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‣ IF such correction is philologically economical.

Lat. amosio:
‣ IF it does not generate a lectio facillima.
“An unnoticed -osio genitive in Latin with a few remarks on time terminology”
‣ IF it matches the semantics encoded in the gloss annuo.
Francesco Burroni (Leiden University) & Michele Brezigia (Independent)1
❖ In fact, we can suppose that an error might have arisen before Paul’s archetype:
“È [...] ormai molto difficile dubitare, secondo me, che
-come ci indica il testo di Satricum- il latino arcaico
‣ BECAUSE Paul wrote an epitome of an epitome of a lexicon of rare words.
possedesse anche il morfema -osio; ulteriori - He worked on Festus’ De verborum significatu, already an epitome of Verrius Flaccus
rinvenimenti fortunati confermerebbero questa
ipotesi” ‣ BECAUSE both Festus' and Verius’ works had a long textual tradition already (at least
(C. De Simone) 500 years).
0. Introduction ‣ BECAUSE the compilation of those lexicons probably went through several redactional
phases which could be the cradle of plausible and less plausible errors.
❖ At first glance the gloss Amosio: annuo (FEST. p.26 ) seems incomprehensible.
❖ Our proposal is based on the fact that:
❖ Neither the retention of amosio nor the emendations proposed so far are convincing.
‣ as Whatmough had already observed two ns closely written could be misread and
1. The previous proposals: a critical assessment wrongly transcribed as an m (see appendix 1).
❖ The form amosio is trustworthy because: ‣ -sio must be retained: an extra -i cannot easily be inserted.
‣ in all the manuscripts – of which the most ancient are geographically and chronologically ❖ For those reasons, we propose to emend amosio to annosio (less invasive and more justifiable
close to the redaction of Paul’s Epitome – we only find amosio (see appendix 2). correction on philological and paleographical grounds).
‣ Paul is thorough in writing his Epitome. 3. The linguistic details
❖ Nevertheless, modern scholars did not limit themselves to retaining the form, but they also ❖ THE STEM: Annosio can be analyzed as ann-o-sio where anno- matches Lat. annus < *annos
emended it. “year”.
❖ MÜLLER 1839:26 retains amosio (and so does also Lindsay 1913:24) ‣ Such stem is also present in O. akenei [loc.sg.] U. acnu [acc.sg./pl.] < PSab. *akno- < PIt.
‣ BUT there is no **amos(i)- stem in Latin. *atno- which ultimately goes back to PIE *h2ét-no-( cfr. Go. aþnam [dat.pl.]) “year” from a
root PIE *h2et- “to go around”.
❖ LINDSAY 1928:123 emends amosio to anosio (he writes in apparatu “An anasio?”)
❖ THE ENDING: having isolated the stem ann- we are left with an ending -o-sio (o is the thematic
‣ BUT n > m and o > a are hard to conceive
vowel).
‣ BUT he does not explain his correction
‣ BUT a corresponding stem cannot be identified in Latin
❖ WHATMOUGH 1931 emends amosio to annoso
‣ OK nn > m is really common in a minuscule script
‣ BUT -so > -sio is hard to explain (replacement of a lectio difficilis with a lectio difficillima)
‣ BUT he connects the second part of annoso with U. usaie and U. usaçe, however these
forms are related with Lat. sancīre and have nothing to do with the word for “year”.
‣ BUT he doesn’t explain what would °am- or °ann- represent.
2. A different philological account ‣ Classical Latin always displays thematic o-stem genitive as -ī < PIE *-ihx
❖We still should attempt a correction ope ingenii: ‣ BUT the Lapis Satricanus (500 BCE, from Satricum modern Le Ferriere, 60 km south of
Rome, probably written in a rural variant of Latin) displays an -osio ending:
1Paragraph 0, 1, 5 are co-written. Michele Brezigia is responsible for paragraph 2. Francesco Burroni is responsible for
paragraphs 3,4. The emendation amosio > annosio was first suggested by Francesco Burroni on purely linguistic
grounds while he was working on his B.A. thesis under the supervision of Prof. Dr. José Luis García Ramón and Prof.
Dr. Michael L. Weiss.
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‣ DE SIMONE 1980 interpreted the text as: -IEI STETERAI POPLIOSIO VALESIOSIO SUODALES ❖ All the nuclear2 Indo-European languages which preserve a distinct genitive point to this
MAMARTEI “ -iei (nom. pl./dat. sg) “The companions of Publius Valerius have erected (this) ending:
for Mamars” ‣ Sanskrit: -asya
‣ The -osio genitival ending is also attested in Faliscan, another dialect of Latin, e.g. ‣ Old Av: -ahiiā
aimiosio, kaisiosio, uotenosio.
‣ Greek: Hom. Greek -οιο, Thess. -οι (apocopated form)
❖ SEMANTICS: the gloss annuo, the ablative of the o-stem adjective annuus, provides us with the
meaning of annosio “yearly, in the year”. ‣ Armenian: -oy
‣ As a matter of fact the genitive has a meaning similar to the adjective “yearly/of the year” ‣ Lepontic: -oiso3
‣ BUT glossing a genitive form with an ablative is remarkable. ‣ Perhaps also Phrygian *-ovo and Messapic *-aihi
‣ This fact demonstrates that the form was not transparent any longer. ‣ Germanic has generalized the pronominal genitive singular ending *-o/eso cfr. Go. -is , OE
-as.
‣ When forms in -osio were completely ousted by forms in -ī, the formers would become
crystalized as adverbs and as such they would have been glossed. ‣ Balto-Slavic has merged genitive with ablative cfr. OCS. -a, Lith. -o.
‣ In a similar fashion, a native speaker of present day English, if asked to gloss seldom would ❖ The burden of (dis)proof for nuclear PIE *-osio is now on the shoulders of those who want to
probably write rarely; even if seldom is from a diachronic perspective the dative plural of a explain the widespread diffusion of this morpheme on the basis of independent processes.
noun, namely PGerm. *selda- “strange thing”. ❖ The -osio ending was later in the history of Latin replaced by -ī < PIE *-ihx,
❖ From a linguistic point of view no morphological or semantic objection can be raised against ‣ A marker originally employed to form denominal adjectives replacing completely the
an emendation amosio to annosio, an old o- stem -osio genitive of the PIE word for “year”: thematic vowel in the stem (NUSSBAUM 1975).

