The Roman Empire left behind many legacies that still live on today.

One of those
legacies is the Romance languages, spoken by millions of people worldwide, both as a
native tongue and a second language. Many of these languages descended from or were
heavily influenced by Vulgar Latin, a variety of Latin that was spoken by the common
Roman people. During the course of their conquest, Roman soldiers brought this
language to the provinces, laying down the foundations for the Romance languages. One
of the main differences between Vulgar Latin and Classical Latin is the case system of
their nouns. While Classical Latin had a five-case system, with each noun having a
specific case form that carries out a special function, Vulgar Latin eventually developed a
much simplified case system. While Classical Latin was relatively static and
conservative, Vulgar Latin underwent a process where most of the case forms gradually
disappeared, which resulted in a two-case or even one-case system in many Romance
languages today.
The decline of the case system in Vulgar Latin was not a new phenomenon. The
five-case system that we know in Classical Latin was itself a simplified version of an
earlier case system. In Indo-European, there were originally eight cases (Alkire and
Rosen, pg. 187). When it branched off into Latin, there were only five cases. Likewise,
when it branched off into Ancient Greek, there were only four cases left, so this
phenomenon is also not limited to Latin alone. The reason the cases were lost was
because they merged together with other cases, or the other cases took over the functions
of the lost cases. The instrumental cases function was taken over by the ablative, for
example. Meanwhile, the locative case also merged with the genitive or dative, as seen in
phrases such as Romae sum, meaning I am in Rome (Bodmer, pg. 318). The process

then continued in Vulgar Latin, where many linguistic changes contributed to the
eventual demise of the case system.
The fall of the case system was due to a combination of many linguistic
phenomena that built up over Vulgar Latins history. Some of the proposed causes
included a more regular word order, increased usage of prepositions, phonetic changes, as
well as functional confusions between the inflections. Thus, lets begin our analysis of the
case systems fall, and look at each cause closely, in order to see the impact each one had
on the case system.
First off is word order. Word order matters in English as well as other languages.
When we say the farmer drives the cow, we cannot mix the words around easily, as the
sentences meaning will be changed or lost. Classical Latin, on the other hand, had the
case inflections to tell us the meaning. Thus, it was allowed to have a more free word
order. A free word order in Classical Latin, however, was simply employed as a literary
device, and had little to do with the way Latin was spoken by the common people
(Bodmer, pg. 324). Just as no English speaker would speak the language of James Joyce
in real life, it is unlikely for a common Roman citizen to speak like Cicero or Cato the
Elder. As such, just like James Joyces Ulysses, many Classical Latin literary works were
not designed for rapid reading (Bodmer, pg. 324). The average Roman citizens probably
would want to get their point across quickly in a conversation, rather than trying to
compose a defense speech like Cicero. Thus, it is probably safe to assume that no
common Roman citizen would want to mix up the word order, leading to a more regular
and fixed word order in Vulgar Latin.

How does a more fixed word order relate to the collapse of the case system? The
reason that word order matters in English is because it helps convey a meaning. When the
word order is enough to convey the meaning, there will probably be no need for a case
system. However, a more regular word order is not likely to be a significant cause of the
eventual collapse of the case system. Rearranging words in a sentence was probably not
enough to cause such a complete collapse of the case system, where it was reduced from
five cases to one or two cases. Besides, as aforementioned, free word order was
employed as a device by Roman writers, and had little to do with the speech of
commoners. Hence, either regular word order was already in place in Vulgar Latin, or it
emerged as a by-product of the fall of the cases, caused by phenomena that are more
likely to dismantle them completely. Such phenomena included the rise of prepositions in
Vulgar Latin.
In Vulgar Latin, prepositions were very frequent, whereas in Classical Latin, they
were used with discretion (Bodmer, pg. 318). While less frequent use of prepositions was
considered graceful and well-bred in Classical Latin (Bodmer, pg. 318), it was
thought of as ambiguous and obscure by the common people. They would rather want
clarity in a conversation, and thus, they used more prepositions. In Vulgar Latin, the
increased use of prepositions would eventually displace some of the case inflections of
the case system, and rendered these case forms unnecessary.
Among the case forms that were displaced due to the rise of prepositions was the
genitive case. During Vergils time, the genitive case was falling out of favor in Vulgar
Latin, and was instead replaced with a combination of the preposition de and the ablative
case (Bodmer, pg. 325). For example, in his Gallic Wars (1.15), Caesar wrote pauc de

