{"id":1169,"date":"2014-06-19T23:26:52","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T04:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2014-06-19T23:34:07","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T04:34:07","slug":"latin-syllabification-and-accentuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=1169","title":{"rendered":"Latin Syllabification and Accentuation"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of my larger project (QLTP<\/a>), one of the things I’ve been working on in the last few months is software to divide a Latin word into syllables, determine which ones are short, which long by nature, and which long by position, and find the word-accent. Here is my test module<\/a>, analyzing the 123 words of Horace, Carmina<\/em> 2.7. It has one bug and couple of refinements still to be added:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The bug can be seen in the second-to-last word: it’s marking a last (or only) syllable short when it is actually long by position. That’s just defective logic in the code and needs further analysis.<\/li>\n
  2. I haven’t yet added code to look for prefixes: if it is a compound of ob<\/em> (etymologists seem to be unsure), then 91 o·blī·vi·ō·sō<\/em> (˘  ̄ ˘  ̄́  ̄ ) should be ob·lī·vi·ō·sō<\/em> ( ̄  ̄ ˘  ̄́  ̄ ), and the same goes for 74 obligatam<\/em> and (mutatis mutandis<\/em>) 62 sustulit<\/em>.<\/li>\n
  3. Latin dictionaries don’t seem to bother with syllabification, but it’s not quite so unproblematic as that implies. For instance, Gildersleeve and Lodge (§ 10) say that MN “under Greek influence . . . belongs to the following vowel”. I don’t doubt that (e.g.) Polymnestor would be divided Po·ly·mne—<\/em> rather than Po·lym·ne—<\/em>, but is it really true that somnus<\/em> would be so·mnus<\/em> rather than som·nus<\/em>, and amnis<\/em> a·mnis<\/em> rather than am·nis<\/em>? If so, I’ve been pronouncing them wrong for decades. The same problem comes up with ST. Can anyone point me to more recent work on this?<\/li>\n
  4. Latin editors who distinguish consonant V from vowel U seem to put some of them consistently in the wrong category. Whether QU should be QV doesn’t really matter, since the combination is a special case metrically and needs to be handled as such, but what about the Us in suavis<\/em>, anguis<\/em>, and sanguis<\/em>, and the second U in unguentum<\/em>? Aren’t those all consonants? They’re not listed as diphthongs in any grammar I’ve seen, and my software is currently misdividing unguenta<\/em> (word 97) as four syllables (un·gu·en·ta<\/em>) when it’s actually three (un·guen·ta<\/em>). So why aren’t they spelled angvis<\/em>, sangvis<\/em>, svavis<\/em>, and ungventum<\/em>? That’s how they’re pronounced, and syllabized. More urgently, where can I find a complete list of these exceptions? The class does not include every Latin word in which NGU is followed by a vowel, because relanguit<\/em> (for instance) is four syllables, not three.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Comments and questions will be very much appreciated. I plan to offer my syllabizer as a stand-alone module, not just a part of the larger project. As soon as I get this module working correctly, I will add code to search for elisions and scan whole lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As part of my larger project (QLTP), one of the things I’ve been working on in the last few months is software to divide a Latin word into syllables, determine which ones are short, which long by nature, and which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,110],"tags":[71,226,225],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-grammar","category-qltp","tag-meter","tag-prosody","tag-syllabification"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1177,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions\/1177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}