The Periodization of Latin: an Old Question Revisited.

Despite the fact that in the last two or three decades several works came to light on the history of the Latin language or on the history of its subsystems, there is no appropriate periodization of Latin that would be acceptable from every relevant aspect. Albeit all published works propose their own periodization, sometimes explicitly, in a separate chapter, sometimes implicitly, through the division of the material (i.e. in the chapter headings), their criteria for periodizing the history of the language are sometimes unclear or inadequate. Moreover, in some cases even the start and end points of the history of Latin are not defined with sufficient accuracy. The absence of one appropriate periodization of Latin (including start and end points) is conspicuous in the new etymological dictionary of Latin published by de Vaan in 2008. In the preface the author offers the most problematic periodization of Latin ever published. Setting out from this failed attempt and calling in some other proposals for periodization, in my analysis I attempt to provide a more accurate periodization.