La morphologie nominale d'après le De analogia de César

Alessandro Garcea (1)

1 Rome et ses Renaissances - Centre Guillaume Budé

The fragments of Caesar's De analogia that deal with nominal morphology can be viewed as proposals for a rearrangement of inflectional paradigms. This is especially the case with the paradigms of i-stems, the independence of which was compromised by the (partial) fusion with consonant stems, and those of u- and e-stems, which were little attested and little productive. Caesar tries to level out differences among morphemes and to promote syncretism of inflections forms, because he intends to single out the individuality of each nominal class. A comparison between Caesar's theoretical statements and literary evidence shows that he strives to resist language's decadence insofar as he abides by the past consuetudo pura et incorrupta. In general, Caesar's proposals aim to observe good usage: among the possible options offered by the literary tradition only those which can be best inserted into the linguistic system are chosen.

Mots clés: Caesar; Analogy; Latin grammarians

Domaines: Linguistique; Etudes classiques

Alessandro Garcea. La morphologie nominale d'après le De analogia de César. Gualtiero Calboli. Latina Lingua! Proceedings of the Twelfth International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Papers on Grammar (IX.1), Herder, pp.71-79, 2005, Papers on Grammar, 88-89670-00-2. ⟨halshs-00120504⟩