatic tagging or parsing, or in the construction of a common form on which to represent all the data of an analysis. Even when, as in the present study, data is constructed manually, the feasibility of producing enough data requires a trade-off between effectivity (gaining a large data collection) and precision (ensuring that there are no errors). Consequently, it cannot be assured that there are no errors in the data collection, though the errors confine themselves to those produced by human reading, and are not further amplified by the problems of automatic language processing. As such, no actual error rate can be calculated.11 Instead, it is assumed that—since errors should be relatively few—they will not be decisive for results that are based on studying the major tendencies in the data. That is, in a quantitative study, not much attention is paid to the single few occurrences of a phenomenon, interesting though it might be. Thus, the study is made with the awareness that the strength is broad, homoge- neously organized data, while the weaknesses are having to accept the presence of errors in the data, and to sacrifice the intuitive interpretations of individual sentences.

5.1.1.3 Textual Criticism

The use of digitized resources deprives a Classical philologist of one central discipline, namely textual criticism. Scribal errors is a risk to all disciplines that are based on historical data,12 but Classical philology, with its well established tradition for textual criticism, is used to considering it part of our scholarly education and part of a proper scientiﬁc approach not to take the transmitted text for granted. Thus, a study such as this, where textual criticism is not the basis of the approach, must be presented along with some consideration. As mentioned, I even use texts that were digitized in varying quality; ranging from original digital ﬁles of thoroughly prepared editions (with

11As is the case of automatic taggers and parsers for which the precision can be calculated. See e.g. Jurafsky and Martin (2008, Chapter 4.3). 12See e.g. Labov (1994, p. 11, note 3).

100 5.1 A Corpus Based Method critical apparatus available) to fully automatically digitized texts with many errors. The following should convince the reader that this varying quality does not influence the final interpretations of the data when studied quantitatively. As mentioned above, we assume that few, sporadic errors do not remarkably affect the great picture. Errors that result from poor text editions are considered to have such a sporadic character—when seen in connection with the topic of this study—because of two tendencies: 1) Normalization of the orthography could be a danger in ‘blindly’ following the editions available. However, the typical orthography in Renaissance texts deviates from the modern interpretation of Classical Latin orthography in ways that happen to be of none or very little influence to this study. The conjugation of verbs is not dependent on any of the general differences, such as using e for the Classical ae or oe diphthongs, and using the spellings cum and quum (or other variations) interchangeably when referring to the conjunction, using y, i, and j more freely in certain contexts etc.13 Hence, it is not expected that it generally influences the distribution of verb forms, whether or not the orthography was normalized.14 Normalization of the morphology, however, presents a problem to the present study if editors change the grammatical form to match the expectations from the Classical Latin practice. But this kind of normalization is not the general practice, and as we shall see, the results extracted from the various texts in many respects seem so consistent that there is no immediate reason to believe that some have been normalized and others not. 2) Also errors in the process of digitizing the texts could be a danger, if any typical error could influence the form of the verb. However, most of the errors that spring from digitizing are caused by machines misinterpreting the forms of different letters. Most often, it is the confusion of i and l or c and e. These errors are quite obvious and will seldomly lead to misinterpretations of the text, because the confused letters—one a consonant; one a vowel—cannot usually take each others’ place and still make sense, as in the case of essc in this example: mea quidem semper fuit opinio, eam rem tum omnibus annis gravem, tum vero senectuti adversam plurimum essc; Poggio Bracciolini, An seni sit uxor ducenda, 2

13Ramminger (n.d.). 14Some of the mentioned typical neo-Latin orthographic tendencies are found in every text in the corpora, though some texts may have been widely normalized.

101 5 Quantitative Methods

None of these problems are expected to generally lead to false but plausible forms with any interest to this study. However, it may eventually have spoiled the forms that are searched for in retrieving the sentences to study, and this may lead to a slightly reduced number of studied sentences in comparison with the actual number available in the texts, in terms of corpus linguistics a slightly smaller recall of the searches. Since it is expected to be random which sentences are missed, this does not either inﬂuence the study in a general way. In the few cases of the verb of study actually being corrupt, it was discarded if the correct form could not be identiﬁed for certain.15 Finally, the design of the data preserves the possibility to identify each sentence that is represented in any count that is used in the investigation. This gives the opportunity to elaborate and exemplify the quantitative presentations by turning back to the original text and consulting traditional editions, if desired. This ensures, that only quantitative presentations depend on the conditions described in this section, while the few qualitative examples can be studied with traditional philological methods.

5.2 Presentation of Quantitative Information

The primary aim of this study is to describe parts of the neo-Latin language and provide information on the distribution of tenses and moods in neo-Latin subordinate clauses, where we have only little knowledge beforehand—in many ways a pilot project. Hence, the linguistic information is designed primarily for making overviews over the use of moods and tenses, without having precise expectations of what to find. Therefore, the linguistic information is represented with several parameters that can be studied in innumerable combinations. This is optimized for searching through the information, looking for tendencies that are suggested from from the data. The quantitative information is used and presented on two quite different levels—and with two different aims in view: 1) Descriptive statistics is used for giving this general picture of neo-Latin moods and tenses, ‘mapping’ grammatical forms in their contexts, describing how the neo-Latin language is composed. On the other hand, 2) inferential statistics is used to draw conclusions from the data, by eliminating possible explanations and patterns, if statistical

15For example, the form essc above is certainly the form esse, as is also evident when consulting other editions of the text.

102 5.2 Presentation of Quantitative Information tests show that a tendency is liable to have emerged by sheer coincidence, not being statistically significant. This is an effective measure for stating anything about dependencies between the factors; to use the quantitative data to explain why the neo-Latin language has its form. That the information in this study was designed for descriptive statistics, presents three problems when using it for inferential statistics:16 Test statistics is used to accept a tendency that is seen in the data if there is less than a 5% chance that it occurred by coincidence. This level can be reached ‘on a false basis’ if the tests are done on inappropriate data. 1) When studying the data and formulating a hypothesis inspired by what emerges from the descriptive statistics, this exact tendency—which may have occurred by coincidence— is already suggested from the data and thus more likely to prove true. If only/primarily testing hypotheses that are suggested by the data, more ‘falsely positive’ results are likely to occur. This effect can be counteracted by testing the hypotheses on other data than the data that originally suggested them. In this dissertation, data from a pilot project on Lorenzo Valla’s language (as well as modern literature on linguistics) will serve as the inspiration for forming hypotheses, while data from a more recent corpus will serve as the test data on which hypotheses are tested. The two data collections are, however, not entirely equal, and some circumstances cannot be seen in the Valla data, and some not in the other. As these situations are rare and not central to the study, no particular strategy will be followed for avoiding false positives. 2) While having multiple linguistic parameters extant is interesting when presenting the data descriptively, a much more focused experiment design is needed to produce proper test statistics. When considering that the tests accept any result that has less than a 5% (i.e. 1/20) risk of being wrong, it is clear that 20 minor tests will statistically accept one false positive. Because of this, the statistical tests occur much more simple than the descriptive part, as each experiment is cut down to preferably one specified question with one result. In addition, after performing a test on the entire data collection, the test is performed on individual genres, authors, and a division into authors before and after Valla. This gives an idea of whether the effect seems to be a common tendency. For an

16Dallal (2012, Esp. Note 01; 02); Rugg (2008, Chapter 7).

103 5 Quantitative Methods

overall test to be accepted, it is not, however, necessary for it to be also accepted in all subdivisions of the data collection, as this is rarely achieved because of the sparse amount of data from each author. Looking at subdivisions of the data collection—especially into early and late authors where Valla is not represented—also prevents accepting false positives that are biased by the language of Valla, which could be problematic otherwise, because some of the same texts by Valla is represented in both corpora, and so the two are not entirely separate. 3) The ambiguous values that are part of the data on neo-Latin in the study may in some situations influence the results heavily. Where nothing else is mentioned, ambiguous values are treated as such: First the data is tested based on the unambiguous values alone. The result of this test is what is reported in the thesis. If that test shows a significant result, the test is performed again, adding one half of the ambiguous forms to each of the possible values, dividing them evenly between the possibilities. If this second test shows no significant difference, it is mentioned that the result is influenced much by the ambiguous values. If the second test gave also a significant result, the test is performed again, distributing the ambiguous forms so that the two groups to be compared are as close to each other as is possible with the ambiguous forms. If this test does not show significance, it is mentioned that the result is influenced a little by the ambiguous values.

5.2.1 Tests Statistics

By using statistical tests, we want to know whether it is probable that a tendency that is found in the linguistic data occurred because there is actually some eﬀect, or because of the variation of the data that can happen by coincidence, as a result of randomness in the data.

5.2.1.1 Hypothesis Testing

This is normally done with hypothesis testing: Firstly, a hypothesis is formulated, the

null hypothesis (H0), which typically states that the eﬀect which we are looking for does

not exist. Then an alternative hypothesis (HA) is formulated, typically the complement of the null hypothesis, that is, that the eﬀect exists. Then test statistics is used to tell

104 5.2 Presentation of Quantitative Information the probability that the null hypothesis is true. If the probability, p, is small enough that the null hypothesis is true, we can use the test to reject the null hypothesis in favor of the alternative hypothesis, saying that it is improbable that there is no effect, and more probable that there is actually an effect. If the probability of the null hypothesis is too large, we fail to reject the null hypothesis. This is not the same as proving that there is no effect—as there may still be one—, but rather, the test—given the used data—was not able to prove that the effect is significant.

How improbable the null hypothesis must be in order to be rejected, is a matter of defining the level of significance (α) of the test. α is the risk of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is in fact true. By convention, α is set to 0.05 in most sciences, including linguistics. Tests in this dissertation are performed at the .05 level, and therefore the critical values for the .05 level are used to determine if a relation is accepted as significant. In addition, it will be shown if a test is significant even at the .01 level, and in some cases the precise value for p will be given.

The test that gives the p-value is chosen on the basis of the data that is analyzed, and depends on the nature of the data.17 The measurement type of this experiment— for example subjunctive vs. indicative—is nominal (i.e. not ordinal, interval, or ratio), and hence, a nominal (less powerful) test must be used. Furthermore, the data is not normally distributed, and no parameters such as mean and standard deviation can be calculated, and so non-parametric tests must be used.

5.2.1.2 The Chi-Squared Test of Independence

The chi-squared test of independence (χ2) is used for testing for diﬀerences between two (or more) groups, when categorizing a sample in two (or more) dimensions.18

17Rugg (2008, Chapter 7). 18Rugg (2008, pp. 77–88); Madu (2003, pp. 82–96); Sheskin (2000, pp. 359–376); Conover (1980, pp. 158–69); Siegel (1956, p. 104).

105 5 Quantitative Methods

Column 1 Column 2 Row sums Row 1 a b a + b Row 2 c d c + d Column sums a + c b + d n

Table 5.1: 2 × 2 contingency table

Given a table that contains frequencies of observed data in two groups, such as Table 5.1, the chi-square test compares the observed frequencies to the frequencies that would be expected if the two groups were equally proportioned. A value, χ2—which expresses the diﬀerence between the observed and the expected frequencies—is calculated as by Equation 5.1. n(ad − bc)2 χ2 = (5.1) (a + b)(c + d)(a + c)(b + d)

The value of χ2 is then compared to a table with the chi-square distribution, a part of which is shown in Figure 5.2.19

p .100 .800 .900 .950 .975 .990 .995 .999 df 1 .0158 1.64 2.71 3.84 5.02 6.63 7.88 10.83

Table 5.2: The chi-square distribution for 2 × 2 table (df 1)

The table shows the critical values that χ2 must be equal to or greater than in order to reject the null hypothesis at different levels of significance. The percentile p corresponds to 1 − α. Hence, to perform the test at the .05-level, χ2 must be greater than or equal to the value at 1 − 0.05 = 0.95. The critical value for a chi-squared test at the .05 level 2 (χ.95) is 3.84. If the test (Equation 5.1) returns a value for χ2 ≥ 3.84, the two dimensions that the sample was categorized in are not independent. Then the null hypothesis is rejected, and the alternative hypothesis is assumed, that is, we conclude that the effect that we are looking for is actually there, that there is some correlation between the two categories. 19For example: Sheskin (2000, App., Table A4, p. 935); Siegel (1956, App., Table C, p. 249). The degree of freedom being df = (r − 1)(c − 1), where r and c are the numbers of rows. Thus, for a 2 × 2 contingency table, the degree of freedom is (2 − 1)(2 − 1) = 1.

106 5.2 Presentation of Quantitative Information

Nondirectional and Directional Hypotheses: Let the null hypothesis be that theoretical situation where there is no diﬀerence between the distributions in the two pop- ulations: H0 : π1 = π2, that is: The proportion (π1) of observed values in one category

(e.g. the cell a in Table 5.1) is equal to the corresponding proportion (π2) in the other category (e.g. c). Then the alternative hypothesis can be either nondirectional, i.e. merely state that the two proportions are not equal: HA : π1 6= π2, or directional, i.e. state that one of the proportions is greater than the other: HA : π1 > π2 or HA : π1 < π2. Since the nondirectional hypothesis includes all possibilities from both of the possible directional hypotheses (it states only a diﬀerence, not regarding whether π1 greater or less), the nondirectional hypothesis is twice as probable as each of the corresponding nondirectional. Hence, there are diﬀerent requirements for the p value in testing directional and nondirectional hypotheses, respectively. The critical value of χ2 ≥ 3.84 stated above regards the testing of nondirectional alternative hypotheses. For a directional alternative hypothesis, the critical value corresponds to the critical value for a 2 nondirectional alternative hypothesis tested on the .10 level (χ.90), the value found in Table 5.2 under the percentile p: p = 1 − α = 1 − .10 = .90, which is 2.71.20

To sum up, Table 5.3 shows the critical values that the χ2 values must be greater than or equal to in order to reject a null hypothesis based on the observations in a 2 × 2 contingency table.

Nondirectional Directional α = .05 ≥ 3.84 ≥ 2.71 α = .01 ≥ 6.63 ≥ 5.43

Table 5.3: Critical values for χ2

The test does not allow to conclude that one category is the cause of the eﬀect seen in the other, only that they are somehow dependent. An important assumption of the test is that the total number of observations in any of the categorizations must not have been predetermined. In this respect, one must pay attention to 1) the way the corpora

20Sheskin (2000, pp. 370–71).

107 5 Quantitative Methods

were composed (it was decided what authors, what genres, and what texts to use), and 2) the reduction of the number of certain clauses studied, as described in 6.2.4.1. The power of the chi-square test—the chance of actually accepting a true positive result—is greater, the larger n becomes. The chi-squared test is employed when sample sizes are n > 20 and all of the expected frequencies are ≥ 5, or when n > 40 and all expected frequencies are ≥ 1. When sample sizes are n < 20 or at least one expected frequency is < 5 or < 1, respectively, the Fisher’s exact text is employed instead.21

Yates’ correction for continuity is employed for samples where 20 < n < 40, which results in slightly lesser χ2 values for minor samples. The critical values are the same as described above, and Equation 5.2 is used.22

n(|ad − bc| − .5n)2 χ2 = (5.2) (a + b)(c + d)(a + c)(b + d)

5.2.1.3 The Fisher Exact Test

The Fisher exact test, which is used for very small samples, as described above, is based on calculations of the exact probability of the distribution in a 2 × 2 contingency table and the probability of the most extreme possible distribution of the sample. Equation 23 5.3 returns a value, p0, representing the exact probability of the observations.

(a + c)! (b + d)! (a + b)! (c + d)! P = (5.3) n! a! b! c! d!

The same calculation is done on all more extreme possible outcomes with the same

marginal totals, and all values are added, p0 + p1... + pn are added to give the ﬁnal value p. The value p, which represents the probability of getting a distribution such as the one tested or a more extreme one, is used to evaluate the null hypothesis. If p ≤ .05, the two categories are not independent, and the null hypothesis is rejected. This measure is intended for testing a directional alternative hypothesis, and consequently,

21Siegel (1956, p. 110); Sheskin (2000, p. 368). 22Sheskin (2000, pp. 368–70). 23Sheskin (2000, pp. 471–76); Conover (1980, pp. 165–67); Siegel (1956, pp. 96–104).

108 5.2 Presentation of Quantitative Information if a nondirectional alternative hypothesis is tested, an even lesser p is required, namely a/2 = .05/2 = .025.

Nondirectional Directional α = .05 ≤ .025 ≤ .05 α = .01 ≤ .005 ≤ .01

Table 5.4: Critical values for Fisher exact test, p

This calculation of p is tedious if there are several more extreme possible outcomes. In some cases, an approximation of level of signiﬁcance may be used instead, using Table I in Siegel (1956, pp. 256–70).

5.2.2 Some Thoughts on Statistic Representativity

The test statistics ensures that tendencies are not accepted if they are likely to have emerged by coincidence, to ensure that we do not study patterns that ‘are not there’. This, however, is only supposed to validate the data that is actually studied, and must not be confused with statistic representativity. For the results from the study to be generalized to the entire neo-Latin language, it would be necessary to guarantee that the sample studied here were representative of all neo-Latin. This is not the case, and it is probably not possible at all to make such a representative corpus. Representativity is ensured by guaranteeing that the subjects drawn from the population to make up the sample are random. The texts in the present corpora are all but random. They were subject to elections—due to e.g. style, inﬂuence, popularity etc.—ﬁrstly in the Renais- sance (Which texts were preserved, edited, disseminated, printed?), secondly by modern scholars (Which texts have become subject to present days’ study? Which have become available in a digitized format that can be used for corpus linguistics?), and thirdly in the actual composition of the corpora; the last phase being the only one that could have been done by randomness. While the corpus cannot be truly representative, this is a broad study that describes 15th century Italian neo-Latin literary prose language, pointing to general and individual tendencies within the studied texts. Those texts, probably not

109 5 Quantitative Methods

representative of all neo-Latin language, are however written by trendsetting authors in the development of a neo-Latin language norm.24 In addition, the selection of different authors gives the possibility to describe whether linguistic tendencies are individual or may be common neo-Latin. Hence, the external validity of this study is based on the assumption that the texts studied were important in the time of the development of neo-Latin (as an indication of linguistic norm), and that the selection is broad enough to gain an idea of genre- and author-individual trends; it is not based on an assumption that the corpus is representative of all neo-Latin text, let alone all Italian, all 15th century, or all literary prose neo-Latin.25 While the selection of texts has been made with some premonition of the level of popularity, style, etc., we have no knowledge beforehand of what concrete linguistic phenomena should be found in what text types. Thus, the texts were not selected in order to enhance the chance of specific results. In this respect, the corpora have the typical strength of a linguistic corpus: They represent actual (literary) language with all parts of the language available—in comparison to ‘experimental samples’ of language that was produced with the specific study in view.26

24These considerations also mirror Labov’s conviction that historical data cannot be representative, but are normative; and that they, because of their fragmentary nature, can only provide positive evidence, not negative, as gaps in the distribution may be due to chance. Labov (1994, p. 11). 25Dallal (2012, Note 5); Rugg (2008, pp. 20–24); Rieger (1979). 26Bungarten (1979).

110 Chapter 6

Corpora and Data

6.1 Corpora

The Latin corpora—though they are not claimed to be representative—are composed with the intention that it be possible to evaluate possible influences from diasystematic parameters, such as chronology, authors, genres. It would make comparison easier between the corpora, and between the different factors within each corpus, if they were equal in size and in composition (with respect to these parameters). This, however, is very difficult to achieve when depending on the very varying resources of digitized neo-Latin texts and annotated Classical Latin corpora. The primary parameter in the composition of the neo-Latin corpora is genre, and consequently the shares of each genre in the corpora are fairly equal (though still, the determining factor is the availability of texts). Differences between authors is a secondary parameter, and hence, the different authors are very unequally represented in the corpora as a whole, and within most genres, because equal shares of texts were only available within some genres (see letters and treatises, Table 6.1).

6.1.1 Neo-Latin Corpora

The analysis in this thesis is based on two corpora that are handled similarly and will supplement each other. One corpus focuses on the diﬀerences between authors’ individual language, comprising texts by several authors and used for the study of six clause

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types, namely clauses with dum, cum, quia, ne, quis/quid, and utrum. The other corpus contains texts only by the author Lorenzo Valla and is used for studying 16 different clause types, among others the six clause types also studied in the common neo-Latin corpus. As some of the same texts by Lorenzo Valla are also represented in the common corpus, there is some overlapping between the results extracted from each corpus, and thus results from the two corpora should not be added together, but they should be used exclusively to complement each other, offering two different points of view on the same questions. The Valla corpus was made first and used for early investigations, and as such, the data made from the later, common corpus show some improvements, as will be evident in 6.2.

6.1.1.1 The Common Neo-Latin Corpus

The common neo-Latin corpus is made up from texts containing a total of c. 300,000 running words. The texts are grouped in the ﬁve genres dialogues, historiography, letters, speeches, and treatises, each containing texts of between c. 50,000 and 70,000 running words. Across the ﬁve genres, thirteen authors, all writing in 15th century Italy, are represented, some by large amounts of texts, some by minor attributions. The amounts of text represented by each author and in each genre is seen in Table 6.1, the numbers designating running words. The texts and editions that are used are found in Appendix A along with the years of publication.

6.1.1.2 The Lorenzo Valla Corpus

The Valla corpus contains texts of c. 140,000 running words in four diﬀerent genres, as is seen in Table 6.2. The historiography genre is represented by the three ﬁrst books of his De rebus gestis Fernandi Regi. The letter genre is represented by a collection of letters, his letter In Bartolum, and his dedicatory letters to Elegantiae linguae latinae and to his translation of Thucydides. Valla’s treatises are represented by his De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio, Reciprocatio ad Tortellum, and Retractatio totius dialecticae. Finally, dialogues are represented by his three dialogues Apologus, De professione religiosorum, and Dialogi de libertate arbitrii. A list of editions can be found in Appendix A.

112 6.1 Corpora

History Speeches Letters Treatises Dialogues Total Alberti 6,261 6,261 Barbaro 8,573 8,026 16,599 B. Guarini 7,641 6,007 13,648 Bruni 26,930 11,035 7,825 9,043 54,833 Ficino 4,670 1,308 5,978 Filelfo 8,652 8,931 17,583 Manetti 5,605 5,605 G. Veronese 10,576 10,576 Perotti 21,834 9,672 10,234 41,740 Poggio 3,945 9,555 7,680 3,664 24,844 Poliziano 3,781 9,642 13,423 Pontano 6,488 34,760 41,248 Valla 26,042 1,553 9,338 6,258 6,516 49,707 Total 60,698 50,636 65,461 69,959 55,291 302,045

Table 6.1: Word distribution in the common neo-Latin corpus

History Letters Treatises Dialogues Total 41,887 28,545 41,499 31,249 143,180

Table 6.2: Word distribution in the Valla corpus

6.1.2 The L.A.S.L.A. Project

For linguistic comparisons with Classical Latin, two existing corpora are used, both accessible online. One is the corpus provided by the ‘Laboratoire d’Analyse Statistique des Langues Anciennes’, or the L.A.S.L.A. Project hosted at the university of Liege, and is described on http://www.cipl.ulg.ac.be/Lasla/. It is a rather large, comprehensive- ly annotated corpus that contains primarily Classical Latin texts. The morphological analysis is done automatically, and the search facility provided online gives the possibility to search for combinations of criteria in three categories: 1) lemmata, 2) subordination, and 3) morphology. The search criteria are chosen from an interface as pictured in Figure 6.1. Searching for a lemma—a representation of a word with all its possible morphological forms—gives for instance the possibility to ﬁnd all incidents of the verb sum. This search can be combined with a speciﬁcation of subordination, such as a clause type, so that all forms of sum that are present in, for example, clauses with dum will be returned. Furthermore, when morphological criteria are added, it is possible to search

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for instances of, say, dum clauses with the verb in the present subjunctive. L.A.S.L.A.

Figure 6.1: L.A.S.L.A. search interface

gives rather detailed and ﬂexible search possibilities. For the present project, however, information on the relation between tenses and moods in superordinate and subordinate clauses is searched for, and this is not possible with the L.A.S.L.A. corpus. Though, the fairly large amount of texts encoded under the L.A.S.L.A. Project makes the corpus a rich source of information on more general questions in the Classical Latin language, such as the distributions of verb forms within each clause type. When comparing results from the L.A.S.L.A. corpus to those produced for the present project, it must be noted that there are some diﬀerences in the morphological analysis. While ambiguous verb forms in the neo-Latin corpora are treated cautiously not deciding which of two possible interpretations to follow, the L.A.S.L.A. verb forms are decided to be the most probable interpretation (which is easier done in the Classical Latin language which is very well described, than in neo-Latin for which we do not yet

114 6.1 Corpora know the tendencies). This diﬀerence must be accounted for in studies comparing data from the two corpora.

For comparisons with the L.A.S.L.A. data, I have defined different subcorpora for different purposes to be used in the analysis. For most purposes, a selection of the corpus containing all the prose texts from the Classical period will be used. This selection is referred to as the L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus. In other cases, corpora with only one genre are more appropriate. Such genre specific collections are the L.A.S.L.A. history corpus, the L.A.S.L.A. speech corpus, and the L.A.S.L.A. dialogue corpus. The L.A.S.L.A. corpus has too few letters and treatises in the corpus to make specific selections with those. A minor selection contains colloquial language, though not only prose texts. This collection is called the L.A.S.L.A. colloquial corpus. Finally, the total amount of texts from the L.A.S.L.A. Project may also be of use, though a major part are poetic works. This will be referred to as the L.A.S.L.A. total corpus. The texts contained in each of these selections can be seen in Appendix D.

One major problem that goes for both of the two online corpora that will be used for comparison with neo-Latin, is that the definition of ‘Classical’ is not the same today as it was in the Renaissance. Today, most scholars who are interested in Classical Latin for example view the Early Christian writers as separate from the Classical Roman, secular tradition. Many Renaissance humanists considered writers from both groups equally good with respect to their values as linguistic and stylistic inspiration.1 And several other Classical authors were more popular in the Renaissance than today. So the Classical Latin corpora cannot truly reflect the actual sources of inspiration for humanist writers, because writers such as Augustine, Jerome,2 Varro, and Quintilian are not part of the existing Classical Latin corpora. In return, not all texts in the corpora were actually discovered in the Renaissance. The Classical Latin corpora are, thus, to be considered a reflection of the general language community that the particular sources of inspiration of the humanists were part of; not as a picture of the actual texts that the humanists read.

1Of course, they distinguished in the nature of what they wrote. See, for instance, Bruni, Stud., § 5; 8; 18. 2See 13.4.1 for a remark on the relationship between Jerome and The Latin Vulgate.

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6.1.3 The Perseus Dependency Treebank

The other online corpus with Classical Latin texts that is used for comparisons is the Perseus Dependency Treebank, a project under the Perseus Project at the Tufts Uni- versity. The treebank is accessed at http://annis.perseus.tufts.edu/. A treebank is ‘a corpus in which every sentence is syntactically annotated with a parse tree’.3 In a dependency treebank, all syntactic dependencies are annotated, as illustrated by the Perseus Treebank in Figure 6.2, which is a parse tree of ista mea norit gloria canitiem.4 In com-

Figure 6.2: Treebank sentence of ista meam norit gloria canitiem

bination with POS tags, all combinations of morphological form and subordination can be queried. Where the possibilities in the L.A.S.L.A. corpus are limited to the relation between a word and its immediate kind of subordination, the Perseus Treebank allows more sophisticated and complex queries. Queries are written in a specialized query language called Annis (or using a graphical query builder). Searching the Perseus Treebank is consequently more laborious than using the rather simple, predesigned search interface of the L.A.S.L.A. Project. Texts in the Perseus Treebank are annotated manually by two independent annotators, and afterwards controlled by a third in cases of disagree- ment. This guarantees that the data is quite precise, but it also results in a fairly small corpus, as the process is thorough. Thus, the Perseus Treebank will be used only for comparisons where the complexity of the queries is needed. To illustrate the possibilities of a treebank: In the L.A.S.L.A. corpus, we could ﬁnd instances of dum clauses with the verb in the present subjunctive. In the Perseus

3Jurafsky and Martin (2008, Chapter 12.4). 4Figure from http://nlp.perseus.tufts.edu/syntax/treebank/.

116 6.1 Corpora

Treebank, we will find instances of cum clauses with the verb in indicative, which are subordinate to a verb also in the indicative. Now, we will se a result of this query in the Annis Query Language searched on the Perseus Treebank: mood="indicative" & POS="verb" & POS="conjunction" & LEMMA="cum" & mood="indicative" & POS="verb" & #1 _=_ #2 & #3 _=_ #4 & #5 _=_ #6 & #2 ->parent #4 & #4 ->parent #6 Figure 6.3, a picture of the graphical query builder, illustrates how this search expression defines three nodes in a parse tree, 1) a verb in the indicative, 2) the lemma cum with the POS conjunction, and 3) one more verb in the indicative. It further defines, that the first verb node must be a parent (in the tree structure) to the cum node, which must be a parent to the second verb node (the verb within the cum clause). The search iterates

Figure 6.3: Treebank query builder all trees in the Treebank and returns all trees that match the query with the possibility to read the actual text as well as see all annotations and an arch dependence overview of the clause that matched the query, as in Figure 6.4. The Latin Perseus Treebank

Figure 6.4: Arch dependency returned from Perseus Treebank contains a total of 53,143 tokens. Of Classical Latin prose, it contains Caesar Bellum

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Gallicum book 2 selection (1,488 tokens), Cicero In Catilinam 1.1–2.11 (6,229 tokens), Jerome Vulgate: Apocalypse (8,382 tokens), Petronius Satyricon 26–78 (12,474 tokens), Sallust Catilina (12,311 tokens), that is 41,173 tokens in total. This selection will be referred to as the Perseus prose corpus. The rest of the Latin Perseus Treebank consists of Ovid Metamorphoses book 1, Propertius Elegies book 1, and Vergil Aeneid book 6 selections. This entire corpus will be referred to as the Perseus total corpus.

6.2 Handling of Data

The art of designing a corpus based analysis of syntactic phenomena, according to Meurers and Müller (2009), comes down to identifying the formal patterns of the phenomena and then reducing the examples to a formal model based on the properties contained in the corpus and its annotation. Three things are crucial to ensure both the precision (getting only the intended matches) and the recall (getting all the intended matches) of the data retrieval, namely 1) knowing the preconditions of the data and the annotation (what does it represent?), 2) understanding what properties can affect the linguistic issue, and 3) designing a precise model of the phenomena. To ensure this, I designed the model on the basis of several pilot studies, increasing in proportion from the first manual countings of verbs in a single letter by Perotti, to the study of four prose genres by Valla also presented in this thesis—testing models, possible factors, and considering preassumptions. The final analysis is, as described in 5.1.1, based on manual readings of neo-Latin text. These readings focus on the finite verb in several types of subordinate clauses and a set of information on the verb and the context in which it is written. An application has been developed for storing this set of data for each verb, and for extracting practically innumerable combinations of the data in order to produce quantitative information on the linguistic combinations. The set of data is modeled as follows.

6.2.1 Data Model

The information stored for each verb belongs to two levels:

• The morphological form of the verb itself

118 6.2 Handling of Data

• Morphological and syntactic factors in the context of the verb

Values marked with * are not used in the Valla corpus, except for Valla’s relative clauses, for which the entire data set was implemented.

6.2.1.1 The Morphology of the Verb

Four morphological values are identiﬁed for each verb, namely the tense, the mood, the voice, and the person. As far as possible, the values are objective. Thus, where a morphological form is ambiguous, it is given a transparent value in order not to apply my interpreting the form to the basic linguistic information. For instance, a value exists for words that could be either in the perfect subjunctive or the future perfect indicative that makes clear that the form is ambiguous and could be either. Further more, the exact form of the verb is stored as well. Thus, a verb is represented by:

• tense and mood (e.g. present indicative)

• person* (e.g. ﬁrst person singular)

• voice (e.g. active)

• exact form (e.g. amo)

6.2.1.2 The Context of the Verb

The tense and mood of a verb in a subordinate clause are to some degree dependent on factors in the context. A set of such factors is identiﬁed for each verb, namely:

• the mood in the directly superordinate clause (e.g. the indicative, the subjunctive, or a peculiar subjunctive such as the unreal)

• the degree of subordination in the directly superordinate clause (i.e. main clause or subordinate clause)

• the time of the directly superordinate clause (e.g. historic tenses or primary tenses)

• the discourse (i.e. direct or indirect discourse)

119 6 Corpora and Data

• if the clause is part of indirect discourse, the person of the verbum dicendi or sentiendi* (e.g. ﬁrst person singular)

• the presence of negations in the subordinate clause itself or in a superordinate clause

6.2.1.3 The Type of the Subordinate Clause

A number of types of subordinate clauses have been chosen for study. To gain the possibility of comparative studies, the clause types chosen are compatible with the clause types annotated in the L.A.S.L.A. Project. However, only a selection of the clause types from the L.A.S.L.A. Project is studied, the selection being based on a) the frequency of the clause type in the neo-Latin corpora (the total number of verbs represented in each clause type are indicated in the list below, and more details in 6.2.4.1 and Ap- pendix C) and b) recognizability. That is, to locate the clause types in the neo-Latin corpus, the program dtSearch5 is used for searching the texts for specific words that indicate the clause type in question (i.e. usually the hypotactic conjunction initiating the clause). Some of these connectives are unique and easily recognizable, some ambiguous. For instance, searching for dum, one will find only the conjunction dum, while searching for quod, one will find the conjunction initiating a subordinate clause as well as certain forms of the relative pronoun, initiating another type of subordinate clause, and the interrogative pronoun and adverbs initiating yet other clause types. Some very common clause types, such as the relative, are studied, however, despite being difficult to search for. With regard to different spellings of the connectives, a word is searched using regular expressions that match the different spellings. For a detailed description of this search and the spellings that are searched for each clause type, see Appendix E. Thus, the spellings in this list match the spellings used in the L.A.S.L.A. Project, and are not the only ones searched for.

The clause types studied in the common neo-Latin corpus are:

5Search dtSearch Support Articles (2010).

120 6.2 Handling of Data

• Dum (198) • Quia (361) • Quis/quid (230)

• Cum (500) • Ne (468) • Utrum (17)

The clause types studied in the Valla corpus are:

• Dum (69) • Priusquam (16) • Tamquam (5)

• Cum (200) • Simulac (5) • Quot (14) • Quia (185) • Ne (200) • Quis/quid (149) • Quoniam (41) • Etsi (104) • Utrum (12) • Postquam (31) • Licet (35)

• Donec (16) • Quamquam (15) • Relative (399)

6.2.1.4 Some Reﬂections on the Choices of Information Categories

The composition of information described above is of great importance to the nature of the investigation. While the information identified can be studied in any possible combination, providing a host of possibilities for different examinations, the investigation is on the other hand limited by the values and categories defined. The aim in composing these categories is to balance degree of detail and feasibility, so that important distinctions between values are not missed, while irrelevant information is not carefully identified for each verb. However, deciding beforehand which information will probably prove relevant is difficult, especially within a field of study—such as that of neo-Latin moods and tenses—which is fairly untouched. Two immediate pitfalls are 1) the modern linguistic tradition and terminology much developed since the time of the writers of both Classical Latin and neo-Latin and 2) the modern philological knowledge being based on studies of the Classical Latin language. As an example of the former, even the morphological form of a verb, which does seem a rather objective categorization when handling the ambiguous forms consequently, is a matter of discussion when it comes to the form –ero nowadays considered an indicative future perfect, but in renaissance grammars until Giulio Pomponio Leto’s definition as

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such in 1484 considered a future subjunctive.6 Pertaining to the latter, as described in 3.2.2, verbal syntax described in renaissance grammars is in some respects rather different from the verbal syntax identiﬁed in modern descriptions of Classical Latin. For instance, indirect questions are often handled as one category of clauses sharing a tendency towards consequently having the subjunctive in Classical Latin while the question clauses are treated individually in renaissance grammars, even without distinguishing between indirect and direct questions. Even more importantly, as the aim of this dissertation is to provide the ﬁrst insights into how moods and tenses are chosen in neo-Latin, consequently one cannot say what factors are relevant to study.

However, my preliminary studies7 indicate that by looking merely for the factors known from the studies of Classical Latin we would not be able to answer the questions on the neo-Latin linguistic practice. For instance, the choice of mood in subordinate clauses in the indirect discourse—the subjunctive being the unmarked case in Classical Latin—seems more dependent on the person of the verbum dicendi in neo-Latin, why the person of both the verb in question and of the verbum dicendi was added as important categories of information in this investigation. On the other hand, knowing that the sequence of tenses in Classical Latin is strongly based on the tenses in the superordinate clauses, this category of information is also an important factor in the study, though it has not yet been shown to what degree it was, for the writers of neo-Latin, a factor in choosing a subjunctive tense.

Thus, the neo-Latin language is here studied both on the terms of Classical Latin, and, to as great an extent as is possible with the so far sparse knowledge on neo-Latin, on its own terms. Completely showing respect for the neo-Latin language and studying it strictly on its own terms would mean shifting the balance in the work too much away from the feasibility of the project in order to take in any possible factor, why the selection of information is a compromise sought to ﬁnd the factors that, based om my preliminary studies of neo-Latin and common knowledge on the Classical Latin, seem more likely to play their part in constructing the neo-Latin linguistic practice.

6Percival (1983, 321); Taylor (1987a, 0.3). 7Horster (2010, 2011).

122 6.2 Handling of Data

6.2.2 Storing Data

The syntactic and morphological information is stored systematically using an application developed for the project exclusively.8 The application saves a collection of data and gives the possibility to query the data, and consequently has some of the functionality of a database. It does not, however give the possibility to easily change the information once it has been stored, to be accessed from more than one user running the application locally, and to be used for other sets of data than the one intended for this project. These are functionalities commonly expected from a database, as well as being managed by database management systems.9 Consequently, this is not an actual database, though it has simple database functionality.

The application consists of a method for entering the information on a verb in a certain structure that is saved in structured text files.10 Thus, a data set for each verb is saved to text files that hold the entire data collection. A verb is represented in the text files by a line consisting of one value for each of these categories:

Number # Word # Clause # Tense # PersonThis # Voice # SupClause # Discourse # PersonVerbDic # Time # Negation # Quote # Author #

Number is a unique enumeration of the verb. Word is the exact form of the verb. Clause is the type of subordinate clause in which the verb is written. Tense is the tense and mood of the verb. PersonThis is the person and number of the verb. Voice is the voice of the verb. SupClause is the type of clause that is superordinate to the clause of the verb. Discourse indicates whether the context is indirect or direct discourse. PersonVerbDic is the person and number of the verbum dicendi or sentiendi, if any exists (otherwise it has the value NONE). Time is the time of the context. Negation indicates if there are negations in the clause of the verb or in the near context. Quote gives the possibility to add a text string quoting the actual clause, and Author names the author of the text in which the clause was found. A list of the possible values for each category is found in

8I developed the application in cooperation with Rune Horster, MSc in Computer Science. 9Garcia-Molina et al. (2002, p. 2). 10The ﬂow of entering data to the text ﬁles can be seen in Appendix G.

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Appendix E.11 A representation of a verb with its values could look like this in the text files: 1098 # erres # NE # PRES_SUBJ # SECOND_SG # ACTIVE # MAIN_CL_IMP # ORATIORECTA # NONE # PRIMARY # NEGATION_THIS_CLAUSE # Vide ne erres # POGGIO # Further more, information on the genre of the text in which the verb was written is ob- tainable, as the data sets are saved in files named according to the genre of the text. Thus, the data collection is altogether saved in five files named letters.save, dialogues.save, historiography.save, treatises.save, and speeches.save. To read the files containing the full data collection used for the investigation, please see Appendix F.

6.2.3 Extracting Data

The application gives the possibility to make queries into the data collection to receive data sets that match any combination of values, by defining the search criteria in a string such as this: Clause[] Tense[PRES_SUBJ, PERF_SUBJ] PersonThis[] Voice[] SupClause[] Discourse[] PersonVerbDic[] Time[SECONDARY] Negation[] Author[VALLA] In square brackets following each information category, are listed the values that are searched for. The example shows the query line for finding all of the instances where Lorenzo Valla writes a verb in either the present or the perfect subjunctive in a clause that is subordinate to a verb in a secondary tense, that is, basically examples of Valla breaking with the main rule for the sequence of tenses. The result is returned firstly as a count of data sets (i.e. verbs) that match the search criteria, both giving the total number of matching data sets and the distribution across genres (with reference to the file name). In square brackets following each genre count, is given the unique numbers of each data set that matched the query, that the verb and the clause can easily be identified for further study:

11Note that the data looks slightly diﬀerent for the Valla corpus. A data set from the Valla corpus contains this sequence of information: Number # Word # Clause # ExactClause # SupClause # Tense # Voice # Discourse # Negation # Time # Quote #. ExactClause is equivalent to Clause as described for the common neo-Latin corpus, while Clause in the Valla data contains a distinction between adjective, noun, and adverb clauses, which has proven to be a category too broad for this study, and is not used.

124 6.2 Handling of Data

Search results: Total: 8 dialogues.save: 2 [543, 555] letters.save: 2 [694, 702] speeches.save: 0 [] historiography.save: 3 [209, 1184, 1507] treatises.save: 1 [1022]

Secondly follows a map over the distribution of the appearances across all possible values within every category of information. Within the categories that were not deﬁned in the query string, all values are possible (e.g. Voice), while in the categories that were deﬁned to match certain values (e.g. Time), consequently, only those values are represented (some lines being abridged in the example):

Clause: {QVIA=1, NE=2, CVM=4, DVM=0, QVIS_QVID=1, VTRVM=0} Tense: {...PRES_SUBJ=8, FUT_IND=0, MISC_FUTPERF_OR_PERFSUBJ=0...} PersonThis: {...FIRST_SG=1, THIRD_SG=6, SECOND_SG=1, FIRST_PL=0} Voice: {PASSIVE=1, ACTIVE=6, BOTH=1} SupClause: {... MAIN_CL_SUBJ=1, SUB_CL_SUBJ=2, MAIN_CL_IND=4, INF=1...} Discourse: {AMBIGUOUS=1, ORATIOOBLIQUA=2, ORATIORECTA=5} PersonVerbDic: {NONE=5, FIRST_PL=0, THIRD_SG=2, SECOND_SG=1...} Time: {... PRESPERF=0, PRIMARY_FUT=0, SECONDARY=8, PRIMARY=0...} Negation: {...NEGATION_THIS_CLAUSE=2, NEGATION_CONTEXT=1, NO_NEGATION=5} Author: {... FICINO=0, MANETTI=0, VALLA=8, POGGIO=0, POLIZIANO=0...}

All search results that are referred to in the investigation are numbered. They are referred to by ‘C# + number’ for verbs from the common neo-Latin corpus, and ‘V# +

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number’ for the Valla corpus. They are enclosed on a CD-ROM (please see Appendix F).

6.2.4 Particulars in the Construction of Information

Though the values within each category have been chosen in order to cover all possibilities in the Latin texts studied and to allow diﬀerentiating between the content of diﬀerent values, several clauses and linguistic phenomena will be a gray area between two or more possible values. A detailed list of particular interpretations of each possible data value is found in Appendix E, Table E.2. So, it is clear which phenomena are represented by the particular value when studying the results, and my linguistic interpretation of the individual text passage is less likely to unwillingly distort the conclusions drawn from the data.

Definition of a clause: Defining a clause is a problem that is very central to the construction of information for this investigation. Whether to make several verbs within the same clause count as one single clause or as one clause each can change the nature of the quantitative data dramatically. Because of the focus on mood and tense in this project, a clause is defined as the presence of a certain combination of mood and tense subordinate to the connective in question. Thus:

• Two or more verbs in the same tense and mood that are coordinate in one subordinate clause with only one initiating connective are only counted once and will be represented by only one data set in the data collection. However, all verbs are to be represented in the category Verb as: Verb1 = verb1 AND verb2 ... AND verbn.

• Verbs in the same tense and mood in identical, coordinate clauses which have an initiating connective each are counted separately, and will thus be represented by two or more data sets as: Verb1 = verb1, Verb2 = verb2, and Verbn = verbn.

• In cases of ellipsis of the verb, the verb is not counted and is not saved to the data collection.

126 6.2 Handling of Data

6.2.4.1 The Number of Verbs Studied

Some clause types are very common, some rather infrequent. As the aim of the study is to give an overview over the linguistic practice in a broad collection of neo-Latin text, the larger number of verbs represented in each clause type, the better and more general the results will seem. If an automatic identification of all the information needed were possible, the total number of appearances in the corpus should be studied. However, as the identification and saving is done partly manually, a general limit to the number of verbs is necessary. Thus, in the common neo-Latin corpus, a clause type will be represented by 100 verbs within each of the five genres at most, that is 500 verbs from each clause type in total. In the Valla corpus, a maximum of 50 verbs from each clause type, in each of the four genres studied, is the limit. Thus, the Valla corpus has a maximum of 200 of each clause type. Excepted are relative clauses, of which there are 399 in the Valla corpus, with a maximum of 100 in each genre. Some rare clause types do not attain a number of 100 (or 50) within one genre, and consequently, all appearances of the clause type within the genre are included in the data collection. When the number of verbs in one clause type surpasses 100 (or 50) within one genre, the number included in the data collection is reduced to the maximum of 100, as far as possible letting all authors who are represented in the genre contribute with an equal share of verbs. In the same way, all texts written by the same author within one genre are represented equally if possible. When the number of verbs is reduced, the verbs from the beginning of a text are included first, and verbs from the end are discarded. A collection of letters is considered one text, and consequently verbs from the first letters in a collection are more likely to be counted in. Please note that reducing the number of verbs counted in very common clause types while letting the full range of verbs in uncommon clause types count may twist some representations of the numbers, because the rare clause type, which was not reduced, will have disproportionately large influence on, for instance, an overview over the total number of verbs having the indicative and the subjunctive mood, respectively, compared to, say, a common clause type that might in reality be represented by a thousand, while being reduced to 500 in this investigation and thus influencing the total only by half of what it might in reality. These very large presentations of data across all clause types

127 6 Corpora and Data

are, however, not very frequent and central to the study, and possible distortions can be checked for. In the Tables 6.3 through 6.5, values that were reduced due to these principles are marked with *. For the common neo-Latin corpus, Table 6.3 and 6.4 show the total number of verbs from each clause type in the data collection, as they are distributed between genres and authors. For the Valla corpus, Table 6.5 shows how many of each clause type are represented in each genre.

Dum Cum Quia Ne Quis Utrum Total History 50 100* 100* 100* 33 2 385* Speeches 20 100* 56 100* 19 4 299* Letters 36 100* 61 98 70 1 366* Treatises 48 100* 97 95 60 4 404* Dialogues 44 100* 47 75 48 6 320* Total 198 500* 361* 468* 230 17 1774*

Table 6.3: Clause types and genres in the common neo-Latin corpus

Dum Cum Quia Ne Quis Utrum Total Bruni 27 94* 34 81 33 3 272* G. Veronese 8 14* 6 11 5 44* Poggio 11 67* 23 35 57 1 194* Manetti 4 10* 10 25 2 1 52* Filelfo 4 24* 3 8 24 63* Alberti 13 10* 10 2 1 36* Valla 27 95* 121* 93* 50 6 392* Pontano 39 35* 8 53 24 1 160* Perotti 16 47* 55 61* 16 3 198* Ficino 11 13* 52 5 2 83* B. Guarini 12 33* 21 18 7 91* Barbaro 6 37* 22 41 3 1 110* Poliziano 20 21* 6 27 5 79* Total 198 500* 361* 468* 230 17 1774*

Table 6.4: Clause types and authors in the common neo-Latin corpus

128 6.2 Handling of Data 415* 333* 379* 369* Total 1496* Table 6.5: Clause types and genres in the Valla corpus 33121311 50* 50* 50*36 50* 50*23 3531 50*13 50* 7 5 9 7 5 16 12 15 4 13 5 4 6 4 2 8 14 2 5 9 2 3 4 7 2 2 1 3 38 27 38 1 46 50* 1 1 2 50* 50* 1 50* 8 100* 100* 100* 99* 69 200* 185* 41 31 16 16 5 200* 104 35 15 5 14 149 12 399* Etsi Licet Quamquam Tamquam Quot Quis Utrum Relative Dum Cum Quia Quoniam Postquam Donec Priusquam Simulac Ne History Letters Treatises Dialogues Total History Letters Treatises Dialogues Total

129

Part III

Mood and Time in Subordinate Clauses

Chapter 7

Mood Variations According to Genre and Author

We shall now change the focus of the linguistic description of neo-Latin from the conceptual view on a language, presented in Part I, to a detailed analysis of the neo-Latin practice in a restricted area of the language: the moods and tenses in subordinate clauses. As discussed above (1.2; 3.2), this morpho-syntactic layer of the language lays basically outside of the grammatical focus of the humanists, and therefore I consider it an op- timal window into the least deliberate components of the neo-Latin language, where I expect unconscious interference from the Volgare and influence from the Medieval Latin to more easily slip into the neo-Latin linguistic practice. Also, it may be one of the best places for testing how much power over the linguistic system can be attributed to the humanists’ deliberate considerations such as the Classical Latin model and stylistic nuances; not for testing if those factors have any power at all, for we know that they are influential factors in the more susceptible parts of the language, such as the lexicon (cf. 1.1), but if they can actually affect also the more invisible language structures that bind the lexicon together.

Because the focus in these investigations is on particular morpho-syntactic phenomena, general considerations on the inﬂuence of various factors, such as style, L1, Medieval Latin, and imitatio, are secondary and appear where they are relevant to the particular

133 7 Mood Variations According to Genre and Author

parts of the analysis. These will be compared and form a concluding characterization of the neo-Latin language in Chapter 14. The quantitative nature of the following investigations causes some of the analyses to be based mostly on representations of the linguistic data in charts. But in most cases the quantitative analyses of the neo-Latin data suggest areas of the language that are worth studying in detail, looking for explanations for the distributions of verb forms. But in all cases, because the approach in this study is the general usus of neo-Latin, and not the sporadic, individual particulars found scattered around the neo-Latin language, we shall only focus on and study in detail those tendencies that are actually detected in and inﬂuence the general, quantitative study of neo-Latin. This also leads to a few studies of very individual uses of moods and tenses, that separate the language use of one humanist from the others, but only where a tendency is so outspoken that it is detectable in a broader perspective. This means that other similar observations may be overlooked, and that much more may be studied in neo-Latin than that which is the focus of this investigation, even in the matter of moods and tenses in subordinate clauses. One exception from this approach to individual language use are the two authors whose language I have studied in detail prior to the common neo-Latin study: Lorenzo Valla and Niccolò Perotti. Two of the leading grammarians of the 15th century, they are represented particularly with their writings on grammar and style, as we have already seen, and also in a few perspectival passages treating their linguistic use in a literary and stylistic context. Our ﬁrst steps into discovering how the moods and tenses are used in humanist Latin are concerned with distinguishing the factors that are related to mood; the factors that trigger, as it were, the use of the subjunctive mood in stead of the indicative (Chapter 7– 10). After this, we shall proceed to analyses of the tenses in dependent clauses (Chapter 11–13). We shall regularly evaluate whether the linguistic use that we identify can be considered natural or unnatural language use. These considerations are to a large extent dependent on studying the language use across two major language external factors, namely author and genre: is the language system consistent across the boundaries of genres, and is there widespread individual variation, or do authors behave as if part of

134 7.1 The Finite Moods in Latin an actual language society? Therefore, we shall begin by identifying the overall distribution of the indicative and the subjunctive across different genres and in the writings of individual authors. Accordingly, this chapter gives us some first insights into the mood system in subordinate clauses in neo-Latin, such as whether the choice of moods is an individual matter that differs largely between the authors or depends on a collective system; and whether there is a genre dependent difference in the distribution of moods. On the other hand, the data presented here will also serve as the base rates of succeeding investigations: basic distributions that we shall return to and base following considerations on. For knowing the overall distributions of mood within, for example, one genre is necessary if one wishes to determine whether or not a figure from within that genre stands out from the ground. For future use of the data as base rates, Appendix H holds all the data presented here and in the following chapter, with even more details.

7.1 The Finite Moods in Latin

The following is a study of the use of moods and tenses in ﬁnite dependent clauses, and we shall therefore focus on the two ﬁnite moods of the Latin language that appear in subordinations, the indicative and the subjunctive. As mentioned earlier (3.2.2), the information on the nature of the moods is sparse in the Renaissance grammars. Perotti distinguishes between three moods, the indicative, the optative, and the subjunctive, and only the indicative is characterized with respect to its semantic value, while the optative and the subjunctive, which are morphologically equal, are characterized in accordance to their place in the sentence structure.

Quis est modus indicatiuus? Quo indicamus quid agitur . . . Quis est modus optatiuus? Qui eget aduerbio optandi, ut perfectum significet sensum. Quis est modus subiunctiuus? Qui non solum eget aduerbio uel coniunctione, uerum etiam altero uerbo, ut perfectum significet sensum. Niccolò Perotti, Rudimenta grammatices, § 282–85 Perotti’s characterization of the indicative as indicating that which happens corresponds to the definition of the indicative in modern grammars as the mood in which factual and declarative situations are phrased. But Perotti does not describe the other two

135 7 Mood Variations According to Genre and Author

moods with respect to the modern conception of modality as a semantic nuance, an “. . . addition of a supplement or overlay of meaning to the most neutral semantic value of the proposition of an utterance, namely factual and declarative.” ( Bybee and Fleischman (1995, p. 1)). These semantic nuances are of various kinds: basically an epistemic modality concerning the truth of propositions, social functions of modality concerning permission and obligation, and directives such as imperatives and optatives.1 All these functions can be expressed by the subjunctive mood in Latin (but also by other means). Perotti’s conception of the optative seems to be related to the semantic value, because it is restricted not only to appear in the context of an adverb, but speciﬁcally an aduerbium optandi, such as “utinam amarem” (Perotti, Rud., § 396). But the subjunctive verbs are those that depend both on some connector and another verb, such as “cum amem”(idem, § 397). That is, the subjunctive is used in dependent clauses. As we shall soon see (8.1), Renaissance grammarians had a rather clear idea of the notion of truth that may follow from using the indicative, as opposed to the uncertainty expressed by the subjunctive. But Perotti’s distinction between the optative in main clauses and the subjunctive in dependent clauses is also interesting, because the subjunctive in Classical Latin, and particularly in later Latin variants, partly developed into a mood of subordination, so that many uses of the subjunctive in subordinate clauses were no longer connected to the basic nuances of modality.2 This relation between the syntactic subjunctive and the semantic subjunctive will be central to some of the considerations in the following chapters, and we shall study whether the humanists choose between the two moods mostly based on syntactic patterns or rather with a semantic distinction. Even though Perotti’s explicit characterization of the subjunctive, as opposed to the optative, indicates a purely syntactic conception of the mood, this is far from the case in the linguistic practice of the humanists, as we shall se throughout these analyses. The division of the functions of the subjunctive into syntactic and semantic was also in eﬀect in the mother tongue of the humanists. Vegnaduzzo (2010) describes how the subjunctive in Medieval Italian can be divided into an intensionale that regards the

1Bybee and Fleischman (1995). 2Blatt (1946, § 370).

136 7.2 Genres semantic property of the context of a verb and may express nuances such as the volitivo, the epistemicho, or the fattivo, and on the other hand some uses of the subjunctive that are polare and are dependent on syntactic elements such as negations and certain clause types or connectors that are automatically constructed with the subjunctive. Therefore the mood in both the Classical Latin and the Medieval Italian language varies between the indicative and the subjunctive based on two parallel mechanisms, a syntactic and a semantic. But the details vary, and in those diﬀerences some parts of the nature of the neo-Latin mood system are to be revealed.

7.2 Genres

As we saw in 4.5, there is reason to believe that some humanists may have associated the subjunctive mood—and sentence structures with many subordinate clauses in general— with high style. If such tendencies can be detected between diﬀerent genres, there may be more subjunctive in genres of higher style, such as history, speeches, and perhaps some letters, while a smaller proportion of the subjunctive would be expected in writings characterized by lower style. We shall therefore test whether or not the data from the entire neo-Latin corpus can show some correlation between genre and the amount of subjunctive, by testing these hypotheses.

H0 There is no diﬀerence in mood between history/speeches and treatises/dialogues.

HA There is a higher proportion of subjunctive in history/speeches than in treatises/dialogues.

In Figure 7.13 we should look briefly at the last column showing how many of all the clauses in the study are in the indicative and the subjunctive, respectively, before we consider the differences between genres. What we can not learn from that is the overall amount of embedded clauses in neo-Latin being in the subjunctive and in the indicative. We can not conclude that Renaissance humanists tend to choose the subjunctive in embedded clauses, because this result is largely dependent on the different clause types

3C# 0.1–0.3.

137 7 Mood Variations According to Genre and Author

that are part of this study. Another overall picture would probably have emerged, had we also studied clauses with, for example, postquam, quamquam, and simulac. These clauses, among others, were part of the original Valla study which we shall occasionally refer to, and the overall values of indicative vs. subjunctive in that study sum up to c. 52% of the clauses being indicative, and 42% subjunctive (the rest being ambiguous). Consequently, this total is (the way this study is designed) meant only as a point of reference for comparison across categories within the study, and says nothing about the entire language. When we look at the genre specific columns, it is clear that the only genre that stands out from the others is treatises, which has a slightly less proportion of subjunctive than what is found in the other genres. Treatises has a smaller proportion of subjunctives, as expected, and the difference is significant, both when comparing treatises to history (χ2 = 8.03, p < .01) and to letters (χ2 = 9.95, p < .01). However, rather than suggesting that

Figure 7.1: Distribution of mood across genres

we are right in assuming that the subjunctive might actually be conceived as a stylistic marker in some circumstances, expressed in some correlation between genre/stylistic level and choosing subjunctive, this indicates that something is wrong with the data or the conception of either the dialogues or the treatises: if high style is related to the subjunctive, dialogues have too much subjunctive to have been conceived and composed

138 7.2 Genres as low style close to the colloquial level. If there is no correlation between genre and mood, how should we explain the exceptionally small amount of subjunctives within the treatises? This problem of characterizing the dialogues as low style we shall return to soon, in 7.3.1. But the effect seen in the treatises also reveals a general problem in the data, namely the bias of an individual author. This first time that the problem of bias is encountered, my procedure for identifying it will be presented. In later instances it is merely noticed that a certain author has been removed from the data, because he causes effects that are not supported by the remaining humanists. Note that authors are removed from the data only to show that an effect is not general, and not to show that an effect would actually exist if a certain author was not represented. So the removal of an author is not a tool for reaching significant results, but for problematizing significant results.

(a) Treatises (b) Dialogues

Figure 7.2: Distribution of authors within genres

As can be seen in Figure 7.24, the data that is used to describe treatises is drawn from several authors with more or less equal shares, and with an almost equal distribution between authors before Valla (light gray) and after Valla (dark gray). The data used for dialogues seems somewhat more uneven. The dialogues, could be inexpediently inﬂuenced by the large amounts of clauses

4C# 0.0–0.3. See Appendix H, Figure H.2 for comparison with other genres.

139 7 Mood Variations According to Genre and Author

written by Pontano, or even Valla (cf. Figure 7.2b). However, as Figure 7.3 shows, the picture remains largely the same if we should consider the genre without either single one of the authors who contribute to the total numbers.

Figure 7.3: Individual authors’ inﬂuence on mood in dialogues

Changing treatises similarly, Figure 7.4 reveals that the clauses written by Ficino influence the total result heavily. Compared to all the other humanists treated in this study, Ficino favors the indicative mood the most. If we remove the influence of Fici- no from the comparison of genres, we get the numbers in Figure 7.5, and there is no significant difference between any of the genres.5 In conclusion, the data in this study cannot show any significant dependency between genre and mood in subordinate clauses in neo-Latin in general, at least not when only genre and mood are considered. However, we should not leave out the possibility that the mood choice of some authors may be sensitive to genre, or that other elements in neo-Latin could be so. Now we shall look into the individual authors’ distributions of mood.

5The largest diﬀerences are now those between speeches with the highest amount of subjunctive and letters and treatises with the lowest (χ2 = 1.5 or χ2 = 1.6 respectively, both p > .05).

140 7.2 Genres

Figure 7.4: Individual authors’ inﬂuence on mood in treatises

Figure 7.5: Distribution of mood across genres (Ficino removed from treatises)

141 7 Mood Variations According to Genre and Author

7.3 Authors

When comparing the overall distribution of subjunctive and indicative in the language of the individual authors (Figure 7.6a), we see that most Renaissance humanists seem to agree on the overall distribution of mood, which more or less resembles the bar “Total” in ﬁgure 7.5 for each individual author, with only little personal variation. This preliminary observation, on a very general level, of some basic agreement on mood is our ﬁrst indication of neo-Latin used as a collective language. However, a few authors stand out, such as Ficino who, as we saw above, uses the indicative much more than the rest of the authors. Less dramatically, Perotti and Guarino Veronese also tend to use the indicative more than other authors, and Poggio at the other end of the scale uses the subjunctive more. This overall variation between authors more or less resembles what can be found in the L.A.S.L.A. corpus,6 though the two results are not easily comparable. The data from the L.A.S.L.A. corpus does not attest deviations in Classical Latin such as Ficino’s, or even Veronese’s, but the general agreement on mood distribution seems to be of roughly the same kind, thus indicating collective agreement on language use equal to what is found in Classical Latin, but perhaps with more possibility for the individual to deviate drastically from the norm.

