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

languages are those in which “auxiliary words are the chief or sole means of expressing
grammatical relationships of words, to the total or partial elimination of inflection”, synthetic
languages are those in which the “grammatical relationships of words are expressed
principally by means of inflections” (Pei & Gaynor 1954: 212). The heavily analytic nature
of Latin, as opposed to the preponderance towards analysis in Romance, has been long
observed; one scholar summed up, in a description of Latin and its vernacular descendents in
later periods: “Medieval Latin was a synthetic language in an analytic world” (Rigg 1996:
89).
It is in verbal morphology where the shift from synthesis to analysis is best
documented. This is especially the case outside the simple present, preterit and future, which
have remained synthetic in Romance. Deponent verbs were subject to two processes,
although in each case they disappeared from use. In some cases, their use was replaced
instead with a normal active synonym. For example: Lat. osculor > basiare > Sp. besar, Ptg.
beijar; Lat. uescor > comedere > Sp., Ptg. comer. In other cases, deponent verbs were
levelled through analogy with normal active forms. For example: Lat. sequor > Sp., Ptg.
seguir; Lat. fabulor > Sp. hablar, Ptg. falar.
The passive voice, in contrast, has been retained in Romance, although the Latin
synthetic passive has not survived in any Romance language. 557 Instead, it was replaced with
557 Interestingly, linguists have not yet been able to reconstruct a passive voice in Proto-Indo-
European. Presumably, some method of constructing a passive voice did exist, but it is possible that it
was formed using particles rather than a verbal conjugation. Lehmann (1993: 184-45) posits a
comparison with Quechua, which also uses particles to mark the passive voice, rather than a verbal
conjugation.
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