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

stance in his discussion focussed primarily on the Latin passive, although his results have
little to offer. He used evidence from the early-second-century letters of Claudius Terentius,
in which the use of synthetic forms in letters, which he deemed to be in a “slightly slangy,
jokey” language (ibid.: 93), meant that they must have been in use in spoken language.
Conversely, the fourth century Peregrinatio of Egeria apparently used synthetic forms to try
and “raise the tone” of her writing. Exactly why the synthetic forms might indicate
„formality‟ is an interesting methodological point, yet not discussed. If it were the case that
by a certain date (for Green, the sixth century), only higher registers of language made use of
synthetic forms, then the fact that they are still appearing in the Visigothic slates some
centuries later, traditionally used as evidence for the spoken language, means that Green‟s
interpretation is flawed (Velazquez Soriano 2004: 535).
His final interpretation is that deponent forms existed in a „half-life‟ for a long period,
unintelligible to some and glossed by others who knew how: “portarum had to be read as [de
las „pwεrtas] and cantatur as [ɛs kan‟tado] or [se „kanta]” (1991: 96). He then adds, “the
sheer mental agility required must make us wonder how consistently this feat could have
been performed” (ibid.: 96). Indeed, such a feat was unlikely to have been consistently
achieved. What is more, „half-life‟ is a fuzzy and misleading metaphor that reveals little
about both sociolinguistic and historical linguistic problems.
6.13 The Wright Thesis: General Conclusions
The Wright thesis recognises that questions such as „when is Latin no longer Latin‟
are unhelpful, and draws instead upon a much more advanced avenue of enquiry, seeking
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