63 Colloquial and Li.. - Ganino.com

Preliminary conclusions 67
adhere to any other single premise, provided the premise is clearly stated.
It is not, however, legitimate to mix premises by assuming that language
with one characteristic normally associated with the term ‘colloquial’ must
also have any other characteristic: that language with colloquial syntactic
characteristics necessarily occurred in someone’s conversation (let alone in
the conversation of a particular group of Romans), that language that one
group found offensive was necessarily used by another group, etc. The wide
range of meanings of the term ‘colloquial’ must not be allowed to colour
our analysis of the facts of Latin: we must describe the facts as they are,
find explanations that fit them, and build larger theories on those explanations,
rather than starting with theories and trying to get the facts to fit
them.
Under these circumstances, how would one go about finding colloquial
Latin? To the extent that colloquial Latin is the opposite of literary Latin,
it would seem that the best place to find it would be in non-literary texts:
curse tablets, ostraca, papyrus letters, etc. The publication of so many
such texts over the past half century has led to an enormous increase
in our understanding of non-literary Latin, such as would never have
been possible from literary sources alone, but nevertheless this material
has some severe limitations. It is relatively scarce: the sum total of all
the non-literary evidence we have comes to far fewer words than Plautus’
plays or Cicero’s letters. It is chronologically restricted: most non-literary
evidence comes from the Imperial period and so can shed little light on the
conversational usage of Cicero’s day, let alone that of Plautus’ day. (Thus,
by some definitions, it is vulgar rather than colloquial Latin.) It is restricted
in format and topic: most curse tablets and ostraca deal with a narrow range
of topics and situations, and many are heavily formulaic, so many words
and usages that we would like to know about have no opportunity to occur.
It comes preponderantly from the middle and lower classes of society; if
one defines colloquial language as belonging to the upper classes, there is
little non-literary evidence that could be relevant.
It is time, therefore, to look again at literature, which remains not only
our largest body of evidence for colloquial Latin, but also our most diverse
and by far our earliest. Until the mid twentieth century this evidence formed
almost the sole basis for the study of colloquial Latin; then the discovery of
original documentary texts such as papyrus letters, ostraca, curse tablets and
the Vindolanda tablets gave scholarship on this topic a fresh, non-literary
perspective. The insights offered by documentary material are invaluable,
but the concentration on them has led to neglect of the important evidence
available in literature. It is now time to re-examine these literary texts, using