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Anonymous: Fragmentum Bobiense de Accentibus

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A short anonymous note on Latin accentuation from a Bobbio manuscript, edited by Heinrich Keil in the seventh volume of the Grammatici Latini. It names the three accents, acute, grave and circumflex, with their Greek equivalents, and gives rules for their use, beginning with monosyllables: those long by nature, such as spes, flos and mos, take the circumflex, while short ones or those long by position take the acute.

Latin grammarians took over the Greek system of accents and applied it to their own language, and brief rules like these were part of every grammar course. The fragment is one of several witnesses to that teaching and to the pronunciation of Latin as late antique schools described it.

About this edition. The Latin text comes from digilibLT, the Digital Library of Late-Antique Latin Texts (edition: Grammatici Latini, VII. Scriptores de orthographia. Terentius Scaurus, Vellius Longus etc., ex recensione H. Keilii, Hildesheim 1961, 539,17-540,8…), licensed CC BY-NC. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.

Latin · Grammar & Reference
Fragmentum Bobiense de Accentibus
Anonymous · every word parsed
1
accentus Graeci prosodian appellant. triplex autem est: aut enim acutus est, quem oxian dicunt, aut grauis, quem barian, aut circumflexus, quem perispomenon. omnia igitur nomina siue uerba siue quae alia pars orationis fuerit, hanc rationem enuntiationis recipient. monosyllaba aliquid significantia, si fuerint natura longa, id est produci potuerint, circumflexa uoce efferuntur, ut spes flos mos ros; si positione longa fuerint aut certe breuia, acuta uoce pronuntiabuntur, ut [non] nec quis quid hic nux. in disyllabis autem, si prima [loco] producta fuerit syllaba, habebit in se circumflexum accentum, ⟨ut⟩ Roma rhetor bruma uita prima. si uero prima syllaba positione longa fuerit aut breuis, acutum tonum in prima reperies, ut canto condo curro salto pinna secta. sed ne opponi nobis a nimium diligentioribus illa possint, quae acuta syllaba nouissima efferuntur, ut cochlis Dryas Thyas, illud est respondendum, omnia uerba peregrina secundum suam positionem, quomodo lecta sunt, ita enuntiari debere.
nam cum in nostram consuetudinem transeunt, rationi nostrae quoque * ceterum nullum est uerbum siue disyllabum siue trium pluriumue syllabarum quod nouissima syllaba acute enuntietur. super istud de trisyllabis dicamus, in quibus haec erit obseruatio: si media syllaba positione longa fuerit, acuto tono enuntiabitur, ut Metellus cancelli lanistae fenestrae.
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Text: Perseus Digital Library, licensed CC BY-SA. Dictionary: Lewis & Short (Perseus, CC BY-SA). Morphology: LatinCy — machine parsing, corrected against the AGDT & PROIEL treebanks and Morpheus.
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