Conclusions

Abstract

Chapter 10 draws the main conclusions together and offers some reflections on the old debate about the value of the Latin grammarians on the Latin accent. The book has largely set aside the question whether Latin grammarians tell us the truth about accents, but it has asked whether Latin grammarians’ statements, when taken on their own terms, are actually intended to pertain to the audible sound of Latin. This book has argued that it depends: some of their statements are so intended, and some are not. To finish with, the discussion is expanded to show how Latin grammarians treated prosody as they treated other aspects of the Latin language too, and how they proceeded as people usually do proceed when they learn techniques for talking about a language from people who use them to talk about a different language.