Nom. PIE *h2ét-no-s PIt. *atnos > Lat. annus ❖ THE GENITIVE OF TIME: annosio shows that a genitive might have been employed to express
temporal reference.
Gen. PIE *h2ét-no-sio PIt. *atnosio > OLat. annosio >> Lat. annī
‣ As such, the form was subsequently crystalized and interpreted as an adverb.
4. Some consequences ❖ Such employment of the genitive might be surprising from a synchronic point of view since
Latin regularly employs the ablative.
❖ THE -OSIO GENITIVE: the evidence for this formation in Italic was very scattered and restricted
to onomastics. ‣ However, in a wider Italic perspective, the genitive can be employed to express time too: O.
eisucen ziculud zicolom (gen.pl.) XXX nesimum comonom ni hipid (T.B.17) “shall not hold
‣ Latin (or a closely related dialect ) x1: Popliosio Valesiosio (LS)
the comitia the next thirty days from that day”
‣ Faliscan x3 namely aimiosio, kaisiosio and uotenosio
‣ N.B. Latin version of the T.B. has forms with the ablative instead.
‣ Ardeatine titoio < *titosio [contra Bakkum 2009]
‣ That is the reason why DEVOTO 1929 claims that Latin, in contrast to Sabellic, doesn’t
‣ Venetic kaialoiso, in fact Lepontic according to Eska and Wallace 2001. display a genitive of time construction.
‣ The dossier is extremely scarce, consequently every token is per se an important finding. ❖ Annosio, an old inherited forms, make now clear for the first time that Latin also displayed a
❖ Annosio is the first known token where the -osio ending is found in combination with a non genitive of time, later replaced by the ablative.
proper noun. ❖ The convergence of Latin and Oscan points to the fact that PIt. had such a construction.
❖ This fact clearly shows that the morpheme was inherited in Italic with a “real” genitival ❖ This seems also the case for Proto-Italo-Celtic, in view of OIr. cēne “as long as”, genitive of
meaning, it was certainly part of the inflection and not yet specified as any particular type of cian “long period of time”.
possession nor just a possessive marker strictu sensu.
❖ This value of the genitive can probably be traced back to nuclear Indo-European since it is
❖ The most likely scenario is that Proto-Italic possessed an -osio ending, still retained in its displayed in:
Latin-Faliscan branch.
❖ The -osio ending has nothing specifically Faliscan or Latin though: it is not a dialectal 2 Indo-European languages after Anatolian (and perhaps Tocharian) split. Hittite had gen.sg -as < PIE *-os, the original
innovation but an archaism. form.

