The Latin language has been studied and discussed since antiquity. Modern studies in the field started in nineteenth-century Germany, and during the twentieth century important contributions were made by scholars also in, for instance, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden. In the late twentieth century two series of international conferences were created, the ‘International Colloquia on Latin Linguistics’, initiated by H. Pinkster (1942–2021) in Amsterdam in 1981, and the ‘Latin vulgaire–Latin tardif’ colloquia, for which the Hungarian scholar J. Herman (1924–2005) took the initiative in Pecs in 1985. Furthermore, colloquia and workshops, to which foreign scholars are invited, have also been organised regularly – every other year – at the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne by M. Fruyt and her colleagues. Since 2013 there is a Journal of Latin Linguistics (edited by G. Calboli and P. Cuzzolin, and published twice a year by De Gruyter).
The two publications in this field under review here are quite different: the two volumes edited by our recently deceased colleague Cabrillana (1962–2025) contain the acts from the 21st International colloquium on Latin Linguistics, organised by her in Santiago de Compostela from 30 May to 3 June 2022, whereas de Melo’s book is a monograph intended for students.
I shall start with an overview of Cabrillana’s conference acts. The first article in volume 1 is a commemoration entitled ‘Latin Linguistics in Harm’s Way’ by C. Kroon, dedicated to her teacher H. Pinkster, who died a few months before the 21st conference in the series founded by him. This is followed by four sections. In section 1, ‘Syntax and Semantics’, there are six papers: P. Cuzzolin, ‘Aspects of the Expression of Definiteness in Classical Latin’; R. Hoffmann, ‘On the Zero Anaphora of Arguments in the Dative Case’; I. López Martín, ‘Interferencias colocacionales entre facere, agere y gerere en latín tardío’; P. Riesco García, ‘Sēnsus cēnsēndī: On the Expression of Opinions in Latin, apropos Cic. Att. 1,4,1’; E. Torrego, ‘Substitution in Latin’; M. Vaníková, ‘Remarks on the Aspect of the Present Tense in Latin’. In section 2, ‘Syntactic Constructions’, there are six papers too: O. Álvarez Huerta, ‘El acusativo adverbial deadjetival en latín’; Cabrillana, ‘Expression of (Non-)Permanent Qualities and Coding of the Praedicativum in Latin’; M. Ctibor, ‘Coordinative Repetition: Repetition as a Means of Coordination in Classical Latin’; M.-D. Joffre, ‘Is au nominatif en fonction de sujet’; M. Kienpointner, ‘Non-Finite Constructions in Latin, German and Turkish: A Trilateral Comparison’; L. Tronci, ‘Latin Translations of Greek ὅτι-clauses in the Vulgate and the Vetus Latina: A Comparative Analysis of the Four Gospels’. In section 3, ‘Syntax and Pragmatics’, there are three papers: M. Taillade, ‘Les subordonnées causales corrélatives en latin’; P. Tonnaer, ‘The Sequence [sola + VIR at the Beginning of the Verse]: A New Textual Motif in Ovidian Elegy?’; A. Vendel, ‘Prepositional Phrase Hyperbaton in Cicero’s Orations’. In section 4, ‘Digital Linguistics’, there are two papers: M. Fantoli, M. Passarotti and D. Longrée, ‘Lemmas in Dialogue: Linking the L.A.S.L.A. Corpus to the LiLa Knowledge Base’; D. Longrée and M. Vandermissen, ‘New Perspectives on Latin Phraseology: Phrasemes and Textual Motifs’.