7.3.1 Individual ‘Genre Sensitivity’

Valla is the only author who’s language is represented in all five genres. Valla was praised in his time for having an unusually detailed knowledge on the differences in vocabulary between genres and the variation in stylistic proprietas when treating different subjects. However, when studying his distribution of indicative and subjunctive in the different genres of this study (Appendix H, Figure H.5d), there is no significant difference to be found between any of the genres. Among the authors in the corpus who developed their Latin language before Valla, both Bruni, Poggio, and Filelfo are represented within more than one genre, and so we can study how they, individually, write differently in different genres. In Bruni’s language treatises have less subjunctive than both history and speeches.7 Also in dialogues he has

6Figure 7.6b is based on the three L.A.S.L.A. corpora with history, speeches, and dialogues. 7χ2 = 6.06, p < .01 and χ2 = 3.4, p < .05 (though a little dependent on some ambiguous values).

142 7.3 Authors (a) Neo-Latin (b) Classical Latin Figure 7.6: Individual authors’ distribution of mood

143 7 Mood Variations According to Genre and Author

less subjunctive than in history,8 though no difference between dialogues and speeches can be attested. These differences correspond to the prediction made in the beginning of the chapter, that treatises and dialogues would tend to have less subjunctive than history and speeches. Between Filelfo’s genres, namely letters and treatises, no difference can be shown. Poggio, on the other hand, distributes his moods in quite the opposite direction than the prediction, so that the absolutely highest amount of subjunctive is found in his treatises followed by dialogues, and then the least subjunctive is found in his letters and history. This difference found in Poggio’s language is the only clear difference between genres which goes against the prediction. In the late division of the corpus, Pontano, Perotti, Ficino, B. Guarini, Barbaro, and Poliziano are all attested in more than one genre, and their individual behavior across genres can be studied. Among those, only Perotti and B. Guarini are represented on both sides of the proposed distinction between high style (history and speeches) and low style (treatises and dialogues), and both support the hypothesis through using less subjunctive in treatises.9 Barbaro and Poliziano both write letters and a high style genre, namely speeches and history respectively, and no difference can be attested between genres in their individual language. The absence of an effect either shows that these two authors have no ‘genre sensitivity’ in their choices of moods, or it shows that letters are linguistically composed as if they were a high style genre, similarly with history and speeches—at least in late 15th c. neo-Latin (see also Figure 7.7). In short, no single author from the late division of the corpus goes against interpreting some correlation between more subjunctive in the high style genres (history, speeches + letters) and less subjunctive in at least the low style treatise genre,10 but not all support it either. In the assembled language of all authors from the late division (Figure 7.7), this difference is only attested between treatises and speeches.11 Pontano and Ficino are both represented by treatises and dialogues, but only Pon- tano shows any remarkable difference between the two genres, and the difference is quite 8χ2 = 3.7, p < .05 (also a little dependent on ambiguous values). 9Perotti uses the subjunctive significantly less in treatises than in speeches, as well as in letters (χ2 = 10.1 or χ2 = 11.5 respectively, both p < .01), and Guarini less subjunctive in his treatises than in speeches (χ2 = 4.9, p < .05), though a little dependent of ambiguous values. None of the authors are represented with both dialogues and a high genre. 10The relationship between dialogues and high style genres is not attested in an individual author. 11χ2 = 4.8, p < .05

144 7.3 Authors dependent on whether the ambiguous forms should be considered subjunctive or indicative.

Figure 7.7: The mood across genres in early and late 15th c. neo-Latin (treatises:late with and without Ficino)

In conclusion, this gives a very slight tendency towards less agreement on the language use in the first half of the century and more collective language use towards the end of the century. But we need more evidence to be able to truly think of it as a sign of the stabilization that I hypothesize will take place during the century. In addition, we must remember in this respect, that the individual author who deviated the most from the common distribution of moods, Ficino, is represented in the later half of the 15th c., which indicates that the language is not entirely stable in the later part of the century either. We cannot attest any general correlation between genre and mood distribution. How- ever, it seems that the language of some individual authors reflects some difference across genres, resulting in less subjunctive in especially the treatises, compared to the other genres. Notably, treatises are probably the least literary genre in this study, as it does not have its own specific literary form but may appear for example in a letter.12 The 12But this is also the case for some dialogues, cf. 4.5.

145 7 Mood Variations According to Genre and Author

diﬀerence in mood distribution in treatises must be due to some genre internal factor, such as stylistic level or the function of treatises as being factual and precise rather than deliberative. Though, we need more information on the internals of the language in treatises before we can establish whether there is a direct relation between mood and style. Other possible explanations may be, for example, a majority of certain clause types in treatises which typically have the indicative. This we shall proceed to in the next chapter.

146 Chapter 8

Mood in Various Clause Types

In the study of Valla’s language, 18 different subordinate clause types are taken into consideration. The clause type is the one most influential factor when investigating the use of moods, which is not unexpected when we know the different use of moods in particular clause types in Classical Latin. Figure 8.11 shows a comparison of the overall use of subjunctive and indicative in Valla’s language and in data drawn from the L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus. At a first glance at the two charts, it is striking that there are, essentially, as many similarities2 as differences,3 and that no clause type is completely different in neo-Latin. Generally Valla agrees with the Classical Latin authors on which clause types have more subjunctive, and which have more indicative.

1As in the previous chapter, the ﬁgures discussed in this chapter will also serve as reference to the basic values, and are found in Appendix H as well. 2There is either no diﬀerence between Valla’s use and the Classical Latin use, or there are too few clauses to give a stable result, in clauses with: dum, ne, postquam, quamquam, donec, priusquam, quoniam, relative quot, tamquam, and simulac. 3Valla has a greater proportion of subjunctive than in Classical Latin in clauses with: cum, etsi, and quia. And a less proportion of subjunctive than the Classical Latin language in clauses with licet, relative clauses, utrum, interrogative quot, and quis/quid.

147 8 Mood in Various Clause Types ) L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus (a) Lorenzo Valla (b) Classical Latin ( Figure 8.1: Mood distribution in diﬀerent clause types

148 8.1 Valla's Language and Renaissance Grammars

8.1 Valla’s Language and Renaissance Grammars

We shall now have a closer look at some of the clause types in Valla’s language and compare them primarily to descriptions in his own manual on style, the Elegantiae, and his successor Niccolò Perotti’s Cornu copiae and Rudimenta grammatices, as well as a few observations on Medieval Italian from the Grammatica dell’italiano antico by Salvi and Renzi (2010). An interesting point of departure into Valla’s use of the moods in his various clause types is the six clause types where Classical Latin always—or practically always—has the subjunctive, namely clauses with ne, licet, tamquam, and the three different interrogative clauses studied: utrum, quot, and quis/quid. At first, we can notice that Valla apparently confines himself to using the subjunctive in clauses with ne—and perhaps also tamquam. Most of the ambiguous forms found under Valla’s clauses with ne are either the future indicative or the present subjunctive. The rest of them—as well as his ambiguous form after tamquam—are either the future perfect or the perfect subjunctive. Valla has likely considered all these forms subjunctive, as far as there are no explicit indicative forms that indicate that Valla would use the indicative in those clauses, and as far as the ambiguous forms ending in -eris/-erit etc. were considered a future subjunctive on Valla’s time. So at least we have no evidence that Valla’s use of mood differs from the Classical Latin use in those two clause types.4 One would think that clause types such as these were easy to imitate, and easy to learn to construct according to the Classical Latin usus, because their mood can be described by the one single rule that they always have the subjunctive. Thus, it should cause no wonder that an imitative writer such as Valla imitates precisely the construction of a simple clause type of which he has probably never seen an indicative clause in Classical Latin, and which cannot be mistaken for any other word with the same spelling but another meaning (such as the various uses of quod, for example).5 This explanation, however, is immediately in conflict with a very similar clause type, namely licet, which Valla constructs somewhat differently from the Classical Latin practice.

4Though the evidence on Valla’s tamquam clauses is not very convincing, based on only four unambiguous clauses. 5The use of ne in the collation ne . . . quidem cannot possibly be confused with the use of ne introducing a subordinate clause.

149 8 Mood in Various Clause Types

Therefore, simplicity and grammatical transparency may not be the only reasons for Valla using only the subjunctive after ne. If we look to his native language, the Volgare, it is relevant that purpose clauses all had the subjunctive in Medieval Italian. They were introduced by conjunctions dissimilar from the form ne, such as acciocché and perché,6 but the similarity in meaning may very well have inﬂuenced his practice in Latin purpose clauses, either directly as (positive) L1 interference or indirectly as facilitating his understanding and recognition of the Classical Latin system.

8.1.1 On Etsi, Quamquam, Quamvis, and Licet

When looking at Figure 8.1, we see that Valla uses the indicative in a few of his clauses with licet. This is in contrast to the practice found in Classical Latin. From the figure it shows that there are no instances of licet with the indicative in the L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus, and neither are there any in the L.A.S.L.A. total corpus. This fact makes the five instances found in Valla’s language appear striking. However, not many Classical Latin authors are represented even in the L.A.S.L.A. total corpus, and Valla may have picked up his inspiration for licet with indicative in an actual Classical Latin text. One of Valla’s alleged models is Quintilian. In his Institutio Oratoria—and even in the Ps.- Quintilian Declamationes minores and Declamationes maiores—licet appears also with only the subjunctive.7 Where, then, did he pick up licet with the indicative? In the Late Latin Bible translations, licet is most often used for expressing prohibition or admission, and only in quite few instances is it used to introduce a finite subordinate clause. Among those, though also primarily in the subjunctive, can be found sporadically instances where licet seems to be used as a modal verb with the indicative, for example in the 4th c. Latin Bible:8

sed licet is qui foris est noster homo corrumpitur tamen is qui intus est renovatur de die in diem. . . The Latin Vulgate, Second Corinthians, 4.16

6Vegnaduzzo (2010), Zennaro et al. (2010, pp. 1086–92). 7Searching through the PHI CD-ROM #5.3 from The Packard Humanities Institute with the search facility Musaios, licet is found with the pres.subj., the perf.subj., the ambiguous perf.subj./fut.perf., and a few instances of an ambiguous pres.subj./fut.ind., as the only ﬁnite verb forms. 8Searched with Musaios on the PHI CD-ROM #5.3.

150 8.1 Valla's Language and Renaissance Grammars

Thus, licet with the indicative in Valla’s language may well be inspired by the Bible that he knew. Licet with the indicative is also found in some Silver Latin authors and several Late Latin, among others some of the Church Fathers whom some humanists cherished.9 In addition, Valla’s use of licet with the indicative does not seem to be slips of the tongue, but a deliberate decision. For he describes it in his Elegantiae, in a paragraph on the four adversative clauses etsi, quamquam, quamvis, and licet:

Etsi, quamquam, quamvis, licet, eiusdem significationis sunt, aliquid in utendo discriminis habentia. Nam maior quaedam dignitas data est primis duobus, quae semper adsciscunt sibi indicativum duntaxat in principio statim oration- um, epistolarum, librorum; alia duo in hoc loco, raro; in caeteris, omnia in- differenter. . . Alia duo magis postulant subiunctivum, nonnunquam tamen et indicativum. . . In aliis partibus quam in principiis parem omnia haec locum sortiuntur. Habent et hoc differentiae duo priora a duobus posterioribus, quod illa aliquando eodem modo quem de nisi ostendimus, a nullo dependent. Lorenzo Valla, Elegantiae linguae Latinae, 2.21

According to Valla, licet and quamvis, though they mostly govern the subjunctive, once in a while have the indicative as well. He gives no examples on this from the literature. In the L.A.S.L.A. total corpus, quamvis governs the indicative in roughly 20% of the instances. That is, for quamvis there is plenty of evidence for constructing it with the indicative in Classical Latin. That is not the case for licet. Consequently, Valla’s use of the indicative in clauses with licet may be due to either a practice in Early Christian Latin writing, or some analogy with the construction of quamvis which according to Valla corresponds to licet in many respects that perhaps appealed more to his grammatical interest, namely his stylistic remarks on the proper places in orations etc. to use either quamvis/licet or etsi/quamquam. Anyways, Valla seems to have consciously decided to use both moods in clauses with licet. The conscious character of this particular use is supported also by Valla’s awareness of the nature of licet in another respect, namely that it is a fossilized verb and not an actual conjunction, somewhat like quamvis. Because licet is actually a verb always in the present indicative, and not a conjunction, it tends to be constructed in the Classical Latin language with those subjunctive tenses that are usually found in connection with other verbs of the present tense (to be

9TLL (1900-, lemma: ‘liceo’, Caput alterum. II.2) mentions among others Apuleius, Jerome, and Augustine.

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discussed in Chapter 11–13), no matter if other verbs in the context are past tense.10 This Valla imitates seemingly perfectly, as his subjunctive clauses with licet are constructed almost exclusively with those tenses that are found in Classical Latin after licet, the present and the perfect subjunctive, and with only a few appearances of the imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive.11 According to TLL (1900-, lemma: ‘licet’, Ca- put alterum.II.1.β–γ) licet is also constructed with those tenses in Classical Latin when the expressions are unreal, which may be the case in Valla’s examples as well, such as “et in manu Iudae erat non peccare, licet foret provisum . . . ” (Valla, Lib. arb., p. 29) and “castra nondum munitionibus cincta capta direptaque sunt, licet parum plenum essent.” (Valla, Gesta, I.11.11). With respect to the verbal nature of licet,12 therefore, Valla’s use reﬂects precise imitation, seemingly based on an understanding of the nature of the word.

With respect to etsi and quamquam, Valla describes the two clause types as identical in the quotation above, just as he did licet and quamvis. And they do indeed look quite the same in Valla’s use of the moods, whereas a clear difference between the two can be distinguished in the Classical Latin practice. The most striking difference between Valla’s and the Classical Latin language is Valla’s greater proportion of subjunctives after etsi. So here we see how Valla’s deliberate categorizations described in his grammatical writings have an effect in his actual linguistic practice; that instances of analogical constructions are also described explicitly from a theoretical point of view.

But in Valla’s adversative clauses, we have also seen another important factor that likely influences his grammatical observations—as well as linguistic practice—namely the influence from the Early Christian Latin literature. So some differences between Classical Latin and neo-Latin may be due to different definitions of what is Classical Latin: that some humanists counted particular Late Latin writers among those worthy of their imitation, while those same authors are not considered Classical Latin in a modern delimitation of the periods.

10Cf. e.g. TLL (1900-, lemma: ‘licet’, Caput altero); [§ 364]LaSynHo. 11V #4.1. 12This is possibly shared with quamvis also in Valla’s language, but that clause type was not part of the Valla study.

152 8.1 Valla's Language and Renaissance Grammars

8.1.2 On Interrogative Clauses

Returning to the last clause types in which Classical Latin has only subjunctive verbs, we notice that Valla in the interrogative clauses with utrum, quot, and quis/quid also has a considerable amount of the indicative. In 3.2.2, the grammatical approach in the Renaissance was characterized as being focused on the meanings and uses of particular words, rather than on grammatical systems that go across words. We shall look into Valla’s descriptions of interrogative clauses, because there we find an explanation of him differing from Classical Latin in also using the indicative. Modern grammars describe how clauses from the category ‘dependent interrogative sentences’ or ‘indirect questions’ in Classical Latin prose had developed into almost exclusively having the subjunctive.13 This category can be described as being different from Valla’s conception in two major characteristics, namely that it 1) includes several connective words (interrogative adverbs, pronouns etc.) different from each other in form as well as meaning, and 2) the category splits, as it were, different uses of one word from other uses, and so it does not treat all uses of for example quis/quid, but only those having the particular grammatical property of being dependent on another clause, and not those in main clauses. In Perotti’s elementary grammar, the Rudimenta grammatices, a section describes and categorizes the conjunctions.14 Perotti categorizes the conjunctions in 18 speties coniunctionum, of which some concern syntactic functions such as the copulatiua, and some are semantic categories, which may go across the modern grammatical distinction between coordination and subordination, such as the disiunctiuae or the aduersatiuae. Here coordinating connectives such as uel and tamen are mentioned side by side with subordinating connectives such as siue and quamuis:

Quae sunt disiunctiuae? Quae quamuis dictiones coniungant, sensum tamen disiungunt et alteram quidem rem esse, alteram uero non esse signiﬁcant, ut ue, uel, aut, seu, siue, ut aut lux est aut tenebrae. Niccolò Perotti, Rudimenta grammatices, § 588

13E.g. Gildersleeve and Lodge (2001, §467); Madvig (2001, §365). In exceptional cases, though, the indicative is found, cf. Blatt (1946, §330, n.). 14Perotti, Rud., § 579–604.

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Aduersatiuae quae sunt? Quae aduersum conuenienti significant, ut tamen, quanquam, quamuis, etsi, etiamsi. idem, § 592 Also the interrogative conjunctions have their own semantic category ( “Quae dubita- tionem cum interrogatione significant, ut an, ne, necne”). Yet two species are characterized according to the mood that they govern, namely the adiunctiuae governing the subjunctive and the causales governing the indicative. We shall return to those below. Perotti very systematically describes how the conjunctions can be characterized according to their Speties, figura, and ordo. These grammatical characteristics can describe all conjunctions. We have seen examples on the speties already. The figura is used to distinguish between simplex and compound conjunctions, such as at opposed to atque, that is, a morphological distinction. The ordo concerns the word order, for example whether a conjunction is always sentence initial. The modern overall distinction between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions is not mentioned. In Elegantiae, Valla does not describe the three interrogative clause types explicitly which we study here, but a few remarks on the behavior of verbs in questions are found in other contexts. In describing the particles that initiate disjunctive questions, an and aut, Valla explains that the subjunctive in interrogationes denotes a dubitative modality, while the indicative expresses certainty. . . . et in maiori numero: Nescio an pater Romae sit, an valeat, an vivat, an venturus ad me sit. Muta verbum dubitationis et inscientiae in dissimile aliud verbum; sic, Scio an pater vivat, an mortuus sit, male locutus es; bene autem, nescio an pater vivat, an mortuus sit. Itaque verbis huiusmodi dubitationis et inscientiae damus subiunctivum cum An, verbis vero opinionis et scientiae indicativum cum Quod et Aut; sic: opinor quod pater aut mortuus est, aut graviter aegrotat. Lorenzo Valla, Elegantiae linguae Latinae, 2.17 In modern grammars, this use of quod is not usually described together with interrogative sentences, being grammatically quite different, though the meaning—which Valla focuses on—resembles that of interrogatives. We encounter yet another use of quod together with the interrogative in Valla’s explanation of the fact that the interrogative pronoun is quis/quid when having the function of a noun, in stead of the adjectival qui/quod. It is not Valla’s aim to describe the use of verb forms in this paragraph, but his examples illustrate to some degree his conception of mood.

154 8.1 Valla's Language and Renaissance Grammars

Dicimus enim, Quid feci? non autem, quod feci? aliquid feci: non autem, aliquod feci. Item, Quod malum feci? non autem, quid malum feci? sed, Quid mali? Et, scio quid faciam, non autem, scio quod faciam; video quid facis, saepius quam, video quod facis. idem, 3.16

First we notice that he uses an indicative form, feci, in the examples on main clauses. Then we ﬁnd a present subjunctive, faciam, in the dependent interrogative sentence governed by scio. Finally we ﬁnd the present indicative, facis, in the interrogative sentence dependent on video, which would be highly unusual in a Classical Latin text. In addition, this last example is compared to a use of quod which is hardly the interrogative, adjectival quod—which is suggested by the presence in this paragraph on quid vs. quod— but rather the relative pronoun.

This apparent confusion may be one reason why Valla is not able to decode the same regularities in choice of mood in Classical Latin as we are aware of today. Here, at least, it would seem to result in indirectly advising to use the indicative in indirect questions with quid—though only indirectly, as the paragraph concerns the pronoun, not the verb. For now, the most important observation probably is that Valla leaps from the indicative to the subjunctive across the same clause type. The difference between “scio quid faciam” and “video quid facis” is perhaps the dubitative meaning of the former, though Valla gives no explanation. Otherwise, the only difference between the two sentences are the two different verbs video and scio—of which scio, in the other quotation above, was connected with the indicative, though in an entirely different clause type.

The grammatical focus thus seems to be the reason why Valla does not compose interrogative clauses like in Classical Latin, but what is the source for his actual distribution of moods? His indirect questions could be equal to his direct questions, and as such reﬂect the total number of interrogative clauses in Classical Latin, in stead of merely reﬂecting the dependent questions. But this is not the case. Querying the Perseus Treebank for all clauses with quis, in any form and in any kind of clause, most authors use the indicative and the subjunctive more or less equally much, and no Classical Latin author’s mood distribution in his entire amount of questions with quis resembles the distribution of moods in Valla’s indirect questions, or of the indirect questions of

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the humanists in general (see 8.2). This would not explain such a high amount of the subjunctive as Valla uses in his indirect questions, after all.15 So it is more plausible that Valla’s use of the indicative is interference from his vernacular language, the Volgare. In Medieval Italian16 the subjunctive is not the primary mood in indirect questions, though it is sometimes used. Munaro (2010) describes the possible constructions of questions in Medieval Italian, and does not give quantitative data that we can compare this neo-Latin study to, directly. However, my personal feeling is that the amount of subjunctives in Valla’s indirect questions (more than 70%) is more than one would understand from this explanation: “Il verbo flesso della frase interrogativa subordinata può essere talvolta al congiuntivo. . . ” (Nicola Munaro (2010, p. 1155)). Subjunctive is, after all, more normal in Valla’s indirect questions than the indicative, and they bear not much resemblance with his relative clauses, which one could expect him to confuse them with because of the presence of the relative quod in his explanation of interrogatives, which we saw above. This indicates that he has at least noticed that the Latin language uses the subjunctive in many questions, and his use may be inspired by Classical Latin, even though it is not exactly the same. In addition, Valla’s intriguing example of video with the indicative is not likely to have been directly transferred from his mother tongue, as Vegnaduzzo (2010, p. 810) describes vedere as part of a group of verbs that govern dependent questions in the subjunctive in Medieval Italian. Valla’s concept of apparently changing mood only according to the meaning of the individual verbs that govern the independent clauses does, however, resemble the linguistic practice in Medieval Italian, where the possible moods in indirect questions are primarily dependent on different groups of governing verbs, which we shall return to in 8.2.2. One of the primary factors that trigger the subjunctive in Medieval Italian is a negation in the superordinate clause, such as “. . . e che sua donna li avea dato commiato, e che neuno uomo non sapea che ne fosse adivenuto.”(Novellino, 64.53–55, quoted after Munaro (2010, p. 1155)). Other factors that are connected with the subjunctive cannot be checked for in this study—such as the use of reflexives in the question, or certain governing verbs. But we can check whether there is a tendency towards more

15The number of indicatives and subjunctives in each author is: Caesar: 0/0; Cicero: 16/14; Jerome: 8/11; Sallust: 11/18; Petronius: 43/18; Ovid: 7/5; Propertius: 8/5; Vergil: 2/0. 16On interrogative sentences in Old Italian, see Munaro (2010) and Vegnaduzzo (2010).

156 8.1 Valla's Language and Renaissance Grammars subjunctive in indirect questions when a negation is found in the context. This would indicate some presence of the linguistic mechanisms from the Volgare in the neo-Latin practice. In terms of contact linguistics, there is indeed a basis for interference from the L1, because—in the eyes of a humanist who does not distinguish direct from indirect questions—both the indicative and the subjunctive is allowed in neo-Latin, as well as in his L1. This forms the basis for over generalizing the mood variation known from the Volgare (and observed in Classical Latin, only in direct questions) to neo-Latin indirect questions as well. However, among the clauses found with no negation in the context, Valla chose the indicative in 21 instances and the subjunctive in 86 instances, and among those with at least one negation in the context, he chose indicative in 7 instances and subjunctive in 39 instances. This gives a slight tendency towards more subjunctive when negations are present, but there is a c. 25% risk that the result happened by chance in stead of showing some actual effect. This is far from being significant, and we cannot say for sure that we recognize the pattern of Medieval Italian in Valla’s indirect questions. We have seen how both clauses with licet and indirect questions are constructed differently by Valla than in Classical Latin. But there is a (possibly important) difference in the two matters. The construction of licet with respect to mood was described explicitly by Valla in the Elegantiae, though not in accordance with the Classical Latin norm. The mood in indirect questions was not described by Valla, but examples from his grammatical descriptions reveal confusion of several different clause types. In addition, Perotti has shown in his Rudimenta grammatices how the necessary distinction between coordination and subordination did not exist in the Renaissance grammatical terminology concerning conjunctions. This difference may be of importance, so that explicit grammatical awareness has a tendency to result in deviations from the Classical Latin norm that depend on another linguistic model, such as the Early Church Fathers; while complete grammatical unawareness better provides the basis for slipping in elements from the L1.

8.1.3 On Cum, Dum, Quia, and Quoniam

Valla’s sentences introduced by cum, dum, quia, and quoniam are all fairly equal to the Classical Latin usage in respect to mood, though he seemingly uses less subjunctive

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in clauses with cum17 and more subjunctive after quia. Valla’s use of quia with the subjunctive is discussed further in 8.2.1 and 13.4.1. On a general level, we can speculate whether the grammatically unambiguous nature of these conjunctions may have helped Valla imitate the Classical Latin more precisely than he did the interrogative clauses. Just like ne (discussed above) these conjunctions are either used exclusively to initiate subordinate clauses (dum, quia, and quoniam), or the other grammatical functions can hardly be confused with the function in question (cum).18 This also speaks for the opinion that grammatical clarity and simplicity facilitates precise imitation, at least on the general level of mood in the clause types. Of these four clause types only cum was given a paragraph in Valla’s Elegantiae, in a chapter describing the use of cum together with tum, primarily constructed with the indicative. This is followed by an example on a use of cum with the subjunctive, namely the adversative use together with tamen.

Cum et Tum indicativum fere postulant. Est autem in cum quiddam minus, in tum quiddam maius . . . Tamen dicitur, non tum; respondet enim ad illud cum, pro quamvis; ut alio idem in loco: Satisne constanter facere videamur, qui cum praecipi nihil posse dicamus, tamen et in aliis de rebus disserere soleamus, et in hoc ipso tempore praecepta oﬃcii prosequamurr? Cum scilicet pro quamvis; aut si scribitur tum, non tamen, scribendum etiam erit soleo, non soleam; Lorenzo Valla, Elegantiae linguae Latinae, 2.22

What we see only in detail here is that Valla’s distinctions of the mood in clauses with cum are dependent on the semantic purposes and explained through synonyms, and not grammatical categories. This actually corresponds to modern distinctions of the uses of cum—and dum as well—which are also based on semantic values, though typically described through categories such as ‘temporal’ or ‘adversative’, rather than through synonyms. Still, the mood distinction in these two clause types lies basically within the semantic ﬁeld, and thus it lies within the grammatical focus of Valla. This may be a contributing factor to Valla’s practice reﬂecting the Classical Latin use. When we study cum and dum in neo-Latin, we should remember that Jozef IJsewijn (1998, pp. 410–11) indicates that “. . . the confusion of cum and dum continues” into the

17The result is, however, very dependent on the actual nature of the ambiguous forms. 18Valla often distinguishes clearly between cum as a conjunction or as a preposition, by using the alternative spelling quum (or the like) for the conjunction.

158 8.1 Valla's Language and Renaissance Grammars neo-Latin language. On this level, Valla’s data gives no indication that the two clause types should be confused. This question we shall return to when studying the language of the other authors and later on the tenses in the two clause types, where the confusion becomes obvious (see 13.2.1).

In continuation of Valla’s treatment of adversative cum, he notes on the causal use19 that “Cum inveniam erat dicendum, aut quoniam invenio” (Valla, Eleg., 2.22). This corresponds to Valla’s practice, as quoniam is found only very rarely with the subjunctive in his language. Quia, which is not described in Elegantiae, was more popular in Valla’s language than in Classical Latin, while quoniam was relatively less popular in Valla’s language than in Classical Latin. In an earlier study, I compared the total number of clauses with quoniam that could be found in an excerpt of the L.A.S.L.A. corpus that was equal in size to the Valla corpus, and discovered that more than three times as many clauses with quoniam could be found in Classical Latin than in Valla’s language. This difference calls to mind the widespread use of quia in Vulgar Latin, where it already in the Classical age was found in plenty and in different uses, such as expressing indirect discourse, which is also the case in Medieval Latin and in the vernaculars.20 Valla’s more extant preference for quia over quoniam could therefore be due to influence from the vernacular and the other norms for Latin in his time. But as I argue in 8.2.1 and 13.4.1, it is more likely that Valla imitates the clauses with quia in writers of Silver Latin historical works, such as Sallust. The uses of quia in the vernaculars and in Vulgar Latin rather seems to support a very active distancing from quia in general, which characterizes the neo-Latin language before Valla.

We have seen above how Perotti in his Rudimenta grammatices categorizes most of the conjunctions similar to Valla, namely according to semantic values, across syntactic distinctions. However, the clause types in question here are divided into those governing the subjunctive, and those having a certain meaning when governing the indicative:

Quae sunt adiunctiuae? Quae uerbis subiunctiuis adiunguntur, ut si, cum, dum; ut quatenus. Quaedam tamen ex his sunt etiam causales. Quae sunt causales? Quae adiunctae uerbo indicatiuo signiﬁcant causam

19Denoted causa eﬃciens, as opposed to causa ﬁnalis. 20Palmer (1954, p. 152); Stotz (1998, IX, §106; §110).

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praecendentem. Et hoc interest inter causales et adiunctiuas quod causales cum affirmatione, adiunctiuae cum dubitatione proferuntur. Niccolò Perotti, Rudimenta grammatices, § 585 Interestingly, Perotti puts dum among the conjunctions that govern the subjunctive, while no humanist writer in this study favors the subjunctive in clauses with dum, as we shall see below, and certainly not himself, who has an exceptionally low proportion of subjunctives after dum.21 Perotti, like Valla in the previous example, demonstrates in his grammar that he is fully aware that some conjunctions have different meanings according to the mood, and the distinction between a cause stated cum affirmatione or cum dubitatione echo Valla’s mood distinctions above. But where the grammatical descriptions seem rather sporadic and insufficient, as in the categorization of dum, the actual linguistic practice often shows to be richly varied also in the respects that are not described, such as mood.

This section has exemplified some characteristics of Renaissance grammar and pointed to some possible points of influence on Valla’s language. But it has also shown that some instances of insufficient grammatical description did not prevent a neo-Latin practice that imitates the Classical Latin norm more precisely, such as this last case with dum which is not constructed primarily with the subjunctive, as prescribed by Perotti. We shall now proceed to the general neo-Latin language and look further into clauses with dum, cum, quia, ne, quis/quid, and utrum.

8.2 Clause Types in Neo-Latin

Figure 8.2a shows the general distribution of mood in the six clause types in neo-Latin. For comparison, Figure 8.2b repeats the six clause types in question in Classical Latin, from the section above. Just like when we studied Valla above, the general picture shows much similarity between Classical Latin and neo-Latin. We can again notice that clauses with ne are

21See Appendix H, Figure H.12a.

160 8.2 Clause Types in Neo-Latin

(a) Neo-Latin (b) Classical Latin (L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus)

Figure 8.2: Distribution of mood in clause types constructed almost exclusively with the subjunctive.22 Only one clause with an unambiguous indicative, produced by Perotti, does not give us reason to believe that clauses with ne are generally conceived diﬀerently with respect to mood in neo-Latin than in Classical Latin. It does not cause any of the authors any trouble to imitate the Classical Latin practice within this clause type—described above as the most simple of the clause types studied. The only remarkable diﬀerences between the two states of Latin are that more subjunctive is found in clauses with quia in neo-Latin,23 and that the tendency known from Valla to use the indicative in interrogative clauses is also seen in the common neo-Latin language.24

8.2.1 Quia

The eﬀect with more subjunctives seen in clauses with quia is apparently caused by Valla alone, who uses the subjunctive more in clauses with quia than do the other neo-Latin

22Not counting the ambiguous forms, which are primarily the form which can be either the future indicative or the present subjunctive, while a few can be either the future perfect or the perfect subjunctive. 23χ2 = 19.6, p < .01. 24The data cannot produce a valid test, and hence we cannot say whether or not the diﬀerence is signiﬁcant.

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authors. Also Valla’s preference for clauses with quia over other alternatives (which we saw in his relation between quia and quoniam) may be a personal characteristic of Valla. Figure H.7 in Appendix H shows that Valla uses quia considerably more than the other authors, and that the clause type seems to become more popular after Valla, where especially Perotti and Ficino use quia, which had been rather sparse before Valla. Quia is among the conjunctions which had been used for the disreputable indirect discourse expressed by a finite conjunctional clause, well known from the Medieval Latin, used in stead of the accusative with infinitive.25 This feature had become a favorite topic for Renaissance humanists to avoid in their own Latin.26 The association of quia with the Medieval indirect discourse seems to be one of the reasons why the humanists would have been cautious with the use of quia at the beginning of the recovering of the Classical Latin language. An argument for this is presented in 10.2.1, namely that quia in the time before Valla was particularly rare directly subordinate to the accusative with infinitive, which indicates a certain dissociation of the two particular constructions, that quia could not be used in the place of the accusative with infinitive, or even together with it. In addition, quia was generally not used much by Cicero,27 who was the primary model among the earliest humanists of the 15th century. Later the eclectics included other Classical Latin authors than Cicero into the group of authors that the humanists considered suitable for imitation. In Valla’s language there seems to be a higher concentration of clauses with quia in his historical writings (92 out of 121 quia clauses28). The fact that Valla connects quia primarily with history is important, because among the Classical Latin writers that are represented in the Perseus Treebank, Sallust is the one who uses quia the most.29 Therefore, it would seem that Valla’s revival of quia is a very precise imitation of—and perhaps even specific intertextuality with—Classical Latin historical writers such as Sallust. But this reference to Sallust is seen only in the sheer popularity of quia in Valla’s language, and not in precise imitation of the Classical Latin constructions with quia, where the subjunctive is

25Stotz (1998, § 104). 26Of the 361 clauses with quia that I have studied, I only suspect that one is used for expressing indirect discourse. See further discussions in 10.1. 27Cf. discussion in 13.4. 28C# 1.31–33. 29See 13.4 for further discussions of the inﬂuence of Sallust on neo-Latin.

162 8.2 Clause Types in Neo-Latin rare and mostly found in indirect discourse. His higher proportion of subjunctive in quia than what is seen in Classical Latin could indicate Valla having a more varied conception of the uses of quia, perhaps because of inﬂuence from the semantic nuances of clauses with cum, which basically tend to have the subjunctive when expressing causality, and the indicative when used as a mere temporal marker. So, even though quia is in Valla’s language associated particularly with a certain genre, his use of the clause type is broader and more varied than it was in Classical Latin. Valla uses quia much more than the earlier 15th c. authors, and the shift that is seen after Valla is striking, particularly in Perotti and Ficino’s language. At least Perotti’s extensive use of quia might be inspired by Valla’s, because we know that Perotti adopted his teacher’s approach to the Latin language in many respects. But Perotti uses quia more or less equally across genres, and therefore it loses its connection to the historical genre in Perotti’s language.30 So quia seems to have followed a very particular path to acceptance in the neo-Latin language, through Valla’s inclusion of other good authors into the repertoire of Classical Latin models for imitation, and through being used seemingly consciously as a genre characteristic, to a more general acceptance as a neo-Latin clause type in some authors after Valla. The data regarding quia after the time of Valla would even indicate that the construction of quia approaches the Classical Latin somewhat, at least with regard to the mood, as no other author uses the subjunctive as frequently with quia as did Valla. But the data on quia is rather sparse even after Valla, so this is only a vague indication.

8.2.2 Interrogative Clauses

Returning to the interrogative clauses, we should notice that the indicative slips in at a much smaller rate in the general neo-Latin than was the impression when we studied Valla alone. This could immediately seem like a sporadic feature then. But looking at Figure 8.3 it is clear that every author (except Pontano) who is represented with 15 or more interrogative clauses has at least one instance of the indicative, but not much more. This looks like Renaissance humanists have generally adopted the subjunctive mood from the Classical Latin language, while something, which they have in common,

30As for Ficino, we shall look further into his language shortly.

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results in slips of the tongue. The immediate answers are their native language, the Medieval Latin, or the grammatical categorization being unclear. Taking a closer look at the ten indicative clauses, no single clear explanation emerges. Both Ficino and Valla use the indicative after the imperative dic:

dic ergo (quia placuerit) planius quid non es, pater meus, ut reviviscam, quid es iterum, mi pater, ut vivam. Marsilio Ficino, Dialogus inter Deum et Animam theologicus, p. 14

Vides ut te insanum etiam probo! Alioquin, dic quis papam deiecit? Ipsene Constantinus, an eius ﬁlii, an Iulianus, an quis alius Caesar? Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione, 8.30.116

This corresponds to several examples from Classical Latin and may be conceived as a paratactical construction, so that these should not be considered indirect questions but rather direct questions, such as is clearly the interpretation by the editor of “dic: quid addidit?” (Cicero, Ver., 2.1.143). Twice Poggio chooses the indicative in a context that resembles the imperative of dic above, namely the hortative scribas mihi/ad me: “Scribas ad me, oro, iterum, quid tibi agendum videtur.” and “Scribas mihi, quid agit L. Aretinus et an in gratiam redisti.” (Poggio, Ep., I p. 33). However, the remaining occurrences seem not to share any characteristics or present any immediate reason for choosing the indicative, though possible reasons could be as such: 1) Six of the ten clauses are found in treatises, the genre that has shown a slight tendency towards the indicative in general. 2) Bruni has the indicative in a case where the first person speaks of himself, saying that he will explain his own opinions. As we shall see (9.1 and 10.4), there may be some connection between the indicative and first person, especially among the earlier writers. 3) In Medieval Italian the mood in indirect questions is primarily dependent on the meaning of the superordinate verb.31 A few verbs are connected only with the indicative, e.g. contare/divisare/significare resembling explanabo which governs Bruni’s indicative clause. Italian dire, corresponding to Latin dico which governs five of the indicative indirect questions, is constructed in Medieval Italian with both moods, as are verbs such as domandare corresponding to Latin quaeratur found in yet another indicative indirect question. As for the remaining superordinate verbs, namely scribas, legimus, and obscurum sit, Vegnaduzzo (2010) gives

31Vegnaduzzo (2010, pp. 809–12).

164 8.2 Clause Types in Neo-Latin Figure 8.3: Individual use of mood in interrogative clauses

165 8 Mood in Various Clause Types

no examples that correspond directly, but both the subjunctive and the indicative are found governed by dubitare which may be somehow similar in meaning to the last. This could indicate that the indicatives are not in conﬂict with the Medieval Italian language system, though it does not explain why the authors chose the indicative exactly here, while usually choosing the subjunctive.

8.2.3 Variation due to Genres and Authors

There is no significant difference between the moods in different clauses before and after Valla,32 and as such, no actual development can be traced during the century. We have seen that the individual authors behave as in unity in using ne and interrogative clauses, because they are clause types that allow for very little variation in respect to choice of mood. We have also noticed that Valla uses the subjunctive more in his quia clauses than seems to be the general practice in neo-Latin. From the Figures H.12– H.13 (Appendix H) it appears that there cannot be found many big differences between individual authors and the practice of the rest of the authors. Guarino Veronese would seem to use the subjunctive rather sparsely after cum, compared to the others,33 and him being among the first of the humanists studied here, we should remember this very vague suggestion for later considerations on the proposed ‘confusion of dum and cum’ which we shall return to once in a while. It may indicate that cum resembles dum more in the earlier authors, but that this is an outgoing tendency.

8.2.3.1 Ficino and the Moods

An author who somehow stands out, though not in a way that can be attested for signiﬁcantly, is Ficino. We saw his heavy inﬂuence on the mood in treatises in the former chapter, and his behavior in individual clause types may shed light on the reason for his extraordinarily many indicatives in general. Ficino’s choice of mood within a single clause type shows very little variation. Both his clauses with dum and quis/quid are constructed exclusively with the indicative, and his abundance of clauses with quia show very little subjunctive. On the contrary, he almost exclusively uses the subjunctive

32Appendix H, Figure H.11. 33However, the data is not quite large enough to determine for sure.

166 8.2 Clause Types in Neo-Latin after cum. Ne and quis/quid are clauses which humanists usually construct with the subjunctive, and cum has a heavy overweight of the subjunctive. Figure H.8 (Appendix H) reveals that Ficino’s data in this study consists of the comparatively smallest amount of all of these three clause types.34 It is perhaps more curious that he happens to avoid clauses introduced by quis/quid, than it is that he uses only the indicative in the two appearances that we have. And his sheer number of clauses with quia, a clause which certain other authors seem to avoid, stands out as well.35 We shall return to Ficino as we move on to other kinds of data, and reconsider the possibility that Ficino’s language is unnaturally unvaried (compared to the other authors). The overall distribution of moods does indeed show some general coherence among the other authors, but with Ficino as the only example on an author who stands out dramatically and seemingly has his own conception of certain linguistic elements.

In this chapter we have seen striking similarities between the neo-Latin and the Classical Latin constructions of individual clause types. We have also seen how the grammatical conception of the humanists seems to affect the actual forms that they choose in some instances, such as Valla’s deliberate analogies of licet and quamvis, or etsi and quamquam. But we have also seen the more indirect influence from the grammatical works in the confusion of the various uses of quod, quis, etc., which seemingly gives room for transferring the indicative into the indirect questions in the Latin language from the Volgare. In this respect, it was also apparent that the influence from the Volgare was not very outspoken, and that most of the indirect questions actually did imitate the Classical Latin usus with the subjunctive. Also the absence of influence from the grammatical descriptions was seen, for example when Perotti categorizes the conjunc-

34Note that the data in the ﬁgure cannot be compared directly because of outer circumstances in the selection of data. Ficino’s data, however, was trimmed very little compared to the other authors, and so, every possible word in the six clause types that are found in the Ficino corpus, except ten clauses with cum, are actually represented in the data collection. Ten cum clauses seem like a lot, but the other authors’ data is cut by considerably more. Ficino’s remaining ten cum clauses consist of three clauses in the present indicative and seven in the present subjunctive. 35Even if we add the 10 extra cum clauses, he would only have half as many clauses with cum as with quia. That is not matched by any other of the studied humanists.

167 8 Mood in Various Clause Types

tion dum together with conjunctions that are usually constructed with the subjunctive, but this fails to inﬂuence the actual language use of the humanists who all agree that dum more often has the indicative than the subjunctive. The actual imitation of the Classical Latin practice—as opposed to the grammatical systems—seems to be a strong factor in the formation of the mood system in neo-Latin, at least in the matter of the moods that are associated with each individual clause type. For the overall distributions are mostly of the same kind in neo-Latin as in Classical Latin. Grammatical knowledge and (negative) L1 transfer seems to inﬂuence the neo-Latin moods in minor, peripheral details, and not in the most basic characteristics.

168 Chapter 9

Some Other Factors Aﬀecting Mood

As we have seen, the choice of mood depends deeply on the kind of clause that the verb is found inside. This is the primary language internal factor that affects the choice of moods the most. Outside the language system, we have seen some personal variation of importance, while the majority of authors seem to act within a frame of common linguistic practice, whatever then causes this common behavior. In this chapter, a number of language internal factors will be considered, of which some could be expected to influence the mood, and others perhaps not, namely the person and voice of the verb in the subordinate clause, the presence of negations in the clause itself or its surroundings, the time and mood in the context, and the nature of the superordinate clause (the matrix clause) with respect to whether it is a main clause itself or subordinate to yet another clause. It is common to most of these investigations that they depend on quite large numbers, and that the effects of dependencies are often not very outspoken. The results that appear in the quantitative data between moods and these other linguistic environments are not of a kind that is easily exemplified with actual neo-Latin clauses, because many examples also exist that individually show the opposite, the absence of an effect. So most of the results in this chapter are only statistically detectable. Yet, they are of particular interest in the considerations of whether the neo-Latin lan-

169 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

guage is used as a natural language by the humanists. For the dependencies that we shall see can be predicted with some knowledge on the behavior of natural languages. And so, the dependencies shown in this chapter will indicate that the humanists to some degree depend on general human connections between modality and other linguistic environments, when they write neo-Latin. As will be discussed at the end of the chapter, these dependencies also generally conform to Andersen’s Principle of Markedness Agreement.

9.1 Person

The subjunctive mood is in some respects described in terms of distance or uncertainty,1 the mood that expresses that the content of the statement is not necessarily the truth. It is not unthinkable, therefore, that expressions concerning what is close to the writer himself—in time as well as spatially—would be considered more certain and show some prevalence for the indicative, while the more distant utterances would seem more uncertain and tend to have the subjunctive. We shall therefore test whether the mood is dependent on the person in this way:

st H0 There is no diﬀerence in mood between 1 person and 2nd or 3rd person, respectively. nd rd HA There is a higher proportion of subjunctive in 2 or 3 person than in 1st person.

There does not seem to be any reason to expect that the number in the verb should inﬂuence the mood. To be sure, we shall also test this:

H0 There is no diﬀerence in mood between the singular and the plural.

HA There is a diﬀerence in mood between the singular and the plural.

Testing this on the data seen in Figure 9.1a and 9.1b,2 it appears that no diﬀerence can be attested between the singular and the plural verbs (χ2 = 0.2, p > .64), while the predicted diﬀerence is actually found between 1st and 3rd person (χ2 = 4.5, p <

1As described in 7.1. 2C# 2.11–73

170 9.1 Person

(a) Person (b) Number (c) Person and number

Figure 9.1: The mood variation due to person and number

.05), though a little dependent on the many ambiguous values for 1st person.3 The corresponding difference between the 1st and the 2nd person is not statistically significant (χ2 = 1.2, p > .27). Figure 9.1c shows that there is no remarkable difference either between the 1st person singular and 1st person plural (χ2 = 0.6), between the 2nd person singular and 2nd person plural (χ2 = 1.4), or between the 3rd person singular and 3rd person plural (χ2 = 0.0). Consequently, we shall conclude that no correlation between number and mood can be found, and proceed by studying the connection between person and mood, especially the 1st person as opposed to the 3rd person. By dividing the data into the early and the late writers (Figure 9.2) it appears that a change happens in the 3rd person during the 14th century. The 3rd person loses its tendency to have more subjunctive than the 1st person. The tendency seen in the general picture above has its roots in the early language alone, as no difference can be attested by the data from the late division between 1st person and any of the other persons. Among the early writers, on the other hand, there is a clear and significant prevalence for the subjunctive in 3rd person verbs, which is not seen in 1st person.

3The abnormally large amount of ambiguous forms in 1st person is due to the present subjunctive and present indicative only being homonyms in the 1st person singular.

171 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

Figure 9.2: The mood variation due to person in early and late writers

Among the early writers, only Bruni and Poggio support this significantly,4 though also Alberti comes close.5 Not a single author who is represented with a considerable number of clauses in each person shows the opposite tendency (neither in the early nor the late division), as most authors seem to be either ‘insensitive’ to verbal person or show a slight, but not significant, tendency towards more indicative in the 1st person than in at least one of the other persons. Tracing the tendency across genres reveals that it is only significant in historical writings, where also the 2nd person verbs have significantly more subjunctive.6 The 2nd person also has significantly high amounts of subjunctives in the letters.7 In treatises and dialogues the tendency is the same, but not nearly significant, while speeches have more subjunctive in 1st person than in the other genres. From the data presented in Figure 9.3 it is clear that the same tendencies exist in Classical Latin. In Classical Latin the 1st person has definitely less subjunctive than both the 2nd (χ2 = 503.1) and the 3rd (χ2 = 19.2) person. The distribution of mood across person as well as number resembles the neo-Latin distributions in many respects.8

4For Bruni: χ2 = 4.2, p < .05 (a little dependent on ambiguous values); for Poggio: χ2 = 19.8, p < .01. Poggio even has signiﬁcantly more subjunctive in the 2nd person than in the 1st. 5Fischer exact p = .103. 6χ2 = 5.5, p < .01 and Fisher exact p = .03 (both a little dependent on ambiguous values). 7χ2 = 3.4, p < .05 (a little dependent on ambiguous values). 8Note also other curious similarities with features in 9.1 which could not be shown statistically, such as the 2nd person having considerably more subjunctive in the plural than in the singular.

172 9.1 Person

(a) Person (b) Number (c) Person and number

Figure 9.3: The mood variation due to person and number in the L.A.S.L.A. total corpus

I believe that the tendencies attested in this section are of a rather ‘invisible’ character, such as are not easy to detect unless ample data is available. As such, I do not expect humanists to have been able to detect them in Classical Latin either. As such, the results must be either 1) dependent on the nature of the subjunctive as less certain and more connected to that which is distant to the writer, or 2) indirectly dependent on other language internal factors, such as fixed expressions, etc. Either way, the pattern in neo-Latin seems a natural effect, because of this resemblance to the Classical Latin practice, because it cannot be described by any specific grammatical rule, because it coincides with the general nature of the subjunctive as distant, and because the authors seem to agree on the tendency.

One important question is how much weight to put into the fact that the tendency could not be attested statistically in the late division of the corpus. At first, we must remember that not being able to show a difference is far from the same as proving that there is no difference. It is possible that the data was to sparse to show a dependency, which is actually there. However, the two divisions of the data are very alike in size (the late actually being a little larger), which gives reason to actually consider the distribution in the later half of the century as a little less clear cut. If we should accept the difference between the picture drawn from the early and the late division, it could indicate a slight

173 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

weakening of this linguistic feature that must be described as natural language use. The tendency is very vague, and no other indications are found in this study of the neo-Latin language that support that neo-Latin should become more artiﬁcial and less natural during the century.

9.2 Voice

The data in the study provides the possibility to investigate if any correlation exists between the voice of the verb and the mood. Whether a verb is active or passive cannot immediately be transfered into a scale of ‘near’ or ‘distant’, and so it resembles the distinction between the singular and the plural more than that between the three persons. Accordingly, there is no reason to predict any speciﬁc dependency between voice and mood. However, we should consider the possibility, and test this:

H0 There is no diﬀerence in mood between the active and the passive voice.

HA There is a diﬀerence in mood between the active and the passive voice.

Figure I.29 in Appendix I shows that the data, as expected, cannot attest any significant difference in mood between the active and the passive voice, and that this is the case both in total, when viewing the early and late division separately, among different authors, and for most of the genres. The only significant difference is found in treatises where there seems to be a tendency towards less subjunctive found in the passive (χ2 = 4.3, p < .05) than in the active. Though, as this is the only actual difference to be found among several tests, and as it is very dependent on the ambiguous forms, I am confident that we should not pay it much attention. Also, the rest of the slight tendencies found in the data, which are not significant, do not seem consistent and do not show the same direction. In Classical Latin there is indeed a significant difference (χ2 = 29.2, p < .01) between active verbs (48,600 subjunctive; 146,059 indicative) and passive or deponent

9C# 3.11–23.

174 9.3 Negations verbs (10,724 subjunctive; 30,097 indicative), but the effect is very small, less than 1 percentage point.10 All in all, I do not believe these few and small differences to be of any interest, and I see no obvious reason for them. We therefore leave voice as a factor that does not influence mood in any considerable way, and as a part of the language where no big difference is seen between Classical Latin and neo-Latin, or between individual authors.

9.3 Negations

In the treatment of interrogative clauses above, we heard that in Medieval Italian the subjunctive can be triggered in a subordinate clause when a negation is found in its matrix clause. Vegnaduzzo (2010, p. 791) categorizes this use of the subjunctive as part of the “congiuntivo polare” which is triggered by being governed by syntactic operators such as negations or adverbial conjunctions as opposed to the “congiuntivo intensionale” which is dependent on the semantic property of the context, connected to the inten- tional, epistemic, or factual expressions of the subjunctive (cf. 7.1). If we adopt this categorization, a potential connection between negations and the subjunctive in neo- Latin would not be considered directly and closely connected to the semantic content of the subjunctive mood, but rather indirectly through a grammatical mechanism. Modern Latin grammars11 do not mention negations as a syntactic operator which should govern the subjunctive. This, however, does not mean that it is not so in Classical Latin, only that other, primary explanations can be given for the majority of the practice in Classical Latin. In the sections above, we have seen the connection between person and mood, which is not described directly in those traditional Latin grammars either. Unfortunately, the L.A.S.L.A. corpus does not provide the possibility to query certain verb forms in combination with other words, such as negations, and so we cannot generate Classical Latin data for comparison with neo-Latin in this case. In testing whether there is some connection between negations and mood, we would either expect that they were independent, or that negations were found with a higher

10Based on the L.A.S.L.A. total corpus. 11Such as Kühner and Stegmann (1914); Gildersleeve and Lodge (2001).

175 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

proportion of the subjunctive than in contexts with no negations, and we shall therefore test this:

H0 It makes no diﬀerence in mood whether a negation is present or not.

HA There is a higher proportion of subjunctive when a negation is present than when not.

In the data collection, we can test the possible influence from negations in the subordinate clause itself (named NegationThis in the data) as well as in the context. Because all clauses introduced by ne have the subjunctive as well as a negation, these clauses will result in a strong bias if counted in.12 Therefore all clauses with ne have been removed from the data that is presented in Figure I.3 (Appendix I). The picture that emerges resembles that in the former section, that no dependency can be shown between the mood in a clause and the presence of negations. Concerning negations in the subordinate clauses themselves, the slight and insignificant tendency that emerges even has the opposite direction than what was stated in the hypothesis: Even less subjunctives are found when a negation is present within the subordinate clause itself, than when no negations is present. Therefore, the effect is only investigated further in the differences between whether there is a negation in the context or not. Even when looking only for this difference, it cannot be found either in the early13 or late14 divisions, in the language of individual authors, or in the different genres. All authors seem almost insensitive to this tendency in their Latin writing, and there are equally many authors who seem to have this slight tendency, however insignificant, to actually have more subjunctive when a negation is found in the context,15 as there are authors who behave contrary to that.16 And their slight tendencies go across chronological distinctions and across other characteristics such as their overall subjunctive/indicative ratio and individual genre sensitivity as studied in 7.3.

12Including clauses with ne in the analysis, there is signiﬁcantly more subjunctive when a negation is found in the clause itself (χ2 = 166.5, p < .01), and even when it is found in the context (χ2 = 7.4, p < .05). 13χ2 = 0.1, p = .79. 14χ2 = 0.4, p = .52. 15Bruni, Pontano, Perotti, G. Veronese, Ficino, and Poliziano. 16Poggio, Valla, Manetti, Alberti, B. Guarini, and Barbaro.

176 9.4 Time in the Context

In conclusion, we cannot anywhere in the neo-Latin language find a general tendency to combine negations with the subjunctive. As we cannot compare the results directly to a similar practice in Medieval Italian, we cannot know whether this tendency described in their native language is more distinct in the Volgare than in neo-Latin. We can only say that it is not very pronounced in their Latin, if it is there at all. Whether or not humanists once in a while let their mood depend on a negation in the context (as the very slight tendencies could suggest), their language is not pervasively and openly governed by this principle from Medieval Italian. It does not seem likely that this is a conscious decision, as the relationship—or lack of relationship—between negations and moods is not described in either the Elegantiae, the Cornu copiae, or the Rudimenta grammatices, where the mentioning of negations is—typically for Renaissance grammars—focused on the changes in meaning that follows from connecting different words with negations.17 So there is no general dependency between the subjunctive mood and negations, but negations have an important influence on certain clauses in indirect discourse, as we shall see in Chapter 10.

9.4 Time in the Context

This section treats oﬀ the relationship between the mood in a subordinate clause and the grammatical time which is used in the context. That the subordinate clause is dependent on the time in the context is a phenomenon that we know from the sequence of tenses, which we shall return to later (Chapter 11). From the sequence of tenses we know that in Classical Latin the tense in a subjunctive subordinate clause is dependent on the time in the context, but it is less widely known that the subjunctive mood itself is somewhat connected to secondary (historical) contexts. In Classical Latin we recognize this in isolated tendencies, such as in the distinction between the temporal cum and the circumstantial/historical cum, where the temporal cum exists in all the indicative tenses, while the somewhat corresponding circumstantial cum is normally imperfect or

17For example, concerning quidam:“Sed hoc multo manifestius cum negatione apparet. Nam si dicam ‘non percussit me hodie quidam uestrum’, profecto signiﬁco unum ex uobis certum, ut puta Pyrrhum, me non percussisse” (Perotti, Ccopiae., 3.5.5).

177 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

pluperfect subjunctive, and not usually present subjunctive.18 In the literature on tenses in language universals, a few tentative explanations on this can be found. Elizabeth Closs Traugott (1978, p. 378) argues that languages all over the world show a tendency to build temporal denominations on spatial words and concepts. She observes that most societies conceive time as walking along a timeline,19 actually having the present and future ahead of you where it is visible (yet the future still uncertain) and the past behind you where it is invisible. This view on time would explain why the past has some tendency to add some modiﬁcation to the declarative, factual nature of the indicative verb. This explanation, though, may seem rather speculative as there is little evidence in the actual Latin language that the past verbal tenses be associated with ‘behind’ or ‘invisible’. In addition, Traugott’s focus is not primarily on the verbal tense and mood but rather on the formation of temporal adverbs, conjunctions, etc. Her suggestions may, however, be part of the explanation. Russell Ultan (1978), in a chapter on the future tense, categorizes natural languages as either prospective or retrospective. In prospective languages, the primary time contrast is that between past and non-past, which means that the present tense is regularly used merely as a non-past tense and thus also expresses the future, which tends to be neutralized in certain contexts. On the contrary, retrospective languages have the future/non-future contrast as the primary contrast. The fact that the future tense is neutralized in the Latin subjunctive is perhaps the most explicit indication that Latin is a prospective language (as are most Indo-European languages). In the description of the Classical Latin language it has therefore long been recognized that the past/non-past contrast is stronger than the future/non-future contrast (see 11.1), and it is seen for instance in explanations of the sequence of tenses which describes some diﬀerences in the subjunctive moods depending on whether they occur in contexts of secondary tenses (past) or primary tenses (non-past), with no individual categorization of future time contexts. Describing what he calls ‘backshifting’ of the tenses, a concept closely connected to the sequence of tenses, he notes:

18Gildersleeve and Lodge (2001, § 580–585, esp. § 585 N. 1). 19Arguing, for example, that many languages build past tense markers on words meaning ‘come’ and future tense markers on words meaning ‘go’ (Traugott (1978, p. 377)).

178 9.4 Time in the Context

Thus—and this is especially true of prospective languages where the present- future contrast in its simplest form may be neutralized—the MOS [i.e. moment of speech] present represents a more “real” time, a time closer to the speaker, and the past a time more remote, hence more “unreal.” Russell Ultan (1978, p. 99)

Following this argument, the possible connection between the mood in a subordinate clause and the time in the context is related to the nature of subjunctive as expressing distance, in some way, and hence uncertainty. Therefore, for a language user who has the distinction of mood available in his language, where expressing the degree of certainty of a statement is normal, it would be natural to show some tendency towards connecting the subjunctive more with the past than with the non-past. Therefore it will be taken as evidence for natural language use if the data shows some dependency between time and mood in the neo-Latin language. We shall now establish whether there is any relation between moods and the temporal contexts that they appear in. We hypothesize that there is a dependency:

H0 It makes no diﬀerence in mood whether the context has primary or secondary tenses.

HA There is a higher proportion of subjunctive among secondary tenses than among primary.

Supposedly because of the very different content in different genres, there are considerable differences from one genre to another between which tenses are most commonly found in the context of the subordinate clauses that we study. As it appears from Fig- ure H.14, the highest proportion of secondary tenses is found in the historical works, traditionally treating past events. Speeches are almost equally divided between primary and secondary tenses, and apparently with the highest proportion of the present perfect (a logical relation between gaining the attention of the audience and using a tense which gives the past a present actuality?). One finds more and more primary contexts as we proceed from letters over dialogues to treatises, and in these genres also more of the future is found. When looking at the language of individual authors in Figure H.15, Ficino once again stands out as the only author with a remarkably different distribution, almost exclusively writing in primary contexts.

179 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

(a) All authors (b) Without Ficino

Figure 9.4: The mood variation due to the time in the context

In Figure 9.4a a clear line can be drawn between all the primary tenses on the one hand being superordinate to remarkably less subjunctive than the secondary tenses on the other hand. The difference is clear, and the result is significant (χ2 = 23.0, p < .01). However, the combination of Ficino’s many primary contexts and his mood being almost exclusively indicative, as we saw earlier, gives a bias among the primary tenses which accounts for part of the clear difference between primary and secondary contexts. With Ficino removed from the data (Figure 9.4b), there is still a significant difference between the two contexts (χ2 = 11.1, p < .01), but the result is now a little dependent on the ambiguous values. Accepting that there is actually a difference, this can be seen as a sign of the contrast in prospective languages between the near non-past and the more distant past. Then this is yet another tendency in the neo-Latin language that points to natural language use, as it resembles well-established language universals. We cannot tell if the contrast originates in the mother tongue of the authors, or if it is the direct result of a varied imitation of Classical Latin language use, as this is perhaps a common trait, but we can certainly see this natural distinction of modality in the context of different grammatical tenses.

180 9.4 Time in the Context

9.4.1 When there is Future in the Context

From Figure 9.4a it also appears that there is no significant difference between the primary tenses and the specifically future tenses. The two categories cannot be separated from each other sufficiently, because the label ‘primary excl. future’ was added to ambiguous situations as well, where the context was definitely primary, but where one cannot tell whether the forms were future or present, or where both future and present were found. Therefore, ‘future’ means ‘future exclusively’, whereas the category ‘primary excl. future’ holds all primary tenses, except the explicit and unambiguous future contexts. Consequently, the data is not suitable for any formal test. We can, however, describe what is seen in the figure. Firstly, we see no remarkable difference between the two categories, and secondly, the very small difference that is seen has the opposite direction than the difference between primary and secondary tenses, namely slightly less subjunctive in the future contexts than in the primary, not necessarily future contexts. Natural languages can, of course, behave in different ways, and both this scenario and the opposite (future contexts more often resulting in the subjunctive) could be accounted for within the nature of tenses and moods. On the one hand, the future tense would seem related to the force of the subjunctive, as it is often connected to the uncertainty of what has not yet happened, and this uncertainty of the future is, in many languages, used for expressing the unreal, neutral to time distinctions.20 This could result in a close connection between the subjunctive and the future. On the other hand—and this seems to be the case for neo-Latin—the fact that the future/non-future contrast is only secondary in prospective languages has resulted in the well-known neutralization of future in the subjunctive, which we know from the inflections of the verbs that do not have a simple future subjunctive form. This could result in the tendency that we see, that there is even less subjunctive when they write about the future, because the future subjunctive is not available. We shall return to a more detailed analysis of the future tenses in 12.3. For now, it is relevant to mention that most of the subjunctive verbs found in future contexts are the present subjunctive (46 out of 54), while only

20E.g. the periphrastic form of the future participle + fuisse in Latin (cf. Madvig (2001, § 410); Rubenbauer and Hofmann (1959, § 260)), which has nothing to do with future time as such, and where both the future and the subjunctive are used independent of time as such.

