# Exspecto caussam (Erasmus)



## Riverplatense

Topic phrase:  Exspecto caussam 
Please include it in the post itself, as well as in the title. 
Cagey, moderator. 

Hello!

Can someone explain the gemination in _causa _operated by Erasmus (_Colloquia familiaria_, _Abbatis et eruditae_, Magdalia to Antronius)?

Is this a typical writing in non-classical Latin? And does it represent a determined quantity of a sound or should it mark the pronunciation as [-s-] instead of [-z-]? I don't think there's any etymological motivation for this spelling.

Thank you!


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## Scholiast

salvete!

I lack the philological expertise to comment on the phonology, but...

_caussa_ (and other such geminated forms) is often found in MSS of classical texts, and with the privilege of autoptic evidence Quintilian, no less, can tell us (1.7.20) that this was normal spelling in the 1st century BC for Cicero and Caesar, and Virgil too. I would guess here that there was already then ambiguity in the spoken language about the voicing or otherwise of the intervocalic 's'.

Σ

Edited afterthought: there are 2nd- and 1st- century (BC) inscriptions with e.g. _es_[_s_]_ent_ apparently interchangeably.


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## Riverplatense

Thank you very much for this helpful answer! I didn't expect these writings to be classical, too.


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## fdb

caussa is the usual spelling in early inscriptions. It is supposed (by some experts) that it is from an IE *keh2udh-t-, which would indeed result in –ss-.


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## Scholiast

Scholiasta Riverplatense fdb aliisque amicis SPD


fdb said:


> caussa is the usual spelling in early inscriptions. It is supposed (by some experts) that it is from an IE *keh2udh-t-, which would indeed result in –ss-.


I knew about the inscriptions - the incomparable Dessau (in the indices to _ILS_, vol. V) lists more than fifty such examples, and that's only a "Selection" of 9,500 or so from around 200,000 known pieces of "classical" Latin epigraphy (in _CIL_).
But about the phonology, I am really curious, especially since It. _cosa_, Fr. _cause_, have a voiced /s/, how did Cicero and Caesar pronounce these words?


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## fdb

In principle, Indo Eurioean intervocalic *-s- becomes –r- in Latin; witness flos vs floris. Where we do have intervocalic –s- in classical Latin it can normally be assumed to go back to older –ss-, or else it has some other more-or-less plausible explanation.


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## Scholiast

salvete iterum


fdb said:


> Indo Eurioean intervocalic *-s- becomes –r- in Latin; witness flos vs floris.


Indeed, as in _honos>honor _&c. But this leaves my question - which is essentially the same as Riverplatense's, at the start of this thread - unanswered. Was the s in _caus_[_s_]_a_ voiced or not?

My guess is that in "erhebener Sprache" it was unvoiced, but in that of the Great Unwashed it was /z/.

Quid putatis?

Σ


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## fdb

Scholiast said:


> especially since It. _cosa_, Fr. _cause_, have a voiced /s/



In good Tuscan Italian they say [ˈkɔsa], with voiceless s.

But more to the point: I do not see any evidence for a voiced s in Latin. This is not about voiced vs voiceless, but about geminate vs non-geminate. As a result of the above-mentioned historic sound shifts there are hardly any minimal pairs with VsV versus VssV (I cannot actually think of any, but perhaps someone else can). In any case, the contrast between intervocalic s and ss has little, if any, semantic weight; this could well be the reason that superfluous ss was reduced to s.


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## Riverplatense

fdb said:


> In good Tuscan Italian they say [ˈkɔsa], with voiceless s.



Exactly, and all the eastern Romance languages have voiceless intervocalic s, too, and so has Sardinian with its (in a lot of fields) conservative phonology. The same goes for Modern Greek, where old VsV → VsV, only the presence of a following voiced consonant caused the assimilation /s/ → /z/, whereas the old affricate _ζ_ shifted to voiced _s_.



fdb said:


> This is not about voiced vs voiceless, but about geminate vs non-geminate.



But isn’t there a link between them? Also in French old geminated _s_ didn’t undergo intervocalic sonorisation ([nɛsɑ͂s]).



fdb said:


> there are hardly any minimal pairs with VsV versus VssV



How about _cassa_ : _casa_?


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## Riverplatense

Scholiast said:


> Quid putatis?



I think it was voiceless in any ancient variety, because

the phonologically most conservative languages/dialects have intervocalic /s/
secondary desonorisation in intervocalic position (interpreted as a process of assimilation) seems less plausible than sonorisation
also both Ancient and Modern Greek have VsV
secondary (ss →) /s/ remains voiceless also in a lot of Galloromance languages



fdb said:


> In any case, the contrast between intervocalic s and ss has little, if any, semantic weight; this could well be the reason that superfluous ss was reduced to s.



I think so, too, even though I’m not sure whether or not there can be something like early consonantic quantity as in today’s Italian.


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## Riverplatense

A last one:

«[Il toscano] distingue ancora essenzialmente tra lat. _-s-_ intervocale e lat. _-ns_ ovvero _-s-_ < _-ss-_: così lat. _rosa_, _mense_, _caussa_>_causa_ divengono in toscano [rɔ:za], [me:se], [kɔ:sa].» (Camilli, A.: «Lingua toscana in bocca romana», in: _Italica_ 15 (1938), pp. 55 s.)

So that’s another hint for the voiceless pronunciation of the sibilant in _caus(s)a_, also in spoken varieties.


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