Latin Vowel Length

Abstract

Chapter 7 introduces the concept of vowel length in Latin grammatical thought, and ways in which the grammatical tradition responded to a changing linguistic reality. By the late antique period, the classical Latin contrast between long vowels and short vowels has been largely or entirely lost. Yet grammarians continue to consider vowels long or short, in the traditional way, and to appeal to these quantities for various purposes. For example, traditional vowel quantities are deployed to help predict which conjugation a verb belongs to. In this capacity, traditional vowel length has become an abstract entity or technical device of the descriptive system. But words for ‘long’ and ‘short’ still have transparent meanings, and can also be used for vowels that are literally long or short in late antique pronunciation. In late antique synchronic analyses there is a complex interplay between abstract ‘length’ and ‘length’ as literal duration.