From: G&P
Message: 67291
Date: 2011-03-29
>>Latin seems to drop
markers right and left
>Sometimes they're
there, sometimes they're not. Standard interpretation says they're dropped, I
say they're added.
Actually, both are right. Classical
Latin sometimes inserts clause markers where the earlier language did not need
them, and sometimes omits them in ways that the earlier language did not. But
Latin is a real language. Even when markers are absent, it is usually clear
what the sentence structure is. It is also an “architectural”
language, so that linguistic ambiguity is difficult to achieve. (There are
overlapping forms within the morphology, which are ambiguous, but I think you’re
talking of ambiguity in clause structure.)
Peter