181 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

three periphrastic future forms are found. Among the indicative forms, a much greater proportion are future or future perfect, namely 20 out of 42, and 21 are the present indicative. All the ambiguous forms are either the future indicative/present subjunctive form or the future perfect/perfect subjunctive.21 These very diﬀerent distributions of future and present tense in the indicative and the subjunctive, respectively, indicate that the future is in eﬀect neutralized in the subjunctive in neo-Latin, as well as in Classical Latin, and that a considerable share of the present subjunctives actually ‘substitute’ the future.22

9.4.2 Future in the Dialogues

Most of the individual genres show the overall tendencies described above, though in some genres the data does not present any clear relation between the time in the context and the mood of a subordinate clause, as seen in Figure 9.5a. In dialogues, though, there is another relationship between primary and secondary tenses.23 In Figure 9.5b we see the opposite tendency in the dialogues, namely that there is apparently a higher rate of the subjunctive in contexts with primary tenses than among the secondary tenses. The difference is not quite significant (χ2 = 2.7, p < .10), yet, I believe, still worth pursuing, because the distribution in both the primary contexts and the secondary contexts is significantly different in dialogues than in all the other genres together. The very different picture is mainly caused by much more subjunctive in future contexts in dialogues, and that there is less subjunctive in the secondary contexts than what is found in the remaining genres. Because little less than half of the clauses in our dialogue data collection was written by Pontano, we should investigate whether this tendency in dialogues is a personal feature of Pontano’s or an actual genre dependent effect.24 The tendency towards less subjunctive in past contexts in dialogues is primarily influenced by Pontano, who tends to use the indicative relatively much in secondary contexts, and only in his dialogues. So this is mainly an effect of Pontano’s dialogue language. Also Poggio’s

21C # 5.11–13. 22This neutralization will be described in detail in Chapter 12.3. 23The distribution in the other genres is found in Figure I.4, Appendix I. Distributions within other particular genres that appear diﬀerent from the general picture that we saw in Figure 9.4 are not signiﬁcantly so. 24Cf. Figure I.5.

182 9.4 Time in the Context

(a) Letters (b) Dialogues

Figure 9.5: The mood variation according to time in the context in different genres (without Ficino) personal tendencies resemble what we find in the dialogues,25 and Poggio is responsible for a minor part of the dialogues as well. His language does not influence the overall impression of the dialogues, which remains largely the same even if we remove Poggio’s data, but his particular language is a minor contribution to the general tendency, which we shall return to shortly. But now we shall focus on the other part of the effect, namely the many subjunctive verbs subordinate to the future contexts. This is not dependent on Pontano alone, though this is also a peculiarity in Pontano’s language in general, even in his treatises. Consequently, this tendency seems to be genre specific and belonging primarily to dialogues. One place to look for an explanation is in the types of subordinate clauses that have the subjunctive in this context. Eight of them are clauses with ne which have almost always the subjunctive in neo-Latin, five are clauses with cum, and three are clauses with quis/quid. Pontano is the author of five of the eight clauses with ne, Valla of two, and Bruni of the remaining one. All except two are of the same kind, namely explanations for, typically the 1st person’s, intentions for interaction in the dialogue, such as: “abstinebo a pluribus, ne, quod paulo ante dixi, vel vigilans videar somniare.” (Pontano, Actius, p. 145) or “Non ero tibi molestus amplius, ne benefico ingratus et

25Cf. Figure I.6.

183 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

amanti incredulus videar;” (Valla, Lib. arb., p. 41). This kind of meta discourse concerning the intentions within the actual dialogue seem to be a central part of the stylistics of dialogues. This particular combination of a future intention and its present subjunctive purpose has apparently resulted in a slightly higher ratio of clauses with ne in future contexts in this particular genre. And the direct result of this is a greater proportion of subjunctive among the future, because clauses with ne always have the subjunctive. This is no doubt part of the reason why dialogues are different in the future contexts. We cannot ascribe this to a different relation between mood and time in the speaker’s conception of the language; it may be explained purely within the particulars of the dialogue genre. Now to the part where Poggio’s language may influence the results slightly. Four times within this context, he uses cum thus: Virgo, cum diversi sint adolescentum et juvenum mores, varii appetitus, longe alia natura, raro conveniet cum viro. Poggio Bracciolini, An seni sit uxor ducenda, p. 14 In connection with the cum clause in the present subjunctive, Poggio seems to use the future almost as a gnomic tense describing what usually happens under the circumstances described in the cum clause, or even instructively expressing what should happen. Four instances may not seem much, and indeed they are not in the greater picture, and their influence here is merely supportive, coincidentally in connection with the combination used to explain the interaction in the dialogue. However, among the 500 clauses with cum in the data collection only eight have the subjunctive in the context of an unambiguous future tense.26 That is, the subjunctive is rare in future context cum. And half of them are of this kind and written by Poggio in his dialogue. Another typical combination of the subjunctive and a future context is the frequent use of ne in treatises, though this is used in a somewhat different way than the typical dialogue use we saw above. In treatises, the future tense often seems to be used instructively, combined with the ne clause for expressing the purpose. Battista Guarini is especially fond of this use and has several examples such as this: Ordo potissimum in studendo adhibendus erit, ne varios libros confuse legant, sed singulis lectionibus dispertitas horas haberi oportet: Battista Guarini, De ordine docendi et studendi, 16

26C# 5.6.

184 9.4 Time in the Context

Here, the relationship between the future and the present perfect somewhat resembles Poggio’s clauses with cum, and in both cases the use relates to the instructive nature of the two genres. Though, it seems that the future tense in treatises generally has this function more often, relating to the actual content of the instruction, while the future in dialogues, as we saw, rather has the function of meta discourse. Either way, these instructive uses of the future indicative resemble the confusion of the future indicative and the present subjunctive known from Medieval Latin, where the future also has this modal voluntative or hortative value.27

9.4.3 The Individual Authors

Considering the general tendency to have more subjunctive in past contexts than in present contexts, we shall now see to what degree this is homogeneous among the individual authors. When dividing the data into the early and late divisions of the corpus (Figure 9.6), it is clear that no development can be tracked chronologically, if we remove Ficino’s highly biased data from the collection. So the division into the primary tenses that have an inclination towards more indicative, and the secondary tenses towards the subjunctive, is a stable feature of the neo-Latin language during the 15th century. This is yet another indication of the common language system that we have now encountered several times. Except for Pontano and Poggio’s language, which we have already discussed to some degree, most of the individual authors do indeed ‘agree’ on this distribution. Even though statistically significant relations are harder to achieve as soon as we divide the data into minor fractions,28 several individual authors show a significant relation between mood and the time in the context.29 Among others, Bruni, Valla, and Perotti30 write clearly in accordance with the general tendency in this respect. Ficino’s language, which we by now know to have particularly little variation with respect to moods, consequently stands out in this part of the language as well. We can draw one important conclusion concerning his language in this chapter. Having 27Stotz (1998, IV. § 59.1); Blatt (1946, § 204). 28Because the chi-squared test tends to have more power with a greater n, cf. 5.2.1.2. 29A sample of individual authors is represented in Figure I.6. 30Bruni: χ2 = 6.6, p < .05, a little dependent on ambiguous values; Valla: χ2 = 3.6, p > .05 (i.e. not quite significant at the .05 level); Perotti: χ2 = 13.4, p < .01.

185 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

Figure 9.6: Mood and time in early and late divisions (without Ficino)

realized that there is a general connection between the present and the indicative, one could think that Ficino’s overall ‘lack’ of subjunctive—compared to the other neo-Latin authors—were caused only by him writing much more on present subjects. However, we can now (Figure 9.7) see that within the primary contexts of Ficino’s writings he has a much lesser degree of the subjunctive than any other author. Thus, Ficino’s more simple use of moods and tenses cannot so far be limited to one area of the language (i.e. preferring either the present contexts or the indicative mood), but is seen also in combinations of the two, as his use of moods subordinate to his many primary verbs are remarkably less varied (more indicative) than the moods of the other humanists. Returning yet again to Pontano, we saw above that his practice was the main reason for the tendency to use the indicative signiﬁcantly more in past contexts within the dialogues than in the other genres. Investigating where Pontano uses the indicative in past contexts, it appears that almost all of the 17 instances are in clauses with dum, and that those are of the Classical Latin kind of dum used with the present indicative, no matter the context, as an historical present.31 Pontano is one of the authors who uses dum the most.32 In addition, his use of dum is somewhat diﬀerent from the other authors’. First, we should notice that Pontano is one of the authors who actually uses primary contexts the most in this data collection (likely because he is represented within

31C# 5.63. 32Cf. Figure H.8.

186 9.4 Time in the Context

Figure 9.7: Mood and time in Ficino’s writings the dialogue and treatise genres).33 Secondly, we know that Pontano’s general choice of mood in clauses with dum is actually not especially biased towards the indicative. In fact, he is one of the authors who has most subjunctive in his dum clauses.34 How then, can his dum clauses result in more indicative within his secondary contexts? Because Pontano, for some reason, has more than half of his indicative dum clauses—58%—in his secondary context,35 a tendency that is contrary to the other Renaissance humanists’ practice, who have only 35% of their indicative dum clauses in secondary contexts. This resembles some kind of hyper correction in Pontano’s use of dum. He is obviously aware of the special case of the historical present, fossilized in clauses with dum in Classical Latin.36 However, in the rest of the neo-Latin language there seems to be no direct relation between the fossilized historical present in dum and historical contexts whatsoever. It may be coincidental, but Pontano often uses the present indicative dum in passages that resemble historical writings, and sometimes explicitly mentions history in connection with this use or refers to well known historical ﬁgures from Antiquity and even the historical writer Livy:

Quae Livius dum quaerit, alia etiam via ingressus atque profectus est. Giovanni Giovio Pontano, Dialogus actius, p. 215

33Cf. Figure H.15. 34Cf. Figure H.12a. 35In addition, all of those are to be found in his dialogue, which is also part of the reason why he aﬀects the dialogue genre largely. 36E.g. TLL (1900-, lemma: ‘dum’ II.A.β).

187 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

quam urbem Philippus obsidebat rex, dum nomen ipsum interpretare vult, locum illum historiae miriﬁce illustravit, inquiens: . . . idem, p. 224

In this way, Pontano’s use of dum often seems genuinely a historical tense, and in many ways it resembles the other humanists writers’ use of the historical present as a stylistic, genre speciﬁc treat, such as we shall see it in 12.4.1. Consequently, we shall consider this part of Pontano’s language an instance of hyper correction, or paying ‘too much’ attention to a grammatical element, or even generalizing the stylistic power of the historical present to the more grammatically conditioned nature of dum. At least in comparison with the other neo-Latin writers.

9.5 Finite Moods in the Context

There are several reasons to believe that a subordinate clause will be more likely to have the subjunctive when its matrix clause is also in the subjunctive. For one, the subjunctive by attraction is well-known in Classical Latin: subjunctive in some clause types, such as purpose clauses, are known to cause an oblique subjunctive in their subordinate clauses, which indicates that the content of their subordinate clause was conceived also as part of the thought or purpose (marked by the subjunctive).37 Also ideal and unreal conditional sentences will often result directly in a correlation between the mood in the protasis and the apodosis, because the nature of uncertainty or being contrary to fact will often be the same in the premise as in the conclusion.38 In the Valla study, the expected dependency between the moods in subordinate clauses and matrix clauses was found, though the difference between subjunctive and indicative contexts was not remarkably clear. There, I distinguished between a few basic uses of the subjunctive in the matrix clauses, namely the unreal subjunctive, the subjunctive of purpose, and remaining uses of the subjunctive. This was supposed to give an indication of whether an effect among clauses in subjunctive contexts was heavily influenced either by this more systematic result of hypothetic clauses most often being found in pairs of protasis and apodosis, or by the oblique subjunctive which is often not

37E.g. Gildersleeve and Lodge (2001, § 662–63). 38See Gildersleeve and Lodge (2001, § 589; 596–97).

188 9.5 Finite Moods in the Context

Figure 9.8: Valla’s choice of mood dependent on the mood in the context necessary in its constructions and therefore might be an important stylistic means of expression. As it appears from Figure 9.8,39 I found no difference between the unreal subjunctive and the category of the remaining subjunctive contexts, and in fact not many of the subordinate clauses in unreal contexts are themselves conditional clauses. Neither the subjunctive purpose clauses seem to affect their subordinate clauses in any particular way, compared to other kinds of subjunctive clauses. The difference that we see is not significant, but should the tendency hold, it would indicate that the less mechanical, more individual oblique use of the subjunctive in contexts of purpose were a less frequent use of the mood in Valla’s language. This distinction between different kinds of subjunctive did not seem to be very influential in the overall analysis, and the distinction seemed to be based too much on my personal interpretations to play a proper role in the basic data collection. Therefore, the distinction is not apparent in the analysis of common neo-Latin. However, in Valla’s language there is a very clear difference between subordinate clauses that appear in contexts of the indicative and the imperative. This also has a very practical, language internal explanation: Almost half of the clauses subordinate to the imperative are clauses with ne with the present subjunctive. Many are of the type vide ne. . . like this: “Sed vide ne hic sint, quibus magis placeant manus tuae quam lingua.” (Valla, Apol., 1 p. 489). Clearly, vide ne. . . is a fixed expression, and common, fixed

39V# 1.11–15.

189 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

expressions can easily aﬀect overall pictures. Therefore, we should expect this particular expression to also aﬀect the common neo-Latin language. Likewise, we should expect that the common neo-Latin language also shows some attraction of mood from matrix clause to embedded clause, and we shall check these dependencies:

H0 There is no diﬀerence in mood between clauses that are subordinate to the indicative and the subjunctive.

HA There is a higher proportion of the subjunctive in clauses that are subordinate to the subjunctive than to the indicative.

H0 There is no diﬀerence in mood between clauses that are subordinate to the indicative and the imperative.

HA There is a higher proportion of the subjunctive in clauses that are subordinate to the imperative than to the indicative.

The data from the common neo-Latin corpus in Figure 9.940 shows that the two tendencies are indeed clear in neo-Latin in general. There is significantly more subjunctive subordinate to other subjunctives than to indicatives (χ2 = 26.0, p < .01), and likewise more subjunctive subordinate to the imperatives than to the indicatives (χ2 = 9.3, p < .01). These tendencies are significant in almost all subdivisions of the corpus, namely in the early as well as the late divisions, in all five genres, and in all of the five authors who are represented with most data in the collection (Bruni, Poggio, Valla, Pontano, and Perotti). Rarely the results are more than a little dependent on the ambiguous values. All in all, this relation between moods is stable and is found in virtually every part of the corpus where the data is big enough to perform a sufficient statistical test. Looking further into the frequent subjunctive clauses that are subordinate to the imperatives,41 more than half of them are clauses with ne (20/3642)—as was the case in Valla’s language—and another great proportion (12/36) are interrogative clauses with

40C#6.11–33. 41C#6.41–42. 42All but one in the present subjunctive.

190 9.5 Finite Moods in the Context

Figure 9.9: Common neo-Latin choice of mood dependent on the mood in the context quis/quid. Even 3/7 of the indicative subordinate clauses in this context are clauses with quis/quid. This indicates that, in common neo-Latin as well as in Valla’s language, the distribution of moods in the context of imperatives is largely determined by standard expressions. Nearly half of the clauses with ne that are found in this context are directly subordinate to either vide og cave. We can, therefore, conclude that the particular distribution of mood in contexts of imperatives is due to mainly two clause types, which both happen to be almost exclusively constructed with the subjunctive in neo-Latin. There are 47 clauses in the entire data collection that are subordinate to imperative main clauses. Of these, 37 are either clauses with ne or with quis/quid. This is a relatively modest degree of variation, which characterizes main clauses in the imperative as rather ‘restricted’ with respect to their capacity to be modiﬁed by subordinate clauses. This does note mean that various clause types are not possible in connection with imperatives, but not many clause types are normal in that context. This restriction, as it were, is hard to compare to the Classical Latin language, even if we use the Perseus Treebank to ﬁnd imperatives that have the various clause types as dependent on them.43 The main problem is that the imperative is not very common in historiography—not in neo-Latin and apparently neither in Classical Latin. The texts in

43Querying e.g.: mood="imperative" & POS="verb" & POS="conjunction" & LEMMA="ne" & #1 _=_ #2 & #3 _=_ #4 & #2 ->parent #4, only with various lemmas and POS="pronoun" instead of POS="conjunction" when searching for quis.

191 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

Figure 9.10: Clause types subordinate to the imperative in Classical Latin and neo-Latin

the Perseus prose corpus by the Classical Latin authors Caesar, Cicero, and Sallust are all historical works. Among those authors, two clauses with cum are the only hits—just like only two clauses were found in the neo-Latin corpus in historical writings, one with cum and one with dum. Other clause types are found outside these authors, in poetry, later writings etc. (cf. 6.1.3), as seen in Figure 9.10. Not much information can be drawn from the sparse examples from the Perseus Tree- bank. However, if we compare the sizes of the corpora44 to the total number of these clause types subordinate to imperative verbs,45 the frequency is practically the same in both corpora. That is, we cannot conclude that neo-Latin is unnaturally restricted or unvaried (cf. M2 for natural language use, 2.3.2) based on the few occurrences of clauses subordinate to imperative verbs. Neither when considering the variation of diﬀerent clause types is this the case, because the data from both corpora give the immediate impression that two of the clause types are strongly preferred over the others in this context. In neo-Latin it is the clauses with ne and quis/quid, as we saw; in the earlier Latin ne and quia. Among the clauses with ne, the majority (4/5) are directly subordinate to vide or cave as we saw in neo-Latin, for example “tu cave ne tristi cupias pugnare puellae.” (Propertius, Eleg., 1.10 v. 21). Thus, we have no evidence that the Classical Latin language had more variation with imperative clauses, and the peculiar picture

44302,045 running words in the neo-Latin corpus and 53,143 in the Perseus Treebank. 4547 and 10.

192 9.6 Degree of Subordination drawn from the neo-Latin imperative contexts may be perfectly natural in comparison with earlier variants of Latin; a result of the nature of the imperative mood. That imperatives show a less varied use with subordinate clauses likely relates to its being a somewhat reduced mood in general, having only present and future tense, only 2nd and 3rd person, and being only used in main clauses. In this respect, imperative clauses resemble the inﬁnite clauses, which are by some considered actual clauses; by others something less than clauses. The capacity of inﬁnite constructions and to what degree subordinate clauses are used freely with them will be part of the discussion of the mood in neo-Latin indirect discourse in Chapter 10.

9.6 Degree of Subordination

We shall now look for restricted use of subordinate clauses also in another context, namely among the clauses that are embedded in other clauses that are themselves subordinate. One typical difference between literary and spoken linguistic registers is that literary and literate linguistic use tends to be more hypotactic than spoken variants. As we have just seen, the presence of subordinate clauses are not necessarily an indication of linguistic complexity, in itself. Some subordinate clauses are fixed expressions and do not make the language appear elaborate and complex. For example, the uses of vide ne. . . belong more to the colloquial genres that imitate spoken language, than to the more stylistically elaborate history and speeches. Also, some clauses are known to have lost their semantic value and have become grammatical markers through processes of grammaticalization,46 or remaining with no value as a clause at all in an entirely fixed expression, such as the nescio quid in Latin. Therefore, I propose another metric for linguistic complexity based on the number of subordinate clauses, namely the degree of subordination, which I believe to present a more nuanced view on the complexity in the language use. Ole Togeby (2003, p. 89), in his Danish grammar, names sentences where there is only a main clause a sentence of 0◦ of subordination; sentences with one subordinate clause 1◦; and clauses where there is yet another clause subordinate to a clause of 1◦ he names 2◦, and so on.

46E.g. Nørgård-Sørensen et al. (2011).

193 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

This is illustrated in Figure 9.11 (from Togeby (2003, p. 89)) which shows an analysis of this sentence:

1/ Da Snorre Sturlasson i sin “Edda” ville skildre verdens skabelse, 1a/ ikke sådan som han og hans samtidige af biblen vidste, den virkelig var foregået, 1b/ men sådan som hans hedenske forfædre, uvidende og godtroende, in- dbildte sig den, havde han ﬂere gamle beretninger at bygge på: forskellige strofer i den “Ældre Edda”, 1c/ som endnu er bevaret, og af hvilke han citerede nogle ordret, og tillige andre forestillinger, 1d/ som er gået tabt og kun kendes i brudstykker fra hans fremstilling.

1/ When Snorri Sturluson in his “Edda” wanted to describe the creation of the World, 1a/ not in the way that he and his contemporaries knew from the Bible, that it had really happened, 1b/ but in the way that his heathen an- cestors, unknowingly and naively, imagined it, he had several old accounts to base it on: various stanzas in the “Elder Edda”, 1c/ which is still preserved, and of which he quoted some word for word, and other ideas as well, 1d/ which have been lost and are only known fragmentarily from his account. (my translation) Ole Togeby (2003, p. 342)

Figure 9.11: Illustrating degrees of subordination

Based on the data in the neo-Latin data collection, we can say that a subordinate clause is at the level of 1◦ if it is subordinate to a main clause, and at the level of 2◦ or more if it is subordinate to another subordinate clause. We shall now investigate possible differences between the two degrees of subordination. What kind of clauses find their way, so to say, into the deeper layers of the language? Are they richly varied, genuine clauses expressing new content? Are they largely fixed expressions or subordinate to fixed expressions, such as we saw with the imperative clauses? Do we find more or less

194 9.6 Degree of Subordination subjunctive in higher degrees of subordination? Is the degree and nature of subordination constant across the language or dependent on authors and genres?

9.6.1 The Frequency of Second Degree Clauses

First, we shall see what can be learned from the mere number of clause types that are 1◦, and those that are 2◦ or more.47 When looking only at clauses that were categorized as either being subordinate to a main clause or to another subordinate clause (i.e. leaving out ambiguous contexts and clauses subordinate to infinite constructions), we find that 77.2% of those (1,229) are clauses with 1◦ of subordination; 22.8% (364) represent 2+◦ of subordination. That gives a 1◦/2+◦ ratio of 3.4. That is, for every clause of 2+◦ there are 3.4 of 1◦, the latter being more common. If we accept the number of 2+◦ subordinate clauses as a measure of syntactic complexity in the sentence structure, we can use Table 9.1, showing this ratio for each author and for each genre, for measuring individual complexity. It appears that for most authors, this ratio lies between 2 and 4, which therefore seems to be the normal in neo-Latin.48 A few authors, namely Poggio, Valla, and Ficino, have a slightly higher ratio, which denotes their language as less complex, as measured by degree of subordination.49 The same can be said for the history genre and the dialogues in the common neo-Latin language. Less complexity in the dialogues is likely connected to the genre imitating spoken language, and thus an indication of the usual difference between spoken and written language. The effect in history, however, is perhaps more puzzling. In Valla’s language, it is striking that his history genre is fundamentally different from his other writings. In Valla’s history, the ratio is 3.8, which is normal for neo-Latin in general. In the remaining genres, it lies between 5.1 and ultimately (in letters) 8.5, which indicates a simpler sentence structure outside his historical writings. From this follows, that the effect seen in the history genre as a total is not caused by Valla. Poggio,

47Neo-Latin data in this section is from C#7.11–23. 48Based on the six clause types in this study, other clause types likely give other results. 49Note that this data has not been (and cannot be, cf. points made in Appendix H, p. 441) tested statistically, and may have happened by chance. I still believe the tendencies to be of relevance, because these three authors, especially Valla, are represented with a considerable number of clauses in the data collection.

195 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

1◦/2+◦ ratio More subjunctive in Bruni 3.6 — G. Veronese 1.7 1◦ Poggio 4.1 — Manetti 2.2 1◦ Filelfo 2.4 1◦ Alberti 2.2 1◦ Valla 4.6 — Pontano 3.9 2+◦ Perotti 3.6 2+◦ Ficino 4.9 2+◦ B. Guarini 2.3 1◦ Barbaro 2.3 2+◦ Poliziano 2.3 — History 4.4 — Speeches 3.5 2+◦ Letters 2.4 — Treatises 3.1 — Dialogues 4.5 — Total 3.4 —

Table 9.1: Overall relations to the degree of subordination

on the other hand, has a high ratio in history and dialogue (i.e. a simpler structure), and a normal ratio in his treatises and letters (i.e. normal degree of complexity). Ficino has a very little complex sentence structure in both his treatises and his dialogues. Only 14 of his clauses are found in the 2+◦ position.50 But the few clauses that are found of 2+◦ are not simple. They are generally of diﬀerent kinds and express actual content, and so Ficino does not avoid deep subordination entirely. It is merely very sparse in his writings, at least when looking at the few clause types represented in this study. While he has some preference for certain combinations, such as a present subjunctive clause with cum subordinate to a present indicative clause with quia, these clauses still vary with respect to word order, the presence of other clauses, etc., and so they do not resemble the simple reuse of one model clause picked up from reading a Classical Latin text,51 or in other ways indicate that his writing of the Latin language is not ﬂuent.

50C# 7.36. 51E.g. compared to the example on the more formulaic passages in The Latin Vulgate, p. 338.

196 9.6 Degree of Subordination

The following two examples will illustrate such variation even among clauses that look almost the same in the data set:

Est et immobilis, quia neque ab alio movetur, cum nihil sit illo validius, neque a seipso, quia ad melius se transferre nequit, cum sit ipsum bonum. Marsilio Ficino, Theologia Platonica, I. 129

Secundum, quia cum sint multa quae moventur ab alio, si omnia talia sunt, vel in inﬁnitum vagabimur, vel circulo revolvemur eodem, ut idem sit primus motor et ultimus, causa idem atque eﬀectus, neque in rebus ordo sit ullus. idem, I. 134

Returning to Valla, what makes him use a more complex sentence structure in his historical work?52 And what makes Poggio vary his language more in treatises and letters?53 When they do not generally write with much variation, is this then due to repeating use of some personal favorite expression, or is it actual variation? In Valla’a Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum his many instances of 2+◦ subordinate clauses are found subordinate to various different clause types, mostly several different uses of ut, but also cum, relative clauses, and others. Of the six clause types studied, Valla shows some tendency to prioritize clauses with ne and quia in this position, though all except utrum are found several times. From the Valla study, where more different clause types were studied, there is evidence54 that he also often uses various other temporal clauses such as priusquam, simulac, and donec, as well as relative clauses, in the deeper layers of the sentence. From that study we can also see that other clause types appear deep in the subordination in his other genres as well, which indicates that the differences between genres may in this respect be especially dependent on the selection of clauses for the study. When reading the actual clauses from Valla’s historical writing which are found in the 2+◦ position, a wide variety of genuine uses appear, and no recurring fixed expressions can be identified. Only one instance, namely an appearance of the expression ne dicam,55 could be characterized as having no actual new content, merely functioning as a communicative device. Most of the clauses serve for expressing precise relations between the events of history, such as this use of quia:

52C# 7.31. 53C# 7.32. 54V#2.11–12. 55Valla, Gesta, praef. 8.

197 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

Hic, cum cerneret regem subinde orationi sue, ut putabat, indormientem, quia oculis conniventibus capiteque demisso sterteret, intersistebat. Lorenzo Valla, Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum, 2.2.3

Some even resemble the well-known long passages from the Classical Latin historical works, of highly complex structures.56 And so, Valla’s historical language is truly varied even in the complexity of 2+◦ clauses. In Poggio’s letters as well, only genuine and various clauses are found in this position. He has a considerable amount of clauses in those deep layers of subordination, which are actually part of indirect discourse,57 for example:

Quidam vero ex amicis ad me iocans scripsit, se cupere, ut cito redirem, ne essem malorum expers que alii patiebantur. Poggio Bracciolini, Epistole, I, p. 23

We cannot, even based on the language by the authors who have the smallest amount of sentence complexity, deduce that hypotactic language is in any way too difficult or unnatural for the neo-Latin writers. When deep subordination appears, the clauses of 2+◦ are richly varied, express new content, do not generally resemble fixed expressions, and neither do they appear subordinate to such expressions. I do not wish to imply that a high degree of subordination is the same as linguistic proficiency or stylistic elegance, and that the lack of it is the same as not being able to use the language in varied ways. Only, this investigation could have revealed some restriction to the humanists’ Latin language, indicating perhaps a less fluent language use, had the clauses that were found in this position shown some trace of being fossilized entities rather than actual clauses. The avoidance of deep subordination may also, for example, be the result of a pursuit of clarity in the linguistic expression.

9.6.2 The Relation between Mood and Degree of Subordination

We shall now study whether there is an actual dependency between the degrees of subordination and the mood in the clauses: if subordination is a factor in the choice of mood.

56E.g.: “ita nunc se presidente, per populos presentes, quibus idem liceat quod superioribus, exceptionem unius optinere, non vi aut imperio aut auctoritate, sed tum miserabili aspectu, utpote collocato ad gremium orbi regis pupillo, tum summissa oratione, darent hoc senectuti sue, darent orbitati, darent precibus ac lacrimis, sinerent se cum hac letitia diem suum obire, quia relinquat nepotem heredem, ne exulceretur hoc quoque dolore ex altero vulnere, quo non minus aﬄictetur quam ex illo quia ﬁlium perdidit.” (Valla, Gesta, 2.3.20). 57In 9/21 clauses in his letters.

198 9.6 Degree of Subordination

The Valla study gives no clear indication of whether to expect more subjunctive in 1◦ or 2+◦ clauses, and so we shall merely test for any possible diﬀerence:

◦ ◦ H0 There is no diﬀerence in mood between subordinate clauses of 1 and 2+ . ◦ ◦ HA There is a diﬀerence in mood between subordinate clauses of 1 and 2+ .

As seen in Figure 9.12a, there is no clear difference between the amount of subjunctive in the different layers of subordination in the sentence. But it also appears that there is a remarkable difference between the early and the late writers of the 15th century. While the early writers seem to have more subjunctive in the 1◦ clauses,58 the late writers have more subjunctive in the 2+◦ clauses. The difference between 1◦ and 2+◦ clauses in the late authors’ language is significant (χ2 = 6.2, p < .05, a little dependent on ambiguous values). The second column in Table 9.1 above indicates where the individual authors and genres have more subjunctive, in the 1◦ or the 2+◦ clauses,59 or whether there is no difference. It is clear, that before Valla all authors show either no dependency between mood and degree of subordination, or they have more subjunctive in the 1◦ clauses. The opposite is the case for the authors after Valla, who generally agree on either no dependency or more subjunctive in the 2+◦ clauses (with B. Guarini as the sole exception). This may be an indication of some coherence in each of the two chronological divisions of the corpus, and therefore an indication that the difference between Figure 9.12b and 9.12c is not a coincidence, but actually reflects a difference in the language use in the two phases. It can also be concluded from the table that there is no immediate connection between an author’s degree of complexity as discussed above (based on the 1◦/2+◦ ratio) and his distribution of moods across the degrees of subordination. This is evident from, for example, comparing B. Gurini, Barbaro, and Poliziano who have the same 1◦/2+◦ ratio but different mood preferences. So we cannot conclude that the choice of mood in the deep layers of subordination has anything to do with complexity. There is a slight difference between the speeches and the other genres. However, this is the result of most of the speeches in the corpus being composed by late 15th c.

58Though the difference is not significant: χ2 = 2.2, p > .05. 59Though, in most cases, not significantly so.

199 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

(a) Total (b) Early (c) Late

Figure 9.12: Relation between mood and the degree of subordination

authors, only Bruni representing the speeches before Valla. In his speeches, Bruni has the same amount of subjunctive in all levels of subordination. Therefore, the effect in the speeches is not one of the genre, but one of the chronological division. So basically, we see a dependency between degree of subordination in the late division of the corpus, and an indication of the opposite relation in the early. There is apparently a shift in this dependency, but no immediate reason exists for the dependencies. I have studied various possible factors that may have caused this effect, and which individually influence the tendency slightly, but even with these factors removed, there is still some difference to be seen between the early and the late authors. A few of thees factors are briefly mentioned in the following. Manetti and Battista Guarini60 who both are among the authors who use the indicative more in the 2+◦ clauses than in 1◦ have a certain concentration of clauses with dum in those deeper layers. There is a common tendency in the neo-Latin language to have a higher concentration of dum in this context than in the 2+◦ clauses (cf. Figure I.7b), and at the same time clauses with dum more often have the indicative in this position than in the 1◦ clauses, as seen in Figure 9.13. This also seems to be the case for quia.61 On the contrary, the authors who have more subjunctive in the 2+◦ clauses than in

60On Manetti, Filelfo, and B. Guarini, see C# 7.331–353. 61Though the diﬀerences are not quite signiﬁcant: dum: χ2 = 1.4, p = .27; quia: χ2 = 2.6, p = .11.

200 9.6 Degree of Subordination

Figure 9.13: Dum, Cum, and Quia in different degrees of subordination the 1◦ clauses, may have a slight preference for clauses with cum in the deep layers of subordination.62 Therefore, some of the tendency should seem to be related to a change in the popularity of clause types, only the overall popularity of the clause types cum and dum is exactly the opposite, as seen in Figure 9.14. Clauses with dum are not more popular among the earlier authors, but among the later, and clauses with cum are more popular in the earlier division of the corpus. So the use of dum and cum in the earlier and later divisions of the corpus, respectively, which we have just seen, is not a general tendency in the entire language, but actually particular for their deep subordination. So something apparently happens which is actually related to the degree of subordination, though the explanation for this is not clear. We saw above that many of Poggio’s 2+◦ clauses were part of indirect. As will be discussed in detail in the next chapter, the finite clauses in indirect discourse most often have the subjunctive in Classical Latin. It is common for the humanists that they have a higher concentration of indirect discourse in the 2+◦ clauses than in the 1◦ clauses,63 and the amount of indirect discourse could therefore influence the mood in the different

62On Pontano, Perotti, Ficino, and Barbaro, see C# 7.37–40. 63While there are roughly 7.5 clauses that are not indirect discourse for each indirect discourse clause at the 1◦ level, among the 2+◦ clauses there are only 4.1 non-indirect discourse clauses for each clause that is part of indirect discourse. Logically, this tendency must follow from the presence of a verbum dicendi, or the like, which is almost always superordinate to the reported speech, adding automatically an extra degree of subordination to the corresponding direct discourse. Therefore, this tendency is not, in itself, worth much attention, though it may be an important factor in other investigations.

201 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

Figure 9.14: The overall popularity of clause types in early and late division

layers of subordination. But the difference between the early and the late division of the corpus is not affected by removing indirect discourse from the analysis, as Figure 9.15 shows. So I cannot, based on the present data, tell the reason for the shift in preferred mood in the deeper layers of subordination, nor can I characterize the nature of the difference or relate it to any other tendency that can be identified in the language. But we shall gain one last insight into the neo-Latin language through the study of the degree of subordination. Studying the mood in indirect discourse in the different degrees of subordination reveals an interesting tendency, though this is an element which does not change during the 15th century, and which cannot therefore explain the difference that occurs over time. In neo-Latin indirect discourse is more often constructed with the indicative in the deep layers of subordination than in the simpler 1◦ clauses, as shown in Figure 9.16.64 The difference seen in the figure is significant (χ2 = 9.1, p < .01, a little dependent on ambiguous values), and the following exemplifies the use of the indicative in a subordinate quia clause which must be part of the indirect discourse.

cuius adeo parcus exstitisse dicitur, ut Plinium minorem sororis suae ﬁlium saepius corripuisse dicatur, quod ambularet, quia scilicet tempus illud non perdere poterat. Battista Guarini, De ordine docendi et studendi, p. 68 In the next chapter, we shall see that in some parts of the neo-Latin language the

64Based on C# 8.111–223. The 12 indicatives found in the 2+◦ clauses were composed by: Valla (3), Poggio (1), Bruni (1), Filelfo (1), Veronese (1), Barbaro (1), Perotti (1), and Battista Guarini (1).

202 9.6 Degree of Subordination

(a) Total (b) Early (c) Late

Figure 9.15: Relation between mood and the degree of subordination (without indirect discourse and ambiguous discourse)

Figure 9.16: More indicative in indirect discourse of 2+◦ of subordination

203 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

mood is affected by indirect discourse in a way that resembles the Classical Latin system somewhat, and therefore the subjunctive is sometimes an effect of being subordinate to indirect discourse, in neo-Latin as well as in Classical Latin. But the distribution in Figure 9.16 may indicate that those subordinate clauses that are most distant from the actual verbum dicendi are affected least by the mood of indirect discourse. This points to a use of moods in dependent clauses where the relation to the directly superordinate clause is of importance, but where entire complex passages consisting of several clauses are not as easily conceived as one thought. This dependency on the concrete superordinate verb, rather than on the concept of indirect discourse, we shall also see in the fact that the infinitive itself—regularly used in Classical Latin indirect discourse—results in a higher proportion of subjunctives in neo-Latin, even when it is not part of indirect discourse.

9.7 On Markedness Agreement

Another possible explanation for the tendencies that we have encountered so far is Hen- ning Andersen’s Principle of Markedness Agreement (PMA). Earlier in this chapter, we have seen a tendency towards more indicative (u) in the 1st person (u) verbs than in 2nd person (m)65 and a very slight tendency towards more subjunctive (m) in the plural (m) (at least in Classical Latin); a very small, yet significant, difference in Classical Latin voice resulting in a little more subjunctive (m) in the passive (m); and then we found more subjunctive (m) together with past tenses (m). However, we should have expected the future to be more connected with the subjunctive if this were our only approach, because the future can hardly be considered an unmarked tense, compared to the present. It is rather rare, is not much used to encompass other meanings than denoting future tense, and overall it has a more complex morphology than the present tense. In the previous chapters, the only real difference between moods in the different genres, namely more indicative (u) in the least literary (u) genre, treatises, also fits into Andersen’s PMA. Among the different clause types, however, markedness agreement would not seem to describe the tendencies. For example, clauses with cum which are

65With reference to Table 2.4 (2.3.4).

204 9.7 On Markedness Agreement very common and cover a wide range of meanings (i.e. note very specific in themselves) (u) have the highest amount of subjunctive (m) among the three clause types that vary considerably in mood. On the other hand, the more rare dum which has a more restricted number of uses (m) has more indicative (u). Only the distribution of moods after quia, with the indicative being very predominant (u), would seem to match the reputation of quia as being somewhat colloquial (u) and scholastic. Still I would be very hesitant to attribute any differences between clause types to the PMA, because the different clause types seem to be governed by very strong grammatical systems, whereas these other factors—which generally behave according to the PMA—seem less strong factors that operate where the grammatical systems of, for example, the clause types leave space for individual and context determined variation.

Thus, the PMA seems to agree with most of the factors that are secondary to the choice of moods, after the primary factors of clause types, and sometimes individual preferences (Ficino). I believe that the PMA should not be considered an alternative explanation. Not in the sense that we should accept either the PMA or other explanations— such as the natural forces of the subjunctive that we have considered—and reject the other. Based on what we have seen so far in the neo-Latin language, the PMA rather seems to be an overlaying frame within which other, more speciﬁc mechanisms of natural language use can be explained. In some cases, this agreement in markedness is logically explained through related forces and meanings, such as that between the uncertainty of the subjunctive (the addition of ‘something else’ than fact) and the distance felt towards an utterance concerning the 2nd person, for instance. In other cases, such as the very little prevalence of subjunctive in the plural in Classical Latin, I cannot come up with any other explanation than the overall tendency of Markedness Agreement (if we should even consider the tendency worth explaining).

As such, the PMA is an observation in languages (apparently also in neo-Latin); not an explanation. However, it might be a help in accepting the complexity that we encounter when describing neo-Latin—or any other language, supposedly. Because several factors seem to play their little part in the use of the moods, it is diﬃcult, if not impossible, to determine what is actually the core reason for choosing a ﬁnite mood in a subordinate clause, and what factors are merely dependent on other determining

205 9 Some Other Fa ors Affe ing Mood

factors. Viewing all these factors as participating in some markedness Agreement, we can be content if we can distinguish between those factors that seem to be part of this agreement with mood, and those that mood is untouched by.

In this chapter we have seen how the subjunctive mood is slightly dependent on some factors that seem related to the more distant and uncertain expression, namely the 3rd (perhaps also the 2nd) person and the past tense. On the other hand, no difference existed between the mood distribution in active and passive verbs, nor in clauses that are found in the context of negations, even though negations are known to affect the mood in the Medieval Italian. Recalling the categorization by Vegnaduzzo (2010) (cf. 7.1) of the subjunctive that is caused by negations as a syntactical mechanism, and the explanations by Traugott (1978) and Ultan (1978) (cf. 9.4) of the subjunctive in past tenses as related to the dubitative nature of the subjunctive, these results from the neo-Latin study can be seen as an indication that the semantic force of the modality is stronger in neo-Latin than the sheer syntactical functions. The strength of the semantic value of the subjunctive mood in neo-Latin—as opposed to the less forceful syntactical functions—will also appear in the studies of indirect discourse in the following chapter. Later on, we shall also see examples on the humanists adding semantic layers of modality to linguistic situations where modality is not apparent in Classical Latin, such as an instructive use of the future indicative and more widespread expressions of hypothetical nuances. On a very general level, we can notice that the actual dependencies between moods and other factors that are identified in this chapter may be taken as evidence for the natural use of the neo-Latin language which we have by now encountered several times: the relations show that mood is not applied randomly, but according to various language internal factors, and mostly in agreement among the individual authors throughout the language community. In addition, those dependencies that are actually shown by the neo- Latin data all conform to Andersen’s principle of Markedness Agreement, which is yet an indication that the distribution resembles the distribution in natural languages. Also,

206 9.7 On Markedness Agreement in those tests that were also performed on the Classical Latin language (e.g. concerning person and number) very striking similarities between the neo-Latin and the Classical Latin practice were identiﬁed. This may be either a result of the Classical Latin and the Volgare being very closely related, or it may be the result of very precise imitation of the Classical Latin literature in the language of the humanists.

207

Chapter 10

Constructing Indirect Discourse

Niccolò Perotti’s major work on the stylistics of Latin, his Cornu copiae, was written as a commentary to Martial’s epigrams. The sometimes obscene character of Martial’s writings would seem to be in contrast with Perotti’s holding a prominent position within the church.1 He wrote the dedicatory letter as a fiction, pretending to be his young nephew Pirro Perotti who had found the manuscript, edited it, and now, without his uncle’s knowing, asked Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, for help with the publication. Throughout the dedicatory letter, Perotti lets Pseudo-Pirro maintain that his uncle, Niccolò, found the work unsuitable for being published, and the parallel tale of how Vergil had found his Aeneid unworthy for publishing as well, is central to establishing a relationship between the humanist writer and his Classical Latin predecessor. Since Late Antiquity such references to earlier writers had been a topos in Latin prefaces, only the mentioning of earlier writers used to serve for expressing the author’s humility towards the better predecessors, not for establishing the author as an equal to the model, such as is the impression from Perotti’s preface.2 In this way, Perotti’s dedicatory letter is a teasing play on formally meeting the expectations of the genre and of the church, while elaborating upon the magnificence of his own work, describing with pride its many qualities, and his own. Within this play of truth and fiction, of his actual stance as opposed to the formal expectations of the tradition, we see Perotti’s perception of the

1He was Archbishop of Siponto and had held oﬃces such as papal secretary and papal governor. On Perotti in general, as well as on his Cornu copiae in particular, see e.g. Pade (2005a); Charlet (1997). 2Janson (1964, 155-57); Pade (2011).

209 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

moods playing their role, so that Perotti accomplishes to say what he believes while pretending to take the opposite position. Pseudo-Pirro reports an ongoing, fictive discussion between Niccolò Perotti on the one side who argues that the Cornu copiae should not be published, and himself and several other learned men on the other side who refute all Niccolò’s arguments. This discussion often takes the form of lengthy passages of reported speech. As it is the case in Classical Latin, both the indicative and the subjunctive are used in the finite clauses of Perotti’s indirect discourse, but the use of the two moods seems somewhat different in Perotti’s writings than what we know from Classical Latin. In Classical Latin, the subjunctive is generally used in all finite clauses that are part of the reported speech3—usually subordinate to an accusative with infinitive. The indicative is rare and would in Classical Latin normally indicate that the author presents the content of a particular clause not as part of the actual reported speech, but as his own comment, his supportive information, or explanation of a general truth. That is, the indicative places something outside the reported speech, or it may be used as an indication that the author shares the thought with the speaker.4 In Perotti’s passages of reported speech, the changes of mood seem to be used more freely, or according to various systems. The subjunctive is used for the author’s dissociation from the statement, and the indicative for his vouching for the statement, sometimes independently of whether the statement was thought as part of the indirect discourse or not. Sometimes this coincides with the Classical Latin grammatical distinction between what part of the indirect discourse and what is not. Yet, often the variation seems more subjective, depending on whether the statement is considered a truth, or whether the author agrees with it. That is, there are more semantically conditioned nuances involved in the choice, and it is not merely a grammatical distinction. As mentioned, these two parameters also sometimes result in the indicative in Classical Latin, but it is not very common among the Classical authors. This more semantic use would seem closely connected to the well-known use of the moods for expressing degrees of certainty and factuality.

3Though many exceptions are known, particularly after the Classical Latin period, cf. Kühner and Stegmann (1914, II § 239, 2. a–b). 4Kühner and Stegmann (1914, II § 239, 2. a).

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In many clause types, the mood is given by other mechanisms than the proposed distinction of the author’s loyalty, as it were, towards the statement. But his relative clauses in particular present a curious changing of moods that cannot be accounted for by the Classical Latin distinction between author comments and parts of the actual indirect discourse. For example, when Niccolò Perotti fictively argues that the obscene parts of Martial’s poetry would be thought indecent for a priest to read, this is expressed through the subjunctive putaretur in a relative clause: tum multa esse apud hunc Poetam uulgi iudicio obscena quae interpretari Pontificem indecens putaretur, quando quidem sunt nonnulli qui legere etiam Martialem nefarium censent. Niccolò Perotti, Cornu copiae, proh. 3 This I believe is an indication that Niccolò Perotti the author (as opposed to the fictive interlocutor) questions the correctness of reasoning in this way. He may with the subjunctive distance himself from reasoning so. Note that the subjunctive does not question the factuality of the statement, as he explicitly adds, in the clause with quando, that there are indeed those who think so, expressed with the indicative censent. This indicative clause would also correspond to the Classical Latin use, as the content could likely be a parenthetic remark presenting the author’s own position. In Niccolò Perotti’s further arguments why the Cornu copiae was not fit for publishing, it is clear that the subjunctive in indirect discourse does not necessarily mean that the author has a negative attitude towards that which is reported. Seemingly apologetically, Niccolò Perotti is reported describing that many elements of the Cornu copiae were too long and extensive, and that the book would become too large, and would not be confined to one poet, but to the entire Latin language: . . . sed multa quoque a se seorsum, non breuiter et carptim ut interpretum mos est, uerum longe diffuse que conscripta, saepe etiam ex libris autorum qui graece latine que scripserunt fere ad uerbum sumpta, quae si aedi oporteret, in grande nimis uolumen opus excresceret, nec tam unius Poetae quam totius linguae latinae interpretatio uideri posset. idem, proh. 3 These two objections are reported in the subjunctive, though Perotti seems to take much pride in the extensiveness of his work, and the subjunctive here merely seems to indicate that the statement was not Pseudo-Pirro’s own, but the other part’s. Here, the subjunctive seems merely to support the fictive scene, to mask Perotti’s pride, pretending

211 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

that he thought the vastness of his work grande nimis. The two uses of the indicative that refer to how other interpreters usually do, and pointing out that many examples in the Cornu copiae are quotes from actual Classical Latin writers, might correspond to the Classical Latin use of the subjunctive in indirect discourse as supportive information from the (here, Pseudo-)author, or they may serve to stress the factuality of the statement and Pseudo-Pirro’s vouching for it, both because it seems important to Perotti that his Cornu copiae is something new and more than the usual commentary, and because the actual quotations of Classical authors were also one of the proud characteristics and innovations of his predecessor Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae, and one of the new prime virtues of the humanists. Therefore, these facts may have felt so important in establishing the place of the Cornu copiae in the humanist tradition, that their correctness should be stressed, notwithstanding the originator of the statement. Only reading a little further in the discussion between the two Perottis, we finally find clear evidence that his use of the subjunctive cannot be interpreted entirely in line with the Classical Latin practice. There we find two clauses in the indicative that can by no means be considered a parenthetic author remark, because removing it from the passage would leave the indirect discourse incoherent. Pseudo-Pirro now reports how many others had refuted Niccolò Perotti’s objections that his work was too long for publishing, saying that brevity should be sought if necessary, but that it was a violation of duty to surpass what was necessary and useful.

Postremo breuitatem ibi tantum custodiendam esse ubi causa postulat; alioquin praeuaricationem esse transire quae necessaria et utilia sunt, aut quae inculcare, inﬁgere, repetere oportet cursim breuiter que attingere. idem, proh. 4

The indicative clauses with ubi as well as quae must be part of the original reported speech. The latter is even the direct object of its matrix clause, and so it cannot even grammatically be left out, let alone with respect to the meaning, which would result in a meaningless statement without it. This is part of a rather lengthy report of reasons for publishing the Cornu copiae, and in this part, the indicative is remarkably more frequent than in the previous section that reported the insistence of Pseudo-Pirro’s uncle, that his work was unworthy. All in all, though Perotti’s exact criteria for choosing either the indicative or the subjunctive in indirect discourse seem vague, his game of pretending

212 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse to deem his own work unworthy is played also on the level of grammatical mood, as he denounces the statements of the fictive Niccolò Perotti who stubbornly opposes the publication of this important work, by using the subjunctive to create some distance to his own statements. On the other hand, he favors the stand of his disobedient nephew by presenting his cause with the air of trustworthiness and factuality that follows from the extensive use of the indicative when Pseudo-Pirro reports the arguments of his friends. This, I believe, is a stylistic use of the moods that benefits from a less strict system in Perotti’s Latin, than what is observed in Classical Latin. Perotti’s play of truths and fiction can only be supported by his choice of moods in this way, because his language system leaves more room for personal variation. As we shall see, an established common system (or rather common systems) for choosing neo-Latin moods in indirect discourse does indeed exist, and Perotti’s use of moods in this dedicatory letter is one indication that neo-Latin stylistic variation works within the frame of the linguistic system. This substitution of the Classical Latin grammatical system (different mood placing a statement inside or outside the reported speech) by a new system (apparently based on more semantic distinctions) should also remind us of the second measure of natural language use (2.3.2) which is based on the assumption that new distinctions will emerge in a natural language when old complexity disappears from the language. I believe this to be such a shift in paradigm, from one kind of complexity/meaning to another, which indicates that neo-Latin was in this respect used like a natural language, and it is likely that the paradigm was partly adopted from the Volgare.5 This introductory evaluation of Perotti’s language will be the basis of our investigation of mood in indirect discourse in neo-Latin. Most importantly, we have seen evidence that not all Renaissance humanists (if any) have the generally invariable use of the subjunctive in indirect discourse that we know from Classical Latin. Therefore we shall begin by determining if Perotti’s language is typical neo-Latin, or if humanists generally agree on using the subjunctive in indirect discourse like in the Classical Latin. Is there some linguistic consensus, or individual preferences? Then, we shall look for evidence for the different uses of the subjunctive that were indicated in Perotti’s language, for

5Those who study language change through the mechanisms of grammaticalization may wish to object that the direction of this change is strange—perhaps unnatural—that the cline would normally result in semantic values being more and more grammatically determined.

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example based on the grammatical person of the verb within the indirect discourse as well as in the verbum dicendi, sentiendi, or the like. We saw in Perotti’s dedicatory letter that especially the relative clauses seemed to vary largely in mood in indirect discourse. Relative clauses are, unfortunately, not part of the common neo-Latin study. However, because of the indications from Perotti’s language that I have presented here, I added information on the grammatical person to each of the relative clauses in the Valla study, which was a novelty in the later common neo-Latin data collection and was not originally implemented in the Valla study. Therefore, the Valla data have not previously been analyzed with respect to grammatical person, and therefore proper statistical tests can be applied to the 399 relative clauses by Valla. We shall begin with a general discussion of how the Renaissance humanists actually expressed indirect discourse. For this is likely one of the parts of the syntax that they, collectively, paid most attention to, and struggled most to make sound like Classical Latin.

10.1 Quia, Quod, and The Accusative with Inﬁnitive

In Classical Latin, most main clauses of the direct discourse, when transferred into indirect discourse, take the form of an infinite nexus consisting of a verb in the infinitive and its logical subject in the accusative, the accusative with infinitive. Most subordinate clauses of the direct discourse, when transferred into indirect discourse, have the subjunctive.6 Alongside the Classical Latin expression of indirect discourse by the accusative with infinitive, finite clauses introduced by quod, quia, etc. had been used frequently in Medieval Latin, as we shall see. The avoidance of finite clauses in indirect discourse, and the substitution by the accusative with infinitive was an important characteristic of the new Latin style of the Renaissance humanists. Though they did not necessarily associate the accusative with infinitive with the concept of indirect discourse, they easily recognized the situations in the language where Classical Latin expresses the content through an infinite nexus. And they were aware that some finite clauses had,

6On indirect discourse in Classical Latin, see Kühner and Stegmann (1914, II §§ 237–39).

214 10.1 Quia, Quod, and The Accusative with Infinitive in the Middle Ages and in the Latin of their contemporaries, been used in stead of the Classical infinitive to a much larger extent than had been the case in Classical Latin. In Niccolò Perotti’s Rudimenta grammatices, we see a characteristic connection between the two different constructions, the infinite and the finite, as he explains how the infinitive can be used much more elegantly in every situation where one could use a verb in the subiunctiuus with quod:

Quid hic in primis notandum est? Quod ea quae per subiunctiuum uerbum cum coniunctione quod dici possunt longe elegantius sine quod per infiniti- uum dicuntur. Verbi gratia: Io so che tu leggi. Scio quod tu legis: Scio te legere. . . . Certa cosa e che queste cose se deueriano scriueri non in carta, ma in marmo euero in metallo. Certum est quod haec non in membranis scribi deberent, sed uel in marmore uel in aes; Certum est haec non in membranis, sed in marmore uel in aes scribi debere, uel potius: Certum est haec non in membranis, sed in marmore uel in aes scribenda esse. Niccolò Perotti, De componendis epistolis, § 1147 In this, we witness the gradual explanation and teaching of Latin style so characteristic for Perotti’s generation of Renaissance grammars, beginning with the expression in the Volgare,7 then the more ‘natural’ Latin expression that was more popular in the Medieval Latin, and finally the elegant expression of the new Latin norm, adopted from Classical Latin. That the typical Medieval expression is not completely banned, but even serves as the foundation on which elegant Latin can be build, illustrates the two-sided nature of Renaissance Latin. The two different language norms coexist and serve different purposes, and they are not independent. Antonietta Bufano (1961) finds the same evidence in Petrarch’s language, namely that the two constructions seem to be perceived as equally legitimate, and that his variation between the two seems to be a matter of stylistics. In Perotti’s school book, it is presumed that the student knows when to use quod with the subiunctiuus, and this knowledge would seem to somehow depend on their use of their vernacular che. The stylistic nature of the infinite expressions is also supported by the data from the neo-Latin corpus. Infinite constructions have not been studied directly, but the data collection contains information on how many of the clauses were found subordinate to infinite constructions. Therefore, we only have information on those infinite construc-

7The vernacular phrases were soon to be avoided in grammars, by the most idealistic humanists of the 15th century. Black (2001, pp. 98-172).

215 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

tions that are accompanied by such heavy modifiers as subordinate clauses (more on the varying complexity of infinite constructions below). Most infinite constructions (49) are found (as directly superordinate context of other clauses) in the historical works, and the least are found in speeches (25) and treatises (26). These numbers should be considered in relation to the total number of clauses represented in the various genres in the data collection. Treatises being the largest genre of them all (404 clauses in total), it is notable that so few clauses were found subordinate to infinite constructions among those. This may be a result of the treatises being the most non-literary genre studied here. Speech- es being the smallest of the genres in the data collection (299 clauses in total), the 25 clauses that were found subordinate to infinite constructions in those make up a larger proportion of the total. The 49 infinite contexts found in history should be compared to a total of 385 clauses in the data collection, which results in a remarkably greater proportion than is found in the treatises. This difference, mostly between speeches and treatises, may be an indication of the stylistic nature of the infinite constructions.

Perotti’s paragraph on the infinitive constructions, which we saw above, is the closest he comes to describing the general construction of indirect discourse. As in Valla’s descriptions of quod, which were discussed in 8.1, there is in Perotti’s grammar some unexplained variation between the indicative and the subjunctive, and a general incon- sistency. In the passage above, he talks about the construction “per subiunctiuum uerbum cum coniunctione quod.” In 7.1 we saw that he defines the subiunctiuus/coniunctiuus as the mood which requires another verb as well as an adverb or a conjunction (i.e. it is subordinate), and then secondarily he inflects it according to the paradigm that is in modern grammars recognized as the conjugation of the subjunctive. But the quod clauses here may have either the (modern) indicative, legis, or the (modern) subjunctive, deberent. This may be an indication that the construction is more important, so to say, than the verbal mood in Perotti’s description of the language. Therefore Perotti gives us no indication of whether to expect the humanists to imitate the Classical Latin practice of using the subjunctive in the subordinate clauses of indirect discourse. However, the infinitive construction is definitely well known to the humanists, and it seems to be characterized as the more stylistic alternative to using the finite quod, mostly in indirect discourse, but not restricted to this.

216 10.1 Quia, Quod, and The Accusative with Infinitive

In this paragraph it is also evident how the similar constructions are composed in Perotti’s native dialect. For he gives several examples—and more examples are found in his text which I did not quote—of clauses with che which he constructs with the present indicative (ame and e), the future (sera, perdonarai, and perdonaro), and the condizionale semplice (deueriano). So he does not prefer the subjunctive in his native dialect, though both the indicative and the condizionale are attested among the few examples. This difference between Classical Latin and the Volgare may be one reason for the confusion of moods in indirect discourse that we see in his grammar as well as in his literary language. In Medieval Italian, as in Modern Italian, indirect discourse is not defined quite as in Classical Latin. Verba sentiendi are not generally associated with indirect discourse in Medieval Italian, and even in the case of verba dicendi no general rule can be given with regard to mood, but the individual verbs are associated with particular moods and tenses in their subordinate clauses, and this system seems to be the same for all frasi argomentali whether associated with indirect discourse or not.8 Basically, moods are in this respect determined in quite a different way in Medieval Italian than in Classical Latin, and possible relations to the verbum dicendi will be considered in the following investigation of moods in indirect discourse in neo-Latin. Because clauses with quod are not part of this study, I cannot provide new information of the use of quod in neo-Latin. Clauses with quia were also used for expressing the reported speech in Medieval Latin, though the use of quia spread somewhat later than quod which had also been used in this way by authors such as Gellius (c. AD 130–80) who is a model for Perotti’s Cornu copiae,9 Vitruvius who was in the Renais- sance regarded as the supreme architectural authority,10 and some Church Fathers,11

8Salvi (2010). 9The new form of commentaries, the miscellanea (see Grafton (1988)), that Perotti contributed to with his Cornu copiae, was inspired by Gellius’ Noctes Atticae, which he may mean to refer to by his repeated mentioning of his own and Pirro’s nightly study (e.g. “post tot epotas lucubrationum fuligines” (Perotti, Ccopiae., proh. 2.19)). For other allusions to Gellius in Perotti’s dedicatory letter, see Charlet (1997, p. 96), and compare the two authors’ descriptions of etymology (cf. also Cavazza (1987)). 10Howatson (1988, p. 596). For example, Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria was modeled on Vitruvius’ De Architectura. 11See Kühner and Stegmann (1914, II § 192,2. e) and Stotz (1998, IV §§ 103–10), who also notes that the accusative with infinitive has always been used, side by side with the various conjunctional clauses, and the accusative with infinitive has almost always been the most frequent construction for expressing indirect discourse. Though in The Latin Vulgate the constructions with quod, quia, and quoniam were most normal because of influence from the Greek text, cf. Platner and White (1926, p. 119).

217 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

whom some Renaissance humanists considered suitable models for an elegant Latin (as mentioned in 6.1.2). The appearance of quod in this use among the humanists’ ‘Classical’ models, while quia was a slightly later invention, may be the reason why Valla explicitly rejects quia and quoniam, while mentioning quod as the correct expression:

Et quod illi habent καθoτι´ , tu malis dicere Quia, aut Quoniam, quam Quod; ut in eodem putatis quia veni solvere legem, quum esset dicendum Quod. Lorenzo Valla, Elegantiae linguae Latinae, p. 154

The humanist banning of declarative clauses with quia was effective. In this study, I have collected 361 clauses with quia.12 Only once I have suspected that quia might be used as a declarative clause, namely Valla’s “Aiunt, quia effectus erat Christianus” (Valla, Don., 4.11). It is striking to find this in Valla’s language, whom we have just seen reject this construction, and it proves that Medieval constructions may indeed slip into the language, even of those authors who reject them strongly and explicitly. But from a greater perspective, one single appearance is not worth much in a description of general language use. Though other examples of declarative quia are found in neo- Latin texts outside this corpus as well,13 the number seems to be very slight, and the construction rather accidental. It does exist in neo-Latin, but it cannot be said to be the general usus. In spite of the very few examples of slips of the tongue, we see how effectively the humanists managed to change their language in certain respects, namely where they were aware of something specific that they would actively wish to change. Perhaps the effective avoidance of quia as a declarative clause has even caused some authors’ general avoidance of quia, also in other uses, as discussed in 8.2.1. If this is the case, it shows that the humanists were indeed in a position to initiate linguistic change deliberately, but also that change can only be initiated and not controlled completely, because other results may come from associated parts of the language: in this case the complete avoidance of a clause type, though the speech community did only agree on avoiding it in certain contexts. Therefore, we see an almost non-existent use of quia used for expressing indirect dis-

12Which is almost all instances of quia that can be found in the corpus, because no more than 28 clauses were left out due to the limits to the data collection, all 28 written by Valla. 13E.g. “An putas quia non possum rogare patrem meum et exhibebit michi modo plus quam duodecim legiones angelorum?” (Salutati, Fat., 1.2).

