On Fri, 5 Mar 1999, Philip Thibodeau wrote:
> I think I would now agree. It is avoidance of dysphony, not ambiguity,
> that motivates the preference for et sic. There are cases where authors
> mention forms which are avoided because of their ambiguity, but these are
> distinct from discussions of euphony and dysphony. But then what is it
> that makes -cqu- dysphonous? For I don't think that we want to say that it
> is just somehow dysphonous by nature. Wilkinson, in his Golden Latin
> Artistry, suggests what I think is a good explanation: "Latin tended to
> discard such tongue-twisting words as the early 'stlites' and 'stlocus'...
> Cicero preferred the words 'formarum', 'formis' to their synonyms
> 'specierum', 'speciebus' on grounds of comfort in utterance ('commoditatem
> in dicendo'). Further, it has been noted that when a Latin critic or
> grammarian says a word is, or is not, euphonious, he often seems to mean
> that it slips more, or less, easily from the mouth... Indeed, someone
> criticized by Philodemus... held that the *only* form of cacophony was that
> caused by difficulty of enunciation," (p.18). So -cqu-, as a rare
> consonant cluster, would be comparatively hard to pronounce, esp. in
> comparison with the much more common -ts- of 'et sic'. In other words, it
> is not the ear that is offended, but the tongue.
It's a bit hard for me to believe that the -cqu- combination would have
been considered difficult to pronounce, when that very combination is what
resulted when prefixes such as "ad" were added to words beginning with
qu-. For example, ad + quiescere = acquiescere. That kind of
assimilation was done for greater ease in pronunciation. Evidently
"sicque" was avoided by classical poets, but it can't have been because of
difficulty of pronunciation.
Randi Eldevik
Oklahoma State University
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