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Synonymic Repetition in Late Latin and Romance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Robert L. Politzer
Robert L. Politzer*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

The use of synonyms in pairs or series is a familiar and much discussed literary device. While there may be many psychological and cultural reasons for the use of pairs of synonyms, and while classical Latin writers employed such pairs or series, the device seems to have mushroomed in the early Middle Ages, where it can be traced through the medieval Latin rhetorics and texts, as well as the early vernacular literatures. Quite recently several detailed studies have been devoted to the problem of the use of pairs or series of synonyms. Most prominent among the authors of these studies are Elwert and Pellegrini and a circle of scholars associated with the latter.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 37 , Issue 4-Part1: October-December , December 1961, pp. 484 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © 1961 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Wilhelm Havers, Handbuch der erklärenden Syntax §139, §153 (Heidelberg, 1931). Cf. also Y. Malkiel, Studies in irreversible binominals, Lingua 8.113–60 (1959), who sees synonymic repetition in the larger context of fixed groups established for a great variety of types of linguistic and cultural patterning, and who points out that ‘synonymic repetition’ ‘Synonymdopplung’, ‘iterazione sinonimica’ imply ‘a partial view of a problem best examined when envisaged in its totality’ (114). But there is no reason why a series of partial views cannot contribute to the discussion of the totality of a problem.

2 J. Marouzeau, Traité de stylistique latin 247–51, 277–82 (Paris, 1946).

3 W. Th. Elwert, La dittologia sinonimica nella poesia romanza delle origini et nella scuola poetica siciliana, Bolletino del Centro di studi filologici linguistici siciliani 2.157–71 (1954); id., Zur Synonymendopplung vom Typ planh e sospir, chan et plor, Archiv f.d. Studium d. neueren Sprachen 193.40–2 (1956); id., Zur Synonymendopplung als Interpretationshilfe, Archiv 195.24–6 (1957).

4 Silvio Pellegrini, Iterazioni sinonimiche nella canzone di Rolando, Studi mediolatini e volgari 1.155–67 (1953). Pellegrini's study contains a rather complete bibliography of the problem of synonymic repetition.

5 Giovanni Marroni, Annominazioni ed iterazioni sinonimiche in Juan Manuel, Studi mediolatini e volgari 2.57–70 (1954); Ferdinando Roselli, Iterazioni sinonimiche in Tirso de Molina, ibid. 2.239–50 (1954) ; Valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso, L'iterazione sinonimica in testi prosaistici mediolatini, ibid. 51–73. (1957).

6 Pellegrini 156–7.

7 Marouzeau 250.

8 Monumenta germaniae historiae, legum tomus IIII (Hannover, 1868).

9 Since in this study I am quoting from highly repetitious legal texts and not from literary prose, I do not attempt an exhaustive listing of all instances of synonymic repetition, but rather a listing of types. I also avoid listing cases in which the second term is clearly not a synonym of the first. Since there are probably few absolute synonyms, it is sometimes difficult to maintain the distinction I intend. Cf. Malkiel 126 ff.

10 Jan-Olaf Tjäder, Die nichtliterarischen lateinischen Papyri Italiens aus der Zeit 445–700 (Lund, 1955).

11 L. Schiaparelli, Codice diplomatico longobardo, 2 vols. (Rome, 1929, 1932); J. Tardif, Monuments historiques (Paris, 1866). After each example the number of the document in the collection and the year of original composition are given in parenthesis.

12 C. Manarese (ed.), I Placiti del ‘regnum Italiae‘, 2 vols. (Rome, 1955, 1958). Again the number of the document and the year of original composition are given after each example.

13 The stylistic possibilities present in English because of the coexistence of a Saxon and a Romance vocabulary have often been discussed. In a recent study, W. Nash reminds us that many pairs of words used by Shakespeare ‘illustrate the marriage of the classical and native elements in Shakespeare's English’, and that ‘the familiar Saxon word acts as a kind of gloss to the rarer classical word’. See Paired words in Othello: Shakespeare's use of a stylistic device, English studies 39.62 (1958).