# subiciens vs. subiiciens



## Furtail

Hello,
I am working with texts that use different orthographic variants of "_*subiciens*_" (subijciens, subiiciens, subjiciens) and am perplexed because, although the version with the extra vowel appears in plenty of Google search results, dictionaries seem to give only the shorter version. 
Question: Can anyone please explain the origin of this to me? Is one correct and the other not? Is one version indigenous to a particular author, genre, century, or geographical area? Thank you!

PS: The full phrase, from the Psalterium Romanum, is "Misericordia mea et refugium meum susceptor meus et liberator meus protector meus et in ipso speravi subiciens [subiiciens] populous sub me." Weber reports PsR: *subiciens*, but Lefèvre reports *subijciens, *in case that's useful.


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## Scholiast

Greetings, all.

First, classical Latin did not distinguish, orthographically, between consonantal _i_ and the _j_ that in modern English (and some other tongues) represents the 'y' sound in words such as _iacio_ (mixed conjugation), whence words such as 'subject', 'inject', 'abject'.

Secondly, Latin contracts stems with 'ia-' in verbs to 'ii', or rather to 'ī', when compounded with a prepositional prefix such as 'sub-' or 'ad'.

Third, I hardly think Lefèvre can have printed _subijciens_: this is in any case wrong (_subjiciens_ is manageable).

Of course the text under discussion is Vulgate, rather than classical. But I believe Jerome would have written _subiciens_.

Σ


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## Furtail

Thank you. I'll interpolate my questions here within the text.


Scholiast said:


> _First, classical Latin did not distinguish, orthographically, between consonantal i and the j that in modern English (and some other tongues) represents the 'y' sound in words such as iacio (mixed conjugation), whence words such as 'subject', 'inject', 'abject'._
> 
> Yep, I realize that the three (ii, ij, ji) are orthographic variants, as I mentioned in my post. What I don't understand is how the single vowel (i) belongs to that set, as well, as in Weber's book. Question: Between single *i* and double *ii*, is one correct and the other not, in this case? If so, which one?  Is one version (single *i* or double *ii* )indigenous to any particular author, genre, century, or geographical area?
> 
> _Secondly, Latin contracts stems with 'ia-' in verbs to 'ii', or rather to 'ī', when compounded with a prepositional prefix such as 'sub-' or 'ad'._
> 
> I'm confused as to where that happens here. The prefex "sub" is apparent but what is the original stem in this case? Can you explain what leads to that in the example of *subiciens* / *subiiciens*?
> 
> _Third, I hardly think Lefèvre can have printed subijciens: this is in any case wrong (subjiciens is manageable)._
> 
> And yet he did; I'm staring at it with both eyes at this very minute. The 16th-18th century Venetian printers used this combination frequently, as well. (...As i think about it, it must correspond to the convention in cursive, whereby northern Italian writers avoided the combination *ii* because in script it looks like the letter u.)
> 
> _Of course the text under discussion is Vulgate, rather than classical. But I believe Jerome would have written subiciens._
> 
> It's actually not Vulgate--it's the Psalterium Romanum, in case that helps answer the questions above. Thank you!


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## Scholiast

saluete omnes

I'll take Mr Furtail's points in sequence.
(1) 'Yep, I realize that the three (ii, ij, ji) are orthographic variants, as I mentioned in my post. What I don't understand is how the single vowel (i) belongs to that set, as well, as in Weber's book. Question: Between single *i* and double *ii*, is one correct and the other not, in this case? If so, which one? Is one version (single *i* or double *ii* )indigenous to any particular author, genre, century, or geographical area?'
It is not a question of 'correctness'. Classical Latin orthography was never wholly standardised (witness the indices to the incomparably sage Hermann Dessau's _Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae_)—there never was a Latin _Academie Française_ to regulate matters. *ii *and *ji*, as well as* ī*, will all still be found in compounded versions of the verb _iacio_, _iacere_, dating from the Renaissance onwards, the choice resting largely at the printer/publisher's discretion. But I have never come across *ij* in this context. To the best of my knowledge, there is no distinction with regard to geography, dialect or genre, in any literary Latin.
(2) I'm confused as to where that happens here. The prefix "sub" is apparent but what is the original stem in this case? Can you explain what leads to that in the example of *subiciens* / *subiiciens*?
You need a proper philologist, not a superannuated schoolmaster, to answer this properly, but to my certain knowledge, numerous mixed-conjugation stems (_capio_, _capere_, _rapio, rapere _for example) are regularly contracted in forms with a compounded prepositional prefix (_corripio_, _arripio_, _suscipio, excipio_).
(3) And yet he did; I'm staring at it with both eyes at this very minute. The 16th-18th century Venetian printers used this combination frequently, as well. (...As i think about it, it must correspond to the convention in cursive, whereby northern Italian writers avoided the combination *ii* because in script it looks like the letter u.)
Yes, in the early days of modern publication of such texts, this looks well possible. Not all Aldine typesetters were themselves philologists.
(4) It's actually not Vulgate--it's the Psalterium Romanum, in case that helps answer the questions above. Thank you!
Thank you for the correction, if that is what it is—but was not the _Psalterium_ extracted from Jerome's Vulgate? The Book of Psalms has always been regarded as having its own independent merit as a hymnary, irrespective of the rest of the Old Testament.
Σ


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## Furtail

Thank you for this, this is enormously helpful. (...And the brilliant phrase "superannuated schoolmaster" put a smile on my face.)