218 10.2 Mood and Clause Types Subordinate to Infinite Con ru ions course in the neo-Latin corpus. And we see the obvious recognition among Renaissance grammarians of infinitives as the Classical Latin way of expressing indirect discourse (and the like). We shall therefore expect the accusative with infinitive to play an important part in the expression of indirect discourse in neo-Latin. This construction was not used in their native Volgare, exemplified also in the paragraph from Perotti’s grammar above, where finite clauses with che are used. And yet, they all imitate the constructions. The humanists’ use of the accusative with infinitive is not in itself a change in their language, as the accusative with infinitive has always been known and been the primary means of expressing indirect discourse in Latin.14 The true change in their language is the avoidance of quia (and likely quoniam as well), and perhaps even their deliberate favorizing the clauses with quod, even though this would not have been expected by the modern scholar with a modern delimitation of what is ‘Classical Latin’.

10.2 Mood and Clause Types Subordinate to Inﬁnite Con- structions

We assume that infinite constructions will show some dependency with indirect discourse. In Perotti’s Latin, he has more subjunctive in the indirect discourse passage that we saw, than we would expect outside indirect discourse. If this is a general tendency in neo-Latin, we would expect to find more subjunctive in clauses subordinate to infinite constructions than in those subordinate to finite constructions, and we shall use the data to test this:

H0 There is no difference in mood between clauses subordinate to infinite and finite constructions.

HA There is a higher proportion of subjunctive in clauses subordinate to inﬁnite constructions than to ﬁnite constructions.

Figure 10.115 shows the expected dependency, namely that there is some relation between the subjunctive and being subordinate to inﬁnite constructions. The diﬀerence

14Cf. note 11 above. 15C# 8.511–33.

219 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

in mood distribution is clear and significant (χ2 = 16.8, p < .01, a little dependent on ambiguous values). The result is the same and is significant (at the .01 level) for both the early and the late partition of the corpus, individually. Therefore, we know that it is common in neo-Latin to find more subjunctive subordinate to infinite constructions, and the tendency is constant throughout the 15th century.

Figure 10.1: Mood subordinate to inﬁnite and ﬁnite clauses

The majority of the clauses that are found subordinate to those infinite constructions are actually part of indirect discourse, namely 113 out of 167. Obviously, such an amount of indirect discourse in this context could easily bias the result heavily, so that the effect could be the result merely of more subjunctive in indirect discourse, and not something particular for clauses that are subordinate to infinite constructions in general. We shall therefore check whether it has something to say if those infinite constructions are part of indirect discourse or not. And the result in Figure 10.2 is curious. It appears that clauses that are subordinate to infinite constructions have a relatively high concentration of the subjunctive mood, in general. And though there is indeed a difference between those clauses that are part of indirect discourse and those that are not, the difference is not very outspoken.16 It would seem that there is not, in the neo-Latin language, a clear distinction between indirect discourse and not indirect discourse, but

16Neither is it signiﬁcant: χ2 = 0.5, p > .05, but as we know, this does not mean that the two are actually the same, only that the data failed to demonstrate an eﬀect.

220 10.2 Mood and Clause Types Subordinate to Infinite Con ru ions

Figure 10.2: Mood subordinate to infinite clauses, inside and outside of indirect discourse that infinite constructions are perceived more or less the same, no matter their position within or outside the reported speech. Considering what clause types make up the two divisions of infinite contexts (indirect discourse or not), it appears that there are different reasons for the very frequent use of the subjunctive (see Figure 10.3). Among the clauses from indirect discourse (10.3a) are a considerable amount of indirect questions, which by nature are most often indirect discourse. When looking at clause types subordinate to infinite constructions, these are therefore not found outside indirect discourse. Because we know that indirect questions most often have the subjunctive in neo-Latin (8.2.2), these must contribute some to all the subjunctives in this position. In fact, when indirect questions are removed from the investigation, the slight difference in mood disappears that is seen between indirect discourse and not indirect discourse in Figure 10.2. But indirect questions are not the only difference that is found between what clauses make up the two divisions. In Figure 10.3b indirect questions are removed, and there are still two major differences between this and Figure 10.3c. There are far more clauses with ne found outside indirect discourse, and far more clauses with quia found inside indirect discourse. In the study of the mood in clauses that were subordinate to imperatives and high degrees of subordination, we saw that the imperative may be characterized as a somewhat reduced mood which invites to primarily use a limited number of subordinate expressions.

221 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

(a) In indirect discourse

(b) Ind. disc. (without interrogatives) (c) Not in indirect discourse

Figure 10.3: Clause types found subordinate to inﬁnite constructions

222 10.2 Mood and Clause Types Subordinate to Infinite Con ru ions

We also saw that deep layers of subordination cannot in the same way be characterized as limited, as most of the subordinate clauses in this position expressed actual new content. Like the imperative, the Latin infinite moods are somewhat reduced morphologically: infinitives have no inflection for person or number, they do not normally express absolute time (to be discussed in Chapter 11), the future infinitive has no passive, etc.; participles have no inflection for person (though they have the nominal inflections for gender, number, and case), neither do they express independent time, the present and future participles are restricted to the active voice, and the perfect participle to the passive voice.17 Such heavy reduction might lead to restricted combinations, such as we saw in the case of the imperative. We shall therefore take a closer look at the two most common clause types, namely clauses with ne that are subordinate to non-indirect discourse infinites, and quia subordinate to indirect discourse infinites. One particular feature of the infinite constructions may be of interest, namely that they can be part of an infinite nexus, such as the ablative absolute or the accusative with infinitive, while they can also function without being part of a nexus. The latter merely expresses the concept of the verb; the former an actualized instance of the verb.18 There is some discussion as to whether an infinite nexus be categorized as an actual clause, or something less. This varying status, so to say, of infinite verbs is a factor to be considered with respect to determining how much complexity can follow infinite constructions in neo-Latin.

10.2.1 Some Examples from the Most Common Combinations

Reading through the clauses with ne that are subordinate to infinite verbs outside the context of indirect discourse,19 the expression ne dicam appears in three of the 21 clauses. They are found in both history and dialogue, and they are written by three different authors. The expression ne dicam is a fixed expression, which functions as a grammatical entity (combining two elements, almost paratactically) rather than an actual clause, and it has no actual content. It appears in three rather different contexts, such as

17Kühner and Stegmann (1914, I. §§ 155; 188). 18Kühner and Stegmann (1914, II.2. §§ 122; 126). 19C# 8.61.

223 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

subordinate to a participium coniunctum coordinating two infinitives,20 coordinating two participles that are part of an ablative absolute “inobservato Cicerone, ne dicam contempto” (Pontano, Actius, p. 139), and coordinating two adjectives that are part of an accusative with infinitive “. . . te . . . petulantiam impudentissimae ulieris, ne dicam immanissimae beluae, haud impune abire permissurum.” (Perotti, Ornam. mul., p. 92.21– 22). In short, this construction seems to have been so far removed from its status as a subordinate clause that i appears in all sorts of contexts and on all levels of the sentence structure. It also appears several times in the context of infinite constructions that are part of indirect discourse.21 Therefore, these few instances of ne dicam are not characteristic for this particular context, and they do not affect the result greatly. Most of the infinite constructions which have subordinate clauses are part of a nexus. Only very few do not function as a predicate in any way, which marks a clear difference between the clause-like uses of infinite constructions in neo-Latin and the noun-like or adjective-like uses, which are much less apt for having larger modifiers such as clauses. Of the few examples where the infinite verb with a subordinate clause comes closest to not being part of a nexus, are 1) the type coepi + infinitive, where the finite verb functions as an auxiliary, similarly 2) subordinate to oportet “Cavere autem oportet ne verba ipsa sint plebeia aut peregrina aut militaria:” (Pontano, Princ., 78), and finally 3) this, where the infinitives are the subjects of visum est.

mihi visum est aliquid prefari ac premonere, ne quis falsa opinione ductus me aut impudentie aut inscitie condemnet: Leonardo Bruni, Laudatio Florentine urbis, p. 610 Having defined the appearance of subordinate clauses to mostly appear with clause- like uses of the infinite verbs, the clauses with ne are found in various contexts, and no common favorite expressions emerge from the data. Especially in historical texts, there is a tendency that a participium coniunctum is often extended with the purpose expressed with ne. Otherwise, multiple different infinite constructions are found with ne clauses, and in all cases, the content expressed with ne is genuine new content, whether subordinate to, for example, an ablative absolute or a gerund expressing purpose:

20Valla, Lib. arb., p. 50. 21E.g. Barbaro, Ep., 1.XV.13.

224 10.2 Mood and Clause Types Subordinate to Infinite Con ru ions

Urbe igitur in regiones quatuor divisa, ne cui illarum suus unquam deesset honos, ex singulis partibus bini viri eliguntur, nec ii quidem fortuiti sed iudicio populi iam dudum approbati et tanto honore digni iudicati. idem, pp. 634–36

. . . palpebreque, que sunt tegmenta oculorum . . . aptissime facte et ad clau- dendas pupillas ne quid incideret et ad aperiendas Gianozzo Manetti, De dignitate et excellentia hominis, 1

This treatment of clauses with ne—together with the general variation of clause types seen in Figure 10.3c—has shown a richly varied use of subordinate clauses in connection with infinite constructions, which indicates that these constructions are indeed to be considered actual clauses in neo-Latin, in so far as one would consider them clauses in any language. They do not bear the mark of being a reduced construction, restricted in the same way as imperative clauses seem to be. The very widespread use of quia in indirect discourse is mostly due to Valla, Perotti, and Battista Guarini’s preference of quia when expressing the reason behind that which is expressed in the accusative with infinitive.22 Being subordinate to the actual accusative with infinitive, this use of quia bears no resemblance to the Medieval use of quia to express indirect discourse, and the individual clauses are different in content and vary with respect to further building of the sentence, such as word order:

Quod si aliquando persica quoque mala animaduertimus improprie hoc ﬁeri constat nec quia ex malorum genere sint qum nucleum habeant sed quia inseri malis caeperunt genetricis sibi nomen assumpsere: Niccolò Perotti, Epistulae ad Ammanati, p. 160

Qua enim ex causa septem urbes de Homeri natione contendisse putamus nisi quia singulae ex tanto viro insignem se famam consecuturas crederent studerentque omnes, ut ea gloria apud suos maneret? Battista Guarini, De ordine docendi et studendi, p. 122

That clauses with quia are used much in this position by a very few authors, and almost not by others, could also be evidence of the general stigmatization of quia, especially in indirect discourse it would seem. That it is found in Valla’s language and two later authors could then indicate the re-acceptance of the conjunction in other uses.

2217/20 clauses with quia in this position are written by them. C# 8.62–63.

225 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

10.3 Mood in Indirect Discourse

We saw above that Perotti, in his Rudimenta grammatices, recommended inﬁnitive expressions instead of an expression “per subiunctiuum uerbum cum coniunctione quod”, and we saw that he gave examples of quod clauses with the verb in the indicative as well as the subjunctive, though the subiunctiuus is the mood that he mentions explicitly. Because of what we have seen both in his grammar, in reading his dedicatory letter to the Cornu copiae, and in the clauses subordinate to inﬁnite constructions, we would expect some connection between indirect discourse and the subjunctive mood, as is the practice that we know from Classical Latin.

H0 There is no diﬀerence in mood between clauses that are part of indirect discourse and those that are not.

HA There is a higher proportion of subjunctive in clauses that are part of indirect discourse than in those that are not.

Figure 10.4a reveals that the expected relation exists, that neo-Latin has more subjunctive in indirect discourse than outside indirect discourse. In Figure 10.4b the infinite contexts, which we have just studied individually, have been removed, and it is clear that the effect is still there, and it is highly significant (χ2 = 39.4, p < .01). To be convinced that the result is not biased by the neo-Latin tendency to have more subjunctive directly subordinate to infinite constructions, we shall proceed with these clauses alone, leaving out the clauses we studied above. This result is significant also for each individual genre,23 in both the early and the late division of the corpus (as seen in Figure I.9 in the appendices),24 and almost all authors show the same tendency, though it is only significant among those for whom we have most data.25 Only Ficino and Battista Guarini show a tendency that is slightly different, namely with more indicative in indirect discourse. Because this is based on very few clauses that were found in the

23χ2 = 8.3, p < .01 for history; χ2 = 5.0, p < .05 for speeches; χ2 = 24.0, p < .01 for letters; χ2 = 26.3, p < .01 for treatises; χ2 = 12.8, p < .01 for dialogues. 24χ2 = 33.9, p < .01 for the early division; χ2 = 14.2, p < .01 for the late, a little dependent on ambiguous values. 25χ2 = 10.6, p < .01 for Bruni; χ2 = 15.0, p < .01 for Poggio; χ2 = 14.6, p < .01 for Valla; χ2 = 8.1, p < .01 for Perotti, a little dependent on ambiguous values.

226 10.3 Mood in Indire Discourse

(a) All clauses (b) Without clauses subordinate to inﬁnitive constructions

Figure 10.4: The moods in indirect discourse

context of indirect discourse (only 2 indicatives for Ficino; 1 indicative, 2 ambiguous, and 3 subjunctives for Guarini), we shall not pay it much attention. In spite of this, I conﬁdently conclude that indirect discourse is indeed a strong factor in the humanists’ choice of mood. In addition, this relationship between indirect discourse and choosing the subjunctive more often is stable throughout the 15th century,26 across genres, and among authors.

Lacking similar quantitative information on Classical Latin, we cannot yet conclude if this tendency to choose the subjunctive in indirect discourse is quite as strong in neo- Latin as in Classical Latin. The evidence from reading Perotti’s dedicatory letter above tells us that at least Perotti’s linguistic practice is not quite the same as what we know from Classical Latin. Therefore, we shall next identify the nature of the subjunctive in indirect discourse, considering whether it is the grammatical mechanism known from Classical Latin, or whether it is rather the result of semantic nuances applied to the particular expression.

26There is only a slight and insigniﬁcant tendency that the early authors use the indicative more often in indirect discourse than the late authors. Cf. Figure I.8, based on C# 8.41.

227 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

10.4 Clause Types and First Person Expressions

In the following, we shall study two possible contributing factors, namely grammatical number and clause types, to the distribution of mood that we saw in Figure 10.4a (showing that there is more subjunctive in indirect discourse, in the context of infinite as well as finite clauses). Clauses that were marked with the discourse value Ambiguous in the data collection, are all clauses that I suspected would have been perceived as part of indirect discourse, but where I could not say for sure. Because of this highly subjective estimation, the category is rather dissatisfactory for further study. I hope to sufficiently convince the reader that leaving out those clauses will not bias the result, as they seem to be exactly that: a mixture of clauses from the two categories, with a distribution of moods that is positioned between the two major categories that are more clearly either indirect discourse or not. I assume that these clauses are truly a mixture of the two categories, and that leaving them out will not prevent us from detecting new tendencies, but that it will merely serve to avoid the most direct influence from my personal interpretation of the neo-Latin texts.27 Inspired by the reading of Perotti’s dedicatory letter at the beginning of this chapter, we shall begin by looking for evidence that the indicative was used for expressing certainty or knowledge of the reported statement. One place to look for this would be in reported content concerning the first person, because that which concerns the speaker himself will logically more often be knowledge to him, than that which concerns others. However, it appears that authors seldomly speak of themselves in indirect discourse. And the little data available does not present any clear result.28 Outside indirect discourse, we see again the result from Section 9.1, that there is a slight tendency to have more subjunctive outside the 1st person verbs. This difference is not seen among the few clauses that are part of indirect discourse, and 1st person. This may show that it does not affect the 1st person verb whether it is part of indirect discourse or not (sup- porting the interpretation of the subjunctive as expressing uncertainty), or it may—very likely—be sheer chance. Consequently, we cannot confirm this interpretation of the sub-

27As I pointed out already in 5.1.1.1, the question of indirect discourse is one of the parts of this study that are most dependent on interpretation. 28See Figure I.10 in the appendices. C# 8.81–82.

228 10.4 Clause Types and Fir Person Expressions junctive statistically, but neither does the data show relations that would suggest other interpretations. Another possible interpretation of mood in Perotti’s indirect discourse was that of the author distancing himself from the expression, implying that he does not himself vouch for the expressed content. This use of moods could be contradicted if a high proportion of subjunctive were found in indirect discourse triggered by a verbum dicendi of the 1st person. We shall check for diﬀerences in mood when reporting one’s own observations and those made by others.

H0 There is no diﬀerence in mood between indirect discourse reporting 1st person’s statements and those of other persons.

HA There is a higher proportion of indicative in indirect discourse reporting 1st person’s statements than those of other persons.

In this investigation, the clauses which are almost always in the subjunctive, i.e. ne and interrogative clauses, are left out, after merely one brief comment. We have seen that the preference for different clause types can vary much across different contexts, such as genre, author, or high degree of subordination. It is not unthinkable, that there be some difference between what authors report themselves saying, and what they would report others saying. This would also possibly affect this result. But there is in neo-Latin a very stable tendency that around 25% of the clauses in indirect discourse, in every clause type studied, report speech of the 1st person (see Figure I.11).29 By leaving out clauses with ne and the indirect questions, we therefore do not miss any great variation between mood in 1st person’s indirect discourse and that of 2nd or 3rd person. Especially since we know from Section 8.2.2 that in effect all clauses with ne have the subjunctive, and that the 1st person of the verbum dicendi was only found once among the ten indicative indirect discourse clauses, namely in this: 29C# 8.83. Only the relative clauses are differently distributed, half of them being part of 1st person’s indirect discourse. Is this an effect of Valla’s language or of relative clauses in general? In the common neo-Latin study, the remaining of Valla’s clause types resemble the general neo-Latin picture: apart from his relative clauses, only 23% of the clauses in his indirect discourse were triggered by a 1st person verbum dicendi/sentiendi. Therefore, the tendency among relative clauses is, if not particular for relative clauses in general, then at least particular for Valla’s relative clauses, as opposed to his otherr clause types. Some of Valla’s relative clauses of the 1st person’s indirect discourse will be presented shortly, and it will be clear that there can be given no immediate reason for this.

229 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

Figure 10.5: Mood in indirect discourse with a 1st person verbum dicendi/sentiendi

Atque ut tota res ista latius intelligatur, explanabo tibi primo, quid de hac interpretandi ratione sentio. Leonardo Bruni, De interpretatione recta, p. 83

Therefore, we continue now by looking at the three clause types which are constructed with varying mood in neo-Latin, namely those with dum, cum, and quia. As seen in Figure 10.5,30 there is a clear relation between the mood in the indirect discourse and whose statement is reported. The difference is significant (χ2 7.7, p < .01, a little dependent on ambiguous values), both when we study all the 1st person expressions (i.e. both in the singular and the plural) and when we look only at 1st person singular, as opposed to all other person/number combinations. Therefore, we can say for sure that 1st person singular in the verbum dicendi/sentiendi affects the mood in the indirect discourse, making neo-Latin authors more likely to choose the indicative. The 1st person plural is more rare, and its position is therefore unsure—and largely unimportant for the discussion below.

10.4.1 An Overview of Four Clause Types

In Figure 10.6 this tendency is presented individually for each of the clauses types, including the relative clauses, which were originally part of the earlier Valla study and

30C# 8.711–33.

230 10.4 Clause Types and Fir Person Expressions have been adapted to the form of the more recent common neo-Latin study, in order to investigate this particular phenomenon in relative clauses.31 It would seem that there is a difference between clauses with dum and relative clauses on the one hand, which have largely the same mood distribution in 1st person and other persons’ indirect discourse, and clauses with cum and quia on the other hand, which have more indicative in the 1st person indirect discourse. But the data in this figure is so sparse that the difference between 1st person and other persons is only significant in clauses with cum.32 This result calls for further investigation, even though the quantitative data is not in itself very explanatory. Especially because the difference in mood seems to be found in those clause types that may express causalities (cum and quia), and not in the merely temporal dum and the relative clauses that may be characterized as more factual and descriptive in their basic function. Are reported causes by nature more likely to be ‘questioned’ by the author, by being put in the subjunctive? First notice that all these clause types, individually, have indeed more subjunctive in indirect discourse than outside indirect discourse (see Figure I.1), except for clauses with dum where no difference between clauses inside and outside indirect discourse can be detected in the present data.33

10.4.1.1 A Note on Dum

That clauses with dum are the only of the clause types in this study where no eﬀect can be seen,34 may be related to its use in Classical Latin, where the fossilized historical present indicative is by some authors maintained in the indicative even when part of indirect

31The relative clauses were chosen from the Valla study because they are the clause type with the largest number from the Valla study, and because of the curious tendency among relative clauses that we witnessed in Perotti’s dedicatory letter above. Also, among the examples given in Kühner and Stegmann (1914, II.2. § 239, 2. a–b) of indicative clauses in the indirect discourse in earlier Latin, most are relative clauses. 32Fisher exact p = .03. 33Testing the hypothesis at the beginning of this section on each clause type gives signiﬁcant results for all clauses except dum, even when the clauses with ambiguous values for discourse are counted among the non-indirect discourse clauses, even though many behave like indirect discourse clauses, as we saw above. The results for each test were: χ2 = 0.1, p > .05 for dum; χ2 = 2.8, p < .05 for cum (very dependent on ambiguous values); χ2 = 11.1, p < .01 for quia; χ2 = 15.6, p < .01 for relative clauses. 34Though, statistically, the non-diﬀerence expressed in the null hypothesis cannot formally be accepted.

231 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse sentiendi / (d) Relativeonly) (Valla verbum dicendi person st 1 Quia (c) Cum (b) Dum Figure 10.6: Mood in various clause types with a (a)

232 10.5 Defining the Value of The Subjun ive in Neo-Latin Indire Discourse discourse, particularly in poetry and post-Classical Latin.35 This view is supported by the fact that 7/8 of the indicative dum clauses in indirect discourse are in the present indicative, the remaining one having the perfect indicative. And as we shall see, the subjunctive uses of dum within indirect discourse tend to be of the type which also have the subjunctive in Classical Latin, when dum means ‘until’. This would witness Renaissance humanists’ awareness of the construction of dum and the somewhat special situation with the present indicative after dum. On a note concerning the acclaimed confusion of dum and cum (cf. 1.1), this on the other hand would look like a very precise imitation of the Latin dum, and a very clear distinction between the two clause types. As mentioned earlier, Renaissance grammarians do not describe indirect discourse as a common phenomenon, such as we do in modern grammars, but rather in terms of the particular constructions, such as the inﬁnite in stead of the clause with quod. Therefore, it does not seem likely that this feature of dum in neo-Latin indirect discourse is directly the result of Renaissance humanists having learned that dum may have the present indicative regardless of indirect discourse, but rather the result of observations such as a very widespread use of dum with this particular form in general, across other boundaries in general within the Latin language that would normally cause them to choose another mood and tense in other clause types.

10.5 Deﬁning the Value of The Subjunctive in Neo-Latin Indirect Discourse

Using the findings concerning 1st person’s indirect discourse as a key, the following is an attempt at defining how moods are used in neo-Latin indirect discourse. A possible complication, which cannot be seen at the quantitative level of this study, is that the data structure has no distinction between verba dicendi and verba sentiendi. And there may indeed be differences between these different contexts, if the suggested use of the subjunctive to express the author’s subjective distancing from the content can be supported. After verba sentiendi in the 1st person, the subjunctive could indicate skepticism towards what is heard, read, etc., while the corresponding reading of the

35Madvig (2001, §§ 336 Anm. 2; 369 Anm. 3).

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subjunctive after a 1st person verbum dicendi would mean that he were skeptic as to whether he himself spoke truly. Therefore, the diﬀerentiation between verba dicendi and sentiendi will now be taken in as an important factor.

10.5.1 The Subjunctive in 1st Person Indirect Discourse

The relatively few occurrences of the subjunctive in clauses that are part of 1st person’s indirect discourse has in itself supported that the moods are to a large extent used for expressing the degree of certainty or trustworthiness that the humanist author ascribes to the contend that he reports. Earlier (8.1.2) we saw this notion of certainty and truth in Valla’s explicit distinction between the subjunctive expressing “verbum dubitationis et inscientiae” and the indicative used for “verbis vero opinionis et scientiae”, when he described various interrogative clauses in his Elegantiae. In this study, there are 13 subjunctive clauses that are part of 1st person’s indirect discourse, and they share some characteristics. First, by looking at the quantitative values, it is remarkable that there is a majority of those clauses that appear in the presence of negations, and subordinate to verbs in secondary tenses.36 We know from the discussion in Section 9.4 that neo-Latin has some relation between secondary contexts and the subjunctive mood. In addition, Kühner and Stegmann (1914, II.2. § 239, 2. a) mention that there is a tendency also in Classical Latin that the relatively rare clauses that have the indicative in spite of being part of indirect discourse are found more often subordinate to verbs of the present tense. With reference to my previous discussion of mood and time, I would characterize this tendency as a natural part of languages, which cannot be ascribed to inﬂuence from either Classical Latin, the Volgare, or Medieval Latin in particular, even though it mirrors the tendency in Classical Latin of having more indicative in indirect discourse in the primary tense. The tendency is not likely

36Negations: Among these 13 clauses, 8 are in the presence of a negation, while 5 are not. Among the remaining clauses (if we leave out clauses with ne that by definition all have negations), 475 are found in the presence of negations, and 818 are not (cf. Figure I.3a). The difference between these two distributions would not quite be statistically significant at the .05 level in a non-direcional test, with χ2 = 3.4. Time: Among these 13 clauses, 9 are subordinate to historical tenses, while 4 are subordinate to primary tenses. Among the remaining clauses, 620 are subordinate to historical tenses, and 945 to primary tenses (cf. Figure 9.4). The difference between these two distributions would be statistically significant at the .05 level with χ2 = 4.7. Note that these results cannot be tested properly, being ‘suggested from the data’ (cf. 5.2), and they merely function as inspiration for the following in-depth study.

234 10.5 Defining the Value of The Subjun ive in Neo-Latin Indire Discourse to be a particular characteristic of 1st person subjunctive indirect discourse, because we could detect it also when studying the entire data collection. Therefore, I suggest seeing this merely as a slight contributing factor, which is a general consequence of natural language use.

With respect to the high frequency of negations among the 14 clauses, however, one should remember that no dependency could be detected between mood and the presence of negations when studied in the entire data collection (9.3), and neither among the interrogative clauses, such as is the case in Medieval Italian (8.1.2). Therefore, it may be of some interest that there is such a high amount of negations here. As mentioned in the section on the (missing) relation between mood and negations, the subjunctive that is in Medieval Italian triggered by a negation in the superordinate clause, was described by Vegnaduzzo (2010, p. 791) as a syntactic mechanism rather than being closely connected with the semantic property of the context. However, the negations in the subjunctive clauses that we shall now look at are almost all connected with stronger semantic features, and do not seem to be a mere technical syntactic factor.

There is only one instance, as I see it, where these more mechanical factors— negations, past tenses, as well as being part of indirect discourse—seem to be the only explanation why the author might have chosen the subjunctive, namely in this, which is part of a lengthy sequence where Valla puts forward a number of observations, originally triggered by Et primum dicam:37

Tertio, nihil datum Silvestro a Constantino, sed priori pontiﬁci, antequam etiam baptismum acceperat, donaque illa mediocria fuisse, quibus papa degere vitam posset. Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione, 2.6

37In the text, this appears shortly after five subjunctive relative clauses of tendency, which we shall return to shortly. They could also affect the mood in this clause. However, between the two passages, another relative clause is found which has the indicative, and that even in the context of an unreal statement: “Secundo loco, si haec non essent, quae verissima atque clarissima sunt, neque hunc acceptasse neque illum tradidisse possessionem rerum quae dicuntur donatae, sed eas semper in arbitrio et imperio Caesarum permansisse.” (Valla, Don., 2.6). The indicative in this relative clause is likely related to Valla’s definition of the indicative as concerning truths, because the relative clause serves to describe something as verissima and clarissima.

235 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

10.5.1.1 A ‘Deliberative Subjunctive’ and ‘Inherent Subjunctives’

Apart from this example, the subjunctive in the remaining clauses seems related to the various semantic values of the mood. Three instances of indirect discourse with subjunctive are triggered by forms of scio, a word that would in its simple form and following Valla’s distinction between scientia and inscientia be expected to be followed by the indicative. But in one instance, the verb is the negated Nescio, which would explain the subjunctive as expressing inscientia.38 In another example, the form scivissem forms part of a contrary to fact condition, which could have aﬀected the dum clause as well:

Quod si te scivissem istic manere mansurumque dum littere mee ad te per- ferrentur, noli, queso, ita male de benivolentia mea sentire, ut non crebro ad te epistolas dedissem. Lorenzo Valla, Epistole, 18

In this case though, the use of dum would likely demand the subjunctive in neo-Latin as well, as is the practice in Classical Latin, when dum is used meaning ‘until’,39 here expressing almost the reason for waiting. Therefore, the subjunctive is likely caused by the meaning of the dum clause itself, and not the semantic nature of its context. The same is the case for the last instance of scio, where the subjunctive subordinate clause is a relative clause used to describe the tendency, the character of a person: “. . . laudaverim, quippe qui sciam et me improbaturos homines, si mentiar, et illum talem esse, qui nec seipsum ignoret . . . ” (Valla, Eleg., proh. p. 54.). These relative clauses of tendency make up a greater part of these subjunctive clauses, because Valla also has a sequence where he compares the nature of two men, expressed through a total of ﬁve such relative clauses:

Et primum dicam non tales fuisse Constantinum Silvestrumque, illum quidem qui donare vellet, qui iure donare posset, qui ut in manum alteri ea traderet in sua haberet potestate, hunc autem qui vellet accipere, quique iure accepturus foret. Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione, 2.6

All these subjunctives are, as such, independent of being part of indirect discourse, and the use of the subjunctive relates to the nature of the relative clause, described by Gildersleeve and Lodge (2001, § 631) as a potential subjunctive.

38Valla, Retr., proh. 14. 39TLL (1900-, lemma: ‘dum’ II.B.3.β).

236 10.5 Defining the Value of The Subjun ive in Neo-Latin Indire Discourse

These were initiated by a verbum dicendi, as was also the ﬁrst example we saw (where no explanation was given for the subjunctive except grammatical mechanisms). Only one more clause is introduced by a verbum dicendi, also a relative clause by Valla, namely “. . . non facile dixerim an ulla sit vel magis scitu necessaria, vel quae minus sciatur.” (Valla, Lib. arb., p. 11). The negated meaning (that he could not easily say it) implies more than a simple negated fact and would add an element of dubitatio to the reported speech, in Valla’s distinction between what is known and what is uncertain. The relative clause is not itself uncertain, and one cannot tell whether the subjunctive is a result of this dubitative semantic nature of its context, or a result of the syntactic mechanisms of being part of indirect discourse or standing in the presence of a negation. Of the indirect discourse that is subordinate to verba sentiendi only the examples with forms of scio have been discussed so far, and it appeared that these instances of scio with the subjunctive were not expressions of actual knowledge, but rather uncertain knowledge or the absence of knowledge. Related to these are three instances of indirect discourse introduced by non dubito, putamus, and arbitror. These three verbs all imply some degree of uncertainty—though in the case of non dubito it is negated. These clauses, one with cum40 and two with quia,41 can thus all be explained in terms of dubitatio and inscientia, as illustrated through this, where Battista Guarini suggests a likely reason why so many authors emerged in the time of Augustus, which is of course only his guess:

Augusti quoque temporibus maximam scriptorum copiam ideo exstitisse arbitror quia imperatorem illum rebus domi bellique gestis inclitum assidue litterarum studiis delectari cernerent . . . Battista Guarini, De ordine docendi et studendi, p. 148

In all these cases, except the very ﬁrst we saw, there are at least two possible factors present that could have resulted in the subjunctive: the syntactic mechanism of indirect discourse and either a semantic uncertainty in the context or an ‘inherent’ function of the subjunctive in the subordinate clause itself, such as in the relative clauses of tendency. I would deﬁnitely see this as a strong indication that the mere grammatical mechanism of indirect discourse, which in Classical Latin usually results in subjunctives, is not very

40Poggio, Ep., p. 6. 41B. Guarini, Ord. doc., pp. 122; 148.

237 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

strong (if at all existing) in the indirect discourse expressed by the 1st person in neo- Latin. Note also, that the use of the subjunctive for distancing one self from the reported speech is not very outspoken among the examples of 1st person’s indirect discourse. Most of the examples on subjunctive clauses that were found in this section were written by Valla. In addition, the suggested interpretation of the subjunctive was inspired by Valla’s grammatical descriptions (though in the context of interrogatives). Therefore it is suggested with caution that this is the way neo-Latin constructs 1st person indirect discourse. It may be Valla’s personal practice. It is however worth noting that without Valla there would have been very few examples of the subjunctive in indirect discourse that reports the 1st person’s speech or thought etc. Therefore, it is merely the tendency to let the uncertainty in the context aﬀect the subordinate clauses of indirect discourse which may be a characteristic of Valla alone. It is common neo-Latin to prefer the indicative in 1st person’s indirect discourse. However, we saw a similar tendency to use the mood for semantic distinctions also in Perotti’s language at the beginning of this chapter, which indicates that Valla is not alone with this use of the moods, but the evidence is rare outside Valla’s writings.

10.5.2 The Subjunctive in Indirect Discourse of 2nd and 3rd person

Now we shall study a sample of subjunctives from other persons’ indirect discourse in order to attempt a characterization of those, and an explanation of why they have more subjunctive than the indirect discourse of the 1st person. As was the case in the study of subjunctive clauses that were part of 1st person’s indirect discourse, there seems to be some dependency between those clauses and the historical tenses, whereas the frequency of clauses that are found in connection with negations does not seem to be higher in this particular group of clauses than in the remaining collection.42 This was more or less the same among the 1st person subjunc-

42Negations: Among these 39 clauses, 18 are in the presence of a negation, while 22 are not. Among the remaining clauses (if we leave out clauses with ne that by definition all have negations), 465 are found in the presence of negations, and 801 are not (cf. Figure I.3a). The difference between these two distributions would not be statistically significant, with χ2 = 1.1. Time: Among these 39 clauses, 26 are subordinate to historical tenses, while 13 are subordinate to primary tenses. Among the remaining clauses, 603 are subordinate to historical tenses, and 931 to primary tenses (cf. Figure 9.4). The difference between these two distributions would be statistically significant at the .01 level with χ2 = 7.0. However, see Note 36.

238 10.5 Defining the Value of The Subjun ive in Neo-Latin Indire Discourse tives, though negations may have played a greater role there than they do here. This we could consider yet an indication of the correctness of treating the negation as a semantic factor rather than a mechanical factor: that 1st person’s expressions more often need to be negated to take the subjunctive.

10.5.2.1 A ‘Subjunctive of Dissociation’

Among the clauses that are part of 2nd or 3rd person’s indirect discourse several have a subjunctive that might be characterized as distancing: The author uses the subjunctive in discussions when putting forward the arguments of an opponent, or when presenting arguments that are explicitly invalidated by further events or information. Primarily, these are arguments that the author would not be associated with, or does not vouch for. Once in a while, they seem not only to conform to Valla’s inscientia but even to refer to something which is not true. This is a sense of the subjunctive which did not appear among the subjunctives of the 1st person’s indirect discourse of this study—which does not mean that it does not exist in neo-Latin, only that it is not very common. This type can be exempliﬁed through the following cum clause in the present subjunctive in the argument of Poggio’s opponent, which is refuted immediately by his explicit expression of skepticism:

Nam quod parentes dixisti voluptate liberorum carere, cum prius e vita sit abeundum quam ad virtutem institui queant; non video cur adolescentes potius quam senes ﬁliorum jocunditate fruantur. Poggio Bracciolini, An seni sit uxor ducenda, 19

This type is particularly common among the clauses with quia, where four out of nine clauses may be characterized thus. In some instances, the argument which is refuted is also not true.43 For example when Perotti argues that it is well-known that it is not proper that peaches are called apples, because they are not apples, with the proper reason added in the indicative—not part of the indirect discourse:

Quod si aliquando persica quoque mala animaduertimus improprie hoc ﬁeri

43In Valla’s historiography, some quia clauses express other people’s lack of conﬁdence in the King Fernando of Aragon, which is then proven wrong through the acts of the King. Similarly: “. . . cum videret apparatum belli solutum iri, quia nemo unus ad eam rem administrandam satis idoneus putaretur . . . se ducem fore pollicitus est.” (Valla, Gesta, I.4.8).

239 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

constat nec quia ex malorum genere sint qum nucleum habeant sed quia inseri malis caeperunt genetricis sibi nomen assumpsere: Niccolò Perotti, Epistulae ad Ammanati, fol. 75r.

Here, the subjunctive in the ﬁrst clause with quia could denote that the content is not true, somehow resembling the unreal use of subjunctives (peaches are not apples), and the second quia with the indicative could in turn be said to express a truth. Also in Valla’s discussion in the following, one gets the impression that he is skeptical not only towards the argumentation of his opponents, but also towards the reasonableness of the argument itself:

. . . quia dicant illum propius ad philosophiam accedere, quia in generalibus versetur et propositis ﬁctis exemplis in universum precipiat . . . Ego vero, cum huic nequaquam opinioni assentiar, tamen poetis multo plus quam illi faciunt tribuo . . . Lorenzo Valla, Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum, proh. 1–2

But only few examples seem to suggest this distinction of truth, while several other examples show that the entire paraphrase of the opponent’s argument may be put in the subjunctive if the author wishes to present it as an invalid argument. In the following, Valla even puts those relative clauses in the subjunctive that serve to show why the opponent’s argument was not valid; relative clauses that seem to express truths in Valla’s opinion:

Et tu vis Constantinum regnum Deo donasse quod ab illo non accepisset, qui praesertim (id quod in Ieroboam non cadebat) offenderet filios, deprimeret amicos, negligeret suos, laederet patriam, maerore omnes afficeret, suique olbivisceretur! Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione, 4.12

Therefore this subjunctive could be characterized as a ‘subjunctive of dissociation’, of arguments that the author deems invalid. Though this use of the subjunctive is dominant and sometimes used to achieve some semantic eﬀect in the argumentation, the proposed distinction between valid and invalid arguments, as expressed through moods, is far from clear in neo-Latin. There are cases where the accepted argument also has the subjunctive, and the subjunctive is used also in arguments that support the author’s stance.

240 10.5 Defining the Value of The Subjun ive in Neo-Latin Indire Discourse

10.5.2.2 A ‘Subjunctive of Source Evaluation’

Related to this use is another type of expressions that subjunctive clauses are often associated with, namely expressions of disbelief or merely a critical approach to the reported speech. This is common in connection with verba dicendi. Most extreme are the very explicit denunciations of the incredibility of a statement, followed by the subjunctive mood, such as the imperfect subjunctive cum clause in Bruni’s exempliﬁcation of deeds that he would not immediately believe, or the imperfect subjunctive following quibus in Valla’s account of what he would not think anyone to believe:

Velut enim si quis mihi narret inaudita quedam et incredibilia virium faci- nora . . . aut, cum in uncto staret clipeo, nullius vi depelli potuisse, quod a Polidamante factum legimus . . . Leonardo Bruni, Laudatio Florentine urbis, pp. 584–86

An est quisquam qui credat admirabiles illas in historiis orationes utique veras fuisse, et non ab eloquenti ac sapienti opiﬁce personis, temporibus, rebus accommodatas, quibus nos eloqui et sapere docerent? Lorenzo Valla, Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum, proh. 10

The two examples are found in contexts that would almost imply a contrary to fact meaning of the subjunctive. In many cases, the indirect discourse reports something very distant in time when the subjunctive is used, such as reports of myths from ancient literature, and the type of sources will often be mentioned and considered explicitly, as is the case in Battista Guarini’s mentioning of the sources for the foundation of Italy:

Italicum autem sic ortum esse omnium fere litterae testantur, Pythagoram illum . . . cum a rege Leonte discederet, ad extremas Italiae oras, quae Magna Graecia vocabatur, pervenisse . . . Battista Guarini, Oratio de septem artibus liberalibus, 3 In many instances, typically after the impersonal dicitur or aiunt, the indirect discourse is reported rather objectively and with no particular indication of skepticism, for example “Deum, aiunt, per se omnino indissolubilem esse, quia ipsa unitas statusque sit.” (Ficino, Theol. Plat., III.1). If we consider these diﬀerent expressions at range from explicit skepticism, over objective reference such as this, to explicit acceptance of an expression, all cases may be expressed with the subjunctive, and so this value of the subjunctive, which we can call a ‘subjunctive of source evaluation’, is not a strict system, and there are plenty of clauses that have a subjunctive which would go against this meaning.

241 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

For instance, Battista Guarini uses the subjunctive in referring to Vergil, taking the Classical Latin author as the authoritative evidence in his own argumentation. He argues that the Ancient Greeks must have known some Latin words, based on evidence from an etymology explained by Vergil:

Vergilius descensum ad inferos, quia nequeant impune aves super volare, Avernum dicit a Grais nominatum, quod ipsi nimirum nescient nisi ρνιν avem dici audierint. Battista Guarini, De ordine docendi et studendi, 9 There is no considering that the ancient authority may be wrong, and Guarini uses the reference to Vergil purely for the beneﬁt of his own argument. This and many other examples show that the distinction between trustworthy and (possibly) untrustworthy sources is far from the only system. Just like there are also plenty of subjunctive clauses that are not to be explained through dissociation from the opponent’s argument, as discussed before. There is more yet to explaining these subjunctive clauses.

10.5.2.3 The Deliberative Subjunctive

Closely related to–and not quite separable from—the examples discussed above are the uses of the subjunctive in contexts that imply uncertainty, doubt, or lack of knowledge. Among the subjunctive clauses that were part of 1st person’s indirect discourse, we saw the common trait that many expressed the inability to say for sure that the author’s expression was true. These clauses were associated with verbs of not knowing, doubting, or thinking. The subjunctive is found in these same contexts also in the indirect discourse of 2nd and 3rd person, and often in impersonal or passive expressions such as (mihi) videtur. A few examples are:

An ignoras . . . solis de intimis terrae locis permissum esse agere, quippe cum in eorum manu sit oblegare quos voluerint ad inferna loca? Giovanni Giovio Pontano, Dialogus actius, p. 130

nam Deum vel hunc iustitiae laudare, vel illum iniustitiae accusare . . . iustitiae videtur esse contrarium, cum actiones hominum sequantur necessario prae- scientiam Dei. Lorenzo Valla, De libero arbitrio, pp. 18–19

Pythagoras ille Samius . . . interrogatus quemnam se esse proﬁteretur, non sapientem se, ut superiores fecerant, sed sapientie respondit amatorem. Neque

242 10.5 Defining the Value of The Subjun ive in Neo-Latin Indire Discourse

id quia existimaret cum iis se non posse comparari, qui sapientes dicti essent.

Lorenzo Valla, Retractio totius dialecticae, proh. 1 As with the previous types of contexts that seem to somehow trigger the subjunctive, there are counterexamples to this use as well. In addition to two subjunctives subordinate to constat,44 Pontano chooses the subjunctive in a context with absolutely no doubt, namely to tell what is “cognitum ac certum”: . . . quando cognitum ac certum est Graecos quoque auctores, Siculos scilicet ac Brutios, ita esse locutos, cum etiam abunde notum sit quanta inter Graecos sit ipsos varietas et terminandorum et ﬂectendorum nominum. Giovanni Giovio Pontano, Dialogus actius, p. 138

10.5.2.4 The Grammatical Subjunctive

In the uses of the subjunctive that were presented above, certain explicit semantic functions of the subjunctive could be identiﬁed, either in the subordinate clause itself, or by assimilation to the context. These are functions of the mood that are related to the function of indirect discourse (sometimes indirectly), related to the meanings of uncertainty or distancing, sometimes even irrealis, that may be implied with the subjunctive. These uses account for some of the dependency between mood and indirect discourse that we saw in Figure 10.4 at the beginning of this discussion of mood in indirect discourse. However, we have also seen counterexamples to each of the interpretations of the subjunctive, clauses in the subjunctive which should have been indicative if these uses of the subjunctive were the only systems. So there is still a considerable amount of subjunctive which cannot be accounted for by these semantic functions. Some of them may, of course, be explained as inherent subjunctives such as we saw among the 1st person’s indirect discourse. Many of the clauses with cum may be causative and also have the subjunctive outside of indirect discourse, and there are, for instance, occurrences of the relative clauses of tendency as well as dum in the sense of ‘until’: His missis, ait . . . se . . . velle rogare illos, ut a ledendo temperent, . . . parumper expectent dum rex declaretur . . . Lorenzo Valla, Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum, II.9.2

44Poggio, Seni., p. 46; Perotti, Ep. ad Amm., fol. 75r. quoted above.

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Yet, there are still several ‘unexplained’ subjunctives left, which indicate either 1) some arbitrariness or confusion in the use of the moods or 2) a mechanical, grammatical eﬀect of indirect discourse which results in more subjunctive in indirect discourse than outside indirect discourse, when the verbum dicendi/sentiendi is of the 2nd or 3rd person.

10.5.3 A Concluding Characterization

We know for certain that indirect discourse is indeed a factor in the neo-Latin choice of mood (recall Figure 10.4). And yet it seems that indirect discourse does not affect the mood when the verbum dicendi/sentiendi is of the 1st person, as the majority of subjunctives in 1st person’s indirect discourse are accompanied by explicit markers that indicate uncertainty or not knowing. In indirect discourse of the other persons the subjunctive is often, in addition to the expression of uncertainty, used for expressing actual skepticism towards the reported speech, or skepticism towards something in the context of the indirect discourse, such as the source. While this would also be a logical result of the semantic differences between what one reports himself saying, and what other persons are saying, the several counterexamples indicate something more, namely an actual syntactical mechanism independent on the semantic properties of the reported speech. A mechanism which is apparently less powerful in the 1st person’s indirect discourse. All this points to a mood system in indirect discourse which is somehow a blending of several systems, namely of the syntactic mechanism known to be rather forceful in Clas- sical Latin, and the semantic properties of the subjunctive, which apparently sometimes oppress the syntactic mechanism, for example from the indirect discourse expressed by the 1st person. This distinction between the grammatical persons in choosing the mood in indirect discourse was not discussed by the humanists in their grammatical works, but it was still present in the description by Reiz (1766, p. 18) of the moods and tenses in Classical Latin, who notes that (subordinate clauses in) indirect discourse that is reported by anybody else than the speaker himself has the subjunctive, while reporting the speech of oneself is expressed in the indicative. We also know that neo-Latin has a tendency to prefer the subjunctive in contexts where an infinite construction is immediately superordinate, and no clear semantic reason was found in studying the sample clauses. Therefore, on the contrary, infinitive

244 10.5 Defining the Value of The Subjun ive in Neo-Latin Indire Discourse constructions likely cause such a syntactic mechanism which results in more subjunctive than in other contexts. It is uncertain whether this is an overgeneralization of the subjunctives normally found after the accusative with infinitive which forms the indirect discourse of Classical Latin, or whether it is due to some mechanism of natural languages, such as a feeling of distance or perhaps the markedness agreement—both infinite constructions and the subjunctive being stylistically interesting. In any case, among the infinite constructions outside indirect discourse which had subjunctive subordinate clauses, no tendency was found towards the kind of explicit semantic modality markers, which were found in the indirect discourse. Therefore, the subjunctives associated with infinite constructions should be considered a rather syntactic mechanism, the subjunctive being used as a mood of mere subordination.

Therefore, I would characterize the subjunctive in indirect discourse in neo-Latin as a complex consisting of the syntactic mechanism that had developed in Classical Latin and a semantic system associated with the basic deliberative and distancing functions of the subjunctive, dependent on the individual context of the indirect discourse. How the two systems interact seems rather arbitrary, though with the general tendency that the syntactic mechanism seems to some degree suppressed when the speaker is of the 1st person, and that the syntactic mechanism may be connected more with inﬁnite constructions than with indirect discourse itself.

In some of the examples where an explicit semantic reason existed for the subjunctive, the modiﬁcation implied by the subjunctive (mistrust, distancing, etc.) would not strictly apply to the subordinate clause itself, and yet it seemed to have the subjunctive by attraction to its context. In this way, neo-Latin seems to be more apt to modify entire expressions if the superordinate context is of a certain type which demands some modiﬁcation by mood. The attraction of mood is also known from Classical Latin, for instance making clauses subjunctive if they are subordinate to expressions of purpose and may be conceived as part of the original thought of purpose (described in 9.5). But in neo-Latin, the superordinate clause would seem to have more weight, and it seems somewhat less important which relation there actually is between the subordinate clause and its context. This semantic weight on the governing verb perhaps echoes two contributing factors, namely 1) the Renaissance grammarians’ focus on the construction of

245 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

the individual verbs (as opposed to categorizing the subordinate clauses as e.g. part of indirect discourse or not) and 2) the similar tendency in the Medieval Italian (presented in the discussion of indirect questions, 8.2.2) that the actual meaning of the governing verb decided the mood and not the function of the subordinate clause. Neo-Latin therefore may bear some traits of this shift from the more syntactically consistent grouping of subordinate clauses according to their own function, recognized in Classical Latin, to the system described for Medieval Italian based more on the semantic variation between diﬀerent governing verbs.

This tendency to mark modality somewhat inconsistently—not only in the part of the sentence which is actually uncertain—is also recognized in a few other characteristics of neo-Latin. Actually, it is clearer in other parts of the language, because the complex system of neo-Latin indirect discourse leaves us unable to determine whether a subordinate clause has the subjunctive because of some attraction to nearby semantic modality, or because of the sheer syntactic mechanism which may also once in a while result in the subjunctive in indirect discourse, independent of semantic nuances.

Before concluding this chapter on indirect discourse, we shall see a few examples from other related parts of the language, where the modal modiﬁcation seems to have been shifted from the verb where it logically belongs—seen from the point of view of Classical Latin—to the superordinate verb. We can say that in neo-Latin parts of the mood system seem to have been somehow ‘raised’, the modality apparently being associated with the superordinate level in the sentence structure.

For example, there are several instances where humanists choose the subjunctive in the verbum dicendi or sentiendi itself, when no particular reason can be given. It would seem that the uncertainty, distancing, or the like, that humanists associate with the particular verb is expressed in the verb itself, though the state of e.g. not knowing is not in itself unknown. This is merely based on some sporadic observations, and a more systematic study should be put to the question before reaching conclusions. Some examples can be found in the quotations that have been presented in this chapter, such as Valla’s “quia dicant” p. 240, and also in some instances where the subjunctive immediately would look like that of indirect discourse, were it not for the fact that the

246 10.5 Defining the Value of The Subjun ive in Neo-Latin Indire Discourse verb in the subjunctive is the verbum dicendi itself: “noluit ipse huic expeditioni preesse, quia diceret ab re esse regem nisi adversus regem exire in bellum.” (Valla, Gesta, I.9.13). Also, in a quotation of Valla above (p. 218), we saw the expression “. . . quum esset dicendum . . . ” According to Apold (2006, § 461), expressions of possibility, obligation, and necessity, when used in the apodosis of contrary to fact conditions and ideal conditions in Classical Latin, they generally have the indicative, because it is not the obligation, possibility etc. which is contrary to fact, but the fulﬁllment of that which is possible/necessary, etc.—which he illustrates through examples such as: “et hanc urbem uos non hostium ducitis, ubi si unum diem morati essetis, moriendum omnibus fuit?” (Livy, AUC, II.38). If this observation is true for the general Classical Latin language norm, this shift of modal focus to the main verb may also be supported by several neo-Latin instances where such clauses have the subjunctive, also outside indirect discourse, for example:

Quod si in medio orationis, ut plaerique fecerunt, invocare deorum opem liceret, id esset mihi hoc loco maxime faciendum. Hermolao Barbaro, De coelibatu, III.1 I am, however, not sure that this description of Classical Latin is actually the normal practice, as I could quickly ﬁnd a few examples from Classical Latin texts that would resemble this neo-Latin practice, such as “At si in causa pari discedere inferior videretur, tamen esset non mediocriter conquerendum” (Cicero, Quinct., 59). But if the modal expressions are to some degree overgeneralized in such neo-Latin uses—in comparison with Classical Latin—it may reﬂect similar modal uses in Medieval Latin, where the imperfect subjunctive is known to be used where the present would be expected in Classical Latin, particularly with modal verbs to make the expression appear more polite and less forceful.45 In 13.1 we shall see further examples that suggest some overgeneralization of the semantic uses of modality in neo-Latin, compared to Classical Latin. Now, we shall return once more to the indirect discourse in neo-Latin. In terms of contact linguistics (cf. the presentation in 2.2), I believe the neo-Latin system of moods in indirect discourse to be a classical example of L1 interference. Latin as a target language has the possibility to construct indirect discourse with both the subjunctive and the indicative. But the humanists do not in their grammatical writings 45Stotz (1998, IV. § 58.4).

247 10 Con ru ing Indire Discourse

clearly define when either mood should be chosen. The system from their L1 then has ‘somewhere’ in the TL to be transfered to, because their readings of the Classical Latin language would more or less fit into their own conception of the moods—and the use of the indicative in Classical Latin indirect discourse would definitely often seem semantically conditioned, a mood of truth or certainty, and it very likely is. But the two Latin variants seem to have two different ‘points of departure’ for choosing the moods. Where Classical Latin would typically need some explicit reason for not choosing the subjunctive, the standard mood of neo-Latin indirect discourse seems to vary according to factors such as whose speech is reported, the author’s own or that of someone else. Therefore, the mostly semantic L1 system seems to be somewhat overgeneralized in neo- Latin, and the resulting system is a mixture of semantics and syntax, and seemingly a mixture of the Classical Latin and the Volgare as well. When Kühner and Stegmann (1914, II.2. § 239, 2. b) report that there is more indicative found in indirect discourse in Classical Latin colloquial texts, and that the use of the indicative becomes more arbitrary in later Latin, and even in authors whom the humanists accept as Classical Latin authorities (e.g. Vitruvius and Gellius), their careful imitative reading of those authors may even have enhanced the humanists’ tendency to let the semantic system interfere. A distinction that resembles the semantic value of the moods in neo-Latin indirect discourse is also attested in The Latin Vulgate from the 5th century, which was under heavy influence from the Greek original text. Thus the classical use of the Moods has largely broken down, and the main distinction is between fact and idea. In the general construction of the sentence, especially in the case of reported speech, we have an approximation to modern practice. Platner and White (1926, p. 144) It seems impossible to determine on which of these sources the humanists based their conception of the moods, on their vernacular language, on other influential Latin variants such as the Latin in their Bible, or on the language of specific authors whom they would deem ‘Classical’. And all such different sources likely contribute to the general idea of mood in humanist Latin. In considering whether or not neo-Latin is used as a natural language, one of the criteria for natural language use used in this thesis, the M2, is concerned with the complexity and degree of variation in the neo-Latin language. In this respect, it is

248 10.5 Defining the Value of The Subjun ive in Neo-Latin Indire Discourse interesting to note how the humanists in their Latin writings transfer and overgeneralize this system of semantic values, while a level of grammatical complexity is weakened. That new complexity is inferred where old complexity disappears is one of the arguments why natural languages are all complex, only that the complexity may be very diverse in diﬀerent languages.46 In the light of the neo-Latin use of the moods in indirect discourse, this does not look like a language suﬀering from attrition or being used merely as a constructed means of communication. Especially not considering such uses of the system as we saw in Perotti’s dedicatory letter to his Cornu copiae.

46Cf. various views presented in Chapter 2.

249

Chapter 11

The Nature of Tenses

In Classical Latin, the use of the grammatical tenses is a complex system, where the grammatical form often both places the referred situation on a timeline and describes the nature of the situation as for example punctual or ongoing. The same tense when used in independent main clauses may have several interpretations: concerning the past, the present, that which is true for all times, etc. In addition, when clauses depend on each other, certain regularities can be described regarding the relation between the involved tenses. The present study being based on subordinate clauses, this aspect will be our focus on the neo-Latin tenses.

The question of the relation between dependent tenses is commonly referred to as the sequence of tenses. In the Latin grammatical tradition, this term is now by most grammarians used speciﬁcally for the relation between the tenses used in dependent subjunctive clauses and the tenses in their context. Some traditions include all dependent tenses. Later, we shall study Squartini (2010) who in his description of the corresponding phenomenon in Italian, La concordanza dei Tempi, includes indicative as well as subjunctive tenses. And there are indeed similarities between the types of relations identiﬁed in indicative and subjunctive tenses, also in the Latin language, as we shall soon see.

Even when restricting the notion of the sequence of tenses to the subjunctive verbs, the modern Latin grammarians demonstrate very diverse interpretations of the concept.

251 11 The Nature of Tenses

Some grammarians, such as Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180–81), use the term for the complete system of subjunctive dependent tenses, namely that:

Neben einem Tempus der Gegenwart oder Zukunft im <über>geordneten Satze steht im Nebensatze das Praesens zum Ausdruck der gleichzeitigen, das Perfectum zum Ausdruck der vorzeitigen, das Futurum periphrasticum Praesentis zum Ausdruck der nachzeitigen (bevorstehenden) Handlung. Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180. 1)

Correspondingly, with a Präteritum in the superordinate clause, the Imperfectum, Plusquam- perfectum, and Futurum periphrasticum Imperfectum are used respectively. Other grammarians, such as Madvig (2001, § 382), include in the sequence of tenses only the speciﬁc mechanism of the past tenses in subjunctive subordinate clauses being dependent on the verb in the main clause, why subjunctive verbs in past contexts will regularly have a past tense as well, regardless whether the action actually takes place in the present or future. This conﬁnes the rule to describe that a subjunctive past tense in the context of a primary tense is expressed with the perfect, and in the context of another past tense either with the imperfect or the pluperfect, depending on the relation to the main verb.

In his humanist school grammar, Niccolò Perotti characterizes the tenses of the Latin language thus:

Quot sunt tempora uerborum? Quinque: praesens, quod praesentem habet signiﬁcationem; praeteritum imperfectum, quod signiﬁcat quod coepit geri et nondum perfectum est; praeteritum perfectum, quo res perfecta monstratur; praeteritum plusquamperfectum, quo res perfecta iam pridem ostenditur; futurum, quo res futura monstratur. Niccolò Perotti, Rudimenta grammatices, §388

At a ﬁrst glance, the description resembles how a modern scholar would likely characterize the present, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, and future tenses: according to their reference to either the present, the past, or the future, and by distinguishing the past tenses according to aspectual diﬀerences. On the contrary, one would wonder why he left out the future perfect indicative. As described earlier (3.2.2), there was in the Re-

252 11 The Nature of Tenses naissance some confusion concerning the form amavero,1 some conceiving it as a future subjunctive. Or rather, some Renaissance humanists such as Perotti described it as a future subjunctive. As we shall soon see (12.3), there is no evidence that the form was actually used according to that characterization in the Latin of the humanists. But from this conception of the form amavero follows that Perotti could neatly arrange his description of the indicative tenses as well as the subjunctive as two similar systems. In 3.2.2 we also saw how he asks the two questions “Indicatiuus quot tempora habet?” (Perotti, Rud., § 288) and “Subiunctiuus quot tempora habet?”(idem, § 291), the correct answer to both questions being “Quinque”. After stating that the subjunctive has five tenses, he merely refers to the indicative and indicates that they are the same. Even though Perotti’s misunderstanding of the form amavero does not seem to affect its uses greatly, it seems a supportive factor in this Renaissance view of the two mood systems being perfect copies of each other, while modern scholars have recognized the two tense systems as rather different from each other, which we shall return to shortly. In not distinguishing between the tenses of the two moods, and therefore describing the tenses collectively in the passage quoted above, Perotti—together with his fellow humanist grammarians—fails to recognize the mechanism which was to be known as the sequence of tenses, the backshifting in time of tenses that occur in the context of other past tenses, in Classical Latin most outspoken in the subjunctive tenses. In Chapter 12 we shall study whether it affects the language of the humanists that they ignored this fundamental system of tenses. Does their language reflect the natural mechanism of backshifting of tenses which we know from Classical Latin, or does it rather reflect the parallel conception of two identical tense systems, independent of mood, which we see in Perotti’s sparse description? In this chapter we shall characterize the nature of tenses, especially in Classical Latin. We begin by viewing the tenses through the glasses of the history of grammar, determining which fundamental findings were necessary for the grammarians before grasping the grammatical mechanisms that determine the relation between tenses, and ultimately to describe what is now known as the sequence of tenses.

1Apparently, this confusion survived for some time, as Clarke (1754, Hom. Il. I,37) in his characterization of the Latin tenses thought it relevant to establish that these verbs were Futura perfecta in the indicative and could not be subjunctive.