In volume 2 we find three more sections. In section 5, ‘Semantics and Lexicography’, there are ten papers: L. Brucale and E. Mocciaro, ‘A Cognitive-Pragmatic Description of Evaluative Suffixes in Latin Letters: The Case of -llus’; S. Cammisuli, ‘Nota su perticarius e sarcitor: due nomi di mestiere di rara attestazione’; Š. Demo, ‘Expressing Rose Colour (roseus) from Ancient to Modern Latin: A Corpus-Based Study’; C. Dowson, ‘Glossing as a Rhetorical Strategy: Seneca the Younger’s Use of Greek Loan-Words in his Philosophical Works’; T. Georgescu, ‘Le micro-champ lexical des noms de pains en latin – une approche étymologique’; P. Lecaudé, ‘L’expression de la non-virilité par le féminin en latin: lat. effēmināre, lat. effēminātus, lat. effēmināte’; A.M. Martín Rodríguez, ‘Semántica y sintaxis de dare. Consideraciones intralingüísticas e interlingüísticas’; M.R. Petringa, ‘La lingua del De errore profanarum religionum di Firmico Materno’; P. De Paolis, ‘Qualche esempio di usi linguistici sommersi nei grammatici latini’; J. Schrickx, ‘Nescio an: Maybe or Maybe Not? Constructions of Doubting Used Adverbially’. In section 6, ‘Discourse Strategies’, there are five papers: J. Dalbera, ‘Verbes introducteurs et stratégies d’introduction du Discours Direct dans la narration romanesque latine (le Satyricon de Pétrone et les Métamorphoses d’Apulée)’; S. Kiss, ‘Degrés et manières d’élaboration textuelle chez quelques historiens romains’; J. Mikulová, ‘Límites del discurso directo en la lengua latina’; R. Müller, ‘Linguistik der Emotionen: Gefühlsausdruck bei Terenz und Cicero’; A. Novokhatko, ‘Fronto’s Theory of Metaphor? An Enactivist and Psycholinguistic Perspective’. In section 7, ‘Conversation and Dialogue’, there are six papers: G. Beghini, ‘Age/agite: the Artistic Re-elaboration of a Polyfunctional Interjection in Virgil’s Works’; Ł. Berger and R. Verano, ‘Self-interruptions (aposiopesis) in Roman Comedy’; E. Calabrese, ‘Gestualità disfunzionale nelle tragedie di Seneca’; F. Iurescia, ‘Conversational Behaviour after Quarrels: Im/politeness in Latin Dialogues’; L. van Gils and C. Kroon, ‘Conversational Strategies in Non-Conversational Texts: The Communicative Structure of Cicero’s Fourth Catilinarian’; L. Unceta Gómez, ‘The Pragmatic Marker age: Its Pragmatic Functions in Comedy and its Contribution to the Expression of Im/Politeness’. At the end of the volume there is a short subject index.
The contents of these two volumes are, as is to be expected from conference proceedings, rather heterogeneous: there are many smaller studies dealing with very different and specific scholarly problems. This makes it difficult to pass an overall judgement on the whole collection. The general impression is that of good quality – and that the editor has done a good job when working with this publication. Most of the papers deal with earlier or classical Latin, but there are a few on later Latin too (e.g. the ones by Tronci, Kiss and Petringa).
In de Melo’s monograph there are eight chapters. In each of these chapters there is first a discussion of the theoretical background and then of a few examples in Latin, which are followed by a final section called ‘Further Reading’, in which a few works in the respective field are recommended. The first chapter, entitled ‘By Way of Introduction’, introduces basic concepts and tells readers what to expect from this book, i.e. that it is intended to give a broad outline of the field and not a complete overview (p. 19). After that follow Chapter 2, ‘Phonetics and Phonology’, i.e. on sounds, sound changes and orthography; Chapter 3, ‘Morphology’, where morphological changes from Indo-European to Latin and from Latin to the Romance languages are dealt with; Chapter 4, ‘Syntax’, in which the use of the cases, of the forms of the verb and tense and aspect, of syntactical patterns, and of word order and complementation is discussed; Chapter 5, ‘Dialectal Variation, Language Contact, and Sondersprachen’, where dialects, language contact and so-called ‘Christian Latin’ are described; Chapter 6, ‘Pragmatics’, on stylistic choices and politeness; Chapter 7, ‘Sociolinguistics’, where de Melo discusses accents and female speech and the rise of grammarians; and Chapter 8, ‘Three Texts’, in which he presents a Faliscan inscription, a passage from the Bellum Hispaniense and a paraphrase of Cato by Gellius. At the end of the volume there are a bibliography, references, an index of passages, an index of words and a general index.
This monograph clearly reflects de Melo’s scholarly profile. Hence readers learn a lot about early Latin, the development of the classical norm and the grammatical tradition, whereas the depiction of the later development of Latin remains a bit sketchy. In the description of the tenses, moods and conjugations (pp. 86–94, 98–101) and of the tense and aspect system (pp. 126–43) there is, for example, much emphasis on the classical system and its development from early Latin, whereas there are a few basic facts about the later development of the verbal morphology (pp. 98–101) and no information about the later changes in the tense and aspect system. The works presented as recommended ‘Further Reading’ seem randomly chosen, and several important contributions are left out: one example is the New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax, edited in four volumes by P. Baldi and P. Cuzzolin (2009–2011).
The book gives, in other words, an outline of the field but not a complete overview of it, which is, on the other hand, just what de Melo states as the intention at the beginning of the book (cf. p. 19). In a medium-sized volume like this one it would not have been possible to provide a complete overview of a field as complex as that of Latin linguistics today. This introduction to Latin linguistics is a most stimulating read not only for students but also for more experienced scholars, thanks to several interesting and insightful observations made by the author.
