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

a periphrastic construction, primarily made up of the verb „to be‟, plus a participle. For
example, Lat. amatur > Sp. está amado; Lat. uidetur > Sp. está visto. The verb „to be‟ can
sometimes be replaced by other verbs; for example, Sp. „como viene dicho en el párrafo
anterior‟, or „más de 450.000 personas se han visto afectadas por la contaminaciόn del agua
portable” (Butt & Benjamin 1994: 368). Otherwise, the passive can be formed using a
reflexive, pronominal, form. This is especially true of Romanian, where the „be passive‟ is a
fairly recent introduction (Posner 2000: 181).
The reason why synthetic passive and deponent verb forms are important for
discussion of language-use in the seventh century is two-fold. On the one hand, they are
features that appear in Latin and not Romance, and so they are important for studies of the
changes that took place in the period leading up to the first evidence of Romance. Already
almost a century ago, Muller (1921) noted, with reference to synthetic passive forms: “The
Latin passive system is a vital part of the Latin language. As long as the Latin passive forms
were used and understood, Latin can be said to have been a living language; when this ceased
to be the case, Latin became a dead language” (ibid.: 69). The very same could be said for
deponent verbs.
On the other hand, acknowledgment of this fact poses a potential problem for the
Wright thesis: if synthetic passive and deponent verb forms are not part of Romance, how
were they accommodated by a reader „glossing‟ Latin into Romance as he read? Since the
Wright thesis has been so influential, this is a topic that merits discussion. Wright sets out
clearly his stance: [synthetic forms would have been given a Romance pronunciation and]
“the morphological endings preserved on paper (e.g. –ITUR, -ABIS, -IBUS) would have
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