3The form is probably not a metathesis, but remodeld on the basis of the genitive plural -oisom see Eska and Wallace
2001.
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‣ Germanic: Go. nahts“at night”
‣ Indo-Iranian: Skt. aktóḥ “id.” Appendix 1 nn and m in various Early Medieval scripts
‣ Greek: νυκτός “id.”
‣ This usage is not unknown outside PIE, Lemnian, for instance, offers a good typological
parallel displaying a genitive of duration of time Lem. avis σ́ialχvis “for forty years”
❖ The lucky recovery of annosio reveals, then, also an old syntactic use of the genitive.
❖ When -osio was replaced by -ī, this latter morpheme being a denominative marker of
pertinence could not subsume the Zeitbegriffen function, which was taken on by the ablative
instead.
5. Conclusions
❖ Amosio can be safely corrected as annosio.
❖ The newly acquired form annosio supports the reconstruction of a PIt. *-osio genitive,
inherited from nuclear Proto-Indo-European *-osio.
❖ Finally annosio, endorses the idea that (nuclear) PIE had a genitive of time construction,
retained in Pro-Italic and then eventually lost in Latin when -ī replaced earlier -osio.
6. Bibliography
Bakkum, G. C. L. M. 2009. The Latin Dialect of the Ager Faliscus 150 Years of Scholarship.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press
De Simone, C. 1980. L'aspetto linguistico in Colonna, Giovanni, Carlo De Simone, Hendrik Simon
Versnel, Conrad Michael Stibbe, and Massimo Pallottino. 1980. Lapis Satricanus
archaeological, epigraphical, linguistic, and historical aspects of the new inscription from
Satricum. 's-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij.
Devoto, G. 1929. Italo-greco e Italo-celtico. reprinted in Devoto, G. 1958. Scritti minori. Firenze: F.
le Monnier.
Eska, J. F. & R. E. Wallace. 2001. Remarks on the thematic genitive singular in ancient Italy and
related matter. Incontri Linguistici 24. 77−97.
Lindsay, W. M. 1913. Sexti Pompei Festi De Verborum Significatu Quae Supersunt Cum Pauli
Epitome. Lipsiae: in aedibus B. G. Teubneri
––––––––––––. 1928. Glossaria Latina. vol. 4. Paris: Les belles lettres.
Müller, K. O.. 1839. Sexti Pompei Festi De Verborum Significatione Quae Supersunt Cum Pauli
epitome. Lipsiae: Weidmanniana.
Nussbaum, A. 1975. Studies in Latin noun formation and derivation.ī in Latin denominative
derivation in “Indo-European studies” vol. II ed. C. Watkins.
Whatmough, J. 1931. The Calendar in Ancient Italy outside Rome. Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology 42: 157-179.

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Appendix 2 Leiden B.P.L. 135, 9th century, p. 13 r Notes

The oldest manuscript of Paul the Deacon’s Epitome

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