63 Colloquial and Li.. - Ganino.com

38 rolando ferri and philomen probert
Ter. Hec. 561); (d) diminutives, for example capitulum lepidissumum (on
Ter. Eu. 531); (e) elliptic expressions.
The , series comes closest to recognising explicitly
the adoption of familiar, colloquial idioms by Latin speakers at different
levels of social and educational background. 45 Donatusisawareof
the sophisticated, artistic purpose to which such conversational turns are
deployed in Terence, and comments plentifully on this aspect of Terence’s
art.
appendix
The following is a list of the most important Latin expressions occurring
in descriptions of linguistic register/sociolect. The list is intended for quick
reference, and a tentative translation has been provided. However, one
must be aware that the adoption of sociolinguistic register labels by Roman
rhetorical and grammatical writers is by no means consistent, and that,
typically, the purpose of a writer using one of these labels is to set up an
opposition between ‘oral, casual’ and ‘written up, literary’, rather than to
explore the existence of different registers.
communis (sermo) ‘common usage’ (Cic. Fat. 24; Sen. Suas. 2.13; Suet.
De poetis 2.43.6). Equated with cotidianus in Gel. 1.10.1 in cotidianis
communibusque sermonibus ‘in the language of everyday’.
consuetudo ‘current language’, ‘current usage’, sometimes with the
implication that the ‘spoken language’ is being referred to. The term
translates the Greek technical term . Starting with Varro,
for whom consuetudo helps to resolve conflicts between analogy and
anomaly (see Müller 2001: 190–1), consuetudo is also advocated to
establish a linguistic norm, although consuetudo mala or depravata can
be considered no foundation for correct usage. In Imperial writers,
consuetudo is sometimes qualified with vulgaris to indicate ‘spoken
language’, sometimes with pejorative connotations and in opposition
to Latinitas, ‘correct usage’ (Gel. 9.1.8; less explicitly negative in
Nonius Marcellus 330 L. (223.24 M.); Charisius 239 Barwick). Consuetudine,
with or without a preposition (in, ex, de), for ‘in the current
language’, is also sometimes opposed to ratione, the term used for ‘the
expected regular or logical construction’, but not necessarily when a
source wishes to condemn the current usage on the basis of analogy.
45 Some caution is in order for the occurrences from Adelphoe, where the Greek words have fallen out
in the MSS, and Wessner prints Stephanus’s conjectures.