253 11 The Nature of Tenses

11.1 Uncovering ‘The Sequence Of Tenses’

Some of the Italian humanists explicitly rejected the philosophical grammatical tradition of the universities in France—think of Valla’s preface to his Elegantiae describing how the Gauls had taken the Latin language captive. But less than 70 years after Perot- ti published his Rudimenta grammatices and Cornu copiae, the Italian scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger published—in France where he carried out most of his studies—his De causis linguae latinae where a more philosophical view on the Latin tenses is presented. In this major work on the Latin language, we see the mentioning of two concepts that I believe to be of great importance for the uncovering of the sequence of tenses. For one, Scaliger says that the Latin tenses can be both relative and absolute; that tenses may be related to a point in the past rather than relating directly to ‘now’. Such considerations leads him to new realizations of the nature of some tenses. For example, he describes that the difference between the perfect and the pluperfect is not a matter of how distant the past is, but a matter of relation, that the pluperfect always appears in the context of another preterite verb. “Dicam enim, Risi iam quinquaginta tribus annis: et dicam, Legeram versum heri antequam biberem.” (Scaliger, Causis, Cap. CXIII, p. 294). Another important concept is not an innovation of Scaliger. Rather, for philosophical reasons, he objects to the general description by other grammarians of the tenses being divided into three parts, past, present, and future. And yet, having defined his view on the nature of time and the three divisions of time, he describes a fundamental system of tenses that was to become central to our modern conception of tenses, and which is fundamentally different from Perotti’s description of the tenses, namely a combination of the three times and two aspectual distinctions:

Praeteritum imperfectum, Amabam: Praeteritum perfectum, Amaveram. Recte sane. Et Praesens imperfectum, Amo. Recte hactenus: continuat enim amorem, neque absoluit. At Praesens perfectum, Amaui . . . De futuro autem vt non male sentit, ita controuersum est: Futurum, inquit, imperfectum, Amabo. Perfectum, Amauera. Julius Caesar Scaliger, De causis linguae latinae, Cap. CXIII, p. 297 This division of the tenses reﬂects Varro’s categorization, and so the concept has been known since Antiquity, but ignored by the humanists.

in verborum genere quae tempora adsigniﬁcant, quod ea erant tria, prae-

254 11.1 Uncovering `The Sequence Of Tenses'

teritum, praesens, futurum, declinatio facienda fuit triplex, ut ab saluto salutabam, salutabo Marcus Terentius Varro, De Lingua Latina, VIII, 20

. Such conceptual considerations of the nature of the tenses I have never encountered in the grammatical writings of Valla and Perotti, the Elegantiae, the Cornu copiae, and the Rudimenta grammatices. According to W. Keith Percival, who kindly assisted me in the matter, the other Latin grammarians of the Italian Renaissance also ignored such questions, and they did not even discuss the use of the subjunctive, which seems so fundamental to us.2 Hofmann and Szantyr (1965, § 297.II.B) note that the term consecutio temporum is perhaps medieval, but based on Percival’s evidence and Valla and Perotti’s grammatical writings, the concept of the sequence of tenses does not seem to remarkably gain acceptance until later, and at least it was not considered important or central in the Renaissance.

The notion seems to have gained acceptance in connection with the universal, philosophical grammar tradition of the Enlightenment and the early 19th century, as suggested by Percival who has observed that the many rules of the consecutio temporum were described in C. G. Zumpt’s (1792–1849) Grammar of the Latin Language, and by J. N. Madvig (1804–1875), whose description of the sequence of tenses we shall return to below. The notion was already well known by their time, for example when Zumpt talked about “the rules respecting what is usually called the succession of tenses.” A grammarian such as Madvig is still today considered an authority on the Latin language, and we still use his grammar for teaching Latin, at least at Aarhus University, being compatriots of the former professor of Latin and rector of the University of Copenhagen. And yet the modern conception of the Latin tenses is only little older than Zumpt and Madvig’s generation of grammarians. But three basic concepts needed to be formalized, which the Italian humanists of the 15th century did not describe, even though the ﬁrst concept, the ordering of the tenses according to three times and two aspects was already known by their time.

2As also indicated by Tournoy and Tunberg (1996, p. 170); Benner and Tengström (1977).

255 11 The Nature of Tenses

11.1.1 Three Basic Times

Varro’s system of tenses is found in a commentary to Homer by Clarke (1754, Hom. Il. I. 37) who also had the fundamental approach that “Tempus esse omne divisum in partes tres” (see Figure 11.1a). Twelve years later, in De temporibus et modis verbi graeci et latini by Friedrich Wolfgang Reiz (1766), the system of three tenses is formalized and expanded with the future ‘aspect’. Inspired by the Stoic linguistic theory, and especially Varro,3 he argues that the tenses should be understood as a system of three tempora, within each of which a situation can be described as either futurum, infectum, or perfectum.

Omnis res quae fit, geritur, agitur, et originem, et progressionem, et finem habet. Itaque nulla dum temporis habita ratione, debet res quaeque posse tripliciter significari, et vt futura, et vt inchoata, et vt absoluta. Friedrich Wolfgang Reiz (1766, p. 1)

This relation between tenses and that which is nowadays called aspect he depicts in Figure 11.1b. This systematic relation between tenses and aspects is fundamental to the modern conception of grammatical time, in the Greek and Latin languages as well as in the universal linguistics, as we shall soon see. Reiz’s table corresponds to the modern view on the tenses of the Latin indicative. For instance, it seems to be the model for Madvig’s presentation of the relation between the indicative tenses, cf. Figure 11.1c from Madvig (2001, § 333).4 Note that this representation relates to the use, meaning, and syntactic function of the indicative tenses, while the morphological forms are traditionally grouped according to the present and perfect stems of the verbs, which was described in detail also in the Renaissance.5 The relation between the Latin tenses and aspects is clear from his table, though the perfect form does not itself belong to the present time, but is a past tense seen in relation to the present time, and sometimes with implications in the present time.6

3Refering to Varro, de Ling. Lat., VIII, 2–3 that we saw above. 4Though likely indirectly through later representations, as it appears also for instance in Krüger (1821, p. 20), also exempliﬁed with the verb scribo. 5See also Krüger (1821, pp. 29–30). 6And with regard to the indicative tenses, the perfect has perhaps gained this position in the tables more out of convenience and for making the ternal tense system complete, than based on its actual occurrences. Though the perfect indicative is (almost) the only past tense that is used in primary

256 11.1 Uncovering `The Sequence Of Tenses'

(a) The tense system of Clarke (1754)

(b) The tense system of Reiz (1766)

Figure 11.1: The tense system from the mid 18th to the mid 19th century

257 11 The Nature of Tenses

The approach was philosophical and concerned with formulating a universal theory of time which could explain all their known languages. Reiz seems convinced that his table with the nine tenses represented all the basic time relations that anyone could be in need of in any language, though well aware that some languages lacked some of these nine possible tenses,7 and that other nuances were expressed in additional forms.8 From such speculations on the universal function of tenses seem to have sprung more conceptual notations during the next half of a century. From Reiz’s systematic representation of the tenses followed that the tenses relate to diﬀerent Zeitsphären,9 and that tenses that are dependent on each other usually come from the same Zeitsphäre. This observation is in some modern grammatical traditions treated as part of the sequence of tenses.10

11.1.2 Relative and Absolute Time

As mentioned, the concept of relative and absolute time is attributed to Julius Caesar Scaliger. Such concepts seem to have been subject to general discussions at the end of the 18th century, as it appears in De emendanda ratione Graecae grammaticae by Gottfried Hermann (1801). The actual term consecutio temporum seems to take shape in such discussions of the two basic functions of time, namely that time can either be deﬁned per se or depend on another time.

Est autem unius cuiusque temporis triplex relatio. Nam aut per se constans deﬁnitumque est, aut ex alio tempore pendet, aut denique utrumque simul est, ita ut et certum per se sit ac deﬁnitum, et simul consequutionem com- plectatur aliorum temporum, id est, ut aut omne aut quodvis tempus sit.

Gottfried Hermann (1801, p. 181)

This corresponds to modern notions of absolute/deictic time and relative/anaphoric time.11 And in his discussion of other scholars’ views on time, the last component

contexts in Classical Latin, it is also frequent in secondary contexts with no actual relation to the present, as we shall see (13.4.1). 7The Greek language, for example, lacking the futurum exactum, Reiz (1766, p. 6). 8Clarke (1754, Hom. Il. I. 37) for example mentions several periphrastic forms in the modern languages. 9The term used in the German tradition, as we shall see below. 10E.g. Squartini (2010). 11We shall return to the modern terminology in 11.2.

258 11.1 Uncovering `The Sequence Of Tenses' emerges, in my opinion, of understanding the nature of the Latin tenses—as well as Greek tenses, and likely grammatical time in general: realizing that the tenses do not behave the same across diﬀerent moods. This, we remember, was never mentioned by Perotti, who merely referred to the indicative tenses when describing the subjunctive tenses.

Nam isti quidem perabsurdi homines sunt, qui in Graecorum coniunctivo atque optativo relativorum temporum signiﬁcationem simul deﬁnitorum temporum formis contineri putant. idem (pp. 209–10)

11.1.3 The Nature of Tenses in Diﬀerent Moods

This difference between moods, seemingly discussed among scholars at the beginning of the 19th century, was also mentioned sporadically half a century earlier. For example, when in 1745 the English Classical scholar Richard Dawes (1708–1766) published the first edition of his Miscellanea Critica,12 one chapter was devoted to the use of the Greek subjunctive and optative mood. Considering the differences in use of the two moods, Dawes explains how the one only occurs in context of past verbs (like the Latin imperfect subjunctive), while the other only occurs together with present or future verbs (like the Latin present subjunctive).

prioris autem eum esse usum, ut verbis de tempore non nisi præterito usurpatis subjungatur, istique adeo Latinorum tempori AMAREM respondeat: alteram contra verbis non nisi præsentis vel futuræ significationis subjungi, atque alteri isti apud Romanos tempori AMEM respondere. Richard Dawes (1781, p. 85) This shows the awareness that different moods behave differently in the context of tenses. And the reference to the Latin forms indicates that it was then well known that Latin subjunctive tenses belong to different time contexts, though still on a less conceptional level, and the presentation lacks the grammatical terminology that we saw applied to the new findings in Hermann. At the time of Hermann, therefore, the basic findings and terminology had been established for discussing and refining the theory of tenses throughout the first half of the 19th century. Twenty years later, in a study of the sequence of tenses in indirect

12See the preface by Thomas Burgess to the second edition in Dawes (1781).

259 11 The Nature of Tenses

discourse by Georg T. Krüger (1821) we have evidence that the sequence of tenses had been established, and we now get the maxim of the sequence of tenses, namely that13

. . . es nothwendig ist, daß in von einander abhängigen, und sich also auf einander beziehenden Sätzen die Zeitsphären mit einander übereinstimmen. Georg T. Krüger (1821, p. 33)

Because Krüger focuses on the sequence of tenses in indirect discourse, he represents some important considerations on the nature of tenses in especially the infinite and the subjunctive verbs. In addition to adopting the theory of tenses that we have seen develop, he applies to the theory what had been observed by his predecessors, namely that the infinite moods are not coded for time.14 Therefore they can belong in any Zeitsphäre, and they express only the quality of a situation.15 Such findings led to the knowledge that infinite constructions do not affect the tenses of verbs that are subordinate to them, unless they are perfect infinitives/participles. Perfect infinite verbs regularly change the tenses so that they belong to the past Zeitsphäre even if the superordinate finite verb is present. The opposite is not the case when a present tense infinite verb is subordinate to a past finite verb.16 Krüger also describes one major difference between the indicative and the subjunctive tenses in proposing that, in order to make the subjunctive tenses fit into the system of 3 × 3 tenses, the present and the future Zeitsphären must be comprised to one, so that subjunctive verbs that appear in a future context behave just like those that appear in a present context. This gave rise to the modern view on the subjunctive tenses: that they are determined according to whether they appear in a primary context (the present and the future Zeitsphäre) or in a secondary context (the past Zeitsphäre). This compression of two Zeitsphären Krüger explains through a characterization of the similarities between the future indicative and the present subjunctive, which we shall return to in 12.3.

13According to Krüger, Hermann’s theory of tenses had been reﬁned by Dissen in De temporibus et modis verbi Graeci (1808) and then Wagner in Commentatio de temporibus verbi inprimis Latini (1816). 14This was, for example, described for the Greek language by Hermann (1801, pp. 220–27). 15Krüger (1821, pp. 23–24). 16Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180. B.9). This rule has been applied to the data collection in the present study, so that all clauses that are subordinate to perfect inﬁnite forms are counted among clauses in secondary context.

260 11.2 Modern Views on Grammatical Time

We shall in the analyses of the neo-Latin tenses follow this basic conception of the Latin tenses. The many exceptions and nuances of the Classical Latin tense system are described by grammarians such as Madvig (2001), Hofmann and Szantyr (1965, § 297.II.B), and Kühner and Stegmann (1914), and we shall only look at further individual rules when studying the actual neo-Latin language in the next chapter. In Chapter 12 and 13 we shall study whether the humanists imitate these three elements of the Latin tense system, namely that tenses belong to certain Zeitsphären, that both relative and absolute time reference exists, and that there are certain differences between the indicative and the subjunctive tenses. We shall see whether their language reflects that they did not recognize such pervasive systems, or whether their attention to the details of the Classical Latin models and their careful and deliberate imitative practices serves them sufficiently to imitate also these aspects of the language that are outside their conscious grammatical focus. We shall in the following apply the theory and terminology from modern literature on linguistic universals to this basic Latin tense system. We shall ask whether the three tendencies that have been described are the result of the semantic nature of the tenses, or of syntactical mechanisms. And so, in the treatment of the neo-Latin tenses, we shall carry on the discussion from the previous chapter of the neo-Latin subjunctive and its both syntactic and semantic functions.

11.2 Modern Views on Grammatical Time

Almost all human languages conceive time as going along a timeline, with the past behind and the future ahead.17 Grammatical time then takes the form of a deictic structure, locating events to reference points on this timeline. As noted by the grammarians of the late 18th/early 19th century, this reference can be either absolute or relative, and I follow Russell Ultan’s deﬁnition of the two types of reference:

In order to refer to time–or perhaps more properly sequence of events or states–in natural language, one or more points of reference are required. These are of two types: 1. the moment of speech (MOS) . . . 2. relative time

17Traugott (1978); Ultan (1978); Comrie (1985). See also consideration on the nature of time and Man’s movement through time in Scaliger (1540, Cap. CXIII, pp. 291–93).

261 11 The Nature of Tenses

(R), any point or span of time that occurs before, after or contemporaneously with the MOS and functions as a surrogate MOS which serves as the basis for predications involving time (or sequence) relative to itself. Russell Ultan (1978, p. 85)

This system of time reference usually consists of three elements: 1) time (i.e. place on the timeline compared to ‘now’), 2) the sequencing of situations, and 3) the aspect (i.e. the way of viewing the internal temporal constituency of the situation). Some of these elements are often combined in the particular grammatical expression of a language. For example, the verbal element of aspect is an important component of expressing sequencing in Latin, as the perfective aspect often denotes anteriority, the imperfective simultaneity. Therefore, I see the expression of time in Latin primarily as an interplay between time-reference and sequencing, the expression of aspect being the typical means for constructing sequencing. In addition, aspect is secondarily used for expressing aspectual differences, where grammatical mechanisms allow the choice (more on this relation below). One fundamental difference between time and sequencing should be noted, namely: “While the time-reference of tense shifts with the ‘now’ of the speaker, the relative relation of two events does not.” (Elizabeth Closs Traugott (1978, p. 379)). It has been discussed in the tradition of language universals how many true types of aspect exist, and how to define them.18 Basically, there is a differentiation between durative and non-durative, while some argue for a universal distinction also between completive and non-completive, as well as the distinctions of progressive and perfective. The question of the Latin sequencing of situations on a timeline is basically dependent on the distinctions between seeing a situation as ongoing or punctual. We shall here use the terms imperfective and perfective which are often applied to this aspectual distinction in the Latin grammatical tradition and which is a sub-category of the durative/non- durative aspect. The main difference between the subjunctive and the indicative tenses in Classical Latin is their preferred kind of reference. Like in many other languages, the Classi- cal Latin subjunctive is to some degree neutralized for time expression. And yet, the subjunctive tenses belong to a certain time, either the primary or the secondary set of tenses corresponding to the indicative tense system. But their time-reference is gener-

18See e.g. Traugott (1978, pp. 387–88); Comrie (1976).

262 11.2 Modern Views on Grammatical Time ally relative, as they usually depend on some other reference point than the MOS. The indicative tenses generally have the MOS as their reference point and are therefore normally absolute tenses. In the context of present verbs, this leaves not much diﬀerence, as the result would seem to be the same whether the reference point of a dependent tense is the MOS directly or another verb which happens to co-occur with the MOS. Therefore, most tenses in primary contexts would expectedly be used in similar ways in the indicative and the subjunctive tense system. The most outspoken diﬀerences are found where the relative character of the subjunctive tenses result in contradictions between the grammatical tense and the position on the timeline. These are situations where it is clear that the subjunctive tenses are primarily expressions of sequencing, and that contradictions with tense-relations to the MOS are typically secondary. The classic example is the subjunctive counterpart to the future perfect, namely in primary contexts the perfect subjunctive, and correspondingly in secondary contexts the pluperfect subjunctive,19 which only express that they are prior to their superordinate verb. Therefore their place in time exists only indirectly through the time reference of the superordinate future (or other form with future time reference20). So when in the Metamorphoses Ovid tells how Pyramus and Thisbe determine to leave the city as soon as they have left the house, the action of leaving the house is expressed in the perfect subjunctive even though it will not happen until some time after the present time of the MOS. The perfect subjunctive therefore serves exclusively for expressing sequencing of the events:

tum murmure parvo multa prius questi statuunt, ut nocte silenti fallere custodes foribusque excedere temptent, cumque domo exierint, urbis quoque tecta relinquant. P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphosae, IV, 83–86

Instances such as this show the basic nature of subjunctive tenses as strict relative tenses,21 though there are also situations where subjunctive subordinate clauses assume an absolute time reference. For example, clauses of consequence or result tend to have the perfect subjunctive even in secondary contexts (where the imperfect would be expected)

19Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180,B,7); Madvig (2001, § 379). 20Cf. 12.3. 21Cf. deﬁnitions in Comrie (1985, p. 56–59; p. 64–65.).

263 11 The Nature of Tenses

if the result is seen as an important, independent historical event itself. So generally, the subjunctive tenses belong to either primary or secondary contexts, but their relation to the MOS is relative, dependent on their aspect, and relates to another time reference. This resembles the indicative tenses pluperfect and future perfect, which Bernard Comrie characterizes as ‘absolute-relative tense’ which has “. . . as part of its meaning that a reference point is situated at, before, or after the present moment and in addition that a situation is located at, before, or after that reference point.” (Bernard Comrie (1985, p. 65)). Therefore, these absolute-relative tenses, in comparison with the strict relative tenses of the subjunctive, are more speciﬁc and demand that their reference points are situated before or after the MOS, respectively. Strict relative tenses only express their relation to the reference point and their belonging to either primary or secondary contexts.

11.2.1 Considering the Sequence of Tenses

This relative nature of the subjunctive tenses is what has been called ‘the sequence of tenses’ by many grammarians, and it has been questioned whether the system should be characterized as a purely grammatical mechanism, especially with reference to the many similarities between the indicative and the subjunctive tenses. Die Tempora des Konjunktivs haben an sich in Nebensätzen, entsprechend der Entwicklung der Hypotaxe aus der Parataxe, durchaus dieselbe Bedeu- tung wie in Hauptsätzen; daher wird das Tempus des Nebensatzes von Haus aus nicht durch mechanische Tempusfolge bestimmt, wie man früher wohl angenommen hat, sondern durch Wesen und Inhalt des Nebensatzes. Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180) The question is, how much of the distribution of the subjunctive tenses is determined by Wesen and Inhalt, and how much is determined by a grammatical mechanism. Bernard Comrie (1985, pp. 104–18) describes that many languages have this phenomenon called the sequence of tenses, which can result in the apparent conﬂict known also from Classical Latin of a past tense used to express a future situation. He explains the sequence of tenses as a neutralization of tenses in a sequence, so that only the ﬁrst verb expresses the relation to the MOS, while the others merely relate to this surrogate MOS. The distribution of the mechanism is determined by syntax. That is, it has a tendency to appear in certain syntactic contexts in a given language. In Classical Latin,

264 11.2 Modern Views on Grammatical Time that syntactic context would be most instances of dependent clauses in the subjunctive. In other languages it may appear only in, for example, indirect discourse, and in yet other languages it may not appear at all. This syntactically conditioned distribution, as opposed to an arbitrary or pervasive distribution, would seem to support describing the sequence of tenses in Classical Latin as a grammatical mechanism rather than the direct result of meaning. In my opinion, being a grammatical mechanism is not the same as being ‘unnatural’ or against meaning. Why would languages all over the world develop similar grammatical mechanisms if not somehow triggered by natural ways of thinking while processing the conception of a timeline into speech? However, in this study, concerning the distribution of moods and tenses, it is important to determine the possible reasons for the distribution.

In Comrie’s terminology, the sequence of tenses is conﬁned to describing the backshifting in time in some situations where verbs depend on another verb with past time reference. He explains the mechanism (in the matter of English indirect discourse) as a shift in deictic center, where the relations between tenses is retained, but “. . . subject to an added requirement that if the main verb is in the past tense, the tense of the original speech is shifted back into the past” (Bernard Comrie (1985, p. 114)).

In the case of Classical Latin, where we have seen that tenses generally belong together in Zeitsphären in similar ways in both the indicative and the subjunctive, the notable thing about the subjunctive tenses is that such a grammatical rule exists that overrides the meaning of the tenses. And this mechanism, which regularly overrides meaning, is in Classical Latin limited to the subjunctive where the relative reference is primary to the MOS-reference, and it is limited to past contexts. This attraction of tenses to the past, regardless of the actual relation to the MOS I consider a grammatical mechanism, syntactically determined. The remaining distributions of the subjunctive tenses may be primarily due to the basic meaning of the tenses, which is the same in the indicative and the subjunctive.

In Classical Latin, it is clear that this backshifting of tenses, the sequence of tenses, is syntactically distributed rather than being a general result of the nature of tenses. It is well known that a perfect inﬁnite form attracts its subordinate subjunctive clauses into past tenses, regardless of their actual position in time. But a present or even a future

265 11 The Nature of Tenses

inﬁnitive does not normally attract its subordinate clauses into the present or the future, not even when the subordinate clauses are actually positioned at the same time as or following the MOS. This asymmetry is not merely the result of the neutralization of the future in the Latin subjunctive. It even allows tenses that are contradictory to the actual time across the past/non-past distinction, such as past verbs concerning the present time. The past/non-past contrast is otherwise maintained in Latin.22 Therefore, this asymmetric distribution, the lacking of a corresponding ‘frontshifting’, also characterizes the backshifting into the past as a separate mechanism. This particular mechanism will in the following be referred to as the sequence of tenses, while the remaining characteristics of the subjunctive tenses will be described in terms of reference type (R or MOS) and belonging to diﬀerent Zeitsphären, as is also the case for the indicative tenses.

Therefore, I characterize the Classical Latin tenses in dependent clauses with regard to three primary parameters: 1) that the tenses can be organized into a system of three tenses and two aspects which determines their normal relations similarly in the indicative and the subjunctive, 2) that the nature of reference is distributed diﬀerently in the indicative (primarily MOS-reference) and the subjunctive (primarily R reference), and 3) that in the subjunctive there exists a mechanism of backshifting to past tenses in past contexts, the sequence of tenses.

22Other typical crossings of the boundary between past/non-past in Latin usually correspond to some part of the meaning of the time-expression, for example when the present is used in the past as a universal tense. Comrie (1985, pp. 37–41) characterizes the present as that which coincides with the MOS or occupies a longer period but includes the present moment. It “. . . invariably locates a situation at the present moment, and says nothing beyond that.” Similarly, that which is expressed with past tenses may still be true at the MOS, but with a present non-relevance. We shall return to the case of the historical present in 12.4.

266 Chapter 12

A Fundamental Characterization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

We have seen that Perotti in his Rudimenta grammatices did not distinguish between the indicative and the subjunctive in his description of the tenses. And yet, it is now well known that a fundamental difference existed in the Classical Latin language. The first step towards a characterization of the neo-Latin tenses in dependent clauses will therefore be testing whether this fundamental difference exists between the moods or not. This will serve as a first indication of whether the use of the tenses is fundamentally dependent on the actual grammatical knowledge of the humanists.

12.1 A Fundamental Diﬀerence Between Indicative and Subjunctive Tenses

Because the primary difference between indicative and subjunctive tenses in Classical Latin is the nature of reference (R or MOS-reference), this difference would be expected to be more outspoken in the secondary contexts, where the MOS does not regularly coincide with the relative point of reference such as it often does in primary contexts. Because of the lack of future tenses in the subjunctive, this first investigation regards the four common tenses, the present, the imperfect, the perfect, and the pluperfect. The future tenses will be considered separately. The following should be tested in primary as

267 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

well as in secondary contexts, and if a difference is found, it should be identified whether the difference corresponds to the Classical Latin tense system or not.

H0 There is no diﬀerence in tense distribution between clauses in the indicative and the subjunctive.

HA There is a diﬀerence in tense distribution between clauses in the indicative and the subjunctive.

Figure 12.11 shows the distribution of the basic tenses of the two moods in primary2 and secondary contexts. Regarding the presentations in this chapter, it should be noted that a considerable amount of tenses are ambiguous. Most kinds of ambiguous forms are rare and can for certain be directed to one of the two moods. They will appear as ‘Ambiguous’ in the more detailed presentations below.3 Two major groups should be considered further: type 1 : the 1st person singular of the 3rd and the 4th conjugation ending in –am which are either present subjunctive or future indicative, and type 2 : the forms outside the 1st person singular ending in –eris,–erit, etc. which are either the perfect subjunctive or the future perfect. These forms are rather frequent4 and they do influence the results. We shall therefore usually test the data with both of the most extreme possible distributions of those. In the first investigation, we do not consider the future tenses, and therefore the indicative tenses are not affected, as the only possible indicative interpretations of these particular forms are the future and the future perfect.

First we shall study the tenses that are used in primary contexts. It is clear that the present tense is predominant in this context both among the indicative and the subjunctive tenses, while the perfect appears to be the second most frequent tense in both moods, especially if a considerable amount of the ambiguous forms of type 2 can be considered perfect subjunctives (which is very likely, cf. 12.3.2 below). One remarkable diﬀerence is the presence of the imperfect among the subjunctives, which is highly

1The data in this chapter and the following is found in C# 9.11–10.75. 2Both contexts with present time reference and future time reference. The particulars are to be discussed later. 3In addition, two instances are left out of the presentations, namely a form which is either the present indicative or the present subjunctive. 4There are 63 instances of each.

268 12.1 A Fundamental Difference Between Indicative and Subjun ive Tenses

(a) Indicative (b) Subjunctive (with- (c) Subjunctive (with out ambiguous) ambiguous)

Figure 12.1: The four basic tenses in indicative and subjunctive infrequent in the indicative (2 instances). In addition, only very few examples of the pluperfect are found in primary contexts (2 in the subjunctive, 1 in the indicative). Without the ambiguous values among the subjunctives, there is a highly significant difference between the moods, but the two moods are not significant if all the ambiguous forms were subjunctive.5 This difference is primarily caused by the 17 imperfect verbs in the subjunctive, and the possibility that there might be only 24 perfect subjunctives in the very unlikely case that all the ambiguous forms were the future perfect. The only statistically significant difference between the primary contexts in Figure 12.1a and 12.1c is the 17 imperfect subjunctives where only two are found in the indicative.6 Therefore, we can conclude that there is indeed a difference between indicative and subjunctive tenses in primary context, but it is not a difference which one would expect, neither based on Perotti’s grammatical description nor on the system known from Clas-

5With the perfects left out (too few to test): p = 5.7×10−5 and p = .08, respectively. Note that tests on more than two tenses are performed slightly differently from what was described in 5.2.1.2 (see the referred literature on statistics). The equations presented there take advantage of a simplification which is possible with a 2 × 2 contingency table, while these tests involve 2 × 3 and 2 × 4 tables. It will appear that these tests more easily produce highly significant results, which may be caused by other interfering factors than what one intents to test. Therefore, we shall regularly break highly significant results up into simpler 2 × 2-tests in order to learn which of the factors actually caused the effect, for then only two factors are compared (e.g. the dependency between one distinction in tense and one distinction in time). 6χ2 = 4.8, p < .05.

269 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

sical Latin. We shall return to this question below (13.1). We cannot say for certain if there is actually a difference in the amount of perfect verbs in the indicative and the subjunctive, as the distributions of the present and the perfect may be both significantly different and statistically very equal in the two moods, depending on the actual value of ambiguous values.7 Now watching the tenses that are used in the secondary contexts, a clear difference occurs between the distributions in the indicative and the subjunctive.8 The primary reason for this clear difference is the immense predominance of the imperfect among the subjunctive verbs, whereas the imperfect in the indicative is used only equally as much as the present and the perfect indicative. This shows an indisputable difference between the use of tenses in the two moods, and the difference seems to reflect the presence of the sequence of tenses in the subjunctive verbs. Compared to the indicative tenses in past contexts, the present and the perfect subjunctive are to a high degree suppressed in secondary contexts, though not completely. The difference between the tense distribution in the two moods would therefore seem to indicate that the relationship between the tenses is stronger among the subjunctive verbs, that the Zeitsphären are not as easily mixed when using the subjunctive.9 In both the indicative and the subjunctive tenses there is also a natural fundamental difference between tenses in primary and secondary contexts. It is clear that in primary contexts the majority of subordinate clauses somehow regard the present time (or the future), as the present tense makes up between 83% and 91%, regardless of mood. In past contexts clauses in the indicative only seem to regard the present time in little more than 30% of the clauses. This is likely a direct result of the things that are talked about, that the topic will more often regard either the present or the past, than it will be mixed.

7The difference between the two moods in the distribution of present and perfect is significant without the ambiguous present and perfect subjunctives (χ2 = 13.1, p > .01) and not significant with the ambiguous values included (χ2 = 0.2, p = .67). 8Without ambiguous present and perfect subjunctive p = 7.0 × 10−36, and including the ambiguous forms p = 8.1 × 10−28. 9Performing the test statistics based on two groups of tenses, namely primary tenses (present and perfect) as opposed to secondary tenses (imperfect and pluperfect), in each mood indicates that this distinction between primary and secondary tenses explains the general difference in tense distribution. There is a significantly larger amount of ‘primary tenses’ in the indicative clauses in past context, than in subjunctive clauses in past context: without the ambiguous present and perfect subjunctive χ2 = 151.3, p < .01 (p = 4.5 × 10−35), and including these ambiguous forms χ2 = 119.1, p < .01 (p = 4.9 × 10−28). Compare to the result from the more complex test in note 8 above.

270 12.1 A Fundamental Difference Between Indicative and Subjun ive Tenses

Unless some fundamental difference in the meaning of indicative and subjunctive clauses should be found, one would think that the natural amount of clauses in past contexts that refer to the present time would be more or less the same regardless of the mood in the clauses, because this has primarily to do with the nature of the topic, and not with grammatical forms. Therefore this difference in the amount of present tenses in the past contexts of the two moods gives a clear indication of the sequence of tenses in neo- Latin, and we would expect a considerable amount of the imperfect subjunctives in the secondary context to have been grammatically ‘backshifted’, though being simultaneous with or future to the MOS.10 It is likely that this result is biased somewhat by the selection of clause types, but as we shall soon see, this difference between indicative and subjunctive tenses exists within each individual clause type. We therefore know that the neo-Latin language has a backshifting of tenses that resembles the sequence of tenses known from Classical Latin, and that this mechanism is more effective in the subjunctive than in the indicative—if existing in the indicative at all. We have also seen clear indications of the cohesion of tenses that in Classical Latin belong to the same Zeitsphäre, which curiously seems most indispensable in the primary contexts of the indicative, and in the secondary context of the subjunctives. We shall now see how stable this basic tense system is, and what external factors can affect it.

12.1.1 Stability and Variation across Genres and Authors

At ﬁrst it can be noticed that this overall picture of the tenses remains more or less the same across the century, as it appears from Figure 12.2. Actually, no statistical diﬀerences can be attested between the early and the late divisions of the corpus in the distributions which have been discussed so far.11 The only possible change is in the frequency of the imperfect subjunctive in primary

10There is signiﬁcantly less present tenses in the subjunctives of the past context than among indicatives of the past tense, excluding the ambiguous values (χ2 = 54.7, p < .01) as well as including them (χ2 = 43.0, p < .01). 11Comparing the early and the late, the following results occur (all results are without the ambiguous values): The relation between the present and the perfect indicative in primary contexts remains stable (χ2 = 2.2, p > .05). The relation between the present, imperfect, and perfect indicative (too few pluperfects for valid test) in secondary contexts remains stable (p = .75). The present, the imperfect, and the pluperfect (too few perfects for valid test) in the subjunctive in past context also remain statistically indistinguishable (p = .79). The distribution of the present, imperfect, and perfect subjunctive in primary contexts does not change quite signiﬁcantly either (p = .10).

271 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

(a) Indicative, early (b) Indicative, late

Figure 12.2: The tenses across the century (early and late authors)

272 12.1 A Fundamental Difference Between Indicative and Subjun ive Tenses contexts, which goes against the basic Classical Latin system, though with the possibility also in Classical Latin that this form may refer to that which is unreal and related to the present (further discussion in 13.1).12 This alone could indicate that the humanists are phasing out this use of the imperfect subjunctive. It is risky to trust one single significant difference among many insignificant, because of the problems with multiple comparisons (cf. 5.2). But there are supportive indications that this may be changing, though a study of later authors would be needed for reaching any certainty in the matter. For one, it appears that the tendency among the earlier authors is the result of an even more frequent use in the language of a few individual authors, actually the earliest authors in the corpus (see Figure 12.4): Bruni and Manetti, as well as Veronese and Poggio not represented in the figure, all show frequencies which are unmatched by any later author, though Bruni and Poggio use the combination considerably less than the other two. A second supportive factor is found when studying the distribution of tenses in various genres.

12.1.1.1 The Inﬂuence from Genres

Next we shall see what parts of the basic tense system vary according to genre. The use of tenses in the genres is represented in Figures I.12–I.13, Appendix I. First we shall study the use of the imperfect subjunctive in primary contexts in diﬀerent genres, considering Henning Andersen’s actualization theory (2.3.4). When studying the frequency of the imperfect subjunctive in primary contexts, two thirds of the 17 appearances are found in the genres of the lowest stylistic level, namely the treatises and the dialogues. While a considerable amount is also found in speeches, it is very rare in the letters and was not found in the historical genre. This evidence—not in itself very clear either—taken together with the fact that the combination becomes signiﬁcantly more rare over time and belongs mostly to a few authors, shows the picture of language users realizing that an expression is not Classical and therefore does not belong in the stylistically more interesting genres. Therefore, when we return to the

12The relation between present and imperfect subjunctive is diﬀerent in the early and the late authors (χ2 = 4.1, p < .05, with an even higher χ2 value if the imperfect is opposed to all other tenses).

273 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

question of these imperfect subjunctives in 13.1, we are aware that the matter actually seems to change according to the pattern of identity related motivations. Looking at the general distribution of tenses in various genres, it is characteristic for all the subjunctive verbs that they are not much affected by the differences between genres. The sequence of tenses is stable across genres, as there is constantly less present tenses in subjunctive tenses in the secondary contexts than in the corresponding indicative tenses. But some genres stand out from the others with respect to the frequency of present subjunctives in past contexts. Especially letters are different from the other genres and are remarkably more prone to this combination,13 while history uses this less.14 Yet, the differences in the basic tense system are not quite as remarkable as is the case in the indicative. The basic system of the indicative tenses that was described above is indeed recognized in every genre: the present and the perfect (as well as the future tenses not yet discussed) are the most normal in primary contexts, while all four basic tenses are equally allowed in the secondary contexts. But within this basic frame, the distributions are very flexible, and the natural topics and characteristics of the individual genres are easily identified in the indicative tenses. In Figure 12.3 the nature of the variation is exemplified. For example, the historical works have a greater amount of the perfect indicative in primary contexts than any other genre, which likely reflects that the historical genre refers more to past events. Dialogues, on the other hand, are generally very little concerned with the past, as is seen in the very high frequency of the present tense even in secondary contexts, though this effect is caused mostly by one author, namely Pontano, as his language appears in Figure 12.4i. Treatises are peculiar in showing very little mixing of tenses, in the sense that very few present verbs are used in past contexts, and very few past verbs are found in present contexts, which may be a consequence of the directly descriptive character of the genre, presenting information rather than discussing it. Because the three past tenses are all allowed in indicative clauses in secondary contexts, there is some freedom for variation between the aspectual expressions of the three

13χ2 = 11.1, p < .01. 14χ2 = 5.7, p < .05.

274 12.1 A Fundamental Difference Between Indicative and Subjun ive Tenses

(a) History (b) Dialogues (c) Treatises

Figure 12.3: Genre variation in indicative tenses (without ambiguous forms) past tenses. This means of expression however seems to be used in a quite similar fashion across the genres, and the imperfect and the perfect are usually used almost equally much. Only the pluperfect, which holds in it a notion of sequencing, is considerably more frequent in the historical genre than for example in the dialogues. This would also be a natural consequence of the historical genre concerned with the sequencing of events. In this way, it is clear that the indicative tenses are used with more variation than the subjunctive, though the grouping of the indicative tenses into Zeitsphären is a consistent grammatical pattern, within which the variation can take place. But note again, that the Zeitsphären in the actual language best describes the tenses in primary contexts, where both the imperfect and the pluperfect indicative are suppressed, belonging almost exclusively to secondary contexts. In the past context are found verbs that refer to all times (though seldomly the future, which we shall return to soon).

12.1.1.2 Personal Variation

Even though a first glance at the individual authors’ use of the tenses reveals very varying practices and different preferences, most authors choose their tenses within the basic systems that have been identified above. Figure 12.4 shows a sample of authors. At first it may be concluded that the sequence of tenses seems to be a pervasive system, in effect in every author’s language, because every author uses the present tense least

275 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

(a) Bruni (ind.) (b) Bruni (subj.) (c) Manetti (ind.) (d) Manetti (subj.)

(e) Filelfo (ind.) (f) Filelfo (subj.) (g) Valla (ind.) (h) Valla (subj.)

(i) Pontano (ind.) (j) Pontano (subj.) (k) Ficino (l) Ficino Figure 12.4: The tenses of individual authors (a sample) 276 12.1 A Fundamental Difference Between Indicative and Subjun ive Tenses in the secondary contexts, and almost always less in the subjunctive clauses than in the indicative clauses.15 Therefore, on this level of the investigation, it seems that especially the subjunctive tenses are attracted towards the past in secondary contexts in the individual language of all authors. Similarly, the imperfect is the most common subjunctive tense in the secondary context in every author’s language, except for Veronese who has only four subjunctive clauses in this context, of which two are the pluperfect, one the present, and the third seemingly a periphrastic form, persuasum haberet. Also the pluperfect seems to belong to the secondary context in the language of most authors, because all authors but two use the pluperfect subjunctive in those clauses, while it is very rare in the present contexts. Almost all authors also agree that a minor part of the subjunctive verbs in a past context may have the present subjunctive, which does not correspond to the main rule of the sequence of tenses in Classical Latin. Consequent- ly, the use of the present subjunctive in past contexts is a common trait of neo-Latin, and not the result of certain authors misconceiving the tense system. Therefore, these present tenses are characterized in 13.3.3. We saw above that the curious use of the imperfect subjunctive becomes signiﬁcantly less frequent after the four earliest humanists in this study. But even after those, more than half of the authors slip in this tense once or more in their data collection. It therefore seems to remain a use which is sometimes chosen by most of the authors, though it does become rare. Therefore, this use should also be characterized as a common neo-Latin trait. Naturally, all authors also agree on the present being the most common tense to use in primary contexts, in the subjunctive as well as in the indicative, and in the language of most authors the amount of present tenses is roughly the same in the indicative and the subjunctive clause in primary contexts. Therefore, it is also a common neo-Latin trait that the use of tenses is more alike in both moods when used in primary contexts than when used in secondary contexts. Apart from this, there seems to be rich variation and some personal preferences to be seen in the remaining tenses in primary contexts. Many

15Only Filelfo and Barbaro have a greater proportion of present tense in the secondary context of the subjunctives than of the indicatives. But while they both have a relatively high proportion of the present subjunctive in secondary contexts, it is more remarkable how few present verbs are found in their indicative clauses in secondary contexts, which causes the opposite relation between the indicative and the subjunctive in their clauses.

277 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

prefer the perfect when in need of a past tense in primary contexts in both moods, and most authors use some future tenses in the indicative, while only a few use the periphrastic futures of the subjunctive. In the secondary context, we see the characteristic basic difference between the two moods in almost all individual authors. An author’s subjunctive clauses in secondary contexts are almost always less varied than his corresponding indicative clauses, which leaves more room, so to speak, for free variation with the indicative tenses. In addition, there are remarkable differences among the authors between what tenses they use the most. And this personal variation is definitely strongest in these clauses, where most different tenses are ‘allowed’ in general. As was the case with the tenses studied across genres, therefore, most authors vary their individual language within a common frame, an actual language system. Two authors worth mentioning, though, are Manetti and Pontano. Manetti is the author who uses the imperfect subjunctive most in primary contexts (Figure 12.4d), and it is interesting that, in this data collection, all his subjunctive verbs are present and imperfect, except for the ambiguous form senserint found in a primary context, which is likely the perfect subjunctive.16 His subjunctive tenses, especially in primary contexts, differ from the general system in that the most frequent tenses do not correspond to the relation between tenses in the Latin of the other humanist writers, the Zeitsphären also known in Classical Latin. Some of these imperfect subjunctives are not merely due to choosing another past tense than the more regular perfect for referring to that which is previous to the MOS. They even regard the MOS, being part of general truth expressions, as they are part of clauses with ne which describe the purpose of various body parts, such as the eye lids being soft in order not to damage the pupil: “. . . palpebreque, que sunt tegmenta oculorum, mollissime tactu ne delerent aciem. . . ” (Manetti, Dign., I). In addition to this quite obvious mixing of times, Manetti also chooses the imperfect subjunctive at several occasions when similarly expressing the purpose in the context of such expressions as datum est, apta, etc. that may be conceived as either referring to previous acts, the present result of a previous act, or simply as an adjective with no coding for time: “Papille . . . feminis ad alendos fetus date, maribus ad solum decus,

16Manetti, Dign., I, l.17.

278 12.2 The Tenses in Various Clause Types ne informe pectus et quasi mutilum videretur.” (Manetti, Dign., I). The imperfect in this place is not unseen even in Classical Latin,17 but as we shall see in 12.4, it is more normal in neo-Latin to conceive the present perfects as primary context, and therefore construct such purpose clauses with the present subjunctive. Therefore, Manetti’s preference for the imperfect subjunctive comes close to violating the common tense system within which most of the remaining humanists produce their tenses. Pontano on the other hand uses the present indicative considerably more in past contexts than the other authors in the corpus. But this is not due to a basic difference in his tense system, but rather because he has a preference for clauses with dum, which caused also the characteristically great amount of indicatives in past contexts that was discussed in 9.4. Because of the very different uses of tenses in various clause types that we know from Classical Latin, we shall now study the relation of tenses in the different clause types.

12.2 The Tenses in Various Clause Types

Figure 12.5 shows the differences in tense use in the five studied clause types, as well as in Valla’s relative clauses from the Valla study.18 Once again it can be concluded that the subjunctive tenses do not permit much variation, and in all clause types there is a clear difference between the subjunctive clauses in primary context that show an invariable predominance of the present subjunctive, and those in secondary contexts that most often have the imperfect subjunctive. Importantly, it is clear that the occasional use of the present subjunctive in secondary contexts is not a characteristic of any particular clause type, as there seems to be an almost constant part of this combination—the only exception being clauses with dum that have no present subjunctives in secondary contexts. But this absence is not quite statistically significant, with the p value .09.19 However, if we should consider the 91% chance that this did not happen by chance, it

17Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180.5.b). 18All are depicted without the ambiguous values. Note that the occurrences of indicative verbs in the interrogative clauses and clause with ne are too few to be of interest in this respect. 19The diﬀerence in the distribution of present and imperfect subjunctive in this context in clauses with dum opposed to the four other clause types of the common neo-Latin study is not signiﬁcant: χ2 = 2.8, p = .09.

279 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

(a) Dum (ind.) (b) Dum (subj.) (c) Cum (ind.) (d) Cum (subj.)

(e) Quia (ind.) (f) Quia (subj.) (g) Ne (subj.) (h) Interrogative (subj.)

(i) Relative (ind.)* (j) Relative (subj.)* Figure 12.5: The tenses in individual clause types (* only Valla) 280 12.2 The Tenses in Various Clause Types may be explained as a sort of hyper correction resulting from a rare grammatical focus on the use of tenses, knowing that the present is used in the indicative after a certain meaning of dum, no matter the time context. Among the indicative tenses, this historical present in clauses with dum is the figure that stands out most clearly, resulting in many more present indicatives in clauses with dum in secondary contexts than are found in any other clause type. The imperfect subjunctive used in primary contexts is also a common trait found in all clause types—again except dum. Therefore, this is not the effect of a particular clause type either. In the subjunctive, the only two major differences between clause types are 1) to what extent the pluperfect subjunctive is used in past contexts, as it is definitely most normal in clauses with cum, but also rather frequent in Valla’s relative clauses. Related to this is apparently the prevalence of the perfect subjunctive in primary contexts, of which all clause types except ne may have considerably more based on the number of ambiguous forms that are either the perfect subjunctive or the future perfect.20 In this, clauses with ne therefore stand out showing the same tendency as known from Classical Latin to almost exclusively have the present or the imperfect subjunctive, based on the meaning of ne signifying the purpose of an action, which by nature takes takes place later than the action itself. Also 2) the use of the periphrastic future subjunctives is almost exclusively limited to interrogative clause, as it is the case in Classical Latin.21 Among the indicative tenses, most variation between clause types is found in the secondary contexts, as was the case with variation across genres and authors. This variation is mainly in choosing between the various past tenses, which reflects the meaning of the various connectors: cum for instance, being concerned with positioning in time and the sequence of events, is more often found with the perfective tenses, both in the indicative and the subjunctive, while quia seems to reflect that the cause of an action often has an non-perfective nature, being the ground on which decisions etc. are made. Note that these differences in nature of clause types is normally reflected in both moods. For example, extensive use of the pluperfect subjunctive in past contexts would seem

20In primary context the number of appearances of this form are: dum: 3; cum: 12; quia: 4; ne: 2; interrogative: 25; Valla’s relative: 6. 21More on the future tenses in 12.3.

281 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

to correspond to extensive use in the same clause type of the perfect and pluperfect subjunctive indicative in past contexts. In this relation, we see both the nature of a clause type that maintains some characteristics across moods, and we see the diﬀerence in the nature of tenses in the two moods in the more varied tense use in especially the past contexts.

The fact that the difference between the two moods, with respect to tenses, is clear in all clause types may be of interest when considering where this system of tenses comes from. It is possible that the tense system is a result of interference from the mother tongue of the humanists. In the Medieval Italian, there is a general difference between the preferred reference types of different clause types. Squartini (2010, esp. pp. 922; 936) describes how writers of Medieval Italian tend to choose their tenses mostly based on relative time reference in frasi argomentali, whereas the direct reference to the MOS is more normal in relative and adverbial phrases. This difference should be clear only in the indicative tenses, as the subjunctive tenses even in relative and adverbial phrases are mostly used with relative time reference, just as the frasi argomentali. The selection of clause types in the present study unfortunately presents a problem to the otherwise very relevant comparison of these two groups of clause types. The interrogative clauses are the only frasi argomentali in the study, and those are regularly constructed with the subjunctive. Therefore, we cannot compare the use of the indicative tenses in the two groups of clause types. But so far it looks like there is some difference in the nature of the indicative and the subjunctive tenses in all those clause types in this study that are used with both moods. And this difference is likely to be a difference in reference type. So with the data that we have seen so far, the tenses in the indicative and the subjunctive would not be characterized as of the same kind, such as the description of Medieval Italian indicates that both the indicative and the subjunctive tenses tend to have relative time reference in those clause types. It now looks as if the indicative tenses in these clause types at least have less relative time reference than the subjunctive tenses. We shall in the following go into detail with the question of reference type, and the question of more specific uses of tenses, both in neo-Latin, Classical Latin, and Medieval Italian, to see if this characterization of the difference between the indicative time reference (chiefly MOS) and the subjunctive time reference (chiefly R) is supported

282 12.2 The Tenses in Various Clause Types in the neo-Latin data. But in the raw data that we have studied so far, we cannot recognize the relative time reference from the Medieval Italian indicative adverbial and relative clauses. The subjunctive tenses deﬁnitely seem more bound than the indicative.

12.2.1 Clause Types Compared to Classical Latin

Later, in Chapter 13, we shall see some data on the Classical Latin distribution of tenses according to the context of the verb, drawn from the rather small Perseus Treebank. But now we shall compare the use of tenses in different neo-Latin clauses to Classical Latin based on the L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus. As the L.A.S.L.A. corpus does not provide information on the context of a verb, except for the actual clause type that it appears in, we shall now study the total use of tenses in each clause type. Two other differences between the neo-Latin data and the data from L.A.S.L.A. are 1) that the L.A.S.L.A. corpus does not code the periphrastic future subjunctives with sim and essem that are represented as present and imperfect subjunctive, respectively. Therefore these forms are in the following added to the present and the imperfect subjunctive in the representations regarding neo-Latin as well. And then 2) the L.A.S.L.A. corpus disambiguates the tenses that are in the neo-Latin corpus treated as ambiguous forms. These cannot be disambiguated in the neo-Latin study, and the charts representing neo-Latin will therefore contain two bars for each clause type, the first without ambiguous values, the second including ambiguous values. Comparing the distribution of tenses in the two Latin variants in Figure 12.6 reveals that there is one frequent difference between Classical Latin and neo-Latin. The authors of neo-Latin use the present more than in Classical Latin in most clause types.22 Except for this general difference between Classical Latin and neo-Latin, the communal differences between the various clause types are alike in both Classical Latin and neo-Latin, and so the individual clause type has the same characteristics with respect to use of the tenses in both variants of the Latin language. For example, clauses with cum were

22There is more present in neo-Latin in all clause types except dum and the subjunctive of quia, though the diﬀerence is only signiﬁcant in cum (indicative χ2 = 6.0, p < .05; subjunctive χ2 = 117, p < .01), ne (χ2 = 12.0, p < .01), interrogative (χ2 = 10.3, p < .01), and the indicative tenses in relative clauses (χ2 = 36.9, p < .01). All results are based on the neo-Latin data set (with or without ambiguous forms) that results in lower χ2 values (i.e. the closest possible match between Classical Latin and neo-Latin).

283 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses (d) neo-Latin subjunctive (* only Valla) (b) neo-Latin indicative (* only Valla) Figure 12.6: Classical Latin and neo-Latin tenses in individual clause types (a) Classical Latin indicative (c) Classical Latin subjunctive

284 12.2 The Tenses in Various Clause Types described above as influenced by its natural use for sequencing events in neo-Latin, and cum is similarly the clause type which in the Classical Latin language has the highest amount of the two ‘absolute-relative tenses’, the pluperfect in the subjunctive and the future perfect in the indicative. Similarly, dum with the indicative stands out in Classical Latin as it does in neo-Latin with the characteristic preference for the present tense. In general, we can see the same kind of variation of tenses across clause types in Classical Latin as in neo-Latin. This supports that the variation among clause types that we saw in neo-Latin is a natural result of the differences in meaning of the various connectors, yet contained within the general tense system. Therefore, the variation discussed for the neo-Latin language does not seem to violate the tense system. It would rather seem that the Classical Latin has even more differences between the tense use of the various clause types.

Two clause types are of particular interest with respect to this question of similarities and differences between the clause types, namely dum and cum. Recall that IJsewijn (1998, p. 410–11) mentions that there may be some confusion of the two clause types in neo-Latin, but that both clauses in neo-Latin resemble the Classical Latin use quite precisely with respect to the overall distribution of subjunctive and indicative verbs, as we have seen at several points in the previous chapters. But here, in the distribution of tenses, the two clause types converge somewhat, especially in the amount of present tenses in both the indicative and the subjunctive. While clauses with dum have slightly (and not significantly) less present tenses in both moods than is the case in Classical Latin, clauses with cum are constructed with present much more than in Classical Latin in both moods. Therefore the difference between the two clause types becomes remarkably less clear in neo-Latin than in Classical Latin, especially in the subjunctive. In the subjunctive, clauses with cum are even more associated with the present tense than are clauses with dum, which is clearly the opposite in Classical Latin. Yet, this possible confusion of the clause types has not allowed the humanists to use the pluperfect and future perfect indicative to any remarkable extent in their dum clauses, in assimilation with the characteristics of cum. In the neo-Latin data collection, only one instance of the future perfect in dum appears, and this use seems more to be due to another conception

285 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

of the grammatical form amavero than to another use of dum.23 Similarly, only one instance of the pluperfect indicative is found among the neo-Latin dum clauses, which has no counterpart in the Classical Latin data. According to Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 210.5) one typical characteristic of dum being influenced by cum in the post-Classical language is the more frequent use of the imperfect subjunctive instead of the present indicative. One of the differences between the Classical Latin and the neo-Latin dum as it appears in Figure 12.6 is indeed a higher frequency of the imperfect subjunctive. And reading those neo-Latin dum clauses with the imperfect subjunctive even reveals some lack the characteristic meaning of dum, that the clause in addition to expressing co-occurrence in time (‘while’) also expresses coincidence of the time span of two events or states (‘as long as’).24 For example, it may be difficult to understand the event of falling to the ground as having the same time span as hurrying away from the church: “mox dum se domum e templo corriperet, ad terram prae angustia collapsus est.” (Poliziano, Pact., 26). Yet, the reference to the time span of a dum clause is still used effectively in some instances. Accordingly, the two clauses may be confused to some extent, but mostly in the uses where they are most alike, where the difference lies in the nuance of how to view the time and the relation between the times of the two events. As we have seen before in neo-Latin, the difference from the Classical Latin use is not in introducing entirely new constructions into the language but rather in overgeneralizing expressions that are accepted in Classical Latin as well. We shall return to the confusion of dum and cum in 13.2.1 where some of the clauses will be studied in detail.

12.3 The Future Tenses

So far the future tenses have been kept out of the discussion except for occasional observations and the description by Krüger (1821) of the present and the future Zeitsphären being comprised into one in the subjunctive tenses, so that the dependent subjunctive clauses have the same tenses, regardless if the context concerns the present or the future. 23See a discussion of the particular dum clause below, p. 294. Only one future perfect after dum is represented in the L.A.S.L.A. data, and this is a form of memini and therefore has the meaning corresponding to a simple future indicative. 24E.g. Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 210.4.Anm.3).

286 12.3 The Future Tenses

In explaining this, Krüger discusses some connections between subjunctive mood and future time.

Man erinnere sich an den Conjunctiv nach ut, welches als folgernde Partikel immer auf etwas bloß Mögliches hindeutet, (nicht auf etwas Gegebenes, wie quod;) an den Gebrauch des Conjunctivs zu Aufforderungen; an die Formen der dritten und vierten Conjugation legam, audiam im Praes. Conj. und Fut. Ind.; an die Verwandtshcaft zwischen dem sogenannten Futurum exactum . . . mit dem Conjunctiv Perf. . . . –ero,–eris etc. und –erim,–eris. Desgleichen nähern sich die Tempora Praeterita des Conjunctivs amarem, amavissem, amaturus essem auch durch ihren Gebrauch als Conditionalia ebenfalls dem Begriff des Futuri. Georg T. Krüger (1821, p. 35) Russell Ultan (1978) in his article on “The Nature of Future Tenses” describes this relation between the future tense and the subjunctive in similar terms, explaining that the two are in some ways “mutually inclusive,” and therefore one is superfluous in many languages. This is the reason why “. . . in . . . Latin . . . the future tense is neutralized with the present (or non-past) in the subjunctive as opposed to the marked future of the indicative.” (Russell Ultan (1978, p. 94)). Therefore the similarities in the nature of the subjunctive and the future—both regarding that which is not yet certain—are one of the reasons for this neutralization. In addition, Latin is a prospective language (as are most Indo-European languages, see 9.4) in which the past/non-past contrast is more important than the future/non-future contrast, and the future tense may be neutralized in other environments as well, where the past/non-past contrast is maintained. Therefore the future alone has a tendency to be neutralized, which has not only to do with its similarities with the subjunctive. In the same way, the subjunctive is often defective in time reference, and the subjunctive in many languages therefore expresses no time distinctions.25 Accordingly, the neutralization of the future in the Latin subjunctive is based on several fundamental features of human language. At this point of the investigation, having studied the neo-Latin language in many details and having found natural relations between the elements of the language in most of the respects that have been considered, one would hardly expect the humanists to ‘violate’ this tendency either. Even though the basic tenses in Latin have no future subjunctive, there are possibilities for 25Ultan (1978, p. 94).

287 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

expressing future in the subjunctive, if necessary, for example in the periphrastic forms of future participles and sim or essem, and we know that some humanist grammarians even considered the form amavero a future subjunctive. But even with the morphological possibilities for expressing the future subjunctive explicitly, the neo-Latin system indeed is much like the Classical Latin system also with respect to future time reference, as we shall see.

12.3.1 Future as a Zeitsphäre

First we shall see if Krüger’s observation of the merging of the present and the future Zeitsphäre in Classical Latin subjunctive can be applied to neo-Latin as well. In Figure 12.7a and 12.7b it is seen that the most clear difference between the indicative tenses that are found in the context of a future or a present verb is the amount of future verb forms. Independent of the many ambiguous verbs that may be future indicative or future perfect, there is a clear and significant difference in the amount of verbs in the future and the future perfect in the two time contexts.26 This difference supports the characterization of the indicative tenses that we have approached above, namely that the indicative tenses vary greatly in accordance with the context, and it would seem that the humanists in their use of the indicative tenses often choose an actual future tense when referring to something that is situated in the future. But note that the future indicative also appears in the context of present verbs (see further below, 12.3.2), and that apart from the difference in the use of the future, the two moods are quite equal. Therefore the prevalence of the future indicative in the context of other future verbs is not an indication of two separate Zeitsphären, but likely a result of the natural tendency that subordinate clauses that modify something that has to do with the future more often regard the future themselves. Figure 12.8a that shows the distribution of the four main tenses that are found in both moods, the present, the imperfect, the perfect, and the pluperfect, reveals that the use of the future tenses is the only remarkable difference between the two different time contexts. The present and the perfect are the only other tenses that appear regularly in both future and present contexts, and the distributions are quite alike, though there may be a slight tendency that the perfect is more normal

26Excl. ambiguous forms: χ2 = 70.9, p < .01; incl. ambiguous forms: χ2 = 27.2, p < .01.

288 12.3 The Future Tenses

(a) Indicative (excl. (b) Indicative (incl. ambiguous) ambiguous)

Figure 12.7: Tenses with future and present time reference in the context

289 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

(a) Indicative (b) Subjunctive (excl. (c) Subjunctive (incl. ambiguous) ambiguous)

Figure 12.8: The basic tenses with future and present time reference in the context

in present contexts.27 Therefore we can conclude that future time reference is often expressed explicitly in the neo-Latin indicative tenses, but that the two Zeitsphären, as it were, are of the same nature. Knowing from the presentation above that there is a clear difference between this primary context and the secondary context, we see even in the flexible indicative tenses the result that the past/non-past distinction is the most important to express. When looking at the subjunctive tenses in Figure 12.7c–12.7d a different picture emerges. It is clear that the periphrastic future subjunctives are not very frequent, and that they are not preferably used in the context of other future verbs, such as was the case with the future indicatives. How these forms are distributed among themselves will be discussed shortly (12.3.3). In fact, no statistically significant difference is found in the distribution of subjunctive tenses in the two different contexts. This is clear when studying all tenses, and the extent of the similarity becomes clear when only the four basic subjunctive tenses are taken into consideration in Figure 12.8b–12.8c. The two Zeitsphären are effectively equal, and the merging of the two, discovered by Krüger in Classical Latin, is complete and indisputable in neo-Latin as well. The characterization of the subjunctive tenses, known from Classical Latin, as relative time reference is sup-

27The diﬀerence in the proportion of perfect indicative is not quite signiﬁcant: based on Figure 12.7a: χ2 = 3.7, p > .05; based on Figure 12.8a: χ2 = 1.4, p > .05.

290 12.3 The Future Tenses ported by the outspoken difference between the subjunctive and the indicative tenses that appears in Figure 12.7, that the prevalence of future reference in future context seen in the indicative tenses is not reflected in the subjunctive tenses in future context at all. The subjunctive tenses in both of the primary time contexts seem to be decided after the same system, likely the system of three different relative time references that we know from Classical Latin, namely as previous, simultaneous, or future to the superordinate verb. At least we can conclude that dependent subjunctive tenses are not affected by the future/non-future distinction in the context, whereas the past/non-past distinction proved important at the beginning of this chapter. Note also that apart from the fact that the indicative tenses actually refer to the future explicitly, there are no big differences between the indicative and the subjunctive tenses (cf. Figure 12.8). And yet, the flexibility of the indicative tenses, compared to the subjunctive, may be seen in the slight difference in the relation between the present and the perfect indicative, where the present and perfect subjunctive are almost perfectly equally distributed in present and future contexts. We shall now focus on the different forms that can be used for expressing future time reference in a dependent clause. First, the nature of the various forms should be characterized on the basis of the neo-Latin linguistic practice, and not exclusively on the knowledge on the corresponding Classical Latin tenses.

12.3.2 The Form Amavero

In Classical Latin the form amavero is used for events in the future that are prior to another future event, that which will have happened before something else will happen.28 As we have seen, there was in the Renaissance some confusion, at least in the grammatical descriptions, as to the nature of this form, and it was from time to time described as a future subjunctive. But there are no immediate indications that the form was actually used as a subjunctive form. For example, it is not more frequent in the clause types that have most subjunctive verbs in general. In fact, there are no unambiguous appearances of the form in either ne clauses or the interrogative clauses, which almost always have the subjunc-

28Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180.7).

