Latin 〈XS〉: Seeing double
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the relevance of suprasegmental graphematic units to the organization of the mental lexicon. Units like the graphematic syllable or the graphematic foot are considered to be partly independent structures that are bi-directionally associated with phonological structures. Nevertheless, with few notable exceptions (Evertz 2019), far less is known about the emergence of such structures in the diachrony of writing systems. Hence, the need for analysis of socio-historical instantiations of these meta-historical structures.
The present talk will be concerned with the emergence of the digram 〈XS〉 instead of the usual grapheme 〈X〉, standing for the /ks/ cluster. The first occurrence of 〈XS〉 in Latin inscriptions can be dated towards the end of III BC and the beginnings of II BC (Mancini 2019: 29-30). Among other examples, we find 〈lixs〉 for 〈lex〉 in the Tabula Ripensis (Ve 218 = MV 1 Rix); 〈dixserunt〉 for 〈dixerunt〉 in the Sententia Minuciorum (CIL I, 584); 〈uxsor〉 for 〈uxor〉 in the epigraphies of the Comino valley (CIL X, 05203); and cases such as <saxsum〉 in (CIL VI, 01289).
Thus, the use of the digram might be correlated with the progressive loss of the phonological vowel length and the beginning of OSL (Open Syllable Lengthening). In parallel, at the orthographic level, the emergence of <XS> is roughly contemporaneous with the introduction of the geminatio consonantium and the geminatio vocalium.
In order to deepen our knowledge of the bi-directional association of graphematic and phonological structures, we would like to apply the notions of graphematic syllable and graphematic foot (cf. Evertz & Primus 2013; Evertz 2018), to the data relative to the use of the alternative spellings for /ks/ in Latin. It is possible that the prosodic drift that rendered vowel quantity increasingly unstable and conditioned by both syllable structure and stress placement was one of the main driving forces that led to the appearance of 〈CC〉 digraphs in the Latin orthographic system. This hypothesis is akin to the proposal made by Fulk (1996: 486) for the interpretation of 〈CC〉 digraphs as markers of preceding vowel length in the Middle English manuscript Ormulum.
We suppose that the introduction of <CC> in the orthography of Latin could be linked to the development of suprasegmental graphematic structures in the Latin writing system. The subsequent association of vowel length (and/or tenseness) to a specific graphematic syllable and foot in the mental lexicon of the speakers made possible the generalization of <XS> in the Latin orthographic system.
References:
Evertz, M. (2018). Visual prosody: the graphematic foot in English and German. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Evertz, M. (2019). The History of the Graphematic Foot in English and German. Y. Haralambous (Ed.), Graphemics in the 21st Century (pp. 27-40). Brest: Fluxus Edition.
Evertz, M., & Primus, B. (2013). The graphematic foot in English and German. Writing Systems Research 5(1). 1-23.
Fulk, R. D. (1996). Consonant doubling and open syllable lengthening in the Ormulum. Anglia 114 (4): 481-513.
Mancini, M. (2019). Repertori grafici e regole d’uso: il caso del latino< xs>. In L. Agostiniani, & M.P. Marchese (Eds.), Lingua, testi, storia. Atti della Giornata di Studi in ricordo di Aldo Luigi Prosdocimi (pp. 13-54). Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider Editore.