-ěrunt v -ērunt

[Chamaeleo]

My textbook (Initiation à la langue latine et à son système) consistently marks the third-person plural of the perfect active indicative as “-ěrunt”, but all other authorities seem to give a long vowel (“-ērunt” or “-érunt”).

What is the reason for this discrepancy?

 

[Chamaeleo]

Do your references all mark the vowel long?

 

[Quasus]

Do your references all mark the vowel long?

Mine do, with no exception.

 

[Decimvs]

My text teaches that both versions are long, -ērunt and -ēre.

I use Learn to Read Latin by Andrew Keller and Stephanie Russell.

 

[Matthaeus]

All my sources give a long vowel ē.

 

[Imber Ranae]

It should be long.

 

[Chamaeleo]

Now that I come to think about it, the derivatives of the perfect in the Romance languages often point to a short -erunt in Vulgar Latin.

Let's take these:
fuerunt
ama[ue]runt
sederunt
biberunt
uenerunt
scripserunt
dormierunt

In Italian, these give:
furon[o] (implies a short e)
amaron[o] (implies a short e)
sederon[o] (implies a long e)
bevvero (implies a short e)
veniron[o] (implies a long e, and/or analogy with verbs like dormire)
scrissero (implies a short e)
dormiron[o] (implies a short e)[/i]

In Spanish, these give:
fueron (implies a long e)
amaron (implies a short e)
seyeron (implies a long e)
bebieron (implies a long e)
vinieron (implies a long e)
escribieron (implies a long e)
durmieron (implies a long e, or analogy with other conjugations)

In French, these give:
furent (implies a short e)
aimèrent (implies a short e)
sirent (is ambiguous)
burent (is ambiguous)
vinrent (implies a short e)
écrivirent (implies a long e, or analogy with other forms)
dormirent (is ambiguous)

Perhaps they based it on the evidence of Italian.

 

[Cato]

The e is typically long in -erunt/-ere, but there are enough exceptions in verse that it could be considered variable. Here's an example from the Aeneid, when Aeneas sees the ghost of his dead wife Creusa:

Obstipui, steteruntque comae et vox faucibus haesit. (II.774)

It occurs often enough that it is probably rooted in vulgar or archaic pronunciation (systole). It seems to me steterunt and dederunt are the most common examples...

 

[Chamaeleo]

It seems to me that the (well-attested, I think) contraction of -áuérunt to -árunt could only really happen if the e was in reality short and unstressed.

It would be great if we actually had a classical source saying whether it was long or short.

 

[Bitmap]

Shouldn't classical poetry suffice as a source? Just a few examples from the Aeneid:

praemia digna ferant. Quae te tam laeta tulerunt (I, 605)

staret equus, toto sonuerunt aethere nimbi (II, 103)

religio, et cuncti suaserunt numine diui (III, 363)

In Cato's example you have to apply an exception rule that allows you to mark a syllable short if the succeeding syllable gets the natural stress. It's not found too often in hexametres, though.

 

[Chamaeleo]

In Cato's example you have to apply an exception rule that allows you to mark a syllable short if the succeeding syllable gets the natural stress. It's not found too often in hexametres, though.

...or is that a rule people invented to explain away the fact that the vowel in -erunt is often short? :wondering:

 

[Bitmap]

No, it's a rule that you find very often in Old, iambic poetry which may even shorten syllables that are long by position. I'm too lazy to look up examples right now, but I can find you some if you insist

I don't think you will find too many examples of -erunt having a short e, at least I didn't come across any when I looked up the passages above. In most cases the natural stress would be on the e, so you cannot apply that rule. It works in Cato's example though, since the addition of the -que puts the stress on the u.

Anyway, I find your attempts to reconstruct classical pronunciation from modern Romance languages quite interesting, but I'm not sure too which extent it works. Even if you could prove or provide strong evidence that the e was short once, it could still be possible that it was long at Cicero's and Caesar's time and shifted only later (or shifted differently in different dialects ... vowels are quite instable after all).

btw my Latin professor has quite strong feelings about the -erunt. People saying laudáverunt is one thing that really drives him mad (along with Caesáris and non with a short o)