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The -TT- in Latin Quattuor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Roland G. Kent
Roland G. Kent*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

Numerals share with pronouns the honor of being the best criteria of linguistic relationship; and yet among the names of the digits we find more exceptions to the principle of regular phonetic development, probably, than anywhere else in an equal group of unquestioned cognates. The exceptions arise, in the main, from the fact that the words are in use so closely associated with one another that they affect one another's forms.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 1927 , pp. 12 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © 1927 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 I give a minimum of references, citing here collectively A. Walde, Lat. etym. Wtb., s. vv.; E. Boisacq, Diet. étym. de la langue grecque, s. vv.; K. Brugmann, Gdr. d. vergl. Gram. d. indog. Spr. 22.2.1–82 (1911); F. Sommer, Hbd. d. lat. Laut-u. Formenlehre 2 (1914); F. Stolz, Lat. Gram.5 291–5 (1926), revised by M. Lehmann, in I. v. Müller's Hdb. d. Altertumsw. II. 2.

2 Leumann-Stolz, op. cit. §152.

3 Sommer, op. cit. 203.

4 Mon. Anc. iii. 22; CIL 3.4959; cited by Sommer, op. cit. 472.

5 For quater, see Vergil, Aen. 1.94, Ge. 1.411, 2.399. For quadr- the evidence is more difficult to locate; for while in Plautus and in Terence a stop plus a liquid does not make position, substitutions of long syllable for short and of two shorts for a long are freely made, and in later verse the consonants may make a closed syllable. The surest warranty for a short vowel seems to be in quadrupedem, Ter. And. 865. But to keep the shortness of the initial syllable, editors are obliged to emend the manuscript reading quadruplari, Pl. Persa 62, to quadrupulari, and quadruplator, ib. 70, to quadrupulator. If the initial syllable of quadrilibrem, Pl. Aul. 809, be short, one must accept a hiatus after the next word, instead of an elision.

6 By R. Thurneysen, KZ 30.501–2.

7 For citations of spelling with -c-, cf. Neue-Wagener, Formenlehre d. lat. Spr.3 2.310.

8 Ap. Fest. 254 M. = 338 Th. : Quincentum et producta prima syllaba et per c litteram usurpant antiqui, quod postea levius visum est, ita ut nunc dicimus, pronuntiari.