The frequency of syncope in Imperial Latin
Abstract
Scholarly works dealing with Vulgar Latin often mention the increasing frequency of syncope as a characteristic feature of Late Antique Latin phonology. However, as early as in 1984, József Herman observed that, based on the epigraphic material from the Imperial period, the widespread nature of this phenomenon in Late Antiquity is not clearly evident. Herman’s observation was confirmed by Béla Adamik’s study conducted in 2015, using the Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age (LLDB). Adamik’s results showed that syncope was a productive linguistic phenomenon only in the Early Imperial period (1st–3rd centuries); in later centuries, according to the inscriptions, its occurrences declined. The substantial increase in the number of data entries recorded in the aforementioned database now makes it possible and desirable to conduct a more detailed spatial and temporal analysis of the productivity of syncope during the Imperial period, compared to previous studies.
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