291 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

tive. Especially the interrogative clauses that have very varied tenses would be a natural setting for a future subjunctive. Rather, the form is most frequent in clauses with cum, where we also saw a high frequency of the pluperfect, the other ‘absolute-relative tense’ in the Latin tense system. Therefore, it may seem to be related to the meaning of sequencing events, such as it is known to be used in Classical Latin. The form amavero will now be compared to the simple future indicative to test whether it is distributed according to sequencing. If the form is clearly more frequent in the context of future tenses than in the context of all other tenses, it will be an indication that its meaning relates to future tenses in its context, like the corresponding form in Classical Latin. For comparison, we shall also check for the distributions across the distinction between primary (incl. future) tenses and secondary tenses in the context. In Table 12.1 all unambiguous combinations29 have been plotted of the future indicative and amavero across these two distinctions in contexts, along with the probabilities that each distribution is the result of sheer chance.

Primary Secondary Future ind. 27 1 Amavero 8 0 Fisher exact p = .78

(a) Future Non-future Future ind. 14 14 Amavero 6 0 Fisher exact p = .03

(b)

Table 12.1: The form amavero

In the ﬁrst part (Table 12.1a) it is clear that both the simple future and the form amavero are mostly combined with primary contexts, which means that they are both 29Taking into consideration that the verbs in question must be unambiguous, as well as the verbs in the context. Therefore all contexts marked in the data collection as ‘PRIMARY’ (cf. Table E.2 (Appendix E), see ‘Time’) have been checked, and those clauses that have perhaps a future in the context have been removed here and in Table 12.2b below, namely two instances with deferam and decedam in the context.

292 12.3 The Future Tenses much more frequent in the context of future and present verbs than in the context of past verbs. This distinction therefore presents no diﬀerence in the use of the two future tenses.

But in the second part (Table 12.1b) there is a clear diﬀerence between the two future tenses. The simple future indicative is not further restricted within the primary contexts, and it appears equally much in the context of other future tenses and present tenses. As there are far more present contexts than future contexts, this of course makes the future more frequent within future contexts than within present contexts. But still a considerable amount of the future subordinate clauses appear in present contexts, and we cannot say that the future is suppressed is present contexts. The form amavero on the other hand was not found in the context of a present tense, but only in relation to future tenses. Reading through these sentences where a relation exists between amavero and another future tense, the sequencing of events in the future that we know from Classical Latin appears clearly in most cases, such as “Sed mihi crede; cum ad te Elegantias misero maledicos istos, nec plane litteratos, retundes.” (Valla, Ep., ad Arret. 1440, May 25).

I therefore propose that the form amavero be interpreted as a future perfect in neo- Latin, a praeteritum in futuro, like the use of the form in Classical Latin, in spite of it being described otherwise by some Renaissance grammarians. Note that the label ‘future subjunctive’ that it was given by Perotti is not accompanied by any description of its uses. It is therefore possible—and with this new information even likely—that Renaissance humanists have been aware of the use of the form in Classical Latin, and that its grammatical name rather served the purpose of describing the tenses of the two moods neatly in two identical systems: that the name was given with a focus on formal categorization rather than on the actual uses of the tenses. The use of amavero exempliﬁes the relative forces of two deliberate approaches of the humanists, namely grammatical description and imitative composition. As we have seen before, the imitation of actual Classical Latin language use often overrules the grammatical descriptions of the humanists, and here as in other respects they manage to use the form amavero in accordance with the Classical Latin model while describing it completely diﬀerent- ly. This indicates that parts of their language are more dependent on the imitation of particular expressions than on grammatical categorization.

293 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

Often in the study of neo-Latin, a few examples can be given on linguistic use that does not correspond to the common language system; sporadic occurrences that are not within the methodological focus of this study. But in this case, it deserves mentioning that this characterization of the form describes most of the appearances and the general conception of the form among the humanists, but not every single appearance thereof. There are few and sporadic examples of uses of amavero that indicate some confusion, likely caused by its grammatical description in the Renaissance, or the lack of description. For example, Poliziano uses the form in a dum clause where it would seem peculiar: “Omnino mihi multus in ore Politianus est, eritque dum vixero.” (Poliziano, Ep., 1.9.1) It seems that Poliziano would have the clause mean “as long as I live.” For that meaning, Classical Latin would usually have two future (or present) indicatives mark that the two states coincide over the same time span.30 In Classical Latin the future perfect is very rare in clauses with dum. For example, in the L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus only one occurrence is found, and that is a form of memini, which has an inherent meaning of present perfect, which means that the form meminerint would be used corresponding to a future indicative, supported here by the fact that meminerint is co-ordinate with the future form sperabunt:“. . . nec uero umquam . . . causa deerit dum homines perditi hastam illam cruentam et meminerint et sperabunt. . . ” (Cicero, de Oﬃc. (quoted after L.A.S.L.A.), 2.29.3).31 In Poliziano’s text, the form vixero perhaps corresponds to the future subjunctive that the Renaissance grammars claimed. But this is deﬁnitely an exception and not a regularity.

Knowing the properties of this form can be of use in other parts of the investigation of the tenses in neo-Latin. Because there is a considerable amount of ambiguous forms that are either this future perfect or the perfect subjunctive, we now know that these ambiguous forms are not likely to be the future perfect when not used in the context of a future tense.

30Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 210.1). But this use of the future perfect is seen also in The Latin Vulgate, cf. Platner and White (1926, § 142). 31In the total L.A.S.L.A. corpus, there are a few more occurrences of dum with the future perfect in the poetic texts, as well as Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 210.7.c) mention the possibility.

294 12.3 The Future Tenses

12.3.3 The Periphrastic Future Subjunctive

The following is a similar analysis of the periphrastic future subjunctives that are constructed with the future participle and a form of sim or essem. In Classical Latin the distribution of the two forms depends on the Zeitsphäre, the form with the present subjunctive sim being used in primary contexts, and the form with the imperfect subjunctive essem being used in secondary contexts.32

Primary Secondary Future ptc. + sim 14 0 Future ptc. + essem 0 6 Fisher exact p = 3 × 10−5

(a) Future Non-future Future ptc. + sim 3 11 Future ptc. + essem 0 6 Fisher exact p = .32

(b)

Table 12.2: Periphrastic future subjunctive

In Table 12.2a there is a clear difference between the two forms of periphrastic future, which corresponds to the use of the tenses in Classical Latin. The form with sim only appears in primary contexts, and the form with essem only in secondary contexts. In Table 12.2b, therefore, all occurrences of the future with essem are in a non-future context as well. And there is no clear effect among the futures with sim to be seen when studied in the future/non-future distinction. Therefore the difference between the two forms is purely one of belonging to different Zeitsphären, and not related to the further distinction within the primary contexts between future and present. In this, there is a fundamental difference between the two pairs of future tenses, the two periphrastic future subjunctives and the two future indicatives. That difference seems related to the general nature of tenses in the two moods: the indicative tenses relating more to

32Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180.1).

295 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

their actual place in time, and the subjunctive tenses relating primarily to the overall distinction between primary and secondary contexts. Also, the two periphrastic forms are made of similar components: the future time reference being of the same kind based on the future participle, and the ﬁnite forms both being the imperfective tense in their respective Zeitsphären.

12.3.4 Explicit Expression of Future

We have seen above that the future is often expressed explicitly in the indicative in neo-Latin. Returning to the sample of individual authors’ language in Figure 12.4, the future indicative is found in the language of almost every author.33 Similarly the future indicatives appear in all genres (cf. Figure 12.3), and the variation in their frequency in diﬀerent clause types resembles the frequencies in Classical Latin (cf. Figure 12.6). In short, the expression of future in the indicative seems naturally varied and in accordance with the Classical Latin practice. The data collection cannot present much evidence on the use of the periphrastic future indicatives in neo-Latin. Stotz (1998, IV. § 61.2) notes that those forms in Medieval Latin no longer express only the near future as in Classical Latin, but also the far future, and that they are used for example for expressing prophecies. In the neo-Latin data, these forms only appear in three instances, and these three instances do not suggest that the Medieval use of the periphrastic future indicative should also be normal in neo- Latin. Once Bruni has dicturus est for that which is just about to happen: “Colucius eo vultu quo solet cum quid paulo accuratius dicturus est, ubi nos attentos in eum vidit, huiusmodi est verbis sermonem exorsus.” (Bruni, Dial. Verg., p. 82). And twice Valla uses the periphrastic future in describing God’s foreknowledge, for example “. . . quia ita futurum est Deum providisse . . . ” (Valla, Lib. arb., p. 22). While this would immediately resemble the prophetic Medieval use, Valla discusses God’s foreknowledge and its implications with the free will of Man in terms of God knowing if someone is about to move his foot, or which foot someone is about to move. So even in Valla’s case of God knowing the future, the topic is still the near future and not a prophetic future. These

33Only Manetti and Filelfo do not use an indicative future or future perfect. All other authors—also those not depicted in the ﬁgure—use it at least once.

296 12.3 The Future Tenses three appearances of the periphrastic future indicative cannot be taken as evidence for what the humanists did not do. We can only conclude that the data collection did not support the Medieval use, and perhaps the sheer infrequency of the form can further indicate some caution in the use of the form. Concerning the subjunctive, there is in Classical Latin a tendency that the future time reference is not expressed explicitly when the nature of the clause type itself indicates that it concerns the future. Krüger mentions the construction of ut in the considerations on the future and the subjunctive quoted at the beginning of this section. Because the subjunctive ut expresses either a consequence, a purpose, or a wish, the content will by nature have a future relation to its context. Therefore it is unnecessary to express the future time reference explicitly, and these clauses almost always have the present or the imperfect subjunctive.34 The negated counterpart to the ut of purpose is ne, which is part of this study. In the neo-Latin clauses with ne it is clear that the humanists construct these clauses also almost exclusively with the present and the imperfect subjunctive, with no further need to express the future. It is unclear whether this is due to similarities in their conception of moods and tenses, or whether it is due to the simplicity of the clause type, making it easy to imitate, as discussed above with regard to the mood in ne clauses (8.1). On the contrary, interrogative clauses are known in Classical Latin to regularly be constructed with the periphrastic future subjunctives, because they by nature may refer to any point on the time-line. And in neo-Latin, most instances of these future subjunctive forms are indeed found in the interrogative clauses, only one found in each of clauses with cum, quia, and relative clauses. This almost looks like the use that would be expected in Classical Latin. In the Valla corpus a periphrastic future that occurs in a clause with cum is found where the future participle relicturus reﬂects a similar future participle relicturum in a parallel expression, and so the explicit use of the future here serves the stylistic purpose of outlining this parallelism.

Alter fratrum sperat se relicturum Mariam suam, Castelle reginam, cum alter frater, qui non sperabat, suam Mariam relicturus esset. Lorenzo Valla, Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum, I.3.6

34Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180.6.Anm.6).

297 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

Valla’s choice of tense in this example deviates from the norm in Classical Latin. But the use of the periphrastic future seems to serve a stylistic purpose, rather than being based merely on ignorance. It may be considered an example of Valla choosing to latine loqui rater than merely grammatice loqui (cf. 4.3), though we cannot know whether Valla was aware that he deviated from the Classical Latin norm or not. And so we cannot know if the deviation happened on purpose, but the form he chose clearly serves a stylistic purpose. Of Valla’s remaining deviations from the Classical Latin norm with regard to the periphrastic future subjunctives one appears in a clause with ne,“. . . equis qui aut saucii aut aﬄicti subsequi nequibant, ne hosti profuturi essent subnervatis.” (Valla, Gesta, I.13.9), and one after dum. Sub hec machine promote sunt usque ad labrum tertie fosse et dum scala, iam iam demisso ponte, tactura cacumen hostilis turris esset, oppidani ignem turri sue immittunt ceteraque spiracula obstruunt . . . idem, I.16.7 The only periphrastic future subjunctive in one of these clause types found in the L.A.S.L.A. corpus was written by Cicero in a clause with ne. Etenim verebatur ne populus Romanus ab isto eas poenas vi repetisse videretur, quas veritus esset ne iste legibus ac vestro iudicio non esset persoluturus.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, In Verrem, V.163.20–22 Perhaps worth noticing is that all Valla’s three deviations from the basic Classical Latin practice are found in his historical work. This may be due to the conception of the historical genre as more elevated in style, that linguistic variation is sought to an extent that may suppress the normal linguistic use. In Valla’s clause with dum above, dum expresses some kind of purpose—originally a iussive subjunctive.35 As it appears from the following example from Valla where dum has more or less the same function, it is not necessary to express the future time reference explicitly in these clauses where dum expresses purpose, and so Valla’s use of the periphrastic future subjunctive is used interchangeably with the present or imperfect subjunctive. Parum constat, an integra ﬁde comes Ferdinandum regem agnoverit promis- saque admiserit, an tempus extrahi voluerit dum rei gerende adesset occasio.

Lorenzo Valla, Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum, III.1.7

35Cf. Apold (2006, § 441 n. 2).

298 12.3 The Future Tenses

Therefore, Valla seems to use these rare periphrastic future subjunctives more outside their most natural setting of indirect interrogative clauses than is the case in Classical Latin, though a rare example with ne appeared also in Cicero. Returning to the remaining authors and looking at them individually, it appears that six of them—almost half of those represented in the corpus—use at least one periphrastic future subjunctive. So even though the forms are rare in neo-Latin, several authors agree to use them, and they are therefore not unusual. Also in the Classical Latin language the periphrastic future subjunctive is rather rare. In the Perseus total corpus, containing 53.143 running words, only six appearances are returned.36 Comparing the size of the two corpora, the proportion of these few periphrastic forms is roughly the same in the two samples.37 So overall, the use of these periphrastic forms seems to have roughly the same frequency in the two variants of Latin. But in neo-Latin it seems that some authors have a considerably higher preference for these forms, especially Valla, and also Poggio. We have already seen how Valla may use these forms as a stylistically interesting verb form used in variation with the present or imperfect subjunctive with future reference. If we should consider the use of these rather rare futures an indication of a complex, naturally varied language, we should on the other hand also consider if those authors who use the form more than the others can also reveal that they use it primarily in a few fixed expressions, and not as a true, productive part of their language. The very high amount of these forms that are found in interrogative clauses is matched in the data from the Perseus Treebank, where five out of the six appearances are found in interrogative clauses, and the remaining one in a clause with dum. Even though this is very little data for comparison, it gives no reason to believe that neo-Latin should be fundamentally different from Classical Latin in this respect. And so, we cannot take the dominant use of the forms in one clause type as evidence for unnaturally invariable use. Reading the neo-Latin clauses that are constructed with the periphrastic future sub-

36Annis Query: case=“nominative” & tense=“future” & POS=“participle” & LEMMA=“sum” & mood=“subjunctive” & #1 _=_ #2 & #2 _=_ #3 & #4 _=_ #5 & #3 ->parent[relation=“AuxV”] #5. 37They make up a slightly less proportion of the total number of words in the neo-Latin corpus (1 : 11, 617) than in the Classical Latin sample (1 : 8, 857), but in the Classical Latin query, all appearances from all clause types were returned, and in the neo-Latin study only the few speciﬁed clause types.

299 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

junctive reveals that there are indeed some stereotypical expressions that could be viewed as an indication that the use of these tenses were based on ﬁxed expressions. One is the kind of contexts that these clauses appear in. All three of Poggio’s periphrastic futures appear after verbs of (not) knowing, namely nescis, nouit, and “ut certior essem. . . ” Similarly, Valla who uses the forms more frequently has a preference for constructing verbs of (not) knowing with these forms, and they are thus found after for example Deum nescire, praenoscit, compertum habet, and in a few expressions such as “neque ipse scio quid facturus sim.” But several examples are also found of the forms appearing in very diﬀerent contexts, such as in this quia clause:

At ubi delectum ducem Ferdinandum comperit, vel magis timuisse dicitur, quia non per alium, ut rex fuerat, sed per se esset bella gesturus. Lorenzo Valla, Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum, I.5

This example also shows that the actual verb that is found in this form is a genuine verb, both modified by the direct object bella and the two coordinate adverbial phrases per alium and per se. Such verbs with actual, specific content are of interest, because many of the verbs that are found in this form are much less specific and more like fixed expressions. Most frequent are the forms facturus (3 appearances), futurum/a (5), and euenturum (5), that are all found across different authors’ language. In fact, Poggio’s three periphrastic future subjunctives are one of each of these verbs, and also Bruni only use two of these verbs in the periphrastic form. This could indeed be taken as an indication of a less varied, less productive use of a verb form, both among these two early authors, and in a greater part of Valla’s many instances of this form. But outside these more typical combinations of (not) knowing what to do, or what will happen, many different expressions are found.38 Comparing this picture to Classical Latin, the same seems characteristic in the very few examples that appeared in the Perseus Treebank. Three are forms of futurus/a and one of facturi, while the remaining two are different forms with ‘actual’ content (sit habiturus and “. . . sit laturus in aras. . . ”). Accordingly, this characterization of the neo-Latin use of the periphrastic future subjunctive, being greatly influenced by some typical expressions and yet showing free

38perventurum, dicturus, servaturus, responsurus, moturus, electura, relicturus, gesturus, and cognitu- rus.

300 12.4 The Present Perfe and the Hi orical Present variation in the remaining instances, seems to be a rather precise imitation of Classical Latin, though the data from the Perseus Treebank is indeed sparse.

12.4 The Present Perfect and the Historical Present

In Classical Latin there are especially two situations where a conflict arises between the meaning of a tense and its grammatical form. The present perfect is a perfect form that is used so that the focus is on the present result of the past action, and the historical present is a situation in the past which is described with a present form by a sort of ‘frontshifting’ of tenses.39 The conflict in the present perfect is a result of the nature of the perfect tense in Latin, being a past tense with reference to the present, a ‘praeteritum in praesenti’. The historical present, on the other hand, is rather a stylistic change in viewing a situation. With historical tenses, true temporal referents exist but, through a process of actualization to achieve “more vividness” or “greater narrative power,” present and future tense forms are substituted for the expected past tense forms. Russell Ultan (1978, p. 87) These two uses of tenses therefore present similar conflicts between grammatical form and logical position on the time-line, but for two different reasons. They can provide interesting insights into the mechanisms of time in neo-Latin, because they can help determine which is the stronger factor: the grammatical form or the actual semantic place in time. According to the descriptions of Classical Latin in Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180.2; 5), both forms can be followed by primary as well as secondary tenses of the subjunctive. Regarding the present perfect, its ‘natural’ construction should be to follow the patterns for primary tenses, while the use of secondary tenses after this form would likely happen under influence from the historical use of the perfect tense. Both patterns would be normal in Classical Latin. Similarly with the historical present both patterns are normal in Classical Latin, the use of secondary tenses being based on the meaning of the verb, and the use of primary tenses being based on its grammatical form. According to Kühner and Stegmann there is a broad personal variation between different authors 39Ultan (1978, p. 99).

301 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

(a) Indicative tenses (excl. ambiguous) (b) Subjunctive tenses (excl. ambiguous)

Figure 12.9: The historical present and the present perfect

of Antiquity. Most of “den besten Schrifstellern” prefer having the historical present followed by the primary tenses, among others Plautus, Cicero, Caesar, and Ovid, while the historical tenses were dominant in the post-Classical Latin of for example Tacitus and Justinian, as well as pre-Classical Ennius and Classical Livy and Nepos. In Figure 12.9 the use of tenses in both of these contexts are compared to the patterns that we know from the ordinary primary and secondary contexts. Among the indicative tenses that are used with the historical present it is interesting that we ﬁnd several occurrences of tenses that are almost exclusively found in secondary contexts, the imperfect and the pluperfect. There are too few indicative clauses to properly test the results, and we cannot deduce much from the distribution of tenses or from what is not found. But the sheer presence of these two forms surely show that the indicative tenses found in connection to a historical present can indeed point directly to the past. Very little can be said on the basis of the few indicative clauses found in the context of the present perfect, as both the present and the perfect indicative appear there, and both these forms are fairly acceptable in both primary and secondary context. But among the subjunctive tenses the result is more characteristic. The subjunctive tenses that are used in the context of the historical present has a considerably closer resemblance to those known from secondary contexts than those from primary contexts. The amount of the present subjunctive in this context is close to being the same as in

302 12.4 The Present Perfe and the Hi orical Present ordinary secondary contexts,40 while it is significantly different from the ordinary primary contexts.41 In fact, the only significant difference that exists between the tenses following the historical present and those following the ordinary secondary tenses, is the mutual distribution between the imperfect and the pluperfect subjunctive,42 which cannot be the direct result of the two-sided nature of the historical present, as none of these tenses are normally associated with the primary contexts. Yet, in one single appearance we may see the possibility for constructing the historical present in accordance with its present form, namely in the fact that it is constructed once with each of the two possible periphrastic future subjunctives. Statistically, this one verb is of very little interest, but again its sheer existence shows that it is possible to conceive the historical present as a present tense—recall how these periphrastic forms were distributed precisely in accordance with the two Zeitsphären above (12.3.3). But all in all, it is clear that humanists construct clauses that are dependent on a historical present according to the semantic meaning of the tense, and they only very rarely decide to follow the grammatical form—if at all, except for the one periphrastic future with sim. With this overall tendency, they do not depart from that which was allowed in Classical Latin, but they certainly place themselves in the tradition of later authors and do not, for example, imitate Cicero’s often sporadic variation between the two possibilities.43 In the same way, the tenses that are dependent on the present perfect clearly have the character of primary tenses. Also in their case, therefore, the actual meaning of the tense seems to dominate over the grammatical form, or any associations with the use of the perfect as a historical tense. Again, this is also in accordance with what is allowed and normal in Classical Latin. Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 180.2) describe that most authors vary between choosing primary or secondary tenses after the historical present. They propose some

40χ2 = 1.3, p > .05. 41χ2 = 135.0, p < .01. 42χ2 = 10.6, p < .01. 43For example, in a passage such as the following, where he follows a different strategy after each of two occurrences of a historical present (fit and allegat), which are in the modern text only separated by a few lines, though also a decretum seems to have been read aloud during the actual performance of the speech: “itaque decurionum decretum statim fit ut decem primi profiscantur ad L. Sullam doceantque eum qui vir Sex. Roscius fuerit, conquerantur de istorum scelere et iniuriis. . . nam statim Chrysogonus et ipse ad eos accedit et homines nobiles allegat qui peterent ne ad Sullam adirent et omnia Chrysogonum quae vellet esse facturum pollicerentur.” (Cicero, S. Rosc., 9.19–10.3).

303 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

(a) Indicative tenses (excl. am- (b) Subjunctive tenses (excl. ambiguous) biguous)

Figure 12.10: Diﬀerent clause types under the historical present

general tendencies, though they are not nearly regularities. There should be a tendency towards choosing secondary tenses more often in clause types that describe that which goes before the time of the historical present, and primary tenses for that which comes after the time of the historical present, particularly if it is somehow part of the idea that is expressed in the historical present. Therefore for example purpose clauses and interrogative clauses would more often tend to have primary tenses in these contexts.

The use of the tenses in the individual clause types when dependent on the historical present is shown in Figure 12.10. The indicative tenses are sparse in this context, but it is clear that most of the present indicatives that were seen in Figure 12.9 above are actually historical presents themselves, the ﬁxed historical present in clauses with dum meaning ‘while’. Knowing this supports the suggestion above, that also the indicative tenses seem to be used according to meaning rather than to grammatical form when subordinate to the historical present. Among the subjunctive tenses are found the explanations for the two most frequent tenses in this context, the imperfect and the pluperfect subjunctive. The imperfect is most frequent in clauses with ne and cum, and most of the pluperfect subjunctives are found in clauses with cum. The tenses used after cum would seem to agree with Kühner and Stegmann’s observation that clauses that express anteriority tend to be constructed with secondary tenses in the context of a historical present.

304 12.4 The Present Perfe and the Hi orical Present

On the other hand, the purpose clauses with ne do not seem to prefer primary tenses in accordance with being a clause type that expresses posteriority, and none of the remaining clause types present any clear and reliable tendencies due to the relatively little number of clauses that are found in the context of an historical present. Therefore the data presents no reason to believe that the humanists in general extended this frontshifting of historical events to the clauses that are subordinate to it. This indicates both that the awareness of the actual place in time was stronger than grammatical forms, and that the humanists may have conceived the historical present as a separate stylistic eﬀect to be applied to individual words and not entire sentences. Before returning to the actual use of the tenses in neo-Latin, we shall turn our attention to this last indication of explicit awareness, which can be described by studying where the historical tenses actually appear in a larger perspective.

12.4.1 The Historical Tenses as Linguistic Intertextuality

Pontano’s use of dum with the historical present was discussed in 9.4.3, and I argued that he seems to conceive the present indicative in dum speciﬁcally as a historical tense, which primarily belongs to past contexts. And there were some indications—even though he uses it frequently in dialogues—that he may associate dum and the historical present with the history genre, or historical passages. So, Pontano’s use of dum with the present indicative shifts from being purely a grammatical mechanism, a linguistic curiosity of that conjunction, to being a stylistic component. Pontano seems to be the only humanist to use dum in that particular way, but we shall now study the use of the historical present in general and its stylistic value. In Appendix H, Figures H.14 and H.1544 show in which genres the historical tenses are found, and how much individual authors use it. Expectedly, the historical works have a very high proportion of the secondary tenses, and especially the historical present is found to a much larger extent in the history genre than in the other genres. Across the individual authors, we see that the early authors apparently use the past tenses more than the later authors do. This can be accounted for by the fact that the early authors are represented with much more historical works

44For a note on the statistic validity of this data as a fairly, but not completely, random sample, please consult the discussion in the appendix.

305 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

than the later authors. The only late author who contributes to the history genre in this study, Poliziano, does indeed show the typical ‘historical’ preference for both ordinary secondary tenses and the historical present, as do all of the other, earlier, authors who contribute to the histories, namely Bruni, Poggio, and Valla. This apparent consensus among historical writers, that they all use the historical present in their historical works—and mostly only there (46 out of 56 instances are found in history)—justifies considering if this is an example of more specific linguistic intertextuality, not only pointing to Classical Latin, but pointing to the stylistic practice in historical works specifically (cf. 4.2.2). That the historical present is being used as a stylistic device is hardly surprising, as its use has long been recognized as a means of making the past appear more present or dramatic. But according to Stotz (1998, IV. 56.1) the use of the historical present did not generally seem to be used deliberately for achieving an effect of vividness in the Middle Ages. And yet, it seems to have been recognized as such by the humanists. For example, Valla mentions in passing, while describing the uses of potior, how “... potitur pro potitus est. praesertim more historico, legimus.” (Valla, Eleg., 3.34). A few paragraphs later, he describes a similar stylistic effect which can be achieved from using the perfect in stead of the future:

Cur de futuro non per verbum futuri temporis auctores interdum loquantur Hannibal apud Titum Livium alloquens milites inquit: Si tales animos in proelio habebitis, quales hic ostenditis, vicimus. Quintilianus: Si tales milites omnes habemus mari vicimus. Cur de futuro non per verbum futuri temporis locutus est? Nempe ad asseverandam rem, ut non futura, sed iam esse videa- tur: multoque plus ponderis habet, ut dicamus vicimus, quam vincemus. idem, 3.48

This last example—concerning an effect not specific for the historical genre—shows that changing the view on an action was indeed considered a stylistic effect by Valla, and the use of more historico above indicates that he refers to a notion that was well known among his contemporaries. With this evidence, we can answer positively to the questions of most of the criteria for specific linguistic intertextuality that I proposed in 4.2.2, and so we have evidence that the tenses can be used in neo-Latin as open and conscious allusion in a sense more varied and specific than simply imitating the Classical Latin language as a whole. In addition to this, it also shows common linguistic practice, which

306 12.4 The Present Perfe and the Hi orical Present we consider an indication of natural language use that takes place in a community with common variation across registers. An unmarked tense—often the most unmarked present tense—can be used in a past narrative context in most natural languages, though to very different extents.45 Knowing that the historical present is a linguistic universal, the primary use of it in the historical works seems even more like some deliberate consensus, a stylistic marker of a genre. But what, then, of the remaining ten instances that were found outside the historical genre? A closer look at them46 reveals a much more restricted use than in the historical genre, where several different clause types appear in context of a historical present. In the other genres, nine out of ten instances are uses of cum historicum with the imperfect subjunctive or the pluperfect subjunctive. However, our focus in this section is not on the subordinate cum clauses, but on the historical present itself. In most of the instances (6), the historical present is merely an inquit, one of the least impressive and characteristic uses of the historical present, which may indeed be considered an actual perfect tense, as it appears in the form inquisti used once by Cicero.47 Among these, there are passages that do not resemble the historical genre at all. However, of the passages with the historical present several have some historical content and treat figures and persons from Antiquity, as when Pontano introduces his De principe with a history of Scipio. Scipio is a character also of Classical history, for example described by Livy, and we could describe the mentioning of a Classical historical figure in connection with this historical use of tenses in terms of what Schøsler calls ‘explicit linguistic intertextuality’, explicit mentioning of, not the genre or the author, but the theme of a Classical Latin historical work. In the remaining passages, the reference to history is less explicit. On the contrary, other genres are often treated explicitly, such as philosophy or eloquence, though in a manner that resembles small pieces of history within the other genres, or history of the other genres, for example:

At Xenocrates, cum legati ab Alexandro quinquaginta ei talenta attulissent, invitavit legatos ad caenam, his tantum quae necessaria erant apposuit sine

45Dahl (1984, pp. 116–18); Ultan (1978, p. 87; 99). 46With these locations in the data collection (cf. Appendix C): In dialogues: # 521; 524; 576; 586. In letters: # 665; 666; 972. In speeches: # 364. In treatises: # 718; 795. 47““tu vero” inquisti “molestus non eris.”” (Cicero, de Orat., II.259.9).

307 12 A Fundamental Chara erization of the Neo-Latin Tenses

ullo apparatu. Cum postridie legati pecuniam ei numerare vellent, “Non ne”, inquit, “hesterna caenula intellexistis me pecunia non egere?”. Niccolò Perotti, Oratio de abdicanda lege, 1.18

Cum eiusmodi ergo tempore sicarius Philippus Senam venisset, neque me usquam videret, adit praeclarum in philosophia virum ac medicum pruden- tissimum Petrum Iohanetum, qui ex patria Bononia pulcherrimis praemiis accersirus medicinam docebat, ut nunc etiam docet in eius urbis publico studio. Francesco Filelfo, Epistole, p. 170

Nam eo tempore loquitur Cicero cum diﬃcilius indocti homines quam nunc docti reperirentur: scimus enim nunquam magis quam Ciceronis tempore latinam linguam ﬂoruisse; et tamen ita loquitur ut supra exposuimus. Leonardo Bruni, Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, p. 96

As these examples suggest, the historical present is often found outside the historical works where the author obtains a specific historical expression, and it appears—perhaps by chance—in passages with some meta discourse concerning genre or ars. This I suggest to conceive as yet another piece of supportive evidence that the use of the historical present, except for the very simple inquit, is indeed an instance of very genre specific linguistic intertextuality. In Classical Latin the historical present is also more common in historical works, as well as in poetry,48 and this use in the neo-Latin language therefore appears to be deliberate imitation of the Classical Latin stylistic proprietas. The neo- Latin use is perhaps even more genre restricted than the Classical Latin use, as some of the more famous Classical Latin passages of historical present, describing the actions of Verres, appear in Cicero’s speeches,49 which has apparently not influenced the neo-Latin distribution much. We cannot, however, compare the distributions across genres to the practice in Classical Latin based on the corpora available.

In this chapter we have identiﬁed the fundamental nature of the neo-Latin tense system, based on the distribution of the tenses. We have seen that there exists in neo-Latin a very stable tense system—across time, genres, clause types, and individual authors—which is

48Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 31.2–3). 49In Cicero, Ver., 2.48; 4.38, also quoted by Kühner and Stegmann (1914).

308 12.4 The Present Perfe and the Hi orical Present only very seldomly violated by some peculiarities in the language of individual authors, or with regard to stylistic effects. Seen from a quantitative point of view, there is a fundamental difference between indicative and subjunctive tenses in secondary contexts, which seems to result from the indicative tense system being more flexible—possibly with more MOS-reference than relative reference—and the subjunctive tenses being governed more by the sequence of tenses, which to some degree suppresses the present and the perfect subjunctive from the secondary contexts. In the following chapter, we shall study in detail some of the combinations of tenses that may help characterizing further the reference types of the neo-Latin tenses. In the use of tenses following the present perfect and the historical present, we saw a clear preference for choosing the tense that corresponds best to the actual position on the time line, rather than maintaining the grammatical relations between the morphological forms. This relationship between semantic and morphological weight will be central also to the following considerations of the nature of the neo-Latin tenses. We have also seen how the humanists construct the particular form amavero apparently through precise imitation of Classical Latin models, rather than based on their grammatical knowledge. Towards the end of the following chapter, we shall see that the actual imitation of the Classical Latin authors—perhaps even specific Classical Latin authors—in fact seem to be the basic foundation of the neo- Latin tense system, supported by the very similar tense system in the mother tongue of the humanists.

309

Chapter 13

The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

In the previous chapter, several circumstances have been presented that indicate both similarities and a fundamental difference between the indicative and the subjunctive tenses, the differences being most profound in past contexts. We shall now look further into the actual use of the tenses in order to reach a more nuanced characterization of the neo-Latin tenses, and in an attempt to find the origin of the neo-Latin system. Is it mere interference from the Volgare, does it represent a unique time system, or is it an imitation of the Classical Latin tense system? The following is based on interpretations of particular quotations from the neo-Latin corpus. And yet, the approach is still quantitative and based on the quantitative findings of the previous chapter. And so the clauses that we shall now see have been chosen because they seem good representatives for the total picture, either because they can give an explanation for some basic tendencies in the tense system, or because they form some peculiarity that needs explaining. This means that many clauses in the study have not been studied qualitatively, and that some particularities remain hidden in the data even after this last chapter on the neo-Latin tenses. This is a study with focus on the overall nature of neo-Latin, and with the clauses that we shall now study we can both describe the basic nature of neo-Latin tenses and reveal some instances of more particular uses of the tenses, which will give an

311 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

overview over the interplay of the various factors that we know to inﬂuence the neo-Latin language.

13.1 The Imperfect Subjunctive in Primary Contexts

The imperfect subjunctive is the most common tense in secondary contexts, and we have already seen from its high frequency in clauses with ne that its imperfective nature makes it suitable for expressing the purpose of an action in the past, and thereby it may have some future reference, at least future in relation to the past action. As we shall soon see, the imperfect subjunctive may in neo-Latin even express future reference also in direct relation to a primary verb, but it its found only in sporadic appearences. We have seen that there are a few occurrences of the imperfect subjunctive in primary contexts, where it is not normal in Classical Latin. Even though they are not very frequent in this context, they may be important to the question on the origin of the neo-Latin tense system, because of a possible relation to the use of the imperfect subjunctive in the Medieval Italian, which is is rather different from the Classical Latin. Squartini (2010) who describes the uses of dependent tenses in Medieval Italian mentions many different uses of the imperfect subjunctive. In secondary contexts it is used such as we know it from Classical Latin, and as it seems to be used in neo- Latin, to refer to that which happens simultaneously with a past verb. But it also appears in primary contexts, side by side with the present subjunctive used for expressing simultaneity with a present verb, and it may even express some reference to the future. This use may be reflected in a number of the neo-Latin clauses from the data collection that have the imperfect subjunctive in i primary context. We have already seen (12.1.1.2) how Manetti uses the imperfect subjunctive seemingly for expressing a general truth, such as the general purpose of various human body parts. It appears that Manetti’s extensive use of the imperfect subjunctive for such purposes is connected specifically to the clause type ne. In a particularly interesting instance, he uses the imperfect subjunctive in a ne clause in a context where he has just used the present subjunctive possit in a similar clause with ut. The negation may be what makes the difference in time:

312 13.1 The Imperfe Subjun ive in Primary Contexts

Quid dicam de manibus . . . quas solertissimus artifex plano ac modice conca- vo sinu fictas, ut quid tenendum sit apte possit insidere, in digitos terminavit, in quibus difficile est expedire utrum ne species an utilitas maior sit? . . . et forma unguium rotunda, concavis tegminibus digitorum fastigia comprehen- dens ac firmans, ne mollitudo carnis in tenendo cederet, magnum prebet ornamentum. Gianozzo Manetti, De dignitate et excellentia hominis, I It is unclear whether this use of the imperfect subjunctive in Manetti’s description of Man is due to some conception of the imperfect subjunctive as a general marker of ‘simultaneity or posteriority’, regardless of the position in time, or whether it is rather an indication of some overgeneralization of the expression of irrealis. In Latin, the imperfect subjunctive is used for expressing the irrealis concerning the present time. These particular expressions with ne regard that which Manetti knows to be prevented, and he could therefore conceive it as an unreal or impossible outcome. On the other hand, when Bruni uses a similar expression for that which he fears will happen in the future, the imperfect tense can hardly be caused by any unreal use:

Itaque timeo, ne nobis ad hanc rem tractandam tempus deesset: est autem opus verbis non paucis ad illos defendendos. Leonardo Bruni, Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, p. 116 Here deesset deﬁnitely seems to be an actual reference to future events expressed through the imperfect subjunctive. Bruni and Poggio use the imperfect subjunctive in a similar way also in two adversative clauses with cum, that express some general circumstances regarding general problems. The two following examples cannot reject the possibility that the imperfect subjunctive in these cases are actually expressions of irrealis. In 10.5.3 above I discussed how neo-Latin in general seems to express irrealis with the imperfect or pluperfect subjunctive even in expressions of possibility and obligation, where many Classical Latin authors seem not to conceive the possibility or the obligation as unreal, but merely the actual fulﬁllment of it. But this seems not to be the case in neo-Latin, and the imperfect subjunctive may therefore be conceived as irrealis, when Poggio says what should be, “. . . quam, cum sublevanda aliquo praesidio esset, pondere uxoris opprimi stultissimum videtur.” (Poggio, Seni., 6), or when Bruni says what a stupid farmer could have done, “Nam velut is agricola improbandus est, qui cum liceret ei fundum universum excolere, saltus quosdam steriles aret . . . ” (Bruni, Dial. Verg., p. 86). And the same seems to be the

313 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

case when Poggio says where he does not want to be at the present moment, “Non enim libenter discedo dum curia est apud vos, quia nollem ibi esse multis de causis.” (Poggio, Ep., I. p. 9). In addition, there are three appearences of the imperfect subjunctive, where the meaning is definitely that of the irrealis of the present moment.1 Therefore, in most of the cases where the subjunctive could seem to refer to the present or future time, such as it can do in Medieval Italian, the tense use may be explained as unreal statements, perhaps overgeneralized in accordance with Medieval Latin practice (cf. 10.5.3). So the evidence for the imperfect subjunctive used with future reference in relation to the MOS is sparse and uncertain. Yet, whether these imperfect subjunctives are a survival of a Medieval overgeneralization of modal expressions or a transferred use from the Volgare of the imperfect subjunctive as a more general tense, the effect is strongest in very few authors, such as Manetti and to some degree Bruni and Poggio. The influence is therefore effectively suppressed from the general Latin language of the humanists, which indicates that the return to the Classical Latin norm could also result in gradual changes in the neo-Latin language during the 15th century. This development even seems to conform to the natural pattern of actualization proposed by Andersen, as it disappears from the least stylistic genres latest (discussed above in 12.1.1), while being related to the identity of the neo-Latin language, namely bringing the language use closer to the Classical Latin norm. There are also a few occurrences of the imperfect subjunctive where it seems to represent a distinction in the aspectual character of a past situation. In a primary context by Poggio, the imperfect subjunctive appears side by side with a perfect subjunctive, and the perfect subjunctive (or, unlikely, future perfect) contigerit is used for referring to an action, while the imperfect subjunctive dignum esset is used for referring to a state: “Sed cum rara sit avis in terris, non quid tibi contigerit, sed quid tibi id aetatis dignum esset quaerendum duco.” (Poggio, Seni., 4). He also uses the imperfect subjunctive dicerentur when describing how he likes to imagine the ancient rhetoricians speaking, in the ruins at Via Sacra:

. . . inclytus quondam cogendi senatus locus maiori ex parte collapse paruis

1“interrogo te quid diceres . . . ” (Valla, Lib. arb., p. 35); “Quid ergo ibi facerem nescio . . . ” (Poggio, Ep., I. p. 41); “quia si usus vilis atque abiecti vestimenti virtus non esset, non laudaret . . . ” (Perotti, Ornam. mul., p. 74).

314 13.2 Aspe ual Variation of Indicative Tenses

uestigiis herent, in quas me sepissime confero, reuocans stupore quodam oppressus animum ad ea tempora cum ibi senatorie sententie dicerentur et aut L. Crassum mihi aut Hortensium aut Ciceronem orantem proponens. Poggio Bracciolini, De varietate fortunae, I.116–20 Also Bruni uses the imperfect subjunctive facerent side by side with a perfect subjunctive fecerit to refer to the almost identical past events of making a painting and copying a painting. Ut enim ii, qui ad exemplum picturae picturam aliam pingunt, figuram et statum et ingressum et totius corporis formam inde assumunt nec, quid ipsi facerent, sed, quid alter ille fecerit, meditantur: Leonardo Bruni, De interpretatione recta, p. 86 These two actions are by nature of the same kind. The difference in tense may serve the purpose of presenting the more recent act of copying the picture as more vivid, while viewing the painting of the original picture more as an historical fact. Or the two forms may have been chosen merely in order to achieve a more varied expression, because the two inflections of the same verb would otherwise have been almost identical. In Medieval Italian the imperfect subjunctive was indeed used in ways such as the three above, as expressing that which is prior to the future time, and both that which is viewed in an imperfective aspect and in an aorist aspect, because the difference between the imperfective and aorist aspect is neutralized in the subjunctive mood, and used for expressing all else than the ‘aspetto composto’, which resembles the Latin present perfect.2 While this neutralization of aspect in the Medieval Italian subjunctive could explain the last example, it is not reasonable to apply to the two above, where an imperfective aspectual view on the situations is indeed reasonable. Therefore there is no particular reason to conceive these few uses of the imperfect subjunctive as influence from this feature of the Medieval Italian. It may as well be that they are sporadic instances of stylistic variation, or merely caused by some uncertainty in the grammatical conception of the tenses, and under influence from the use of the corresponding indicative tenses.

13.2 Aspectual Variation of Indicative Tenses

It was proposed above that the indicative tenses in neo-Latin are more more freely used than the grammatically bound subjunctive tenses, for example because all three basic 2Squartini (2010, pp. 923–24).

315 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

past tenses are allowed in secondary contexts, while among the subjunctives, the perfect tense is not normally used in secondary contexts. In order to support this characterization, the following is an analysis of the actual aspectual nature of the past indicative tenses, and we shall investigate if aspectual variation is used as a stylistic/semantic device, and if there is a clear coherence between the imperfective or perfective nature of a tense and the content that is expressed in the verb, its Aktionsart.

13.2.1 The Perfect Indicative

We shall ﬁrst study the various uses of the perfect indicative, which we know to be frequent in both primary and secondary contexts. The perfect indicative is a somewhat universal past form, in neo-Latin as well as in Classical Latin. We have seen that it is frequently used as a very near past tense, the present perfect, which is followed by primary tenses in the clauses that are subordinate to it. But it is also frequently used for mentioning events in the far past time, such as Bruni referring to the events concerning Catiline that happened, inciderunt, in ancient republican Rome, as well as Valla referring to more recent historical events:

Haec ego, quamquam pervulgata harum rerum historia sit, tamen quia in hanc regionem et primordia huius urbis inciderunt, paucis commemoranda putavi. Leonardo Bruni, Historiae populi Florentini, I.8

quas postea classis Portugallensis, cum Septam oppidum in angustiis freti positum invasit, repertas in sicco deduxit in mare vacuas atque abduxit. Lorenzo Valla, Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum, I.6.11

However, the perfect indicative is not restricted to situations that can be viewed as punctual, as historical events, but are also used for situations that are explicitly thought of as a stretch on the time line. For example, Valla describes the night as eight hours long, and shortly after mentions the night that has passed as a fact in the perfect subjunctive:

Novi iam octo horis noctem fuisse, sed mea cognitio non facit illud fuisse: potiusque ego novi noctem fuisse, quia nox fuit. Lorenzo Valla, De libero arbitrio, p. 21 Also in Classical Latin the historical perfect is used for merely telling that something happened in the past, regardless whether this situation was conceived as a stretch on

316 13.2 Aspe ual Variation of Indicative Tenses the timeline or as merely completed.3 This ‘neutral’ character of the perfect indicative becomes particularly clear in neo-Latin when used in verbs that by nature express continuity, such as vivo, and in clause types that express a continuum: “Haec illum atque alia carum populo, carum suis, dum vixit, reddebant.” (Poliziano, Pact., 65). This use of the perfect indicative with the verb vivo, and even after dum meaning ‘per quod spatium temporis’ is not unprecedented in earlier phases of the Latin language. But it is very rare in Classical prosaists such as Cicero and Caesar, and more connected with the poetic language of for example Plautus and Ovid.4 Such uses of the perfect indicative are rather frequent in neo-Latin, and it may be an indication of a slightly more loose use of the perfect tense, or rather of the conjunction dum, in neo-Latin than in the Classical Latin language. Therefore, we see again that the uses found in neo-Latin do not deviate completely from that which is allowed in Classical Latin, but the neo-Latin practice seems to be an overgeneralization of rare occurrences and resembles the post-Classical writers more than their most explicit model Cicero. The perfect in vixit may have a character of being completed, rather than being punctual, so that the focus is on the fact that he no longer lives.

Consider also Poliziano’s implication with the use of the perfect tense that his age is no longer suitable for writing love poetry, though the perfect tense cannot imply that the verb licuit be conceived as punctual, for it concerns a general condition throughout an entire period of his life. “Cum Musas tenues meas, quibus, dum per aetatem licuit, de amoribus meis iocatus sum, in libellos quinque digesserim, mitto ad te illorum primum. . . ” (Poliziano, Ep., I.3). In clauses such as these the reference type of the perfect indicative is clear. The perfect seems to be chosen to stress the fact that something is not true anymore at the moment of speech. The perfect does not express anteriority in relation to the superordinate verb. In fact we know that the two things were true at the same time. And so, the perfect indicative in some cases show a clear MOS reference, while there are no cases in the data collection of verbs in the perfect indicative where the expressed past tense is in conﬂict with the relation to the MOS. In accordance with Comrie’s deﬁnition of past tenses presented in Note 22, p. 266, the past tense invariably places something in

3Kühner and Stegmann (1914, § 33.6). 4TLL (1900-, lemma: ‘dum’, II.A.2.a.δ).

317 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

the past, and whether or not it is still true at the MOS is irrelevant. Therefore, I do not see examples such as the following as in conﬂict with the MOS reference, even though the perfect indicative abstinuere is likely still true at the MOS. But the relevance in the particular utterance is that some people have not practiced properly before writing Latin, and not whether they have begun so in the meantime.

Vos enim et in plerisque id videre potestis, qui cum litteras scire se prof- iteantur et libros lectitent, tamen quia se ab hac exercitatione abstinuere, nisi cum libris suis latine loqui non possunt. Leonardo Bruni, Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, p. 84

Similarly, the perfect is in neo-Latin as in Classical Latin normally used for expressing that which precedes a general truth in the present. Such expressions have very little actual time reference5 and primarily reflect the relation between two events, such as between hearing a sound and waking from sleep: “. . . cum sonus acceptus est, ex somno excitamur.” (Manetti, Dign., I). Yet, by not referring to any particular event, such an expression is not in direct conflict with the time of the event it refers to, though it is also true for both past and future events as well. Returning once more to a neo-Latin dum clause with the perfect indicative, we find an example which is even more different from the Classical Latin practice: the use of dum with the perfect to express that which is completed at a certain time, parallel to the expression tum cum. This use is found when Valla discusses the way in which human knowledge is achieved in experiencing things while they happen, and not being achieved after the event has been completed.

Praeteritum quoque nihil diﬀerens habet a praesenti: id namque non tum cum factum est cognovimus, sed cum ﬁeret, et praesens erat, ut noctem fuisse non tunc dum transiit didici, sed cum erat. Lorenzo Valla, De libero arbitrio, p. 21

This use of dum is very rare, and is found only in Silver and Late Latin.6 The confusion of dum and cum is here obvious, and the two clause types are used as directly inter- changeable, likely to achieve variation in the expression. Both clause types are used in parallel arguments both with the perfect indicative (factum est and transiit), and both

5“Gnomic or general truth uses of tense markers in eﬀect neutralize all the temporal distinctions of the system.” (Russel Ultan (1978, p. 87)), and generalizations concerning tense systems do not usually apply to gnomes. 6TLL (1900-, lemma: ‘dum’, II.A.4.β).

318 13.2 Aspe ual Variation of Indicative Tenses in contrast with the imperfect indicative of erat. Because the dum clause with transiit is an exempliﬁcation of the previous cum clause with factum est, and as the sequencing of the events are the basis of Valla’s argument, the conception of the events as completed is important in both of these two perfect verbs. Therefore, the contrast in aspectual value that exists between the perfect and the imperfect indicative is used deliberately in the argumentation, and the perfect indicative looses its ‘neutral’ character in being opposed to the imperfect.

13.2.2 The Imperfect Indicative

In fact the contrast between the perfect and the imperfect is one of the parts of the use of the tenses that the humanists actually described in their grammars. Remember from the beginning of Chapter 11 how Perotti describes the imperfect tense as that which “coepit geri et nondum perfectum est” as opposed to the perfect which “res perfecta monstratur.” But the imperfect indicative seldomly appears in contrast with the perfect indicative in instances such as we have just seen, and as Poggio uses it in the next example, where there is a clear difference between the two coordinate clauses with quia: Fui paulum tardior iamdudum in scribendo ad te, tum quia carui interim litteris tuis, tum quia existimabam quotidie me postridie discessurum. Poggio Bracciolini, Epistole, I. p. 34 Here the perfect of carui implies that Poggio has in the meantime received a letter, and the outstretched, or iterative, nature of the imperfect existimabam is supported by the adverb quotidie. Except for a few examples such as this, where some contrast or variation in the aspectual view of the tenses is used for effect, the imperfect indicative is rather restricted, for example to some clause types, mostly quia. Also, the imperfective character of the tense is seen in the Aktionsart of its verbs; the internal aspectual character or the lexical aspect.7 The fact that verbs have an aspectual character implies that they fit more naturally with the corresponding aspect in the verbal inflection. As in Poggio’s clause with quia above, a conflict between Aktionsart and aspect may result in certain nuances: when Poggio presents in the imperfective aspect the rather punctual achievement of estimating something, the imperfective aspect can add an iterative element and make the achievement appear again and again, so that Poggio kept thinking 7Comrie (1976); Blatt (1946, § 202–03).

319 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

this every day. The most frequent verbs in the imperfect indicative in neo-Latin are verbs that by nature have some duration, mostly atelic activities or states, such as erat, videbat (in the sense of knowing), nolebat, nequibat,sperabam, and pugnabant, or verbs of accomplishment defined as telic verbs that have a duration, such as legebat, scribebam, or utebatur. Only seldomly are verbs of achievement, telic verbs with no duration such as dabatur and faciebant, presented in the imperfect indicative. This indicates that the aspectual value of the imperfect indicative is indeed central to its use, as it is seldomly chosen if in conflict with the nature of the verb. On the other hand, there is a considerable coincidence of a high frequency of the imperfect also in the context of these subordinate clauses with the imperfect indicative. In fact, more than half of the subordinate clauses with the imperfect indicative are subordinate to yet another imperfect. And in these matrix clauses there seem to be more apparent conflicts between the imperfective nature of the grammatical tense and the perfective nature of some verbs such as demigrabat, augebat suspitionem, addebat stimulos, or increparetur. So there may be some tendency that the imperfect indicative—or clause types such as quia, dum, and cum where most instances of the imperfect indicative are found—cause an overgeneralization of the imperfect in the matrix clause. But in the subordinate clauses, the use mostly seems restricted to the particular expression of a cause that is naturally viewed as a stretch on the timeline. And the only other normal context for these clauses with the imperfect indicative are clauses with the perfect, both perfects in the far past and with relevance still at the moment of speech:

Hinc, consilio mutato, constitui scribere, cum quia sperabam . . . nostras litteras non suscepturum modo, sed suscepturum esse atque lecturum, tum quia verebar, ne me . . . egregie et plane demerentem existimet; Hermolao Barbaro, Epistole, I. p. 20

Et quia suspectum habebat Manfredi animum, curam tuendi administrandique regni propinquis uxoris, quos secum e Germania duxerat, quoad ﬁlius ado- lesceret, demandavit. Leonardo Bruni, Historiae populi Florentini, II.19

So generally, we see among the imperfect indicatives a use which is basically restricted to agree with the Aktionsart of the expressed content. But few examples are found also

320 13.2 Aspe ual Variation of Indicative Tenses of the imperfect used in contrast with the Aktionsart, such as it is known to appear, not seldomly, in Medieval Latin.8

13.2.3 The Pluperfect Indicative

Just as the future perfect invariably appears in the context of other verbs with future time reference (Table 12.1), the pluperfect indicative also almost exclusively appears in past contexts.9 This indicates that the pluperfect indicative is in neo-Latin, as in Classical Latin, what Comrie calls an ‘absolute-relative tense’, with the inherent value of belonging to the past time. The other requirement of such tenses is also met in the neo-Latin data, namely that there always exists another verb before which the pluperfect takes place. It never relates directly to the MOS.10

Tunc semel data vite venia hostibus et quia multum funiculi apud captivas repertum erat, quoscunque iam barbarorum capiebant . . . Lorenzo Valla, Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum, I.11.14

Hostes quia et ipsi et equi de via fessi erant, cum illuc cursu venissent satius putarunt diﬀerre per noctis tempus expugnare eos qui iugum montis ascen- derant . . . idem, I.12.14

Compared to the kinds of verbs that we found in the imperfect indicative above, most of the verbs that are found in the dependent pluperfect clauses have a diﬀerent Aktionsart. Most can be characterized as achievements such as repertum erat, amiserant, audierant, viderant, and sumpserant. This supports the regularity that the dependent pluperfect indicative is always completed at the time of the matrix clause—or in the case of verbs such as fessi erant, that the result of the pluperfect has always set in. The relative nature of the neo-Latin pluperfect indicative is therefore clear and indistinguishable from the Classical Latin pluperfect indicative, and no evidence was found in this study of the Medieval use of the pluperfect merely as a past tense, which could also appear in main clauses.11 8Stotz (1998, IV. § 58.1). 9The only exception being Valla’s peculiar expression of indirect discourse with quia that we saw in Chapter 10, “Aiunt, quia eﬀectus erat Christianus.” (Valla, Don., 4.11). 10Not even in Valla’s indirect discourse with quia, where the only directly superordinate verb is the present aiunt, because the pluperfect seems to relate to the surrounding context which describes the man in question in past tenses. 11Stotz (1998, IV. § 68.3).

321 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

13.3 Relative Time in Subjunctive Tenses

The presence of relative time reference is most apparent in those places where the system of reference results in a contradiction with the time relation to the MOS. Such cases, as mentioned in 11.2, are found in Classical Latin when a perfect subjunctive is used in the context of future time reference exclusively for coding anteriority to that future verb, without itself being coded for its placement in the future. In such cases, a perfect tense is used for that which takes place in the future.

13.3.1 The Perfect in the Future

We saw above that the perfect indicative is not in the neo-Latin data used to represent any action that takes place (only) in the future. And this would not seem to be necessary either, because the indicative mood has the future perfect form, which is also in neo-Latin used with that exact purpose. But the perfect subjunctive is indeed found in this position in neo-Latin such as it is known to in Classical Latin, though the instances are rare. When Valla discusses the relation between the free will and God’s foreknowledge, one of his interlocutors says what he will not do when certain circumstances appear in the future: “Non repugnabo amplius, nec cum tela omnia fregerim, unguibus pugnabo, ut aiunt, et dentibus.” (Valla, Lib. arb., p. 30). Though this example bears some resemblance with a gnomic sentence, which are largely neutralized for tense,12 it is an important part of the argument that it regards a situation in the future, and not any given time. And the time reference of the perfect subjunctive is therefore in conﬂict with its relation to the MOS. The second example, also by Valla, is part of a longer passage relating a speech in the form of direct discourse: “Denique nunquam te ab isto proposito, dum de iure iudicatum sit, revocare temptabo.” (Valla, Gesta, I.19.15). The long passage consistently has the presentation of the speech as its basic time reference point, as is the normal practice with direct discourse as opposed to indirect discourse that is viewed from the time when the speech was again reported. Therefore deﬁning the MOS as the time of the original performance by the original speaker, the past tense in iudicatum sit is primarily relevant

12Cf. Note 5.

322 13.3 Relative Time in Subjun ive Tenses in relation to the future tense temptabo, though it is unclear if it was also true at the time of the MOS.

In the last of the three examples in the data collection of a perfect subjunctive in the context of a future, the relevance of the perfect subjunctive is definitely that it precedes the future, but it cannot be said whether it was also true at the time of the MOS, whether Ficino had already decided if he would regard the action as good or not: “Nam etsi hanc vitare voluero, non nisi quia devitationem ipsam bonam existimaverim, devitare tentabo.” (Ficino, Dial. theol., p. 16). In addition, this use of the future may not specifically regard the future at all, as it resembles the sort of ‘gnomic future’ that we have seen very sporadically also in Poggio’s An seni sit uxor ducenda (9.4.2). Yet, grammatically, the relation between the perfect indicative and its superordinate future verb seems similar to the two other examples. None of the examples are completely unambiguous with respect to whether or not the perfect subjunctive tense is actually in conflict with the MOS relation.

The perfect subjunctive seems in each example to take the place of the future perfect of the indicative, and its relative nature is clear especially in the first. And yet, we do not see clear and unambiguous contradictions between MOS relation and R relation. For comparison, the two last examples on the perfect subjunctive used in the future resemble this use of the perfect indicative, only it is appears clearly in the text that the lex in question was already proposed at the time the text was written, and that the perfect tense is therefore definitely not in conflict with the MOS reference: “ideo ne inutilis aut mala lex erit, quia ab improbo viro et contra id quod praecipit agente rogata est?” (Perotti, Ornam. mul., 2.3). So the difference between the indicative and the subjunctive uses of the perfect tense is subtle, and yet it seems to support that a basic distinction into absolute and relative tenses is reasonable. But it also indicates what we shall see more clearly below, that the humanists do not always use the subjunctive tenses with relative time reference, but avoid those cases where the relative use would result in too evident contradictions with the MOS reference.

323 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

13.3.2 The Imperfect in the Present or the Future

We already know that the imperfect subjunctive is used far more than the imperfect indicative. This is likely an indication that the imperfect subjunctive is used in more different situations than the corresponding indicative tense. We also know from the frequent use of the imperfect subjunctive in the purpose clauses with ne that it is used with the notion of posteriority. We shall now particularly study 1) whether this value of posteriority can result in MOS conflicts, because purposes expressed in past contexts but regarding the future remain in the secondary Zeitsphäre, and 2) whether the general agreement between grammatical aspect and the Aktionsart of the verbs, which we saw among the dependent imperfect verbs of the indicative, is found also in the subjunctive imperfect verbs. The following is an analysis of clauses with ne, because their inherent element of posteriority would seem to be a likely source for examples of humanist authors ‘cross- ing the boundaries’ of the Zeitsphären. Regarding the Aktionsart of the verbs that are found in these clauses in the imperfect subjunctive, the tendency is different from what we saw among the verbs in the imperfect indicative. Verbs in the imperfect subjunctive have an Aktionsart with no duration almost as often as they actually have duration. In a sample of 38 clauses, 20 verbs were of a kind that would seem to correspond to the imperfective aspect of their tense, namely accomplishments and activities such as expectaretur, viderentur,(de)esset, haberet, reprehenderem, liceret, exigeres, and prae- berem. 17 had a meaning that does not fit naturally into this aspect, namely verbs of achievement such as exoriretur, venirem, extinguerentur, recusaret, proficiscereris, mit- terem, and pedem inferret. Only in few instances is there any indication that the verb should actually be seen with the aspectual modification, for example when the addition of the adverb saepius to “ne “Inquam” et “Inquit” saepius interponeretur” indicates that the imperfective aspect here adds an iterative value to the punctual action of putting a certain word in the text while writing Latin.13 This shows that the aspectual view on the imperfect subjunctive is to a greater extent neutralized in the subjunctive than in the indicative, and the primary value of the aspect is its use for sequencing, for expressing simultaneity or even posteriority. The loss of aspectual value is particularly clear when

13Valla, Lib. arb., p. 10.

324 13.3 Relative Time in Subjun ive Tenses verbs of a particularly punctual action, for instance killing a man, occur in the imperfect subjunctive:

Marcellus ipse delectatus magnamque sibi gloriam comparaturum, si hominem conservasset, existimans militibus suis, ne Archimedem vita privarent, edicto prohibuit. Battista Guarini, De ordine docendi et studendi, p. 104

This lack of relation between the Aktionsart of the verb and the aspect in the imperfect subjunctive does indeed tell us that the imperfect subjunctive is a more relative reference type than the imperfect indicative. The loss of the aspectual character results in less information being communicated about the nature of the particular situation that is described in the verb, and the main purpose of the tense is describing its relation as simultaneous or future to another verb in the context. In this way, the neo-Latin imperfect subjunctive is a characteristic subjunctive tense, which cannot express quite as much as the corresponding indicative, except for the added modal information.14 But even if the subjunctive tenses may be characterized as relative tenses, the Latin subjunctives still belong to certain Zeitsphären, and so they are not deprived of all time reference. But which is the stronger force in the neo-Latin imperfect subjunctive: the sequence of tenses and the pure value of sequencing, or the expression of time and the actual relation to the MOS? And what system is strongest: the grammatical system of dependent tenses belonging to the same Zeitsphäre as their superordinate verbs, or the semantic avoidance of conﬂicts with the MOS relation? There are several examples on ne constructed with the imperfect subjunctive, where the negated purpose also regards the present time and even the future. For example, Valla explains the purpose of a past action, a purpose that is meant to be eﬀective in all time postea, both immediately after the action, at the present time (cf. the present Quare . . . ago), and perhaps even in the future:

Sed cum viderem quonam haec quaestio foret evasura, iam tum mihi consule- bam, sponsionemque te facere coëgi, ne postea a me aliquid, praeter id unum quod quaerebatur, exigeres. Quare tecum non tam iure ago quam aequitate.

