Variant: alternative form of word
| Values: | Greek | Archaic |
Variant is used to distinguish word forms that differ only from a formal point of view, but that otherwise share the same lemma and morpholexical features. In Latin this is seen in the possible adoption of Greek case endings for nouns and adjectives, or similarly in the use of archaic inflectional traits.
Greek: Greek morphology
Due their descent from a common ancestor (Proto-Indo-European), Latin and (Ancient) Greek share many similarities, especially with regard to their nominal inflectional paradigms. This was evident also to native speakers at the time, so that it has always been straightforward to adapt words of one language to the inflectional schemes of the other.
In Latin, we observe that, for words of Greek origin, sometimes such affinities have given rise to mixed Greek-Latin paradigms, or to the sporadic use of morphologically Greek forms in an otherwise Latin syntax. We mark these cases with Variant=Greek on top of all other morphological features. Whereas this phenomenon is quite common for nouns, Greek morphology seems not to occur with regard to verbs.
This is different than simply marking words of Greek origin which comply to “regular” Latin inflectional classes: a Variant=Greek form has to deviate from Latin inflectional paradigms and to correspond to a Greek one (on the basis of possibly different transcriptions), so that e.g. acc. basim ‘basis’ from basis does not receive Variant=Greek.
Examples
(nom. = nominative case, acc. = accusative, gen. = genitive; pl. = plural, singular elsewhere; gr. = Greek)
- nom. mystes ‘priest of secret rites’, gen. mystae, masculine first declension, gr. μύστης; cf. “regular” mysta
- acc. Lethen ‘forgetfulness (name of a river in the Underworld)’, nom. Lethe, feminine first declension, gr. acc. Λήθην from nom. Λήθη; a “regular” Latin form would be Letham (or Lethem if interpreted as a third declension)
- acc. delphyna ‘dolphin’, nom. delphin, masculine third declension, gr. acc. δελφῖνα from nom. δελφίν; in Latin one would expect delphinem from delphin
- nom./acc. melos ‘tune’, neuter second declension, gr. nom./acc. μέλος; the corresponding “regular” Latin form would be melum (or a masculine melus)
- gen. metamorphoseos ‘(of a/the) metamorphosis’, nom. metamorphosis, feminine third declension, gr. gen. μεταμορφώσεως from nom. μεταμόρφωσις; one would expect the “regular” Latin form metamorphosis (identical to the nominative)
Archaic: Archaic inflectional traits
Some forms are crystallised into variants which belong to an older phase of the language, and have been generally superseded by new inflectional paradigms. Sometimes, the use of such forms can be a deliberate matter of style by an author, but in other cases these forms, while still morphosyntactically transparent, are used i nspecific contexts, especially in the realm of connectives.
Examples
(nom. = nominative case, acc. = accusative, gen. = genitive, dat. = dative, loc. = locative; pl. = plural, singular elsewhere; f. = feminine, m. = masculine, n. = neuter; gr. = Greek)
- gen. pater familias ‘master of a house’, with an archaic sigmatic genitive instead of synchronic familiae; since it is a crystallised expression, sometimes it occurs univerbated as paterfamilias
- abl. quī ‘whereby’, instead of synchronic m./n. quo , f. qua of the relative pronoun qui (which has short vowel quantity), showing the original tendency of pronominal elements to not distinguish grammatical gender (as still the case in gen. cuius and dat. cui); most often used as a subordinating connective in free-relative-like subordinated clauses
- gen. pl. equum ‘of horses’, from equus, instead of an expected synchronic equorum, and in analogy to athematic inflectional patterns, as opposed to the o-thematic ones of the first declension
- loc. hīc (< heic)’here’, literally ‘in/at this (one)’, from hīc ‘this (one)’, could be seen as an archaic variant in that, synchronically, the locative case appears restricted to nouns and is not productive anymore for synsemantic elements; it is similar in use to yet another form of the paradigm, f. abl. hāc, and traditionally it is often misleadingly annotated as an independent adverbial (ADV) lexeme
Variant in other languages: [be] [cs] [cu] [de] [koi] [kpv] [la] [lt] [mdf] [myv] [orv] [pl] [ps] [qpm] [ro] [ru] [sl] [uk]