If we compare Cabrillana’s edited volume to the structure of de Melo’s monograph, it will become clear that two fields seem to be lacking, i.e. (a) phonetics and phonology (de Melo’s Chapter 2) and (b) morphology (de Melo’s Chapter 3). This, however, seems to be a coincidence, since such papers have been published in previous acts belonging to this conference series (e.g. the papers on accent and phonology and on the Latin vowel system in: A. Bammersberger and F. Heberlein [edd.], Akten des VIII. Internationalen Kolloquiums zur lateinischen Linguistik [1996] and the papers on the genitive in -osyo and on verbs in -āre with a perfect in -ui in: G.V.M. Haverling [ed.], Latin Linguistics in the Early 21 st Century [2015]). There are, however, a few papers dealing with the semantic functions of morphology (in a broad sense), for instance Cuzzolin’s paper exploring the ablative of manner and the corresponding adverbs, in which the author discusses definiteness and concludes that the ablative phrase tends to be more event-oriented, whereas the corresponding adverb usually is speaker-oriented, and the paper on the aspect of the present tense by Vaníková.
De Melo’s Chapter 4 on syntax finds an equivalent in the first three sections of Cabrillana’s conference acts. Here there are papers on the function of the cases, as for example the one on the adverbial use of adjectives in the accusative by Álvarez Huerta, in which the use of the adverbial accusative is compared to the use of the accusative in so-called internal objects, or the paper on certain arguments in the dative case by Hoffmann, in which the author discusses phrases in which arguments in the dative are left out. We also find papers on subordination and related structures, such as for instance the paper on the translation of Greek ὅτι-clauses by Tronci, which argues that the distribution of the three complementisers (quia, quod and quoniam) is determined by syntactic and semantic parameters, or the paper on non-finite clauses by Kienpointner, in which the systems found in Latin, German and Turkish are compared and it is shown that Latin makes extensive use of both finite and non-finite subordinate clauses, whereas German favours finite subordinate clauses and Turkish non-finite such clauses.
On the themes dealt with in de Melo’s Chapter 5, on dialectal variation, language contact and Christian Latin, there are a few papers in various parts of the acts, for instance the paper on Seneca’s use of Greek loan-words by Dowson, in which Seneca’s scientific and philosophical vocabulary is analysed and which shows that Seneca tends to rely on established Latin terms, circumlocutions, or a Greek loan-word rather than on coining a new term, and the one on Firmicus Maternus’ late Latin language by Petringa, in which various changes in vocabulary and morphology are discussed against the background of the ideological purpose of this anti-pagan pamphlet.
Pragmatics, treated by de Melo in Chapter 6, is addressed in several papers, for example in the paper on the often – but not always – diminutive suffix -llus by Brucale and Mocciaro, in the one on conversational behaviour after quarrels in literary texts (Roman comedies, tragedies and novels) and im/politeness by Iurescia, and in the one on the imperative form age in comedy by Unceta Gómez, in which the author concludes that this pragmatic marker – contrary to some previous statements – often contributes to the expression of politeness.
Sociolinguistics, covered by de Melo in Chapter 7, is discussed in a few papers in the acts, for example in a paper on ‘submerged’ linguistic traits by De Paolis, which argues that a glimpse of early Latin re-emerging in late Latin is possible after all in accordance with some older scholarly opinion (e.g. F. Marx and E. Löfstedt) and despite the more negative statements on the matter made in more recent scholarship (e.g. J.N. Adams), and in Petringa’s paper on Firmicus Maternus’ anti-pagan pamphlet.
There are fields of study that are not so much discussed in de Melo’s monograph but represented in Cabrillana’s acts. In the short section 4, ‘Digital Linguistics’, we find a paper on linking two databases by Fantoli, Passarotti and Longrée and another one, by Longrée and Vandermissen, on the semantic and stylistic functions of expressions like per mare, per terras and terra marique, which are studied with the help of the L.A.S.L.A. database.
There are also several studies on the semantic function of single words or expressions, as for instance a paper on the semantics and the syntax of dare by Martín Rodríguez, which analyses this word within the framework of cognitive linguistics, and the one on the semantic function of nescio an by Schrickx, which is discussed against the background of the changing function of the conjunction an. There are furthermore a few studies on how narrative texts are structured, as, for instance, the paper on direct speech in Petronius and Apuleius by Dalbera, which analyses the functions of a few verbs of saying, and the one on narrative style in Roman historiography (i.e. in Caesar, Sallust, Velleius Paterculus and Eutropius) by Kiss, in which the author focuses on summaries, scenes and descriptions and on cohesive means such as anaphora, discourse particles and thematic progression, uses the methods of text linguistics and narratology, and concludes that certain changes in the late Latin period are connected to the growing distance between the literary language and the language of everyday speech.
Cabrillana’s conference proceedings cover a different and in several respects much larger area than de Melo’s relatively short introduction to the field. In the conference acts we find a number of contributions on specific fields of study, whereas de Melo provides readers with a more general overview of the field. These two publications reflect, however, in their different ways the very vibrant and bustling scholarly field that is the study of Latin linguistics today.
