63 Colloquial and Li.. - Ganino.com

Roman authors on colloquial language 31
it is interesting to note the expression volueris, this time not followed by
censure. 32
Another interesting passage, from the grammarian Diomedes (c. 380 ad),
deals with what we may suspect to have been a widespread construction in
informal speech, the use of the indicative in indirect questions:
hanc speciem [i.e. relativa, for ‘modal attraction’, or simply ‘subordination’] in
consuetudine parum multi observant inperitia lapsi, cum dicunt nescio quid facis,
nescio quid fecisti. eruditius enim dicetur nescio quid facias, nescio quid feceris.
quo more et Cicero loquitur pro Sexto Roscio [1], ‘credo ego vos, iudices, mirari
quid sit quod, cum tot summi oratores hominesque nobilissimi sedeant, ego
potissimum surrexerim’; non dixit credo vos mirari quid sit quod surrexi, quod est
idiotismos. (GL 1.395.15)
Many people adopt this construction [i.e. the use of the subjunctive in the relativa
species] little or not at all in current usage, for lack of knowledge, so that they say
nescio quid facis, nescio quid fecisti. A more educated way to say this will be nescio
quid facias, nescio quid feceris. So Cicero speaks in Pro Sexto Roscio: credo ego vos,
iudices, mirari quid sit quod, cum tot summi oratores hominesque nobilissimi sedeant,
ego potissimum surrexerim; he did not say credo vos mirari quid sit quod surrexi,
which is an idiotism.
Interestingly, Diomedes does not condemn the use of the indicative
for the subjunctive as non Latinum, but recommends the other construction
as eruditius. 33 In fact we shall see that the use of the significant
label reveals a degree of acceptance of this as a ‘current
construction’.
More attention to register variation may have been a feature of the school
commentary tradition, especially when it dealt with comedy, where it was
impossible not to acknowledge variation, both socially determined and
situational or contextual. A particularly apt case is the series of Donatus’
references to in the Terence commentary (fourth century ad).
The term occurs in rhetorical writers, in contexts where there can be no
question of a substandard, incorrect usage, but the reference is clearly to
32 Donatus describes this usage as current, with mild censure: consuetudine quam ratione dixit pro: date
ei potionem . . . nam duo verba iniuncta nullum habent significatum sine nomine aut pronomine, ut si
dicas dic facere, ‘He said this through usage rather than according to logic, for date ei potionem ...for
two juxtaposed verbs have no meaning without a noun or pronoun, just as if you were to say dic
facere’ (on Ter. An. 484). Penney (1999: 256–7) considers this the mingling of a Greek, learned
construction and an inherited one attested as early as Plautus and Cato (Agr. 89 meridie bibere dato
‘at midday he should give them to drink’).
33 The indicative is a mark of uneducated speech in Petronius (44.1), but it occurs occasionally in
several texts, such as Ad Herennium,Varro’sDe lingua Latina, and Cicero’s letters: cf. H–S 538.For
its use in inscriptions see Konjetzny 1907: 340;intheVetus Latina Rönsch 1875: 428–9.