Lorenzo Valla, De libero arbitrio, pp. 40–41

14As discussed by Ultan (1978, p. 94).

325 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

Therefore, the imperfect verb exigeres here has a broader scope than the past time, as it regards also the time of the MOS, and likely after that as well. As it was the case with the perfect subjunctives that we studied above, this use of a past tense is not in direct conﬂict with the MOS reference, because it also regards the time-span that runs from the action of the superordinate perfect coëgi and until the MOS, which is past time. The imperfect subjunctive rather encompasses all three times. All that we can conclude from such examples is, therefore, that humanist Latin lets the imperfect subjunctive, a past tense, refer to the inclusive time if dependent on a secondary context. In independent clauses, the inclusive time is normally expressed with the present, and it should therefore be seen as evidence for the backshifting of tenses to the past—the sequence of tenses—that the inclusive time has its focus on the past when written in a past context.

There is an interesting tendency that these inclusive imperfect subjunctives are used considerably more in letters than in any other genre in the corpus. In the letters, this mechanism of seeing the inclusive time as rooted in the past is enforced by another well- known mechanism of shifting the view on time. Human language is generally developed in spoken communication, where the speaker and the listener share the same view on time. Written language presents the possibility for shifting the time, so that the reader achieves the communicated content at a later time than it was produced by the writer.15 In the Latin literary tradition, a common strategy has been developed for meeting this dislocation in time in letter writing, namely politely presenting the content as if seen from the point of view of the receiver of the letter. This Classical Latin strategy is imitated in many humanist letters. This alone results in many things that are present to the writer being presented as if they were past, because they will be past when the letter reaches the receiver. This ‘double-backshiﬁng’ in time is likely what causes the most of the examples that we are looking for here to appear in letters. In letters, therefore, the imperfect is sometimes seen in expressions regarding the desired eﬀect that the letter will cause when the receiver reads it. This is future seen from the point of view of the writer, and present time seen from the point of view of the receiver. For example,

15For considerations on the temporal dislocation in written language, see Comrie (1985, pp. 15–16), and on the tenses in Latin letter writing, see Kühner and Stegmann (1914, II.1. § 38).

326 13.3 Relative Time in Subjun ive Tenses

Barbaro considers how it will be looked upon if he sends a letter, or if he chooses not to, and the act of him being judged in either case, at the time the letter is (not) received, is expressed in the imperfect, even though one of the imperfects are actually subordinate to a present tense scribo.

Heu mihi fraudi sit aut quod non scripsi ne temerarius et arrogans iudicarer, aut quod nunc scribo ne ingratissimus et plane barbarus viderer! Hermolao Barbaro, Epistole, I. p. 20 In such cases, the backshifting of tenses works eﬀectively, and that which logically is not only future to the letter writer, but even present to the receiver, is expressed in a past tense. But even in letters, an actual conﬂict with the MOS reference is very rare in neo-Latin, and the majority of imperfects that refer to the present or future of the receiver, can be characterized as inclusive tenses, that also regard the past time, at least the past of the receiver. See for example two explanations by Poggio of the reason why he does not return home as soon as he was expected to, and why a friend of his thinks he should do so anyway:

Itaque circumspiciens ratiunculas meas, licet paratus essem ad iter, tamen substiti paulum dubitans, ne temere agerem, si confestim hinc abirem, cum nullus esset locus, ad quem sine magno incommodo possem divertere. Poggio Bracciolini, Epistole, I. p. 23

Quidam vero ex amicis ad me iocans scripsit, se cupere, ut cito redirem, ne essem malorum expers que alii patiebantur. idem, I. p. 23

In conclusion, the use of the imperfect subjunctive resembles what we saw above in the perfect subjunctive, namely a tense that is generally relative in its reference type, but which does not produce direct contradictions with the MOS reference. Also the sequence of tenses is seen in the choice of a past time focus on the inclusive time, and yet again this mechanism only very seldomly results in an actual conﬂict with the semantic time.

13.3.3 The Present Subjunctive

When studying those clauses with ne in secondary contexts that have the present subjunctive, it appears that the present subjunctive is in a few cases chosen to avoid the conﬂict with the MOS reference that an imperfect subjunctive would cause. In Perotti’s discussion of a proposed law, for example, the future reference of the present subjunctives

327 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

liceat and possint is clear, and the present tense prevents the semantic conﬂict between a past tense and the reference to ‘after now’ in posthac and ut hactenus fecerunt.

Tulerunt cives nostri iniquissimam legem, ne mulieribus posthac auro et pur- pura aliisve pretiosioribus ornamentis uti liceat magnumque nescio quid atque praeclarum egisse sibi videntur. Niccolò Perotti, Oratio de abdicanda lege, 1.3

Tulerunt autem legem ad reprimendum luxum, ne mulieres auro purpuraque, ut hactenus fecerunt, uti possint nec tamen propterea servis, ut ipsi uti valeant, concessere. idem, 2.10

On several occasions, the present subjunctive in this context is used interchangeably with the imperfect subjunctive to express the inclusive time. In many cases, the present subjunctive is subordinate to a perfect indicative that may have been thought of as a present perfect, even though this perfect represents a very distant past, as long as the result is still valid when the author writes: “Haec omnia, ne quis forte nosmet nobis blandiri existimet, graeci romanique vetustissimi scriptores tradidere.” (Bruni, Hist., I.18). A perfect indicative is found in the matrix clause of many of the clauses that have the present subjunctive in past contexts. The same is the case for most of the perfect subjunctives that are found in past contexts in neo-Latin as well. And so it seems that the humanists have a tendency to conceive the perfect indicative as a present perfect in many cases where I interpreted the perfect indicative as a past tense when constructing the data—recall that the categories ‘historical present’ and ‘present perfect’ were described as the distinctions in the data collection that are most dependent on subjective interpretations (5.1.1.1). While this tendency may be the result of (mis)interpretations of the perfect indicative, it may also be supportive evidence of the tendency that we have now seen also in the avoidance of MOS conflicts, namely that the humanists often refer more to the present time than what is usual in Classical Latin. This seemingly increased tendency to conceive the perfect indicative as a primary tense—if it is not just a matter of interpretation—may be related to the passato prossimo in Italian which is often conceived as a primary tense (see 13.4.2). But in a sentence by Barbaro, the present subjunctive is also found dependent on an imperfect indicative. Barbaro gives two reasons for choosing to write a letter, of which the first is phrased as a wish in the form of sperabam and a future infinitive, and

328 13.3 Relative Time in Subjun ive Tenses the second as fearing something that is expressed with ne and the present subjunctive. These two coordinate reasons both regard the time when the achiever reads the letter. The content of the ne clause even more regards the time after the letter has been read, and so this may be yet an instance of the present subjunctive substituting the imperfect subjunctive in order to avoid MOS conﬂicts. Hinc . . . constitui scribere, cum quia sperabam . . . nostras litteras non suscepturum modo, sed suscepturum esse atque lecturum, tum quia verebar, ne me . . . aut impudentem quispiam aut superbum aut, quod vero propius est, egregie et plane demerentem existimet; Hermolao Barbaro, Epistole, I. p. 20

We have now seen the importance of the semantic time in the tense system of neo- Latin in several situations, but also the strong grammatical coherence of tenses within the same Zeitsphäre. The feeling of semantic time prevents unambiguous conflicts between grammatical time and real time and makes the present subjunctive the preferred tense for expressing the inclusive time, when dependent on a the double-natured perfect indicative—which may have present reference. The grammatical force, on the other hand, triggers the sequence of tenses in most unambiguous past contexts, and changes the inclusive time from the present to the imperfect, as long as this is not in conflict with the MOS reference. Therefore, the subjunctive tenses in neo-Latin basically express sequencing of events, and the semantic nuance of aspect that the indicative tenses may show is secondary—if at all existing. They also show a clear coherence between grammatical tenses of the same Zeitsphäre, in a system that is more restrictive than the system of the indicative tenses, because only two of the three past tenses are allowed in the subjunctive clauses of secondary contexts. But the direct relation to the MOS is even stronger, and the system of relative time reference is overruled when a conflict occurs, and the time reference of the subjunctive verbs becomes absolute. And so, the subjunctive tenses in neo-Latin are generally more relative than the indicative tenses, but there are frequent uses of absolute time as well, among all the neo-Latin authors.

329 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

13.4 The Origin of the Neo-Latin Tense System

13.4.1 The Classical Latin Tense System

So far, we have focused on the neo-Latin language while searching for evidence for the neo-Latin constructions in grammars and dictionaries on Classical Latin and Medieval Latin. This has shown that most of the things that are done in neo-Latin are also attested in earlier Latin, even in Latin as early as the silver age or the church fathers, whom many humanists regard worthy for linguistic imitation. But, as Valla said, the aim of most humanists was not to adopt every expression that appeared only once in the texts of the ancients, but to imitate their usus, to write as the ancients wrote, and not according to every rule that could be formulated on the basis of Classical Latin literature.16 We shall now study Valla and his contemporaries more on these terms formulated by himself. Did they write according to the Classical Latin usus, or did they overgeneralize those (sometimes rare) concepts from Classical Latin that fitted more naturally into their conception of moods and tenses? We have already seen (Figure 12.6) how the humanists generally use the same tenses within the particular clause types as those that can be found in the Classical Latin data from the L.A.S.L.A. project, though with some variation, particularly after dum and cum. But in L.A.S.L.A. we cannot gain information on the distribution of tenses according to the tenses in the superordinate clauses. This is possible with a treebank, and the data from the neo-Latin corpus will now be compared to data from the Perseus Treebank. Before comparing the two sets of data, a few differences should be noted. The information from Perseus is drawn from a treebank (cf. 6.1.3) by searching the morphological tags that are applied to each word in the text, and the relations between the words. For example, finding a form in the perfect tense that dominates the conjunction dum, which in turn dominates a present indicative, returns clauses with dum in secondary context that are constructed with the present indicative. This is purely based on morphological form, and the perfect form in the context was not interpreted, and it may therefore be an instance of the present perfect. Likewise, a present form in the context may be an historical present, and it will still count as an instance of primary

16Cf. 4.3.

330 13.4 The Origin of the Neo-Latin Tense Sy em context. Therefore, the presentation of neo-Latin in the figures in this section is divided into primary and secondary contexts based on the morphological form, and not based on the semantic function, though we know the humanists to base their tenses much on the semantic value. Another difference is that Perseus disambiguates the ambiguous forms that are in this study kept aside. One should therefore remember that there is likely more perfect and present subjunctives in the neo-Latin data than show in the Figures, and likely more future and future perfect in the indicative as well. Finally, the Perseus Treebank was manually annotated and is therefore not very large, when used to search for such specific constructions as particular clause types. The data is therefore sparse and biased by the individual authors’ preferences for certain clause types, and the difference in popularity of the clause types studied.17 Particularly, we shall find out whether the frequent use of the present subjunctive in past contexts is as outspoken in Classical Latin as in neo-Latin, by testing this.

H0 There is no diﬀerence in the amount of the present subjunctive in past contexts in neo-Latin and Classical Latin

HA There is a higher frequency of the present subjunctive in past contexts in neo-Latin than in Classical Latin

In Figure 13.1 it is clear that the present subjunctive is rare in secondary contexts, as only one appearance was found in the Perseus total corpus. The absence of these present subjunctives is highly signiﬁcant when compared to the popularity of this combination among the humanists.18 The Perseus total corpus is a broad selection of both prose and poetry, of authors dating from Cicero to Jerome, and even counts Petronius’ Satyricon known for certain passages with language that parodies the spoken Latin. So not even in the late Latin of Jerome or in the colloquial Latin of Petronius is any general tendency found that resembles the humanists preference for adjusting the tenses to the MOS. Remember also that all perfect forms in the contexts of these clauses have been counted among the secondary contexts. So not even the possibility that present perfects may be

17The data is based on all clauses found in the Perseus total corpus with dum, cum, quia, ne, quis/quid (in all cases), and utrum. 18Comparing neo-Latin to the Perseus total corpus: χ2 = 8.5, p < .01; and to the Perseus prose corpus: χ2 = 4.9, < .05.

331 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

among the secondary contexts produces any eﬀect. And this is a fundamental diﬀerence between the Classical Latin and the neo-Latin tense system.

(a) Neo-Latin corpus, in- (b) Perseus total corpus, dicative indicative

Figure 13.1: The neo-Latin tenses compared to data from the Perseus Treebank

Note that, while Perseus ascribes The Latin Vulgate to St. Jerome, he did not inﬂuence all parts of the edition much, and Platner and White (1926, p. 5) mention the Apocalypse which is the text analyzed in the Perseus Treebank as one of the passages which Jerome did not revise much. And so, the language represented here as the language of Jerome is to a large extent rather the language of the Vetus Latina, a collection of

332 13.4 The Origin of the Neo-Latin Tense Sy em earlier Late Latin Biblical writings. Even though the origin of the text may not be ascribed to any particular author, the nature of the Latin in the humanists’ Bible is an important factor to consider. When referring to the data from the Perseus Treebank we shall refer to this text by the name of ‘Jerome’, in consistency with the practice in the Perseus Project. It may be that most of the present subjunctives in past contexts that we saw in neo-Latin are also precedented in the Classical Latin language. But the Classical Latin authors do not generally choose to see the subjunctive tenses in direct relation to the present moment. The difference is most prominent in the context of the perfect tense, as we saw above. Because of the double nature of the perfect tense, it can be seen either as a secondary tense or a primary. The pattern of the perfect tense followed by primary tenses is therefore not unseen in Classical Latin, and this provides the basis for the humanists to transfer their own patterns to their Latin language and overgeneralizing them (cf. the TSP, 2.2.1.1). And this preference for a more absolute MOS reference is apparently not Classical Latin, nor Late Latin, and the language in the Satyricon does not present any evidence that it would be colloquial either.19 Note also that the fact that the perfect indicative only seldomly is followed by primary tenses in Classical Latin indicates that there is indeed a remarkable difference between neo-Latin and Classical Latin in the conception of the present perfect, and the tendency that was discussed above does not seem to be purely the result of my (mis)interpretation of the perfect indicative. An actual difference in the matter is seen between neo-Latin and Classical Latin in this comparison, even though the Classical Latin data is sparse. Looking at the tenses in Figure 13.1, the general distribution of tenses are alike in Classical Latin and neo-Latin, and it is clear that the tendency among the humanists to overgeneralize the present tense in past contexts compared to the Classical Latin language, is only the reality among the subjunctive tenses. In the indicative tenses, the present is also frequent in the Classical Latin secondary contexts—even more frequent, 19But note that the actual relation between the spoken language and the language of the Satyricon is uncertain, because the language is not direct evidence such as modern recordings of speech, but a literary representation. Some elements may have been exaggerated, while others may have been overlooked. It is very likely that the author has not been aware of tense systems. Anyway, the humanists did not have more sources to the spoken Latin than we do, and a direct influence from spoken Latin on the neo-Latin is impossible. The influence from the spoken Latin is only possible through the languages that it developed into, such as the Volgare.

333 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

but this effect comes only from Jerome and Petronius. The basic characterization of the indicative and subjunctive tenses in neo-Latin proposed at the beginning of Chapter 12 is the same in the Classical Latin data from the Perseus Treebank, namely that the fundamental difference between indicative and subjunctive tenses is seen only in the secondary contexts. The present and perfect tenses make up a considerable part of the indicative tenses in secondary contexts, while they are almost non-existent in the subjunctives in secondary contexts. Except for the use of the present subjunctive in past contexts, most of the remaining differences between neo-Latin and Classical Latin are caused by the bias of the relatively small amount of data that could be extracted from the Perseus Treebank. This is clear when the clause types are studied individually. Figures I.14–I.15 in Appendix I show the distribution of tenses in the five clause types20 and in the four authors who contribute most data to the study from the Perseus Treebank: Cicero, Sallust, Petronius, and Jerome. Here we shall only study a few details. In general, the distribution of tenses in each clause type in the neo-Latin language is a rather precise imitation of the Classical Latin use. Except for the few difference we shall look at here, the distribution of tenses is generally statistically very alike in neo-Latin and Classical Latin in every single clause type of the study. The most profound differences between the two Latin variants seems to be related to the confusion of cum and dum which was discussed also in the comparison to the data from L.A.S.L.A.. In the indicative, dum only appears in the present tense in secondary contexts in the Classical Latin data (Figure 13.2b). While other forms are indeed allowed in this context in Classical Latin, the data from the Perseus Treebank gives an indication of how rare they are, in comparison with the historical present.21 While the humanists definitely seem aware of the use of the historical present after dum, as we have seen at several occasions before, they also seem to slip in other uses of dum (Figure 13.2b). Data from the Perseus Treebank, for example the tenses after cum (Figure 13.2c), support the impression that we got from the neo-Latin clauses with dum that we read above:

20Compare to Figure 12.5 above showing the tenses in neo-Latin clause types. Note that clauses that are subordinate to the historical present and the present perfect are not counted in there, as they are in this chapter. 21The amount of the present indicative as opposed to other forms is signiﬁcantly greater in Classical Latin (Figure 13.2b) than in neo-Latin (Figure 13.2a): Fisher exact p = 0.01.

334 13.4 The Origin of the Neo-Latin Tense Sy em

Those other indicative tenses that are used in the neo-Latin dum clauses along with the present indicative resemble the clauses after Classical Latin cum, and therefore these other indicative tenses in neo-Latin dum are likely based on a confusion of the two clause types, and not on the Classical Latin use of dum.

(a) Neo-Latin dum (ind.) (b) Classical Latin dum (c) Classical Latin cum (ind.) (ind.)

(d) Neo-Latin cum (e) Classical Latin cum (f) Neo-Latin dum (subj.) (subj.) (subj.)

Figure 13.2: Dum and cum in Classical Latin and neo-Latin

On the other hand, subjunctive clauses with cum in primary contexts have a con-

335 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

siderably more varied tense use in the Classical Latin data than in the neo-Latin.22 The neo-Latin cum clauses in primary contexts actually resemble the subjunctive dum clauses in primary contexts. This results in a simplification in the neo-Latin language, compared to the Classical Latin language, which is actually rare, because most changes that the humanists infer into their Latin language have the form of adding possible expressions, of loosening the systems and adding further room for variation. Quia is a special case, because the humanists add a subjunctive use of quia to the normally indicative quia of Classical Latin. The tenses in subjunctive quia are much like the subjunctive cum and dum in neo-Latin, which supports my earlier suggestion that the subjunctive quia was invented in analogy with the subjunctive cum, or similar causal clause types. As such, the confusion of dum and cum is not restricted to those two clause types, but to several clause types with similar meanings, which we also saw instances of in Valla and Perotti’s grammatical descriptions of the various clause types in 8.1. As we saw in the earlier comparison of the neo-Latin data with data from the L.A.S.L.A. Project, a larger corpus of Classical Latin texts reveals that the subjunctive is also found after quia in Classical Latin, but most of the subjunctive clauses with quia that appear in the L.A.S.L.A. data are clearly part of indirect discourse, which explains the relatively rare use of the subjunctive. As mentioned in 8.2.1, quia seems to have been adopted into the neo-Latin language through eclectic authors such as Valla in imitation of for example Sallust, who is responsible for 11 out of the 41 clauses with quia that were extracted from the Perseus Treebank. In this respect it is interesting that Sallust is the author in the Perseus Tree- bank whose tenses resemble the neo-Latin tenses the most. In Figure 13.3 the difference between Sallust and Jerome is shown. Compared to the depictions of the neo-Latin tense distribution above, it s clear that the neo-Latin tenses resemble those of Sallust quite much—perhaps also Cicero, but the data from his language is too sparse to say for sure. In comparison, the neo-Latin tenses are quite different from the tenses in both the language of Jerome and Petronius. The language in Jerome’s Latin Vulgate seems influenced much by some favorite expressions, so that the individual clause type is typically

22The amount of the present subjunctive as opposed to other forms is signiﬁcantly greater in neo-Latin (Figure 13.2d) than in Classical Latin (Figure I.14d): χ2 = 18.0, p < .01.

336 13.4 The Origin of the Neo-Latin Tense Sy em

(a) Sallust, indicative (b) Sallust, subjunctive

Figure 13.3: Tenses of Sallust and Jerome

337 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

used in a restricted number of constructions. For example, there are two occurrences of ne used with the perfect subjunctive, which also appears a few times in the neo-Latin data,23 and the two passages are very alike: “et dicit mihi vide ne feceris // conservus tuus sum // et fratrum tuorum habentium testimonium Iesu”(Lat. Vulg., Rev., 9.19) and “et dicit mihi vide ne feceris // conservus tuus sum et fratrum tuorum prophetarum // et eorum qui servant verba libri huius”(idem, 22.9). Also a certain preference for cum clauses with the pluperfect subjunctive influences his language. In Jerome as well as in Petronius’ language there is very little difference among the indicative tenses as to whether they are part of a primary or a secondary context, and the present indicative is dominant in all contexts. The language in The Latin Vulgate is generally influenced by being translated from Greek, and the use of the Latin tenses correspond to the Greek system, and a mechanism such as the sequence of tenses is much less strict:

In the Tense the Vulgate sometimes adheres to the correct consecution, where the Greek after a Past Tense has the graphic Subjunctive instead of the Optative . . . Platner and White (1926, p. 123)

The seemingly simplified tense systems of Petronius and Jerome resemble what is seen only in individual authors of neo-Latin, most explicitly Ficino. It is likely that Ficino’s language is to some degree an imitation of such early Christian Latin writings, which is also supported by the theological topic of his works. Only, Ficino’s few occurrences of subjunctive verbs does not reflect Jerome’s preference for clauses with cum and the pluperfect subjunctive, as they are distributed like the indicatives, almost exclusively with the present tense. The comparison of the data from the neo-Latin corpus and the Perseus Treebank can therefore show that the basic neo-Latin tense system seems to reflect the Classical Latin tenses. And because the specific clause types are basically constructed in accordance with the Classical Latin model, the neo-Latin tense system seems not only to coincide with the Classical Latin tenses by chance, but they seem to reflect actual imitation of individual Classical Latin clause types. In addition, the common neo-Latin tense system is closer to the Classical Latin of Cicero and Sallust than to the later variants that are also represented in the Perseus Treebank. It seems that the neo-Latin language is

23And which is also found in Quintilian, cf. Gildersleeve and Lodge (2001, §512. note 1).

338 13.4 The Origin of the Neo-Latin Tense Sy em based more on specific authors than on a complete mixture of all the Latin variants that the humanists were exposed to—Biblical, Late Latin, Medieval, Scholastic, Classical, Silver Age Latin, etc. But in the comparison to Classical Latin data, we do not have many authors available, and the data from each author is sparse. But we can take the represented Classical Latin authors as representatives for particular kinds of Latin and conclude that the humanists write more like authors ‘such as Cicero’ or ‘such as Sallust’ than like authors ‘such as Jerome’ or ‘such as Petronius’, whoever might be categorized together with those if a comparative quantitative study were applied to more Classical Latin writers. I do not propose that the humanists necessarily modeled their use of tenses specifically on Sallust, just because Sallust is the author represented in the Perseus Treebank whose use of the tenses resembles that of the humanists most. But it is clear that humanists Latin, even on the level of the use of tenses, is based more on some Classical Latin models than on others. Similarly, I do not propose that Ficino’s language, which is peculiar in comparison with the language of the remaining humanists, is modeled specifically on the language in the Bible, but it seems likely that hes use of the tenses is based more on Early Christian writings than on what we would nowadays call Classical Latin. Of the neo-Latin deviations from the Classical Latin tense system, some seem to depend on the confusion of some clause types, while the fundamental difference in the frequency of present subjunctives in past contexts has no precedence in the treebank.

13.4.2 The Medieval Italian Tense System

In his chapter on “La concordanza dei Tempi,” Mario Squartini (2010) describes the relations of dependent tenses in Medieval Italian. He notes how the diﬀerence between primary and secondary contexts is sometimes neutralized, especially when the content is still relevant at the MOS:

Le più evidenti diﬀerenze tra it. ant. e it. mod. si riscontrano nell’espressione dei rapporti anaforici rispetto ad un passato deittico. Diﬀerentemente che in it. mod., in it.. ant. alcune forme che esprimono anteriorità e posteri- orità rispetto ad un presente deittico sono ammese anche nel caso in cui la sovraordinata contenga un passato deittico, neutralizzando così la distinzione

339 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

tra concordanza rispetto ad un presente e concordanza rispetto ad un passato. Mario Squartini (2010, p. 925) This regards the tenses in frasi argomentali which are otherwise described as having a tendency to use relative time reference. In relative clauses and adverbial clauses the preferred reference type is absolute. Therefore, this shift in time from secondary to primary tenses is normal in all clause types in Medieval Italian, just as it appears equally much in most clause types in neo-Latin. Generally, in Squartini’s account of the dependent tenses in Medieval Italian, it is mentioned several times and in several contexts that the present tense may be used, in both moods, if the situation that is described is still relevant at the moment of speech. In addition, it appears that the Italian passato prossimo may be followed by either primary or secondary tenses, because of its double nature, which resembles the Latin perfect tense.24 Therefore, it is likely that the tendency that we saw in neo-Latin is interference from the L1 of the humanists, though we have no comparable data on the frequency. Squartini describes the Medieval Italian tense system as rather loose compared to the modern tense system, and this looseness is apparently reﬂected in neo-Latin. This tendency is also seen in Medieval Latin, especially in purpose clauses where we also found it in neo-Latin, and Stotz (1998, IV. § 55.2) also mentions how it only gradually disappeared from the Latin language in the Renaissance. Table 13.1 summarizes Squartini’s many observations on the dependency of tenses in Medieval Italian.25 Studying the tenses in the tables will reveal that the Medieval Italian tenses resemble the neo-Latin and Classical Latin tenses much. Therefore the basic tense system in neo-Latin could be transfer from the Volgare. At least it seems that the tense systems of Medieval Italian and Classical Latin are so closely related that the natural use of the tenses in the vernacular of the humanists supports their unconscious acquisition of the Classical Latin tense system. So when the Medieval Italian tense system basically is the same as the neo-Latin, how can we know if the neo-Latin tenses are at all aﬀected by the Classical Latin tenses, or if they are purely the result of their mother tongue, or vice versa? We have indications

24Squartini (2010, p. 931). 25The presentation in tables is mine, and not Squartini’s own, and they are a simpliﬁcation of the matter.

340 13.4 The Origin of the Neo-Latin Tense Sy em

XXX XX Time XXX Primary Secondary Future Relation XXX Anterior passato prossimo piuccheperfetto passato prossimo passato remoto passato remoto other past tenses imperfetto

Simultaneous presente imperfetto presente passato remoto presente

Future futuro imperfetto futuro presente (a) Indicative tenses XX XXX Time XXX Primary Secondary Future Relation XXX Anterior imperfetto piuccheperfetto perfetto perfetto presente (adv./rel. clauses)

Simultaneous presente imperfetto presente imperfetto presente

Future presente imperfetto presente imperfetto presente (b) Subjunctive tenses

Table 13.1: La concordanza dei Tempi

341 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

that suggest that both the Classical Latin and the Medieval Italian tenses interplay with the neo-Latin tenses. In the table, the red colors show some positions where the imperfect indicative and subjunctive do not generally appear in the neo-Latin language, but where they are attested in the Medieval Italian. The imperfect indicative is very rare in primary contexts in neo-Latin, and we have only seen one instance of an imperfect subjunctive in a primary context which may have a temporal reference to the future (13.1), a use of the imperrfect subjunctive that is attested in the Medieval Italian. Most of the instances of the imperfect subjunctive in primary contexts seem to have an unreal value, which is expressed with the same tense in Classical Latin. But we also saw that there were a few instances of the imperfect subjunctive in primary contexts which seem to be used in stylistic variation with the perfect subjunctive, to express that which is prior to a primary tense in the context, and which is viewed in an imperfective aspect. This use does not appear in Classical Latin, but in Medieval Italian (blue color), and it may be transferred from the L1, though it may also be the result of some confusion of the indicative and the subjunctive tenses. The use of the present in past contexts (blue color) deﬁnitely seems to be transferred from the L1 as well, as discussed above, because it is normal in Medieval Italian and rare in Classical Latin. In this we see that one feature of the Medieval Italian becomes very normal in neo-Latin, namely the adaption of the tenses to better correspond with the MOS reference. And we see some indications of the expanded use of the imperfect subjunctive in Medieval Italian—seemingly a form that is to some degree neutralized for time reference. But these uses of the imperfect are rare and occur mostly in a few authors’ language, mostly among the older authors, and mostly in the low-style genres. This resembles the pattern of a feature that the humanists try to suppress, likely a feature from their L1 that they do not associate with the proper Latin language, where it has no precedence.

I propose to characterize the role of the tense system in the Volgare as supportive, as an instance of (mostly) positive interference of the L1, but not as an independent, unassisted source for the neo-Latin tense system. This I propose on the one hand because of the quite accurate coincidence of the neo-Latin and the Classical Latin tense systems, as discussed above, and on the otherr hand because of the precise imitation of the various

342 13.4 The Origin of the Neo-Latin Tense Sy em

Classical Latin tense patterns of the individual clause types. The neo-Latin tense system is based on imitation of the particular clause types. In addition to the relation to particular clause types, the influence from the Classical Latin language appears in those forms that the Medieval Italian does not have. For example, the precise imitation of the future perfect discussed in 12.3.2 must be an indication of the role of the Classical Latin language in the neo-Latin tense system, as well as the periphrastic future subjunctives that appear mostly in those contexts where they are also most frequent in the Classical Latin language and the characteristic use of the present indicative after dum, a clause type which did not survive into the Italian language of their time wherer it was substituted by mentre (che).26 Therefore, I see the neo-Latin tense system as based both on Classical Latin and the Volgare, in which the tense systems are basically the same. But the more loose nature of the Medieval Italian tenses are adapted to the Classical Latin uses of the tenses, so that especially the different uses of the imperfect subjunctive have been restricted in neo-Latin and only appear sporadically. This results in a tense system that not only resembles earlier Latin, but primarily resembles the tenses of the Classical Latin and Silver Latin prosaists. But the Volgare is apparent throughout the neo-Latin language in the one general characteristic of absolute MOS reference in past contexts. Because most humanists seem to be able to adapt their tense use to particular Clas- sical Latin authors, while avoiding the distribution of tenses in the language of others, such as the language in The Latin Vulgate, I believe the influence from Medieval Latin to be of a sporadic nature, and not to form the basic tense system. We have seen some indications of direct influence from Medieval Latin, but they generally appear in the language of individual authors, and often among the earlier authors. But Medieval Latin, as well as Scholastic Latin which has generally not been studied here, likely play a contributing part in the formation of neo-Latin. For even though the neo-Latin tense system basically seems to be a mix of the Volgare and Classical Latin, it shares some characteristics with those other Latin variants as well, because they share some basic conditions. All variants are contact languages and are used by writers who do not have Latin as their mother tongue. So all variants have been taught in school (or the like), and

26Zennaro et al. (2010).

343 13 The Value of Neo-Latin Time Reference

all likely reveal traits of having been learned outside a natural language environment. And there are indeed similar reports on for example the sequence of tenses, and especially violations of the sequence of tenses, in several individual treatments of Medieval authors, as well as in descriptions on Medieval Latin in general.

Classical rules concerning the sequence of tenses are frequently violated (indeed, medieval tense structures in all situations frequently conform to norms other than those of classical or modern usage—mixtures are frequent). Harrington (1997, p. 49) Therefore the Medieval Latin may be yet a supportive factor which ‘helps’ the humanists associate certain patterns with the Latin language, so that those generalizations from their mother tongue which can be recognized in most Latin variants are more likely to be overgeneralized. And so, the many variants of Latin through the centuries, with an abundance of possible expressions, are all sources for the overgeneralization of the Volgare. The more Latin variants represent a linguistic feature, the more stable a part of the language that feature becomes.

344 Chapter 14

Conclusions: the Nature of Neo-Latin

The Latin language of the humanists played an important part in their identity as the heirs to the culture of Antiquity, and we know how much passion and eﬀort they put into adapting their own Latin to the Classical Latin norm. We also know that they succeeded in changing many lexical elements in their language in imitation of Classical Latin. But did they also succeed in imitating those parts of the Classical Latin language that they were not explicitly aware of and which were not part of their extensive metalinguistic discussions? This study has shown that the use of the moods and the tenses in the subordinate clauses in neo-Latin to a large extent are modeled on the Classical Latin language that they imitate, supported by similarities in the system of their vernacular language, but also sometimes hindered by the diﬀerences between Classical Latin and the Volgare as well as by diverging tendencies in later states of the Latin language. So the basic system of moods and tenses in neo-Latin subordinate clauses was based upon their imitation of the Classical Latin literature, but with some central deviations.

14.1 A Language of Natural Linguistic Mechanisms

The humanists did not generally wish to merely copy the Classical Latin language. Since Petrarch they strove to make the relationship between Classical Latin and their

345 14 Conclusions: the Nature of Neo-Latin

own Latin one of “similitudo, non identitas:” Their Latin should be a language in its own right, allowing for some characteristics and adding something new and worthy to the tradition of Classical Latin language and literature. We now know that the morpho- syntactic layers of neo-Latin indeed add something new to the Latin language. However, most of these diﬀerences hardly seem to be deliberate innovations. But is the neo-Latin language used by the humanists in its own right, as a natural language dependent on natural linguistic mechanisms and with the same extent of linguistic complexity as is found in the Classical Latin language?

As mentioned in 2.3.2, the discussion of linguistic complexity in natural languages is a delicate subject, which I am not qualified to participate in on a theoretical level. And yet, the discussion has led us to studying the complexity in the neo-Latin language, because neo-Latin and Classical Latin are two language variants that share so many similarities that they seem comparable with respect to complexity. In a few instances we have studied the matter of complexity explicitly in certain linguistic environments, such as subordinate to imperatives, to infinite constructions, and in the deep layers of very hypotactic passages. In general, we found plenty of genuine clauses that express actual new content in all those layers of the language, and so the neo-Latin language seems fluent and naturally complex. But the degree of subordination could not be compared to Classical Latin data, and so we cannot say for sure whether neo-Latin is generally more or less paratactic than Classical Latin. We can only say that the subordination seems fluent, genuine and varied. We also noted that corresponding tendencies were found in the Classical Latin language in the few linguistic environments where the neo-Latin language was characterized by many fixed expressions—such as clauses subordinate to an imperative in the main clause, or such as many of the periphrastic future subjunctives being subordinate to verbs of knowing. And so the few examples of the neo-Latin language being formed by simplified linguistic expressions do not seem to represent a simplification of language in comparison with Classical Latin, but actual imitation of Classical Latin expressions. On the contrary, when comparing the neo-Latin language to the Classical Latin, most differences in the use of moods and tenses that are found between the two variants result in more possible constructions in neo-Latin than in Classical Latin. For example, Valla adds a semantic means of expression when

346 14.1 A Language of Natural Lingui ic Mechanisms he regularly chooses between the indicative and the subjunctive in clauses with quia. We have also seen at several occasions that the humanists express modal modiﬁcations where it is not quite as frequent in Classical Latin. One exception was found in the use of tenses in clauses with cum that appear in a secondary context, for there the present subjunctive is much more frequent than is the case in Classical Latin. Thus, neo-Latin generally conforms to the tendency seen in natural languages—except for those dying from attrition—that where one element in the language is weakened, another element is strengthened. In the case of neo-Latin, it is often a grammatical mechanism which is weakened, while more semantic nuances are introduced, enhanced, or spread to new linguistic environments.

In connection with such considerations of complexity there are also the considerations of ‘natural variation’, the observation made in many languages that certain linguistic elements—such as the subjunctive—are more frequent in the presence of other linguistic elements—such as particular tenses. Relations such as are described by Andersen (2001c) as agreements in markedness can be identiﬁed in several parts of the neo-Latin language, for example in the dependency between the subjunctive mood and both the ‘distant’ grammatical persons and the past tenses. Such dependencies within the neo- Latin language conform to observations made in the studies of universal grammar, and we have seen that the overall distribution of the subjunctive in neo-Latin is related to the general nature of the subjunctive as a means for expressing the uncertainty with that which seems distant to the speaker. On the other hand, the similar—but syntactically rather than semantically determined—relation known from Medieval Italian between the subjunctive mood in subordinate clauses and the presence of negations in its context could not be attested in neo-Latin, which indicates that the semantic functions of the subjunctive are stronger than the syntactic functions in the Latin of the humanists. So far as this study can show, the neo-Latin language has a natural distribution of the moods which coincides with tendencies that have been observed in human language use in general.

347 14 Conclusions: the Nature of Neo-Latin

14.2 Stability and Change

Another central principle of human language is its social character, that human language is formed in a speech community, and that the individual adapts his language to the language of the community. Also for the neo-Latin language it is possible to determine clearly the common frames, as it were, within which most humanists display their individual language use: even though much variation is found between the language of the individual humanists, there is also a general agreement of the grammar of their language. For example, all the humanists represented in the corpus, except Ficino, demonstrate the same conception of the diﬀerences between the clause types studied, and they ‘agree on’ which clause types have more indicative and which have more subjunctive. Except for Ficino’s moods, the variations found among the humanists resemble the variations found when extracting comparable Classical Latin data provided by the L.A.S.L.A. Project. And similarly almost all authors studied contain their dependent tenses within the same basic principles, namely 1) the application of the sequence of tenses in a considerable number of subjunctive clauses in secondary tenses, 2) a common conception of Zeit- sphären which suppresses the imperfect (indicative) and the pluperfect from primary contexts and the perfect subjunctive from secondary contexts,1 and even 3) the common deviation from the Classical Latin norm that makes almost all humanists choose the present subjunctive in stead of the backshifted imperfect subjunctive in secondary contexts when the past tense would be in conﬂict with the absolute time reference. Only one author, namely Manetti, seems to violate this common system of tenses. It may be considered an indication that the neo-Latin language is not quite as stable as a truly natural language that authors have actually been shown to violate the fundamental language systems which the other members of the language community seem to agree on. We have seen several other individual peculiarities, such as Poggio’s and Battista Guarini’s instructive use of the future tense. This may also be the unnatural result— linguistically speaking—of a language which is built upon centuries of Latin literature, where both the desired and the undesired language variants exist side by side in written

1Knowing that those perfect subjunctives that appear in secondary contexts are subordinate to the perfect indicative which was more often considered a primary tense by the humanists than in Classical Latin.

348 14.2 Stability and Change testimony, even though centuries have passed between one language variant and another. This has, seemingly, provided the possibility for individuals to pick up expressions, even in the morpho-syntactic layers of the language, and use them frequently, expressions which the community otherwise generally avoids (but note that other humanists not represented in the corpus may support those uses as well).

So apart from such few and sporadic deviations, the humanists clearly act as in a language community and demonstrate common grammatical patterns. But one could ask whether these observations could not also be the result of individuals who, independent of a language community, each refer to the same stable, fixed model, the Classical Latin language. The results of this study do not show much development of the neo-Latin language throughout the 15th century, and in almost all respects the morpho-syntactic nature of the language is very stable. This could indeed indicate that the only common act in the formation of neo-Latin was the common formulation of a new model and a new norm. But actually we see a few indications of such ‘negotiation’ of the linguistic form in an actual language community, which show that acting within a language community is at least a contributing factor to the stability of and widespread agreement on the grammar observed in neo-Latin. One of these indications is the common deviation from the Classical Latin norm, that all humanists attach more importance to the semantic MOS relation than to the syntactic mechanism of the sequence of tenses when a conflict occurs, while also agreeing that the backshifting be applied when no direct conflict occurs. The remaining indications that the agreement on the neo-Latin language is indeed the result of acting in a language community are found in the few instances of change that we have witnessed in the 15th c. neo-Latin.

In the very stable system of neo-Latin moods and tenses we cannot see many reﬂec- tions of the discussions and development of the Latin vocabulary that unfolded throughout the century. And so, the stabilization of the language norm and the attempts by humanists such as Valla and Perotti at reaching agreement on the nuances in the Latin vocabulary is not seen in similar stabilizations in the morpho-syntactic levels of the language. For there the language was basically stable already. But we have seen a few indications of stabilization in more peripheral elements of the language use. One we saw in the pursuit to detect the stylistic levels of various genres in the amount of the

349 14 Conclusions: the Nature of Neo-Latin

subjunctive used in each genre. Here we saw an actual agreement to use less subjunctive in the treatises, but only in the late division of the corpus, and we saw how each of the late authors individually revealed some measure of ‘genre sensitivity’ between his writings of the highest style, and those of lowest stylistic level. Among the early authors only Bruni’s language seemed to reﬂect this genre sensitivity, and Poggio’s language even showed the complete opposite distribution. This could be an indication of a common agreement—though likely unconscious—that the subjunctive was the ‘interesting’ mood slightly less associated with the least literary of the genres studied.

One of the only two clear examples of change that were identiﬁed is the gradual suppression of the imperfect subjunctive in primary contexts, which was associated with overgeneralizations of modal modiﬁcations such as are also recognized in Medieval Latin. Phasing out this element from the language apparently happens without an explicit discussion in the grammatical writings, and yet it is clearly related to the conceptual identity of the neo-Latin language, as the linguistic practice approaches the Classical Latin norm and diverges from the practice in Medieval Latin, and as the change actualizes according to the patterns predicted by Andersen’s Actualization Theory for changes with a pragmatic motivation—in Andersen’s terminology. This change therefore follows natural patterns and indicates that the language is formed in a community where an unpopular expression is gradually suppressed.

The remaining example of change in progress that we have witnessed is the matter of quia discussed at several occasions. Though quia follows the same pattern with respect to Andersen’s Actualization Theory—the change appearing ﬁrst in the high style and last in the low style—it has a more ‘explosive’ and deliberate nature. It is clearly related to the explicit discussions of the Classical Latin vocabulary and particularly the deliberate avoidance of quia for indirect discourse. And in this we see the nature of individual and deliberate innovation followed by spread to the language community which results in actual language change. For we see how Valla revives the conjunction in certain environments, particularly in precise imitation of historical writers of Antiquity. Then we see how the use of quia is accepted by succeeding humanists, only not quite in the fashion intended by Valla, as it ‘loses’ its proprietas and moves away from the genre which Valla seemingly associated it with. In this we see both the mechanisms of a language

350 14.3 Deliberate Imitation and Unconscious Grammar community accepting an innovation which then actualizes in other genres as well, and we see how humanist grammarians such as Valla had the position to inﬂuence and initiate change, but could not control language itself. Even neo-Latin with its particular position as a primarily written language in an institutionalized setting was not a language to be controlled.

14.3 Deliberate Imitation and Unconscious Grammar

The change of the language norm that led to the neo-Latin language was a highly deliberate decision introduced by humanists fascinated by the Classical Latin language and literature. The metalinguistic discourse from the 15th century shows how the humanists ardently discuss the nature of imitation: Which authors should be imitated, should they be imitated precisely, or should the humanists add their own characteristics to their language? The paradigm shift from a rule-based approach to an imitative approach is what forms the basis of the neo-Latin language, an approach which we have seen reflected also in the morpho-syntax of the language, for example in equal distributions of moods in various clause types in Classical Latin and neo-Latin as well as in the fact that the tense system in neo-Latin prose resembles the tenses in Classical Latin prose more than poetry and more than the tenses in The Latin Vulgate or the Satyricon. We have at very few occasions studied in detail the language of individual authors and seen how the language was used very carefully and deliberately, for example in Perotti’s stylistic use of the subjunctive in indirect discourse when writing in the name of his nephew Pirro and perhaps in Valla’s use of the periphrastic future subjunctive outside its most normal context of indirect questions, which seems to reflect stylistic considerations such as variatio in the historical genre. We also know from the writings of the humanists and especially a manual of style and proprietas such as the Elegantiae how much thought was put into the detail in writing humanist Latin. But only very seldomly are stylistic considerations reflected in the general distribution of the language, and only seldomly has this quantitative study led us to linguistic deviations from the norm which could be explained as stylistic prioritization. This does not mean that style is not a central

351 14 Conclusions: the Nature of Neo-Latin

component of the Latin of the humanists, whose prose composition was based on the rhetorical approach to letter writing, the ars dictaminis.

The fact that style only seldomly is reﬂected in the neo-Latin language, which is basically a literary language, reveals the relationship between the neo-Latin language system and style. The neo-Latin language is based on a common language system which is not regularly violated. Style is variation within this language system, the individual author composing his literature with all means allowed by the system. The strength of the language system makes examples of individual variation which deviates dramatically from the common norm rather rare, and we have only encountered a couple of such examples in this study, such as Pontano’s seemingly stylistic interpretation of the historical present indicative after dum as an actual historical tense, both related to past tenses and to passages that resemble historical writings. Ficino’s very diverging use of particularly moods and to some extent tenses as well may also be considered an instance of stylistics that actually suppresses the common language system, if one accepts the suggestion that his language imitates Early Christian Latin rather than Classical Latin in general. Similarly, Valla’s excessive use of quia in the historical genre is a matter of style which is detectable even in the general neo-Latin language. The only common stylistic use of tenses identiﬁed in this study is the use of the historical present which is clearly considered a characteristic of the historical genre by the humanists. That the language is a rather consistent system that overrules stylistics, so to say, is particularly clear when studying individual variation of the tenses and variation across genres. We have seen how the characteristics of genres and authors are much more outspoken in the indicative tenses than in the subjunctive tenses. The subjunctive tenses are, in neo-Latin as well as in Classical Latin, considerably more grammatically restricted than the indicative tenses, and this restriction weakens such individual characteristics in the subjunctive, while they remain in the indicative tenses.

Even though the humanists sought an imitative approach to Latin composition, they still formulated rules for the Latin language and discussed the correctness and elegance of individual expressions. But how much inﬂuence had such deliberate discussions on their actual language use? As is the case with stylistics, the conscious knowledge on the language does not inﬂuence the linguistic practice much, not the individual rule at

352 14.3 Deliberate Imitation and Unconscious Grammar least. This is first and foremost evident in the fact that the actual language system of the humanists is much more complex than the rules that they describe. The consistent system of tenses mentioned above exists almost independent of the corresponding grammatical knowledge. For in the grammars, we find only sporadic mentioning of a particular tense, and the explanation of the tenses in for example Perotti’s Rudimenta grammatices lacks several central observations that would be needed to build such a tense system on grammatical knowledge. Other pieces of evidence for the absence of an effect of the actual grammatical descriptions are found in several differences between a grammatical description and the corresponding use. For example Perotti describes the form amavero as a future subjunctive and the conjunction dum as a conjunction usually constructed with the indicative, while the actual use of amavero in neo-Latin generally resembles the Classical Latin future perfect, and dum is predominantly constructed with the indicative, also by Perotti himself. Such diverging grammatical descriptions seem to have confused the humanists only very sparsely, and the form amavero only seems to have been used as a future subjunctive once in the data collection. Once in a while a peculiarity of the neo-Latin language is phrased explicitly in a grammatical work, such as when Valla categorizes licet and quamvis as synonyms used in exactly the same way, while he constructs licet with the indicative as well as the subjunctive known from Clas- sical Latin, likely in analogy with the construction of quamvis. Because clauses with licet were not part of the common neo-Latin study, we cannot yet know whether this use is a personal characteristic of Valla—we have seen that he adds the subjunctive to another clause type, quia, more than any other of the humanists in the corpus. But even if licet with the indicative should happen to be a common neo-Latin trait, I doubt that we could blame Valla’s grammatical description, knowing how little effect grammatical rules have in the neo-Latin practice. And even though Valla tells us that he for some reason associates licet with quamvis, this association does not result in two completely equal clause types in his own language, and Valla’s licet still resembles the Classical Latin licet more than does his quamvis. In this way, the open and deliberate discussions only exceptionally lead to precise intended changes to these parts of the language system, such as was the case with the suppression of the declarative quia as a means for expressing indirect discourse.

353 14 Conclusions: the Nature of Neo-Latin

I believe that the actual descriptions in humanist grammars merely reveal some of the reasons for the formation of the neo-Latin language, rather than cause the form themselves. Except for some sporadic indications such as the confusion of two particular clause types, the grammars can teach us one thing of particular importance for the formation of the morpho-syntactic subject of this study, namely which parts of the language interested them the least, and which parts caused them most confusion. For example, both Valla and Perotti describe the use of the moods and the distinctions in meaning caused by the moods in certain clause types such as cum. And we have seen that the humanists generally imitate the Classical Latin distribution of moods in most clause types, even dum and cum. Even though the principles for the choice of mood is sparsely described in humanist grammars and based only on a few semantic distinctions such as knowledge vs. uncertainty, the use of the tenses is given even less thought. This may be the reason why we see the confusion of dum and cum clearly in the distribution of tenses and not at all in the distribution of moods. This is not due to speciﬁc grammatical rules that I have encountered, but the presence of a paradigm for distinguishing mood may help imitating the mood in Classical Latin dum and cum, while the absence of a similar paradigm for choosing tenses may contribute to preventing precise imitation of this element. In this way, deliberate grammatical considerations play a role, but only indirectly, and likely not as a decisive factor but merely contributing.

14.4 Classical Latin, Volgare, and Medieval Latin

For the grammatical confusion or absence of grammatical focus does not result in random language use, but rather it provides a gateway for other kinds of inﬂuence to slip into the language where the imitation of Classical Latin becomes imprecise. For example, Valla’s confusion in his Elegantiae of the indirect interrogative use of quid with the relative or declarative use of quod seems to provide the basis for an overgeneralization of the indicative from one clause type to another. This is also the case when Perotti in his Rudimenta grammatices under a general paragraph concerning all that which is expressed in Italian with che treats what is in Classical Latin considered indirect discourse. Both of these two examples show how the lack of grammatical distinctions—

354 14.4 Classical Latin, Volgare, and Medieval Latin or rather grammatical distinctions not adapted to the Classical Latin language—provides the possibility to overgeneralize the indicative mood in accordance with the Transfer to Somewhere Principle of contact languages. The humanists seem to recognize patterns from their own dialects in the Classical Latin language because they do not distinguish clearly between those environments that we now know to be associated primarily with the subjunctive in Classical Latin and those that regularly have the indicative. And so, the transfer of elements from the Volgare always seems to conform to the TSP, and the humanists eﬀectively suppress those parts of their mother tongue that they do not associate with the Classical Latin language at all—such as the peculiar uses of the imperfect subjunctive with direct reference to the present and the future that we see in only one instance, by Bruni, the earliest writer in the corpus, and perhaps by the somewhat younger Manetti.

One more characteristic emerges when looking back at those elements of the neo- Latin language that were identified as—or proposed to be—transferred from the Volgare in accordance with the TSP. They are stable throughout the century and occur in the language of almost every author in the corpus. This regards both the specific use of a seldom indicative in indirect questions that are otherwise constructed with the subjunctive in precise imitation of the Classical Latin practice, and tendencies that are very central to the character of moods and tenses in neo-Latin, such as the preference for the indicative in indirect discourse, the use of the present subjunctive in secondary contexts where conflicts occur with the MOS reference, and even a fundamental stress on semantic values rather than syntactic mechanisms. Such instances of interference from the Volgare reflect that the Volgare is a constant factor which is common to all the Italian humanists of this study. While these characteristics of neo-Latin may be shared with other of the later Latin variants as well, such as Medieval Latin, they are likely primarily the result of L1 interference. For those elements that more likely have their origin in the Medieval Latin or other Latin variants than Classical Latin have a different distribution.

We have at several occasions encountered constructions in the neo-Latin language which are not normal in Classical Latin. Those appear more sporadic, as a peculiarity of a particular author or only at very few occasions. We have only studied those parts of the language that were outspoken enough to catch our attention through the quantitative

355 14 Conclusions: the Nature of Neo-Latin

appearances. And yet, only very individual Medieval constructions were identified. We saw for example the Medieval overgeneralization of mood in modal verbs among two of the earlier authors, namely Bruni and Poggio, and the Medieval instructive use of the future indicative in two different ‘favorite’ constructions by Poggio and Battista Guarini. The influence from Medieval being more sporadic and more individual may reflect that it depends more on the differences between authors, that they may have focused their studies on different sources. It may be a difference in which authors the humanists have studied, in Bruni’s words “. . . quo mens imbuitur atque nutritur.” (Bruni, Stud., § 5). In many cases they definitely twist the principle of writing according to Classical Latin usus, overgeneralizing that which is not normal practice, though neither unseen. This is clear, for instance, in the fact that neo-Latin does not normally allow the pluperfect and the future perfect in clauses with dum, even though several clauses with dum resemble cum when considering the tenses. But those tenses that, used exclusively for expressing the sequencing of events, seem to have been to far from the nature of dum, in spite of a general confusion of the tenses after dum and cum.

Those parts of the language that can only be attested in the Medieval Latin or in the Medieval Italian before neo-Latin are rather sparse. Humanist Latin is a language of imitatio, and it is clear that most of those elements that at ﬁrst sight do not seem Classical are found when extending our deﬁnitions of Classical Latin slightly. Here I think especially of the many peculiar uses of tenses in certain clause types where they are not normal in Classical Latin (e.g. the perfect after dum), but also the more systemic tendency to use the historical subjunctive tenses in clauses subordinate to the historical present. Many common neo-Latin constructions are explained when considering those authors whom we know the humanists to have cherished, even such an ‘unclassical’ phenomenon as the declarative quod used for expressing indirect discourse, openly accepted by Valla in his Elegantiae, and found in the language of writers such as Gel- lius, Vitruvius, and some Church Fathers. For the humanists do not regularly use Latin expressions that are not at all to be found in the language of those authors whom they consider ‘Classical’.

The tendency that the humanists prefer expressions that are attested in both Clas- sical Latin (following their own deﬁnition), Medieval Latin, and Medieval Italian makes

356 14.4 Classical Latin, Volgare, and Medieval Latin it impossible to determine the precise origin of each expression found in the neo-Latin language, but a pattern has emerged in the ways each language variant inﬂuences the neo-Latin language. Detailed comparative studies of particular expressions used in neo- Latin and in its surrounding variants of Latin and Italian would likely reveal many interesting and more precise models for particular neo-Latin expressions. This study, on the other hand, was intended to determine the fundamental nature of the neo-Latin language and the mechanisms of interplay between various linguistic factors. The inclusion of several authors in one corpus has proven decisive for this study, and we can now characterize the components of the neo-Latin language structures through a complex of individual and common language use.

Neo-Latin is basically built on imitation of Classical Latin, even in the subconscious morpho-syntactic parts of the language which the humanists do not describe openly. Imitation is a very deliberate strategy, but many elements follow from the imitation into the neo-Latin language without the author’s explicit awareness, and even against their (imprecise) grammatical knowledge in some situations. But the natural language that results from this imitative practice is also very dependent on another deliberate strategy of the humanists, namely to rely on the similarities between their mother tongue and the Classical Latin language. The role of the Volgare is merely supportive to the imitative Latin, for the Volgare is suppressed where the humanists did not recognize their mother tongue in the Classical Latin language. And yet, the constant presence of the Volgare in the Latin of the humanists is evident where their grammatical view obscures some basic differences between the two languages and allows their mother tongue to slip into their Latin. The direct influence from the Medieval Latin is also frequent, but more personal and sporadic—various elements appear in some authors and are suppressed by others. And yet, Medieval Latin also seems a supportive factor in overgeneralizing certain elements, either from the Volgare or from those authors that we would not today call Classical. For neo-Latin often favors those expressions that became normal in the Latin of the Silver Age or even in Late Latin, and which became even more frequent in the Middle Ages. But first and foremost based on imitation, and only seldomly in direct conflict with that which the eclectic humanists would themselves call ‘Classical Latin’. And so, even the subconscious parts of neo-Latin proves a battle of suppressing the

357 14 Conclusions: the Nature of Neo-Latin

sporadic appearances of Medieval Latin and building a language on imitation of Classical Latin—not the Classical Latin of today, but the Classical Latin of the Renaissance humanists.

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373

List of Figures

2.1 Contact zones ...... 27

4.1 Genre hierarchy ...... 91

6.1 L.A.S.L.A. search interface ...... 114 6.2 Treebank sentence of ista meam norit gloria canitiem ...... 116 6.3 Treebank query builder ...... 117 6.4 Arch dependency returned from Perseus Treebank ...... 117

7.1 Distribution of mood across genres ...... 138 7.2 Distribution of authors within genres ...... 139 7.3 Individual authors’ inﬂuence on mood in dialogues ...... 140 7.4 Individual authors’ inﬂuence on mood in treatises ...... 141 7.5 Distribution of mood across genres (Ficino removed from treatises) . . . . 141 7.6 Individual authors’ distribution of mood ...... 143 7.7 The mood across genres in early and late 15th c. neo-Latin (treatises:late with and without Ficino) ...... 145

8.1 Mood distribution in diﬀerent clause types ...... 148 8.2 Distribution of mood in clause types ...... 161 8.3 Individual use of mood in interrogative clauses ...... 165

9.1 The mood variation due to person and number ...... 171 9.2 The mood variation due to person in early and late writers ...... 172 9.3 The mood variation due to person and number in the L.A.S.L.A. total corpus ...... 173 9.4 The mood variation due to the time in the context ...... 180

375 Li of Figures

9.5 The mood variation according to time in the context in diﬀerent genres (without Ficino) ...... 183 9.6 Mood and time in early and late divisions (without Ficino) ...... 186 9.7 Mood and time in Ficino’s writings ...... 187 9.8 Valla’s choice of mood dependent on the mood in the context ...... 189 9.9 Common neo-Latin choice of mood dependent on the mood in the context 191 9.10 Clause types subordinate to the imperative in Classical Latin and neo- Latin ...... 192 9.11 Illustrating degrees of subordination ...... 194 9.12 Relation between mood and the degree of subordination ...... 200 9.13 Dum, Cum, and Quia in diﬀerent degrees of subordination ...... 201 9.14 The overall popularity of clause types in early and late division ...... 202 9.15 Relation between mood and the degree of subordination (without indirect discourse and ambiguous discourse) ...... 203 9.16 More indicative in indirect discourse of 2+◦ of subordination ...... 203

10.1 Mood subordinate to infinite and finite clauses ...... 220 10.2 Mood subordinate to infinite clauses, inside and outside of indirect discourse221 10.3 Clause types found subordinate to infinite constructions ...... 222 10.4 The moods in indirect discourse ...... 227 10.5 Mood in indirect discourse with a 1st person verbum dicendi/sentiendi . . 230 10.6 Mood in various clause types with a 1st person verbum dicendi/sentiendi 232

11.1 The tense system from the mid 18th to the mid 19th century ...... 257

12.1 The four basic tenses in indicative and subjunctive ...... 269 12.2 The tenses across the century (early and late authors) ...... 272 12.3 Genre variation in indicative tenses (without ambiguous forms) ...... 275 12.4 The tenses of individual authors (a sample) ...... 276 12.5 The tenses in individual clause types (* only Valla) ...... 280 12.6 Classical Latin and neo-Latin tenses in individual clause types ...... 284 12.7 Tenses with future and present time reference in the context ...... 289

376 Li of Figures

12.8 The basic tenses with future and present time reference in the context . . 290 12.9 The historical present and the present perfect ...... 302 12.10Diﬀerent clause types under the historical present ...... 304

13.1 The neo-Latin tenses compared to data from the Perseus Treebank . . . 332 13.2 Dum and cum in Classical Latin and neo-Latin ...... 335 13.3 Tenses of Sallust and Jerome ...... 337

B.1 Timeline of lives and works ...... 401

E.1 Tree showing regular expression ...... 413

H.1 Distribution of mood across genres ...... 427 H.2 Distribution of authors within genres (authors before Valla are pale gray; after Valla, dark gray) ...... 428 H.3 Distribution of genres across authors ...... 429 H.4 Distribution of mood across authors ...... 430 H.5 Authors’ individual mood variation across genres (only authors represented by more than one genre in corpus) ...... 431 H.6 Number of clause types in genres ...... 433 H.7 Authors’ contribution to clause types (authors before Valla are pale gray; after Valla, dark gray) ...... 434 H.8 Distribution of clauses across authors ...... 435 H.9 Mood in Valla’s clause types and in Classical Latin ...... 436 H.10 Mood in neo-Latin and Classical Latin clause types ...... 437 H.11 Mood in different clause types, early and late division ...... 438 H.12 Mood in different clause types, individual authors (continued in Figure H.13) ...... 439 H.13 Mood in different clause types, individual authors (continued from Figure H.12) ...... 440 H.14 Time in the context in the five genres (primary tenses are pale gray; secondary tenses are dark gray) ...... 442 H.15 Distribution of time in context across authors ...... 443

377 Li of Figures

I.1 Mood inside and outside indirect discourse in different clause types (* = Valla only) ...... 445 I.2 The mood variation due to voice ...... 446 I.3 The mood variation due to negations ...... 447 I.4 The mood variation according to time in the context in different genres (without Ficino) ...... 448 I.5 The influence from Pontano’s language and dialogue on the mood in primary and secondary contexts ...... 449 I.6 Mood and the time in the context in various authors’ language (a sample) 450 I.7 Clause types in different degrees of subordination ...... 451 I.8 Authors who use the indicative in indirect discourse ...... 451 I.9 Mood and indirect discourse in various authors’ language (a sample) . . . 452 I.10 Mood in indirect discourse concerning 1st person, and other persons . . . 453 I.11 Clause types in indirect discourse reporting 1st person’s and other persons’ speech (* = Valla only) ...... 453 I.12 Indicative tenses in various genres (excl. and incl. ambiguous forms) . . . 454 I.13 Subjunctive tenses in various genres (excl. and incl. ambiguous forms) . . 455 I.14 Classical Latin tenses in clause types from Perseus Treebank ...... 456 I.15 Tenses of Classical Latin authors from Perseus Treebank ...... 457

378 List of Tables

2.1 Classical Latin changing into neo-Latin ...... 28 2.2 Medieval and Scholastic Latin changing into neo-Latin ...... 29 2.3 Changes inside neo-Latin ...... 30 2.4 Environments suitable for language change ...... 43

5.1 2 × 2 contingency table ...... 106 5.2 The chi-square distribution for 2 × 2 table (df 1) ...... 106 5.3 Critical values for χ2 ...... 107 5.4 Critical values for Fisher exact test, p ...... 109

6.1 Word distribution in the common neo-Latin corpus ...... 113 6.2 Word distribution in the Valla corpus ...... 113 6.3 Clause types and genres in the common neo-Latin corpus ...... 128 6.4 Clause types and authors in the common neo-Latin corpus ...... 128 6.5 Clause types and genres in the Valla corpus ...... 129

9.1 Overall relations to the degree of subordination ...... 196

12.1 The form amavero ...... 292 12.2 Periphrastic future subjunctive ...... 295

13.1 La concordanza dei Tempi ...... 341

C.1 Unique numbers in historiographical works ...... 404 C.2 Unique numbers in speeches ...... 404 C.3 Unique numbers in letters ...... 404 C.4 Unique numbers in treatises ...... 405

379 Li of Tables

C.5 Unique numbers in dialogues ...... 405

D.1 Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus ...... 407 D.2 Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. history corpus ...... 408 D.3 Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. speech corpus ...... 408 D.4 Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. dialogue corpus ...... 409 D.5 Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. colloquial corpus ...... 409 D.6 Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. total corpus, in addition to those listed under the L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus ...... 410

E.1 Search expressions used in dtSearch ...... 412 E.2 The possible values of the data categories ...... 418

380 English Summary

The dissertation analyzes the use of moods and tenses in subordinate clauses in 15th c. Italian neo-Latin, a Latin variant written in imitation of the Classical Latin of Antiquity. General systems of moods and tenses are largely ignored in the grammatical descriptions of the Renaissance humanists. Therefore the study of this part of the language is aimed at discovering subconscious language use in the neo-Latin language and at characterizing the interaction of subconscious mechanisms in language use with the deliberate strategy to write in imitation of Classical Latin and the actual grammatical knowledge described in grammars. The dissertation pursues the thesis that the neo-Latin language differs from the Classical Latin language, not primarily in containing features which are not possible also in Classical Latin, but rather in the distribution of linguistic features: Preferences for certain features which are less frequent in Classical Latin are the key to uncovering the influence on neo-Latin—both the influence of subconscious linguistic mechanisms and of deliberate strategies. Theoretically neo-Latin is studied as a contact language, a language which does not develop as an isolated language, but in the interplay with other languages: based on the Classical Latin literary language, but not isolated from later Latin variants such as Late Latin, Early Christian Latin, and the Medieval Latin in the school books and teaching methods of the Renaissance. Neo-Latin exists also side by side with the vernacular Italian dialects. Neo-Latin is evaluated with respect to mechanisms of contact languages such as overgeneralization of certain linguistic features and both positive and negative interference from the mother tongue. The study aims at describing the common literary neo-Latin of 15th c. Italy in five prose genres. The investigation is built upon a corpus of texts written by 13 different

381 English Summary

Renaissance humanists. The language of these authors is considered both individually and in common. Lorenzo Valla’s major work Elegantiae, finished in 1444, is taken in the study to be a dividing line between an early group of humanists educated before the influence of Valla, and a late group of humanists younger than Valla. This division is used for determining changes during the century. The grammatical descriptions by Valla, as well as by his successor Perotti, are the main sources in the present investigation for information on the grammatical knowledge and the view on grammar in the Renaissance. A similar pilot study focusing on the language of Valla also contributes to the findings in the dissertation.