As an interesting footnote, it turns out that although the PsR was long thought to have been Jerome's work, current thought is that it represents an earlier translation, one that Jerome used as a starting point for his own. Catherine Brown Tkacz writes, _It was long thought that this correction survived in the particular version used widely in Italy, especially in Rome, and known as the Roman Psalter (Psalterium Romanum). In the 1930s, this view was contested, and since the 1960s (at least) it has been generally held that the Roman Psalter represents the Old Latin base text which Jerome corrected, not his correction of it. _
Fascinating stuff, indeed!!


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## Scholiast

saluete de nouo!


Furtail said:


> although the PsR was long thought to have been Jerome's work, current thought is that it represents an earlier translation, one that Jerome used as a starting point for his own.


Fascinating. Yes I can understand that for decades, even centuries, before Jerome produced the Vulgate, the devotional hymnary of the Psalms could well have been used by Latin-speaking Christians. There was after all, a well-established diasporadic Jewish community in Rome already in Caesar's time, at least some of whom will have been more proficient in Latin than in Hebrew, and the rise of (gentile) Christianity in the Roman west can only have enhanced the demand for a Latin Psalter from the 1st century AD onwards. I must learn more of this.

Σ


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## Sobakus

Compounds of _jacere _occur in two forms, with and without the /j/, so both /su.bi.cere/ and /sub.ji.ce.re/. In the former the /ji/ was simplified to a single short vowel; the latter could preserved, but more likely analogically restored. There exists no form with a long /ī/, but some materials (even recent ones) that (ab-)use the macron indiscriminately both for vowel length and syllable weight will present the word as _sūbicere_. Since the Romans actively avoided spelling two I's in a row, the /ji/ forms were rarely represented in writing, and so people reciting poetry and confronted with the *-subi-* sequence that required a heavy first syllable ended up mispronouncing these with a long vowel as early as the 2nd c. AD, as Gellius 4.17 kindly lets us know.
We get confused at the spelling *subijcere* because although we consciously know that *I* and *J* were variants of the same letter, as were *U* and *V*, this explicit knowledge doesn't override our long-developed reading skill, which tells us that one is a vowel and the other a consonant. Writing consecutive occurrences of these letters with two different letter-forms has been a common practice at least since the Middle Ages, and it was practically standard in the Renaissance, where you find *ij* and *vu.* Another convention, particularly common after the Enlightenment, was to spell *i* and *u* when lowercase, and *J* and *V* when uppercase, and this is continued even today in some publications. Often you will find these two conventions employed together.
This whole issue often shows a glaring lack of consistency or logic, since many who distinguish *V~v* from *U~u* on the basis of the sound they represent don't do so with *J~j* and *I~i* (wiktionary is one example), and the Oxford Latin Dictionary even takes this mess a step further by only employing *i, u, I,* but *V.*
Thus spellings like *subijcere *have nothing to do with philology, only with spelling conventions, and when confronted with them one has to suppress the urge to read the sequence as vowel-consonant, but mentally translate it into *subiicere*, and then phonemically into /sub.ji.ce.re/.


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## Furtail

Sobakus said:


> Compounds of _jacere _occur in two forms, with and without the /j/, so both /su.bi.cere/ and /sub.ji.ce.re/. In the former the /ji/ was simplified to a single short vowel; the latter could preserved, but more likely analogically restored. There exists no form with a long /ī/, but some materials (even recent ones) that (ab-)use the macron indiscriminately both for vowel length and syllable weight will present the word as _sūbicere_. Since the Romans actively avoided spelling two I's in a row, the /ji/ forms were rarely represented in writing, and so people reciting poetry and confronted with the *-subi-* sequence that required a heavy first syllable ended up mispronouncing these with a long vowel as early as the 2nd c. AD, as Gellius 4.17 kindly lets us know.
> We get confused at the spelling *subijcere* because although we consciously know that *I* and *J* were variants of the same letter, as were *U* and *V*, this explicit knowledge doesn't override our long-developed reading skill, which tells us that one is a vowel and the other a consonant. Writing consecutive occurrences of these letters with two different letter-forms has been a common practice at least since the Middle Ages, and it was practically standard in the Renaissance, where you find *ij* and *vu.* Another convention, particularly common after the Enlightenment, was to spell *i* and *u* when lowercase, and *J* and *V* when uppercase, and this is continued even today in some publications. Often you will find these two conventions employed together.
> This whole issue often shows a glaring lack of consistency or logic, since many who distinguish *V~v* from *U~u* on the basis of the sound they represent don't do so with *J~j* and *I~i* (wiktionary is one example), and the Oxford Latin Dictionary even takes this mess a step further by only employing *i, u, I,* but *V.*
> Thus spellings like *subijcere *have nothing to do with philology, only with spelling conventions, and when confronted with them one has to suppress the urge to read the sequence as vowel-consonant, but mentally translate it into *subiicere*, and then phonemically into /sub.ji.ce.re/.


Thank you for your thoughtful response and all this generous detail! I particularly appreciate the examples you included-  very helpful, indeed!


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## Sobakus

Your welcome! There's yet another convention I forgot to mention, namely spelling *j~J* and *v~V* when initial: *jllius vltimi judicii*. It seems that this was far more common for *v~V*: here's one example.


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## Furtail

As I examine the work of seven different Venetian 18th century printers, it looks as though each printer has slightly different "house rules" for *u/v* and *i/j. *In the case of one of the prints, I also have a copy of the handwritten text copy submitted to the printer, so it's possible to identify which conventions belong to the author and which to the printer... Fascinating!


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