I thought the observation about ugly sounding -cq- was a very interesting one, and when I went to check it, it seemed to be true: for a full-corpus search on the Latin CDrom yielded about 25 instances of sicque, all fairly late, as has been noted, vs. well over a thousand instances of the alternative, et sic; so sicque definitely seems to have been avoided.
But then I mentioned this to a colleague, and he suggested that I look up plain -cq- . And there were very nearly 1500 instances of words containing that pair -cq-; about 90% of these were the two pronouns quicquam and quicquid, which are of course common in classical Latin authors. So this would seem to tell against the theory that -cq- was avoided for reasons of dysphony. My colleague, Mr. Malcolm Hyman, suggested that the reason sicque would be avoided was in fact to prevent confusion of the following sort: 1) quicquam is analyzed as quid + quam, and quicquid as quid + quid. 2) Thus, most of the time when a Latin speaker heard -cqu-, they would understand that this pair of sounds was substituting for -d + qu-. 3) So, sicque would be avoided because it would be confusing, i.e. the listener might momentarily confuse it with a form *sidque, or perhaps sitque. Philip Thibodeau Brown University >In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED] >du>, RANDI C ELDEVIK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >>I'd be interested to know why "sicque" is objectionable by classical >>standards; and if Ovid did use this phrase once in the _Fasti_, can it >>really be called non-classical? Rare, maybe, but not non-classical. At >>any rate, why should classical poets have avoided "sicque"? >>Randi Eldevik >Because of the ugly combination of sounds, -c qu-. Both Greek and Latin >authors are far more sensitive to such matters than speakers of Germanic >languages; Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote a whole treatise on them, >and he wasn't the only one, though actual rules have to be inducted from >usage. > >Leofranc Holford-Strevens >*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* > >Leofranc Holford-Strevens >67 St Bernard's Road usque adeone >Oxford scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter? >OX2 6EJ > >tel. +44 (0)1865 552808(home)/267865(work) fax +44 (0)1865 512237 >email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) > >*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* >----------------------------------------------------------------------- >To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. >Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message >"unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You >can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
