In Search of the Regional Diversification of Latin: Changes of the Declension System According to the Inscriptions.

In order to discover chronological and/or geographical differences in the Latin of the Roman Empire, this paper analyses the distributional structures of the nominal morphosyntactic ‘errors’ which have been to date recorded from Latin inscriptions and concern the changes of the declension system. The present investigation, which is based on the very methodology of József Herman, will demonstrate that Roman provinces (Moesia Inferior, Moesia Superior, Dalmatia, Venetia-Histria and Gallia Narbonensis selected for survey) can show conclusive differences in the distribution of morphosyntactic phenomena both chronologically and geographically, and that this way they can be classified dialectologically. According to the inscriptional material of later periods, Gallia Narbonensis and Venetia-Histria can be classified as belonging to an area where the linguistic system has only two cases, the same way as Old French and Old Occitan does, while Dalmatia displays a preform of another two-case system, of the Balkan type. Regarding Moesia Inferior and Superior, it can be asserted that a three-case system emerged in both areas, but the lack of any inscriptional evidence from the later periods makes it impossible to determine the direction in which the three case-system would have developed: towards the Gallic type represented by Gallia Narbonensis and Venetia-Histria, or the Balkan type represented by Dalmatia.