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  • Chapter 15 - Some Syntactic Features of Latin Legal Texts

  • from Part III - Other Genres and Fragmentary Authors
  • Edited by J. N. Adams, All Souls College, Oxford, Anna Chahoud, Trinity College Dublin, Giuseppe Pezzini, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
  • Book:
    Early Latin
    Published online:
    27 July 2023
    Print publication:
    17 August 2023, pp 311-326

  • Summary

    Legal texts from the early period contain a number of peculiarities that are not common in classical and post-classical Latin. The chapter discusses some of them: relative clauses introduced by a relative phrase, subjunctive mood, restrictive quod and subordinators introducing impediment argument clauses (quo minus and quo setius). Legalisms represent a subtype of early Latin phenomena in that they need not be features of every text found in that period; they are restricted to legal documents as a specific text type. Some of them are true legal archaisms (siremps, quo setius) – and they can be easily identified as such – that continue to be used in the same text type after the pre-classical period or appear in other text types in a legal context. As for the remaining ones: autonomous relative clauses introduced by a relative phrase and those containing a subjunctive for factual content as well as restrictive quod clauses can be at least considered as characteristic of legal Latin.