The 13 authors have been chosen because they were each influential among Re- naissance humanists. Their language is therefore not expected to be representative of neo-Latin in general, but to be representative of the neo-Latin norm. The corpus provides information on the verbs found in six different subordinate clause types: dum, cum, quia, ne, quis/quid, and utrum (and 11 additional clause types in the Valla study). In total, 1,774 clauses are part of the common neo-Latin study. The data from these clause types provides information on the distributions of and relations between various factors such as mood, tense, person, voice, and negations in the subordinate clause and mood, tense, verba dicendi/sentiendi, and negations in the context of these clauses. This is used for testing for dependencies between such factors, and for describing the distribution of moods and tenses in different contexts within the neo-Latin language.

The dissertation conceives the neo-Latin language as a stylistic Language variant built on a the literary variant Classical Latin and used for literary purposes. Therefore it is asked whether the use of moods and tenses reﬂects deliberate stylistic considerations rather than an actual language system. Is the language inﬂuenced more by stylistics than by grammatical knowledge, or is it a language system out of reach for both of these deliberate elements? The status of neo-Latin as a natural or a constructed language is studied by asking if it forms as one language in a natural language community, if it is naturally complex and varied, and if it conforms to known linguistic universals.

In Chapter 7 it is studied whether more subjunctive can be attested in the genres which are associated with a higher level of style. An association of the subjunctive with high style could indicate that the subjunctive mood was thought of as the ‘interesting’

382 English Summary mood, a means for variation in ﬁner writings. No clear relation between mood and level of style emerges in the data, only a clear tendency among the late authors to have less subjunctive in treatises than in historical works. When looking at the distribution of moods among the individual authors, it appears that most authors largely agree on a common amount of the subjunctive and the indicative, and the diﬀerences among individuals resembles comparable data from Classical Latin authors extracted from the corpus of the L.A.S.L.A. Project. Only Ficino uses the subjunctive remarkably less than the remaining humanists. This is taken as an indication that neo-Latin is generally a common language, but perhaps with unnaturally much room for individual variation.

In Chapter 8 the use of moods in the individual clause types is compared to the corresponding clause types in Classical Latin, and it appears that each clause type is generally imitated precisely with respect to mood. Also the distribution of moods after dum and cum resembles the Classical Latin practice, and a confusion between the two clause types proposed in earlier studies is only clear in the use of tenses. Most remarkable in comparison with Classical Latin is the use of licet in the Valla study with the indicative, of quia with the subjunctive, and indirect interrogative clauses being once in a while constructed with the indicative by almost every humanist in the study.

Chapter 9 shows a dependency between the grammatical person of a verb and the mood, so that the subjunctive is less frequent when writing about one self than when writing about others. There is a similar dependency between the subjunctive mood and past tenses. Both these two relations are described in terms of the semantic nature of the subjunctive expressing that which is most uncertain and furthest away from the speaker. Such tendencies are attested in human language in general, and neo-Latin therefore reﬂects natural language use in such relations. There is a similar relation between the mood in the subordinate clause and the mood in the matrix clause. No dependency is attested between mood and voice, nor between the mood in the subordinate verb and the presence of negations or whether the matrix clause is itself an embedded clause or a main clause.

In Chapter 10 the construction of indirect discourse is studied. In Italian, indirect discourse is constructed rather diﬀerently from the practice in Classical Latin, and the Classical Latin grammatical mechanism which regularly causes the subjunctive in sub-

383 English Summary

ordinate clauses after verba dicendi and sentiendi is not found in the vernacular Italian. This causes some confusion in neo-Latin, both in the linguistic practice and in the grammatical descriptions which do not mention a concept such as ‘indirect discourse’. The humanists regularly choose the indicative when referring their own thoughts and speech in Latin, only choosing the subjunctive when expressing uncertainty, not knowing, or the like. When referring what others said or thought, they choose the subjunctive more often, and not always with a particular semantic reason. But often the subjunctive denotes uncertainty or emphasizes that the writer is skeptical towards the content or the reasonableness of the reported argument. In Classical Latin the subjunctive is chosen when there is no reason to choose the indicative. In neo-Latin the subjunctive most often has a particular reason. The humanists recognize the Classical Latin use of the accusative with inﬁnitive as an alternative expression where Medieval Latin often used quod or quia, and Italian che. They deliberately avoid quia in this position, and only one instance of a declarative quia is found out of 361. In addition, quia seems to be generally stigmatized and is rather rare among the early authors, only spreading again after Valla used quia particularly in historical works, likely in imitation of historical writers such as Sallust.

The Chapters 11–13 concern neo-Latin dependent tenses. The grammatical descriptions of tenses in the Italian Renaissance are very sparse, and they lack several basic observations to be able to describe the Classical Latin tenses. And yet, the distribution of tenses in neo-Latin resembles the Classical Latin distribution in many respects, and there is a fundamental difference between the use of the indicative and the subjunctive tenses: In past contexts, the perfect subjunctive is largely suppressed, and the present subjunctive is significantly less frequent in past contexts than is the present indicative. This is because the sequence of tenses is partly in effect in neo-Latin, and because the subjunctive tenses are often used with relative time reference. But where the relative nature of the subjunctive tenses in Classical Latin may result in conflicts between the grammatical time and the actual time (e.g. an imperfect expressing that which is future to the moment of speech), the actual time reference is more important in neo-Latin than the syntactic mechanism of sequence of tenses. The present subjunctive therefore substitutes the imperfect when a conflict occurs between grammatical time and actual

384 English Summary time. This is proposed as inﬂuence from the Italian dialects, though based on similar but rare expressions found in Classical Latin as well as Medieval Latin. Basically the neo-Latin tense system seems to depend both on many similarities between the Italian and Classical Latin tenses and on imitation of Classical Latin literature. For the neo-Latin use of tenses corresponds more to the practice of authors whom the humanists claim to imitate, such as Cicero and Sallust, than to less popular texts such as Petronius’ Satyricon or The Latin Vulgate (cf. data from the Perseus Treebank). The general tense system also seems to be the result of each clause type being constructed more or less in accordance with the corresponding Classical Latin clause type, and particularities from Classical Latin such as the historical present indicative after dum are imitated precisely in neo-Latin. Similarly, the form amavero, described in some Renaissance grammars as a future subjunctive, is imitated precisely by most humanists, as well as the periphrastic future subjunctive mostly appears in indirect interrogative clauses. Therefore the neo-Latin use of moods and tenses seems basically to depend on the imitative approach to Latin composition and on many similarities with the Italian language. Deliberate considerations both on grammar and on style are only rarely detected in the general grammatical system, which is mostly formed by linguistic intuition and according to natural language mechanisms. Tendencies in Medieval Latin are sometimes supportive, and a feature can become more strongly represented in neo-Latin if it appears both in Italian and in Medieval Latin. But those features that appear only in Medieval Latin are sporadic and belong to the language of individuals. Similarly, features from Italian which are not attested in either Classical Latin or Medieval Latin also seem to be gradually suppressed in neo-Latin. Basically, neo-Latin is used as a natural language of intuition, and its basic systems are outside the reach of deliberate awareness on individual constructions. And yet, neo-Latin is the result of a very deliberate change in language: not a direct change to the language system, but the decision to write in imitation of Classical Latin, for the language system follows from precise imitation.

385

Dansk Resumé

Denne afhandling analyserer brugen af modus og tempus i underordnede sætninger på italiensk nylatin fra 1400-tallet, en variant af latin som skrives i imitation af antikkens klassiske latin. Generelle systemer for modus og tempus ignoreres oftest i renæssancehu- manisternes grammatiske beskrivelser. Derfor har studiet af netop denne del af sproget til hensigt at identificere ubevidst sprogbrug i det nylatinske sprog og at karakterisere samspillet mellem ubevidste mekanismer i sprogbrugen, den bevidste strategi at skrive i imitation af klassisk latin og den konkrete viden om sprogsystemerne som findes i gram- matikker fra renæssancen. Afhandlingen afsøger den tese at nylatin ikke adskiller sig fra klassisk latin ved at indeholde elementer som ikke også er mulige på klassisk latin, men snarere i fordelingen af sproglige elementer: Elementer som foretrækkes på nylatin, men som er sjældnere på klassisk latin, er nøglen til at afdække indflydelsen på nylatin, både fra ubevidste sprogmekanismer og bevidste strategier. Teoretisk betragter afhandlingen nylatin som et kontaktsprog, et sprog som ikke formes isoleret fra men i samspil med andre sprog: Nylatin er baseret på det klassiske litterære latin, men ikke isoleret fra senere varianter af det latinske sprog så som sen- latin, tidlig kristen latin og det middelalderlatin humanisterne mødte i middelalderlige skolebøger og undervisningsmetoder. Men latin eksisterede også side om side med de italienske dialekter. Nylatin evalueres i dette studium med henblik på mekanismer i kontaktsprog, fx overgeneralisering af visse sproglige elementer samt både positiv og negativ indflydelse fra modersmålet. Studiet søger at beskrive det generelle litterære nylatin i fem prosagenrer fra 1400- tallets Italien. Undersøgelsen er baseret på et korpus af tekster af 13 forskellige renæs- sancehumanister, nemlig Bruni, Veronese, Poggio, Manetti, Filelfo, Alberti, Valla, Pon-

387 Dansk Resume

tano, Perotti, Ficino, B. Guarini, Barbaro og Poliziano. Disse forfatteres sprog betragtes både individuelt og samlet. Lorenzo Vallas værk Elegantiae, færdiggjort i 1444, betragtes som en skillelinje mellem en gruppe af tidlige humanister uddannet før Vallas indﬂydelse og en gruppe af sene humanister som er yngre end Valla. Denne inddeling benyttes til at undersøge sprogforandringer i løbet af 1400-tallet. Vallas grammatiske beskrivelser er sammen med hans efterfølger Niccolò Perottis de primære kilder i studiet til informationer om grammatisk viden samt grammatiksyn i renæssancen. Et pilotstudium af Vallas sprog indgår desuden af og til i afhandlingen. De 13 forfattere er valgt fordi de hver især var indﬂydelsesrige humanister. Deres sprog forventes dermed ikke at være repræsentativt for al nylatin, snarere at være repræsentativt for den nylatinske norm.

Korpus giver informationer om verberne i seks forskellige ledsætningstyper: dum, cum, quia, ne, quis/quid og utrum (og yderligere 11 sætningstyper i Vallastudiet). I alt indgår 1.774 sætninger i studiet af det generelle nylatin. Data fra disse sætningstyper giver informationer om fordelingen af og relationen mellem forskellige faktorer så som modus, tempus, person, diatese og negationer i ledsætningen samt modus, tempus, sæt- ningstype, ytrings- og sanseverber og negationer i sætningernes overordnede kontekst. Disse informationer bruges til at teste for afhængigheder mellem sådanne faktorer samt til at beskrive fordelingen af modus og tempus i forskellige kontekster i det nylatiske sprog.

Afhandlingen betragter det nylatinske sprog som en stilistisk sprogvariant bygget på den litterære variant klassisk latin og brugt primært i litterære kontekster. Derfor undersøges det om brugen af tempus og modus bygges på bevidste stilistiske hensyn frem for et egentligt sprogsystem. Påvirkes sproget mere af stilistik end af grammatiske beskrivelser, eller er det et sprogsystem uden for begge disse bevidste elementers indﬂy- delse? Det overvejes også om renæssancehumanisterne bruger nylatin som et naturligt sprog ved at undersøge om det formes som ét sprog i et naturligt sprogsamfund, om det er naturligt komplekst og varieret, og om det lever op til kendte sproglige universaler.

I kap. 7 undersøges det om der kan påvises mere konjunktiv i de genrer som forbindes med et højere stilniveau. Hvis konjunktiv associeres med høj stil, kunne det antyde at konjunktiv blev opfattet som den mest ‘interessante’ modus, et middel til at opnå et varieret sprog i ﬁnere tekster. Ingen tydelig relation mellem modus og stilniveau ses i

388 Dansk Resume de givne data, men alene en klar tendens blandt de sene forfattere til at have mindre konjunktiv i traktater end i historiografien. En undersøgelse af fordelingen af modus hos de individuelle forfattere viser at de fleste forfattere er nogenlunde enige om ensartede fordelinger af konjunktiv og indikativ overordnet set, og de udsving der ses, svarer til de forskelle der findes blandt klassiske forfattere i L.A.S.L.A.-projektets korpus. Dog adskiller en forfatter sig: Ficino bruger konjunktiv væsentligt mindre end de øvrige forfattere. Dette ses som en indikation af at nylatin generelt bruges som et fælles sprog, men muligvis med unaturligt stor mulighed for personlig variation.

I kap. 8 sammenlignes modusfordelingen i individuelle sætningstyper med tilsvarende på klassisk latin, og det vises at hver sætningstype generelt imiteres præcist med henblik på modus. Også fordelingen af modus i sætninger med dum og cum ligner praksis på klassisk latin, selvom tidligere litteratur om nylatinsk syntaks nævner en sammenblanding af de to sætningstyper. Denne sammenblanding ses til gengæld tydeligt i tempus- brugen. Mest bemærkelsesværdigt er det at licet i Vallastudiet ﬁndes med en anselig andel indikativ, hvilket er meget sjældent på klassisk latin, at quia ofte konstrueres med konjunktiv, hvilket også er sjældent på klassisk latin, og at næsten alle humanisterne af og til konstruerer indirekte spørgesætninger med indikativ, hvilket næsten aldrig ses på klassisk latin.

Kap. 9 viser en sammenhæng mellem et verbums grammatiske person og dets modus sådan at konjunktiv er sjældnere når man taler om sig selv end når man taler om andre. Tilsvarende er der en sammenhæng mellem konjunktiv og fortid. Begge disse to relationer kan beskrives ved den semantiske funktion af konjunktiv at udtrykke det som er usikkert og fjernest fra taleren. Sådanne tendenser ses generelt i naturlige sprog, og praksis i nylatin afspejler dermed naturlig sprogbrug. En lignende sammenhæng ses mellem modus i ledsætningen og modus i konteksten. Det kan ikke påvises at modus i ledsætningen påvirkes af hverken diatese, tilstedeværelsen af negationer i konteksten eller hvor vidt den overordnede sætning selv er en ledsætning eller en hovedsætning.

I kap. 10 undersøges konstruktionen af indirekte tale. På humanisternes moder- smål konstrueres indirekte tale basalt anderledes end på klassisk latin, og den klassisk latinske mekanisme som regelmæssigt udløser konjunktiv i ledsætninger efter ytrings- og sanseverber, ﬁndes ikke på italiensk. Dette giver nogen forvirring på nylatin, både

389 Dansk Resume

i sprogpraksis og i de grammatiske beskrivelser hvor begrebet ‘indirekte tale’ end ikke nævnes. Humanisterne bruger regelmæssigt indikativ når de refererer hvad de selv har sagt eller tænkt, og bruger her kun konjunktiv til at udtrykke usikkerhed, uvidenhed el.lign. Når det refereres hvad andre har sagt eller tænkt, anvendes konjunktiv oftere og ikke altid med en specifik semantisk grund. Dog udtrykker konjunktiv også her ofte usikkerhed eller understreger at forfatteren er skeptisk over for det refererede indhold eller fornuften i argumentationen. På klassisk latin benyttes konjunktiv når der ingen grund er til at bruge indikativ. På nylatin har konjunktiven oftest en specifik betydning. Humanisterne anvender den klassisk latinske brug af akkusativ med infinitiv som en al- ternativ udtryksform der hvor middelalderlatin ofte brugte quod eller quia, og italiensk che. De undgår bevidst quia i denne position, og kun ét tilfælde af deklarativt quia findes blandt 361 quia-sætninger. Desuden synes quia generelt at være stigmatiseret og er relativt sjælden blandt de tidlige forfattere, indtil hyppigheden stiger igen efter Valla bruger den navnlig i sit historieværk, sandsynligvis i imitation af historiske forfattere så som Sallust.

Kap. 11–13 behandler afhængige tider på nylatin. Grammatiske beskrivelser af tider er meget begrænsede i den italienske renæssance og mangler flere væsentlige observation- er som er nødvendige for at beskrive de klassisk latinske tider. Dog ligner fordelingen af tider på nylatin den klassisk latinske praksis i mange henseender, og der er en fundamental forskel på brugen af indikativiske og konjunktiviske tider: I fortidig kontekst er perfektum konjunktiv stort set fortrængt, og præsens konjunktiv er signifikant sjældnere i fortidskontekst end præsens indikativ er. Dette skyldes at tidsfølgen til dels virker på nylatin, og at konjunktivs tider ofte bruges med relativ tidsbetydning. Men hvor den relative natur i klassisk latins konjunktiviske tider kan resultere i konflikter mellem grammatisk tid og faktisk tid (fx imperfektum som udtrykker det der er fremtidigt i forhold til fortællingens tid), er den faktiske tidsbetydning vigtigere på nylatin end den syntaktiske mekanisme i tidsfølgen. Præsens konjunktiv erstatter derfor imperfektum når der opstår en konflikt mellem grammatisk tid og faktisk tid. Det foreslås at dette skyldes indflydelse fra de italienske dialekter, selvom tilsvarende kan findes blot i meget mindre omfang på både klassisk og middelalderlatin. Overordnet synes det nylatinske

390 Dansk Resume tidssystem at være baseret på mange ligheder mellem italiensk og klassisk latin og på imitation af klassisk latinsk litteratur. For de nylatinske tider svarer mere til praksis hos nogle af de forfattere som humanisterne selv siger de imiterer, så som Cicero og Sallust, end til praksis i mindre populære tekster, så som Petrons Satyricon eller Vulgata (ifølge data fra Perseus Treebank). Det generelle system synes også at være et resultat af at hver enkelt sætningstype konstrueres mere eller mindre som den tilsvarende sætningstype på klassisk latin. Endvidere imiteres særlige klassisk latinske træk præcist, så som den stivnede historiske præsens efter dum. Formen amavero beskrives i nogle renæssancegrammatikker som en futurum konjunktiv, men den imiteres præcist af de fleste humanister, lige så vel som den perifrastiske futurum konjunktiv oftest optræder i indirekte interrogative sætninger som på klassisk. Derfor synes den nylatinske brug af modus og tempus overordnet relateret til den imitative tilgang til at skrive latin samt på ligheder mellem det latinske og de italienske sprog. Bevidste overvejelser over både grammatik og stil kan kun sjældent aflæses i det brede billede af det grammatiske system som primært synes at være formet af sproglig intuition og efter naturlige sprogmekanismer. Tendenser i middelalderlatin medvirker sommetider til at et element kan blive stærkere repræsenteret i nylatin hvis det både optræder på italiensk og middelalderlatin. Men træk som kun findes i middelalderlatin er sporadiske og tilhører individuel sprogbrug. Tilsvarende undertrykkes de elementer også gradvist i nylatin som kun kommer fra modersmålet. Nylatin bruges generelt som et naturligt sprog bygget på intuition, og de grundlæggende systemer styres ikke ofte af opmærksomhed på konkrete, individuelle konstruktioner. Og dog er nylatin et resultat af en meget bevidst sprogændring: ikke en direkte ændring af sprogsystemet, men en beslutning om at skrive i imitation af klassisk latin, for sprogsystemet er en følge af denne præcise imitation.

391

Appendices

Appendix A

Texts and Editions

Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472)

• Uxoria (1439), Opere Volgari 2, Scrittori d’Italia a cura di Cecil Grayson (1966). Laterza.

Hermolao Barbaro (1454–1493)

• Orationes (1474/83/84), V. Branca, ed., Epistolae, Orationes et Carmina, 2 (1943). Florence:

In funere Nicolai Marcelli Venetiarum Principis Hermolai Barbari patricii veneti oratio (1474);

Prosphonematica Oratio in adventu Renati Ducis dicti Lotoringiae ab Hermolao Barbaro habita pro nomine (1483);

Hermolai Barbari oratio ad discipulos (1484).

• Epistole, 1,I-XVI, V. Branca, ed., Epistolae, Orationes et Carmina (1943). Flo- rence.

Battista Guarini (1435–1503)

• Oratio Baptistae Guarini de septem artibus liberalibus (1453), L. Piacente, ed., La didattica del greco e del latino. De ordine docendi ac studendi e altri scritti, (Quaderni di ‘Invigilata Lucernis’ 15, 2002). Bari.

395 Appendix A Texts and Editions

• De ordine docendi ac studendi (1459), L. Piacente, ed., La didattica del greco e del latino. De ordine docendi ac studendi e altri scritti,(Quaderni di ‘Invigilata Lucernis’ 15, 2002). Bari.

Leonardo Bruni (1370/74–1444)

• Historiae Florentini populi, book 1-2 (1442), J. Hankins, ed., Historiae I–IV,(Re- rum italicarum Scriptores XIX,3, 2001). Cambridge, Mass. & London.

• Laudatio Florentine urbis (1403/04), P. Viti, ed., Opere letterarie e politiche di Leonardo Bruni, pp. 568–646. Turin.

• De studiis et litteris liber ad Baptistam de Malatestis (1422/29), P. Viti, ed., Opere letterarie e politiche di Leonardo Bruni, pp. 248–78. Turin.

• De interpretatione recta (c. 1420), P. Viti, ed., Opere letterarie e politiche di Leonardo Bruni, pp. 150–92. Turin.

• Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum (1401/1407), P. Viti, ed., Opere letterarie e politiche di Leonardo Bruni, pp. 78–142. Turin.

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499)

• Theologia Platonica de animorum immortalitate (1486), J. Hankins & W. Bowen, edd. ( 1964/2001–2). Paris.

• Dialogus inter Deum et Animam theologicus (Familiares 4), S. Gentile, ed., Epis- tolarum familiarium liber I (1990). Florence.

Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481)

• Ep. ad Sforza Secondo (1451) and Ep. ad Lorenzo Medici (1473), M. Tavoni, ed., Latino, Grammatica, Volgare,(Storia di una questione umanistica, 1984). Padua.

• Ep. ad Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1439), Ep. ad Francesco Sforza (1438), and Ep. ad Bartolomeo Francanzani (1428), D. Robin, ed., Filelfo in Milan. Writings 1451–1477, pp. 169–75 (1991). Princeton.

396 Appendix A Texts and Editions

• De morali disciplina, book 1 (1474), D. Robin, ed., Filelfo in Milan. Writings 1451–1477, p. 226–46 (1991). Princeton.

Gianozzo Manetti (1396–1459)

• De dignitate et excellentia hominis, book 1 (1452), E.R. Leonard, ed. (1975). Padua.

Guarino Guarini, Veronese (1374–1460)

• Epistolae, vol. 1, R. Sabbadini, ed. (1915—19). Venice.

Niccolò Perotti (1430–1480)

• Oratio de abdicanda lege, qua auri et purpurae usus mulieribus interdicitur (c. 1467), G. Lombardi, ed., Galiane in rivolta. Una polemica umanistica sugli orna- menti femminili nella Viterbo del Quattrocento,(Patrimonium. Studi di storia e arte 9, 1998). Rome.1

• Ep. ad Acerbus (1474), G.B. Vermiglioli, ed., Memorie di Iacopo Antiquario, 33, pp. 314–15 (1813). Perugia.

• Ep. ad Alfonso (1456), Mercati, ed., pp. 148–150.

• Three letters to Ammanati (1471), Hausmann, ed., Iacopo Ammanati Piccolomini. Lettere (1444–1479) a cura di Paolo Cherubini, pp. 608–09 (1970/97). Rome.

• Two letters to Ammanati (1472), Hausmann, ed., Iacopo Ammanati Piccolomini. Lettere (1444–1479) a cura di Paolo Cherubini, pp. 289–91 (1970/97). Rome.

• Ep. ad Bessarion (1469/1465), Mohler, ed., 3, pp. 594–97.

• Ep. ad Boncontes (1455–1457), Mohler, ed., 3, pp. 648–49.

• De componendis epistolis (1473), W.K. Percival, ed., Rudimenta Grammatices, pp. 219-90 (2010). Kansas. URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1808/6453 1It is uncertain, whether De ornam. mul. was actually composed by Perotti.

397 Appendix A Texts and Editions

Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459)

• Historiarum Florentini populi liber vi (1450-1455), transcr. O. Merisalo, Vat. Urb. lat. 491 (2007).

• Lettere, 1, H. Harth, Lettere a Niccolò Niccoli, pp. 3-44 (1984—87). Florece.

• De varietate fortunae, 1 (1447/48), O. Merisalo, ed., Annales Academiae Scien- tiarum Fennicae B 265 (1993). Helsinki.

• An seni sit uxor ducenda (1435), G. Shepherd, ed. (1807). Liverpool.

Angelo Ambrogini, il Poliziano (1454–1494)

• Coniurationis Pactianae commentarium (1478), Perosa, ed. (1958).

• Letters, 1,1–2,6, S. Butler, ed., Angelo Poliziano, Letters (I Tatti Renaissance Library 21, 2006). Cambridge, Mass.

Giovanni Giovio Pontano (1429–1503)

• De principe (1464/65), G.M. Capelli, ed., Testi e Documenti di letteratura e di lingua 22, pp. 1024—66 (2003). Rome.

• Dialogus Actius (1499), C. Previtera, ed., Giovanni Pontano, I dialoghi (1943). Florence.

Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457)

• Gesta Ferdinandi Regis Aragonum, prooem.–2,ix (1-3 in the Valla corpus), O. Besomi, ed., (Thesaurus mundi 10, 1973). Padua.

• Oratio in principio studii (1455–56), Orazione per I’inaugurazione delI’anno acca- demico ; atti di un seminario di ﬁlologia umanistica a cura di Silvia Rizzo,(Roma nel Rinascimento, 1994). Rome.

• Epistole Laurentii Valle, 1-19 (the entire collection in the Valla corpus), O. Besomi & M. Regoliosi, edd. (Thesaurus mundi 24, 1984). Padua.

398 Appendix A Texts and Editions

• De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione, 1,1–9,31 (the entire work in the Valla corpus), O. Pugliese, ed., La falsa donazione di Constantino (1994). Mailand. URL: history.hanover.edu/texts/vallapart2.htm.

• De libero arbitrio (1439), E. Keßler, Über den freien Willen. De libero arbitrio, (Humanistische Bibliothek 2,16, 1987). Munich.

Texts by Lorenzo Valla that are Only in the Valla Corpus

• L’Epistola contra Bartolum del Valla, M. Regoliosi, ed., Filologia umanistica. Per Gianvito Resta, pp. 1501–71 (1997). Padua.

• Praefatio zur Thucydides-Übersetzung, M. Pade, transcr., Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commen- taries 8, pp. 121–22 (2003). Washington, DC.

• Dedicatory letter to linguae Latinae, S.L. Moreda, ed., Laurentii Vallensis de linguae Latinae elegantia (1999). Cáceres.

• Laurentii Vallensis ad Ioannem Tortellum Arretinum cubicularium apostolicum de reciprocatione ‘sui’ et ‘suus’, E. Sandström, ed.,Studia Graeca et Latina Gothobur- gensia 63 (1998). Gothenburg.

• Retractio totius dialecticae cum fundamentis universae philosophiae, B.P. Copen- haver, ed., (2010). Los Angeles.

URL: www.cmrs.ucla.edu/brian/research/unﬁnished/unﬁnished_books

/valla_book.htm

• L’Apologus, S.I. Camporeale, ed., Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, pp. 479–534 (1972). Firenze.

• De professione religiosorum, M. Cortesi, ed., Thesaurus Mundi 25 (1986). Padua.

399

Appendix B

Timeline of Authors

This appendix shows the division of the studied authors into an early and a late group, and an overview of the lives of the authors, and the years of the works studied. Not all works are included, especially not all letters, and some years are approximate. The precise information is found in Appendix A.

Figure B.1: Timeline of lives and works

401

Appendix C

Corpus Details

The texts represented in the individual genres are:

Historiography: Bruni, Historiae populi Florentini; Poggio, Historiarum Florentini populi; Poliziano, Coniurationis Pactianae commentarium; Valla, Gesta Fernandi Regis Aragonum.

Speeches: Barbaro, Orationes (cf. App. A); Bruni, Laudatio Florentine urbis; B. Guarini, Oratio de septem artibus liberalibus; Perotti, Oratio de abdicanda lege; Valla, Oratio in principio studii.

Letters: Epistole by Barbaro, Filelfo, Perotti, Poggio, Poliziano, Valla, and Veronese (all speciﬁed in App. A).

Treatises: Alberti, Uxoria; B. Guarini, De ordine docendi et studendi; Bruni, De studiis et litteris liber ad Babtistam de Malatestis and De interpretatione recta; Ficino, Theologia Platonica; Filelfo, De morali disciplina; Manetti, De dignitate et excellentia hominis; Perotti, De componendis epistolis; Poggio, De varietate fortunae; Pontano, De principe; Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione.

Dialogues: Bruni, Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum; Ficino, Dialogus inter Deum et Animam theologicus; Poggio, An seni sit uxor ducenda; Pontano, Dialogus actius; Valla, De libero arbitrio.

403 Appendix C Corpus Details

The following tables name the unique numbers of each data set that was saved within each genre in each clause type and by each author in the common neo-Latin corpus.

Dum Cum Quia Ne Quis Utrum Bruni 12-21+142,275,276,277,278 65-102 1414-1421 161-196 1173-1181 144 Poggio 0-5 47-64 153-160 1182 Poliziano 6-11+141, 280, 281 41-46+140 145-152 Valla 22-40+ 282 103-139 1422-1513 197-244 1183-1205 143

Table C.1: Unique numbers in historiographical works

Dum Cum Quia Ne Quis Utrum Barbaro In funere Nic. 283-286 1514-1516 820-829 Prosphonem. 287-281 1517-1519 819 Orat. ad disc. 292-304 1520-1525 830-837 1211-1213 373 B. Guarini 258-260 327-349 1526-1537 810-818 1207-1210 Bruni 261-263 305-326 1538-1541 838-861 1214-1218 Perotti 245-257 350-372 1544-1569 862-904 1219-1224 374-376 Valla 264 265-274 1542-1543 805-809 1206

Table C.2: Unique numbers in speeches

Dum Cum Quia Ne Quis Utrum Barbaro 377-382 605-619 1570-1579 981-1002 Filelfo 383-385 663-676 1580-1581 913-917 1225-1233 G. Veronese 405-412 649-662 1582-1587 918-928 1253-1257 Perotti 635-648 1588-1597 905-912 1245-1252 Poggio 386-388 620-634 1598-1618 961-980 1258-1294 1403 Poliziano 389-399 677-690 1619-1624 929-947 1234-1238 Valla 400-404 691-704 1625-1630 948-960 1239-1244

Table C.3: Unique numbers in letters

404 Appendix C Corpus Details

Dum Cum Quia Ne Quis Utrum Alberti 413-425 745-754 1031-1040 1302-1303 1404 B. Guarini 426-434 765-774 1631-1639 1008-1016 1297-1299 Bruni Stud. et litt. 435-438 735-739 1640-1645 1041-1046 1344-1345 Recta interpret. 439 740-744 1646-1650 1047-1049 1346-1354 1405-1406 Ficino 440-450 775-784 1688-1727 1003-1004 Filelfo 451 785-794 1651 1017-1019 1304-1318 Manetti 452-455 725-734 1652-1661 1073-1097 1300-1301 1407 Pontano 459-460 795-804 1050-1062 1319-1323 Perotti 456-458 755-764 1662-1680 1063-1072 1295-1296 Poggio 715-724 1005-1007 1324-1337 Valla 705-714 1681-1687 1020-1030 1338-1343

Table C.4: Unique numbers in treatises

Dum Cum Quia Ne Quis Utrum Bruni 501-504 556-579 1728-1738 1105-1116 1376-1383 Ficino 505-507 1739-1750 1102-1104 1355-1356 Pontano 461-497 580-604 1753-1760 1133-1172 1384-1402 1408 Poggio 499-500 508-531 1751-1752 1098-1101 1357-1361 Valla 498 532-555 1761-1774 1117-1132 1362-1375 1409-1413

Table C.5: Unique numbers in dialogues

405

Appendix D

L.A.S.L.A. Corpus Details

The following tables show which works are represented in the selections from the L.A.S.L.A. corpus. Names and works are written as on the L.A.S.L.A. homepage. For the total list of works, visit http://www.cipl.ulg.ac.be/Lasla/tlatins.html. The L.A.S.L.A. total corpus is comprised of all texts listet in Table D.1 and D.6.

Author Works Caesar Gaius Iulius All works from L.A.S.L.A. Cicero Marcus T. All works from L.A.S.L.A. Plinius C. Secundus Panegyricus Sallustius C. Crispus All works from L.A.S.L.A. Seneca Lucius Annaeus Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales De Clementia ... and those mentioned under the L.A.S.L.A. dialogue corpus Tacitus Cornelius All works from L.A.S.L.A.

Table D.1: Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus

407 Appendix D L.A.S.L.A. Corpus Details

Author Works Caesar Gaius Iulius Commentarii Belli Civilis Commentarii Belli Gallici Commentariorum Belli Gallici Liber Octavus Sallustius C. Crispus Catilina Fragmenta Historiarum Jugurtha Tacitus Cornelius Annales Agricola Germania Historiae

Table D.2: Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. history corpus

Author Works Cicero Marcus T. Pro S. Roscio Amerino oratio In Verrem actio prima + secunda Pro A. Cluentio oratio In Catilinam 1–4 Pro Murena Pro Archia Pro Caelio Pro Milone Pro Ligario Philippica oratio 1–14 De Imperio Cn. Pompei ad Quirites oratio Plinius C. Secundus Panegyricus

Table D.3: Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. speech corpus

408 Appendix D L.A.S.L.A. Corpus Details

Author Works Cicero Marcus T. Laelius (De Amicitia) De Oﬃciis Cato maior (De Senectute) Seneca Lucius Annaeus Ad Helvetiam Matrem De Consolatione Ad Marciam De Consolatione Ad Polybium De Consolatione De Brevitate Vitae De Constantia De Ira De Otio De Providentia De Tranquillitate Animi De Vita Beata De Beneﬁciis Tacitus Cornelius Dialogus De Oratoribus

Table D.4: Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. dialogue corpus

Author Works Petronius Arbiter Satiricon Plautus Titus All works from L.A.S.L.A.

Table D.5: Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. colloquial corpus

409 Appendix D L.A.S.L.A. Corpus Details

Author Works Cato Marcus Porcius All works from L.A.S.L.A. Catullus, Gaius Valerius Carmina Horatius Q. Flaccus All works from L.A.S.L.A. Juvenalis D. Iunius Saturae Lucretius T. Carus De Rerum Natura Ovidius P. Naso All works from L.A.S.L.A. Persius A. Flaccus Satirae Petronius Arbiter Satiricon Plautus Titus All works from L.A.S.L.A. Propertius Sextus Elegiae Seneca Lucius Annaeus Hercules Furens Hercules Oetaeus Medea Oedipus Phaedra Phoenissae Thyestes Troades Agamamnon Apocolocyntosis Tibullus Albius Elegiae Vergilius Publius Maro All works from L.A.S.L.A.

Table D.6: Authors and works in the L.A.S.L.A. total corpus, in addition to those listed under the L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus

410 Appendix E

Search Expressions and Data Sets

Table E.1 lists the exact search expressions used for ﬁnding the clause types in the neo- Latin corpora. The expressions use a combination of the unique search functions of the program dtSearch1 and regular expressions.2

As an illustration of the use of regular expressions, ﬁgure E.1 gives a tree representation of the possible spellings that the search expression used for the word QVIS_QVID will return. In addition, marked with *, are the hits that are non-existant Latin words, but forms that would be found by the search as well if they should appear in the corpus.

Table E.2 lists all the values that can be applied to a verb in the diﬀerent categories in the application, as described in 6.2.2. Values marked with * are not used in the Valla corpus, except for Valla’s relative clauses, for which the entire data set was implemented.

1Search dtSearch Support Articles (2010). 2Microsoft (2010) and Jurafsky and Martin (2008), 17-44.

411 Appendix E Search Expressions and Data Sets

Connective Search expression DVM "##d[uv]m(q?[uv]e)?" CVM "##[cq][uv][uvo]?m(q?[uv]e)?" QVIA "##q[uv]ia" QVONIAM "##q[uv]on[ij]am" or "##q[uv]o[mn][ij]a[mn]" POSTQVAM_POSTEAQVAM "##post(ea)?q[uv]am" or ("##post(ea)?" w/5 "##q[uv]am") DONEC donec PRIVSQVAM "##pri[uv]sq[uv]am" or ("##pri[uv]s" w/5 "##q[uv]am") SIMULAC_SIMULATQVE ("##sim[uv]l" w/2 (ac or "##atq[uv]e")) or "##sim[uv]lac" or "##sim[uv]latq[uv]e" NE_CONJ_SUB "##ne(q[uv]i[sd])?(q[uv]a(ndo)?)?([uv]e)?" ETSI_ETIAMSI "##et(iam)?si" or ("##et(iam)?" w/1 si) LICET licet QVAMQVAM "##q[uv]a[mn]q[uv]a[mn]" TAMQVAM "##tamq[uv]am" or (tam w/1 "##q[uv]am") QVOT "##q[uv]ot" QVIS_QVID "##q[uv]i[sd](nam)?" In Valla corpus also: "##q[uv][ioae]m?" or "##q[uv][aio][esd]" or "##c[uv]i(us)?" or "##q[uv][oa]r[uv]m" or "##q[uv]ib[uv]s" or "##q[uv][oa]?(ibus)?c[uv]m" VTRVM "##[uv]tr[uv]m(ne)?(q?[uv]e)?" RELATIVE "##q[uv][ioae]m?" or "##q[uv][ao][esd]" or "##c[uv]i(us)?" or "##q[uv][oa]r[uv]m" or "##q[uv]ib[uv]s" or "##q[uv][oa]?(ibus)?c[uv]m"

Table E.1: Search expressions used in dtSearch

412 Appendix E Search Expressions and Data Sets

q P PP PP

v u ¨¨HH ¨¨HH ¨¨ HH ¨¨ HH

a i o a i o ¤¤TT ESE S ESE S ¤¤TT ESE S ESE S e s d* e* s d e* s d e s d* e* s d e* s d Figure E.1: Tree showing regular expression

Table E.2 Category Values Explanation/Example Clause CVM QVONIAM DVM NE_CONJ_SUB POSTQVAM_POSTEAQVAM LICET DONEC QVIS_QVID ETSI_ETIAMSI QVAMQVAM PRIVSQVAM SIMULAC_SIMULATQVE TAMQVAM QVOT Tense PRES_IND Present indicative PRES_SUBJ Present subjunctive FUT_IND Future indicative FUT_PERF Future perfect indicative IMPERF_IND Imperfect indicative continued on next page 413 Appendix E Search Expressions and Data Sets

Table E.2 – continued from previous page Category Values Explanation/Example IMPERF_SUBJ Imperfect subjunctive PERF_IND Perfect indicative PERF_SUBJ Perfect subjunctive PLUPERF_IND Pluperfect indicative PLUPERF_SUBJ Pluperfect subjunctive Also missus foret MISC_FUTIND_OR_PRESSUBJ Future indicative or present subjunctive referam MISC_FUTPERF_OR_PERFSUBJ fuerint MISC_PERFIND_OR_PRESIND legimus MISC_PRESIND_OR_FUTIND uteris MISC_PRESIND_OR_PRESSUBJ praedicat MISC_PRESSUBJ_OR_PERFSUBJ Ambiguous (consultum) sit etc. MISC_PRESSUBJ_OR_IMPERFSUBJ maceres FUT_PERIF_IND Periphrastic future with sum dicturus est FUT_PERIF_SUBJ Periphrastic future with sim moturus sim FUT_PERIF_SUBJ_PAST Periphrastic future with essem foret eventurum MISC_PERIF_SUBJ persuasum haberet PersonThis* AMBIGUOUS Two coordinate verbs with same mood and tense, but diﬀerent person Ambiguous forms FIRST_SG First singular SECOND_SG Second singular THIRD_SG Third singular FIRST_PL First plural (also the majestic plural) continued on next page

414 Appendix E Search Expressions and Data Sets

Table E.2 – continued from previous page Category Values Explanation/Example SECOND_PL Second plural THIRD_PL Third plural Voice ACTIVE Only morphologically active verbs PASSIVE Only morphologically passive verbs Deponent verbs etc.3 BOTH Two coordinate verbs with same mood and tense, but different voice Ambiguous (consultum) sit etc. SupClause MAIN_CL_IND The directly superordinate clause is a main clause in the indicative Main clause with no verb, when the context is otherwise in the indicative MAIN_CL_SUBJ Main clause in the subjunctive MAIN_CL_IMP Main clauses in the imperative MAIN_CL_NO_MOOD Main clause with no verb, when the context has mixed moods or the subjunctive Main clause with ambiguous verb, e.g. present subjunctive or future indicative SUB_CL_IND The directly superordinate clause is itself a subordinate clause in the indicative SUB_CL_SUBJ Subordinate clause in the subjunctive SUB_CL_NO_MOOD Subordinate clause with no verb or a verb with ambiguous mood INF The directly superordinate verb is infinite The accusative with the infinitive An infinitive (not governed by an auxilary) Participles, e.g. in the ablative absolute continued on next page 3Humanist grammars pay much attention to the genus of the verb, and so, following their semantic/syntactic distinctions of voice would be too comprehensive.

415 Appendix E Search Expressions and Data Sets

Table E.2 – continued from previous page Category Values Explanation/Example MAIN_CL_UNREAL_SUBJ Main clause in explicit unreal SUB_CL_UNREAL_SUBJ Subordinate clause in explicit unreal subjunctive SUB_CL_FUT_LESS_VIVID_SUBJ Subordinate clause in explicit future less vivid SUB_CL_FINAL_SUBJ Subordinaet clause in the subjunctive of purpose NO_SUP_CLAUSE The clause is a fraction, not connected to the context Discourse ORATIOOBLIQUA Unambiguous indirect discourse only An actual verbum sentiendi or dicendi is present Non dubito quin... ORATIORECTA Epic, narrative, and direct discourse passages (when no reason exists to interpret as indirect discourse) AMBIGUOUS May be interpreted as indirect discourse "Virtual indirect discourse"4 Eﬀective ut/ne after peto, vereor etc. PersonVerbDic* NONE No verbum dicendi or sentiendi is found The verbum dicendi or sentiendi is expressed in an impersonal construction The verbum dicendi or sentiendi is ambiguous, or there are several verbs with diﬀerent person FIRST_SG First singular SECOND_SG Second singular continued on next page

4As deﬁned in Apold (2006, §448-9; 475; 484).

416 Appendix E Search Expressions and Data Sets

Table E.2 – continued from previous page Category Values Explanation/Example THIRD_SG Third singular FIRST_PL First plural (also the majestic plural) SECOND_PL Second plural THIRD_PL Third plural Time PRIMARY_FUT Unambiguous future tenses only PRIMARY Primary tenses including ambiguous future/present SECONDARY AMBIGUOUS The historic inﬁnitive Contexts with very mixed tenses Where you cannot tell the diﬀerence between, say, present and perfect Contexts that may be historic present or present perfect In the Valla corpus: all values from HISTPRES and PRESPERF HISTPRES* Morphologically unambiguous present verbs with past sense inquit in secondary contexts PRESPERF* Morphologically unambiguous perfect verbs with reference to the present coepi, memini, and odi Negation NO_NEGATION No negations in the entire period sine, haud dubie etc. NEGATION_THIS_CLAUSE There is a negations in the clause5 continued on next page

5Negations that are ‘raised’ to the superordinate clause from the place of their semantic role in the subordinate clause, such as nego (see Noonan (1985, p. 90)), are counted among negations in the context, not negations in the subordinate clause (i.e. based on their actual place in the written text, and not on their semantic value).

417 Appendix E Search Expressions and Data Sets

Table E.2 – continued from previous page Category Values Explanation/Example Both single and double negations minus, nullus, nonne, nonnulli etc. Negated verbs, such as nego, nescio etc. NEGATION_CONTEXT Negations in the directly superordinate context (not in clauses coordinate with the directly superordinate clause) NEGATION_THIS_AND_CONTEXT Author* ALBERTI BARBARO BRACCIOLINI BRUNI FICINO FILELFO BATTISTA_GUARINO MANETTI PEROTTI POLIZIANO PONTANO VALLA GUARINO_VERONESE

Table E.2: The possible values of the data categories

418 Appendix F

Data Files

On the enclosed CD-ROM are found a number of ﬁles containing the data that was used for the investigation. If possible, it is recommended to disable word wrap in the text editor when reading the ﬁles.

The Data Collection

The ﬁles in the folders ‘Data Common’ and ‘Data Valla’ contain the data sets for each verb as described in 6.2.2. The ﬁles are divided into genres and are named letters.txt, dialogues.txt, historiography.txt, treatises.txt, and speeches.txt. The folder ‘Data Valla’ contains both data from the original Valla study and a version of his relative clauses extended to the form of the more recent common neo-Latin study.

Queries

The ﬁles Referred searches Common.txt and Referred searches Valla.txt contain the queries that are referred to by ‘C# X.X’ and ‘V# X.X’. All are enumerated and have the form described in 6.2.3. Speciﬁc distributions within queries which returned no matches have been removed to improve clarity.

419

Appendix G

Application Flows

Information is entered to the application using a simple dialogue in the console. The application lists and enumerates all possible answers to each question, and the user answers by typing the number of the correct value. Typing numbers and making the program write the correponding values to the text files is effective and prevents typos, and the possibility to check each value before finally saving a clause to the data collection reduces manual errors.

Who is the author? Choose a number: 0: ALBERTI, 1: BARBARO, 2: BRUNI, 3: FICINO, 4: FILELFO, 5: BATTISTA_GUARINO, 6: MANETTI, 7: PEROTTI, 8: POGGIO, 9: POLIZIANO, 10: PONTANO, 11: VALLA, 12: GUARINO_VERONESE >

You chose BRUNI

In what kind of clause is the verb? Choose a number: 0: AN, 1: NE, 2: CVR, 3: QVANDO_ADV_INTERR, 4: QVARE_INTERR, 5: QVEMADMODVM_INTERR, 6: VTRVM, 7: QVOT_INTERR, 8: QVOT_REL, 9: QVIS_QVID, 10: NONNE, 11: QVALIS_INTERR, 12: QVOMODO_INTERR, 13: RELATIVE, 14: CVM, 15: DVM, 16: VT_VTI_CONJ_SUB,

421 Appendix G Application Flows

17: POSTQVAM_POSTEAQVAM, 18: LICET, 19: ETSI_ETIAMSI, 20: QVAMQVAM, 21: NISI_NI, 22: QVIA, 23: DONEC, 24: PRIVSQVAM, 25: QVOMINVS, 26: QVOD, 27: QVONIAM, 28: SI_CONJ_SUB, 29: SIVE_SEV, 30: TAMQVAM, 31: TAMENETSI_TAMETSI, 32: SIMULAC_SIMULATQVE, 33: SIN, 34: SIQVIDEM, 35: QVEMADMODVM_REL, 36: QVOAD_REL, 37: QVANTO_REL >

You chose CVM

Type the verb (all parts of periphrastica). > est

What is the tense and mood of the verb? Choose a number: 0: PRES_IND, 1: PRES_SUBJ, 2: FUT_IND, 3: FUT_PERF, 4: IMPERF_IND, 5: IMPERF_SUBJ, 6: PERF_IND, 7: PERF_SUBJ, 8: PLUPERF_IND, 9: PLUPERF_SUBJ, 10: MISC_FUTIND_OR_PRESSUBJ, 11: MISC_FUTPERF_OR_PERFSUBJ, 12: MISC_PERFIND_OR_PRESIND, 13: MISC_PRESIND_OR_FUTIND, 14: MISC_PRESIND_OR_PRESSUBJ, 15: MISC_PERFIND_OR_PRESINF, 16: MISC_PRESSUBJ_OR_PERFSUBJ, 17: MISC_PRESSUBJ_OR_IMPERFSUBJ, 18: FUT_PERIF_IND, 19: FUT_PERIF_SUBJ, 20: FUT_PERIF_SUBJ_PAST, 21: FUT_PERIF_IND_PAST, 22: MISC_PERIF_IND, 23: MISC_PERIF_SUBJ, 24: MISC_PERIF >

You chose PRES_IND

What is the person of the verb? Choose a number: 0: AMBIGUOUS, 1: FIRST_SG, 2: SECOND_SG, 3: THIRD_SG, 4: FIRST_PL, 5: SECOND_PL, 6: THIRD_PL

422 Appendix G Application Flows

You chose THIRD_SG

What is the voice of the verb? Choose a number: 0: ACTIVE, 1: PASSIVE, 2: BOTH >

You chose ACTIVE

Of what type is the superordinate clause? Choose a number: 0: MAIN_CL_IND, 1: MAIN_CL_SUBJ, 2: MAIN_CL_IMP, 3: MAIN_CL_NO_MOOD, 4: SUB_CL_IND, 5: SUB_CL_SUBJ, 6: SUB_CL_NO_MOOD, 7: INF, 8: SUB_CL_FINAL_SUBJ, 9: MAIN_CL_UNREAL_SUBJ, 10: SUB_CL_UNREAL_SUBJ, 11: MAIN_CL_FUT_LESS_VIVID_SUBJ, 12: SUB_CL_FUT_LESS_VIVID_SUBJ, 13: MAIN_CL_IMP_OR_IND, 14: NO_SUP_CLAUSE >

You chose MAIN_CL_IND

Is the context direct or indirect discourse? Choose a number: 0: ORATIOOBLIQUA, 1: ORATIORECTA, 2: AMBIGUOUS >

You chose ORATIORECTA

What is the time of the context? Choose a number: 0: PRIMARY_FUT, 1: PRIMARY, 2: SECONDARY, 3: AMBIGUOUS, 4: HISTPRES >

423 Appendix G Application Flows

You chose SECONDARY

Is there any kind of negation in the clause or in the context? Choose a number: 0: NO_NEGATION, 1: NEGATION_THIS_CLAUSE, 2: NEGATION_CONTEXT, 3: NEGATION_THIS_AND_CONTEXT >

You chose NO_NEGATION

Type quotation from clause and/or context. >

gerendarum civitas hec florentissima est, tum etiam optimarum

Verb: est Morphological form: PRES_IND, THIRD_SG, ACTIVE Context: - Discourse: ORATIORECTA - Person of verbum dicendi: NONE - Time: SECONDARY - Superordinate clause type: MAIN_CL_IND - Negation: NO_NEGATION Quotation from text: gerendarum civitas hec florentissima est, tum etiam optimarum

Clause type: CVM Author: BRUNI

424 Appendix G Application Flows

Is the above verb correct? (yes or no) > yes

The verb was saved as # 556.

425

Appendix H

Base Rates

In this appendix, the base rates of several central factors are found. First, the overall distribution of values across the entire data collection, and across genres and authors, which are the two major outer factors in the study. Data concerning the composition of the data collection is based on the results C# 0.0–0.3.

Figure H.1: Distribution of mood across genres

427 Appendix H Base Rates

(a) Total (b) History

(e) Treatises (f) Dialogues

Figure H.2: Distribution of authors within genres (authors before Valla are pale gray; after Valla, dark gray) 428 Appendix H Base Rates Figure H.3: Distribution of genres across authors

429 Appendix H Base Rates Figure H.4: Distribution of mood across authors

430 Appendix H Base Rates

(a) Bruni (b) Poggio (c) Filelfo

(d) Valla (e) Pontano (f) Perotti

(g) Ficino (h) B. Guarini (i) Barbaro (j) Poliziano

Figure H.5: Authors’ individual mood variation across genres (only authors represented by more than one genre in corpus) 431 Appendix H Base Rates

Clause Types

The first of the following figures (H.6–H.8) concern the composition of the corpus and the data, showing how many clause types are found in each genre, what authors contribute to the data of a certain clause type, and how a particular author’s language is composed of different clause types within this data collection. This data should not be directly subject to interpretation, as it is highly dependent on the composition of the corpus and the practice of cutting very common clause types down to a maximum of 100 instances per genre. The remaining figures show the mood in the different clause types as it is distributed in different corpora and divisions of corpora.

432 Appendix H Base Rates

(a) Total (b) History

(e) Treatises (f) Dialogues

Figure H.6: Number of clause types in genres

433 Appendix H Base Rates

(a) Dum (b) Cum

(e) Quis/quid (f) Utrum

Figure H.7: Authors’ contribution to clause types (authors before Valla are pale gray; after Valla, dark gray) 434 Appendix H Base Rates Figure H.8: Distribution of clauses across authors

435 Appendix H Base Rates ) L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus (a) Lorenzo Valla (b) Classical Latin ( Figure H.9: Mood in Valla’s clause types and in Classical Latin

436 Appendix H Base Rates

(a) Neo-Latin

(b) Classical Latin (L.A.S.L.A. prose corpus)

Figure H.10: Mood in neo-Latin and Classical Latin clause types

437 Appendix H Base Rates Figure H.11: Mood in diﬀerent clause types, early and late division

438 Appendix H Base Rates Cum Dum (a) (b) Figure H.12: Mood in diﬀerent clause types, individual authors (continued in Figure H.13)

439 Appendix H Base Rates quid / Quia Quis (a) (b) Figure H.13: Mood in diﬀerent clause types, individual authors (continued from Figure H.12)

440 Appendix H Base Rates

Other Factors in the Context

The following charts show the distribution in the corpus of some language internal elements, such as the time found in the context of the subordinate clauses studied. While these charts serve primarily to show the basic levels across genres, authors, etc., they can be of some interest themselves. Many of the previous pictures show distributions that are (more or less directly) deﬁned by the composition of the corpus and the design of the data collection. The distributions in the following depict almost exclusively the actual distribution within the neo-Latin language, because the factors were not taken into consideration in forming corpus and data collection. They are random. Only a slight bias can be expected because of the fact that these factors are not the main focus of the investigation (the verbs in the subordinate clauses are). Therefore, there are a few instances of the same context counting more than once in the charts, because a matrix clause with a certain tense, mood, etc. may be superordinate to more than one subordinate clause in the collection. The context will therefore appear once in the data collection for every subordinate clause that is contains. Consequently, “dic ergo planius” in the following example appears twice as a main clause in the imperative with no negation in the context, with a primary time in the context, etc.:

dic ergo (quia placuerit) planius quid non es, pater meus, ut reviviscam, quid es iterum, mi pater, ut vivam. Marsilio Ficino, Dialogus inter Deum et Animam theologicus, p. 14 This is no problem in the main investigation where the interesting question is what the authors choose in every single subordinate clause in each context. Here, the two subordinate quid clauses do indeed diﬀer, though only in whether there is a negation in the clause itself or not. However, we shall consider the data in the following charts fairly ‘safe’ to look at, though only for descriptive purposes. Figures H.14–H.15 are based on C# 5.11–53.

441 Appendix H Base Rates

(a) Total (b) History

(e) Treatises (f) Dialogues

Figure H.14: Time in the context in the ﬁve genres (primary tenses are pale gray; secondary tenses are dark gray) 442 Appendix H Base Rates Figure H.15: Distribution of time in context across authors

443

Appendix I

Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) In indirect discourse (b) Outside indirect discourse

Figure I.1: Mood inside and outside indirect discourse in diﬀerent clause types (* = Valla only)

445 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) Total (b) Early and Late

(d) Genres

Figure I.2: The mood variation due to voice

446 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) Total (b) Early and Late

(d) Genres

Figure I.3: The mood variation due to negations

447 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) History (b) Speeches (c) Letters

(d) Treatises (e) Dialogues

Figure I.4: The mood variation according to time in the context in diﬀerent genres (without Ficino)

448 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) Dialogues without Pontano (b) Dialogues with Pontano

Figure I.5: The inﬂuence from Pontano’s language and dialogue on the mood in primary and secondary contexts

449 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) Bruni (b) Poggio (c) Valla

(d) Pontano (e) Perotti (f) Ficino

Figure I.6: Mood and the time in the context in various authors’ language (a sample)

450 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) 1◦ (b) 2+◦

Figure I.7: Clause types in diﬀerent degrees of subordination

Figure I.8: Authors who use the indicative in indirect discourse

451 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) Early (b) Late

(g) Perotti (h) Ficino

Figure I.9: Mood and indirect discourse in various authors’ language (a sample) 452 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) Dum, cum, and quia in common (b) Valla’s relative clauses neo-Latin

Figure I.10: Mood in indirect discourse concerning 1st person, and other persons

Figure I.11: Clause types in indirect discourse reporting 1st person’s and other persons’ speech (* = Valla only)

453 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) History (excl.) (b) History (incl.) (c) Speeches (excl.) (d) Speeches (incl.)

(e) Letters (excl.) (f) Letters (incl.) (g) Treatises (excl.) (h) Treatises (incl.)

(i) Dialogues (excl.) (j) Dialogues (incl.)

Figure I.12: Indicative tenses in various genres (excl. and incl. ambiguous forms) 454 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) History (excl.) (b) History (incl.) (c) Speeches (excl.) (d) Speeches (incl.)

(e) Letters (excl.) (f) Letters (incl.) (g) Treatises (excl.) (h) Treatises (incl.)

(i) Dialogues (excl.) (j) Dialogues (incl.)

Figure I.13: Subjunctive tenses in various genres (excl. and incl. ambiguous forms) 455 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) Dum (ind.) (b) Dum (subj.) (c) Cum (ind.) (d) Cum (subj.)

(e) Quia (ind.) (f) Ne (subj.) (g) Interrogative (subj.)

Figure I.14: Classical Latin tenses in clause types from Perseus Treebank

456 Appendix I Figures of Moods and Tenses

(a) Cicero, indicative (b) Cicero, subjunctive (c) Sallust, indicative (d) Sallust, subjuncive

(e) Petronius, indicative (f) Petronius, subjunctive (g) Jerome, indicative (h) Jerome, subjunctive

Figure I.15: Tenses of Classical Latin authors from Perseus Treebank

457