The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

Romance, with only a few exceptions such as those found in Provençal sivals and Romanian
sau (Meyer-Lübker 1935: 9117a). Indeed, it is the sole etymon of Castilian o and prevocalic
u, Catalan o, Portuguese and Galician ou (Penny 2002: 245). Similarly, out of all the Latin
copulatives (et, atque, ac and the enclitic –que), only et survived. However, a simple
frequency count of copulatives in the monastic rules demonstrates a tendency towards et,
suggesting that its predominance in Romance was already underway:
ET ATQUE AC -QUE
Rule of Isidore 34 21 8 29
Rule of
Fructuosus
185 21 12 31
Common Rule 440 5 8 7
The disjunctive is a particularly interesting example. The particle uel appears
frequently in Latin writing of all genres and in all periods, and is typically defined by its
relationship with aut (Kohlmann 1898; Kirk 1921; Weston 1933): aut is normally promoted
as an exclusive disjunctive (i.e. a choice between p or q, but not both), and uel as an inclusive
disjunctive (i.e. a choice between p or q, or perhaps both; see Kennedy (1879: 318); Ernout &
Thomas (1972: 446); Weston (1933: 47)).
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