nostrs (a few of us), as opposed to pauc nostrrum, which would have been the correct
form in Classical Latin. By the end of the Empire, the combination of de and the ablative
case had completely taken over the function of the genitive case and displaced it. In many
modern Romance languages today, the preposition de is normally used to denote
possession; a function once belonged to the genitive case. Even before the Romance
languages fully emerged, a separate genitive case had ceased to be relevant. Other cases
would soon meet the same fate.
After the genitive fell out of favor, the dative case also became gradually
displaced. Although the dative case was a bit more resistant than the genitive, it still
could not survive, and the cause for its fall was also more frequent use of prepositions in
Vulgar Latin. Even in the earlier stages of the development of Latin, it already had a rival
in the form of the preposition ad (Bodmer, pg. 326). Ad is often used in conjunction with
the accusative case, and this combination often had the same function as the dative case.
For example, in one of his plays, Plautus wrote ad carnuficem dab (I give to the
executioner), whereas we would have expected carnufic dab (Bodmer, 326). Hence,
even before the time of Cicero and Vergil, the process of displacement had already begun.
Eventually, the dative case also fell out of favor, joining the genitive case as they both
disappeared and left behind only a few traces in the modern Romance languages.
With both of the genitive and dative cases gone, the ablative and accusative took
over their functions when they are combined with certain prepositions such as de and ad.
Thus, so far, there were only three distinct cases in Vulgar Latin. Due to phonetic
changes, however, the ablative and accusative cases would also eventually cease to be

distinctive. When phonetic changes came in, the entire case system would be shaken up,
changing the paradigm of the nouns, especially the singular case forms.
One of the most influential phonetic changes was the loss of the final consonant
-m. By the first century BC, the final m at the end of a word was hardly pronounced
(Herman, pg. 39). However, there were also cases where the m was simply omitted due
to practical reasons, such as the lack of space at the end of a line (Herman, pg. 40). There
were also a few exceptions to this phenomenon, where the m is retained, such as in
monosyllables like rem and quem, which later became French rien and Spanish quien
(Herman, pg. 40). These few exceptions are rather negligible when compared to the
impact of the loss of m, however. When the m is lost, it played a large role in the
demise of the case system, or to be more specific, the singular accusative case.
Any Latinist would know that most nouns singular accusative case form ends
with m. Thus, when the m is lost, the singular accusative case ceased to be distinctive.
This is especially true in the first declension, where the difference between the singular
nominative and singular accusative is the final consonant m. When the m is gone, so is
the difference. For example, we can no longer distinguish between nauta and nautam
when the m is loss. With the m gone, the singular accusative case form is no more.
The process of case decay did not stop with just the loss of m, however. Over the
years, many vowels also lost their length distinctions, when the short vowels and long
vowels merged together (Weiss, pg. 508). This is attested in many modern Romance
nouns that descended from Latin. For example, we have Spanish luz and Italian luce, both
of which originally came from Latin lcem (Weiss, pg. 509). This might have been
caused by confusion between short and long vowels in unstressed syllables, but

eventually, even the stressed syllables were affected (Herman, pg. 28). As the
grammarian Sergius put it, it is difficult to know which syllables are naturally long
(Herman, pg. 28). Just like the loss of m, the loss of length distinctions was another
phonetic change that contributed to the collapse of the case system, at least in the singular
case forms.
The case form that was most affected by this phonetic change was the singular
ablative case. Similar to the singular accusative case, which had the final consonant -m in
most nouns to distinguish it from the other cases, most nouns singular ablative case was
distinguished by the long vowel at the end of a word. Hence, like the singular accusative
case, when length distinctions were lost, the ablative case also went away. When we go
back to the example with nauta, we can see how the loss of length distinctions had an
effect similar to that of the loss of m. When the long vowel in naut is gone, it will look
just like the nominative case nauta. When this is compounded with the effect of the loss
of m, we can no longer distinguish between the singular nominative, accusative, or
ablative case forms in the word nauta, or any other first declension nouns.
When phonetic changes happened, the singular case forms were mostly
decimated. If some of the case forms had not already been displaced by prepositions, they
would be rendered indistinguishable by phonetic changes. In the second declension, for
example, we have the masculine noun dominus. It had the same inflection for both the
singular dative and ablative cases, domin, and the accusative case is dominum. Even if
the dative case was not displaced by the preposition ad, it would still be affected when
the final consonant m and the distinction between short u and long are lost. Hence, the
singular dative, ablative, and accusative cases would all be pronounced the same way.

Thus, we can see how much an impact phonetic changes had on the singular case forms.
When phonetic changes were combined with a wider use of prepositions, the result was
the near complete destruction of the singular case forms, evident in the two-case or onecase system in many Romance languages.
The singular case forms in Vulgar Latin had largely been dismantled through a
combination of phonetic changes and increased preposition usage. However, would the
plural case forms suffer the same fate? In many Romance languages, we can see that
there are only one or two plural case forms. Thus, it is quite clear that the plural case
forms were also eliminated. They just underwent a process that was a bit different from
what the singular case forms went through, which still ultimately resulted in their
disappearance in Vulgar Latin and the Romance languages.
The eventual demise of the plural case forms had less to do with phonetic changes
when compared to the singular case forms. They were relatively unaffected by phonetic
changes, and most of the phonetic distinctions that distinguished an inflection from
another were relatively stable in the plural case forms (Herman, pg. 53). Instead, the
erosion of the plural case forms was caused by the functional confusions between the
inflections. This is when the wrong case was used for another case, and in Vulgar Latin,
this happened on many occasions. The accusative case, for example, was used where the
ablative case would have been more appropriate, or vice versa. For example, we have
cum filis sus trs instead of cum flis sus tribus, as the preposition cum generally
required the ablative case (Herman, pg. 53). Even if there were prepositions that accepted
both cases, they would lose semantic distinctions. For example, sub hc titul (beneath
this tombstone) denoted the location of where something is, whereas sub hunc titulum

denoted the direction of a movement (Herman, pg. 54). As time went on, they became
increasingly interchangeable, and both came to mean beneath this tombstone. Thus,
this only served to blur the line between the ablative case and the accusative case.
The confusions between case inflections became increasingly common in Late
Latin texts, even though the plural case inflections were formally distinct (Herman, pg.
53). Functional confusions eventually triumphed over formal distinctions as time went
on. In Vulgar Latin, people continued to use the wrong cases, and even when there were
prepositions that accept more than one case, the difference in semantics gradually
disappeared. When semantic distinctions are gone, it is likely that one case form will be
favored more than others, as people will not need two phrases that have the same
meaning. Amidst the confusions, one plural case form in particular rose above all the
others in importance. That case form was the accusative case.
The plural accusative case form was the case form that became increasingly
prominent as the other plural case forms faded away. This can be seen in some of the
Romance languages, where the plural forms end in s, hinting at their descent from the
accusative plural case form of Latin. In Classical Latin, many verbs took on a specific
case. In Vulgar Latin, however, verbs tended to take on the accusative case (Herman, pg.
54). Toward the end of the Empire, it was clear that the accusative case had risen above
the other cases in importance, when a new grammatical construction arose from it
(Herman, pg. 54). This was the accusative absolute, which was modeled after the ablative
absolute, and almost always carried out the same function. With the accusative case
gradually taking over in the plural case forms, and the singular case forms being
destroyed by phonetic changes and prepositions, the case system of nouns had completely

collapsed in Vulgar Latin. This collapse, much like the collapse of the Roman Empire,
did not pass without consequences.
When the case system of nouns crumbled under the pressures of linguistic
changes, it had several effects in Vulgar Latin, some of which simplified the language
even more. The five declensions, for example, were reduced to three. The fourth and fifth
declensions did not have many nouns to begin with, and with the collapse of the case
system, they grew even less distinct (Herman, pg. 61-62). When the case system fell, the
second and fourth declensions both looked identical, and thus, many fourth declension
nouns were absorbed into the second declension. Meanwhile, the fifth declension
contained mostly feminine nouns, which were reassigned to the mostly feminine first
declension. Fifth declension nouns such as facies and glacies became facia and glacia
and so on (Herman, pg. 62). The disappearance of inflections in nouns also rendered
inflections in adjectives unnecessary, and hence, inflections in adjectives also shared the
same fate and went away (Bodmer, pg. 327). Finally, with the fall of the case system, the
prepositions will be on the rise. With all the inflections gone, prepositions will be
necessary to give meaning to words, taking over the functions that the case system once
held.
The collapse of the case system is one of the testaments of the constantly evolving
nature of languages. It had been brought down by a combination of many factors that
built up over the years, as the Roman Empire extended its reach. When the Empire
marched its soldiers into the provinces, it laid down many foundations, including the
foundation for the Romance languages that descended from Vulgar Latin. One of the
processes that helped make the Romance languages as we know today, however, had

already begun before there was a Roman Empire. The simplification of the case system in
Vulgar Latin had already begun when Indo-European branched off into Latin. The
process then continued in Vulgar Latin, as phonetic changes and prepositions, among
other causes, completely tore down the case system. The fall of the case system had
contributed to the birth of the modern Romance languages, a legacy of the Roman
Empire that still lives on to this day.

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