Evidence for the Spoken Language in Roman Britain: A Study of the Curse Tablets from the Sulis Minerva Sanctuary in Bath

Douglas, Samuel (2015) Evidence for the Spoken Language in Roman Britain: A Study of the Curse Tablets from the Sulis Minerva Sanctuary in Bath. The Student Researcher, 3 (2). pp. 71-78. ISSN 2047-3427

[img]
Preview
Text
Douglas, Samuel (2015) Evidence for the Spoken Language in Roman Britain A Study of the Curse Tablets from the Sulis Minerva Sanctuary in Bath. The Student Researc.pdf

Download (187kB) | Preview

Abstract

The reconstruction of pronunciation and other linguistic features of the ancient world has always been a feature of linguistic study. Epigraphic evidence plays a key role in this, and a large amount of the research done on accent and language development has looked at graffiti. The corpus of curse tablets found at the site of the temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath presents a slightly different set of challenges to those faced by earlier studies, but also provides rare opportunities as a relatively large set of texts from a specific location in the far west of the empire. This study examines what role these curse tablets could play as evidence for the spoken language of the Bath area, explores the methodological approaches other scholars have used when looking at similar bodies of text, and finally draws some possible conclusions from the curse tablets with reference to their chronology and expected linguistic changes in the western empire.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Bath, Latin, curse tablets, linguistic, empire, Tomlin, Caerfaddon, Lladin, llechi melltith, ieithyddol, ymerodraeth
Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
P Language and Literature > PA Classical philology
P Language and Literature > PC Romance languages
Divisions: Institutes and Academies > Institute of Education and Humanities > Academic Discipline: Humanities and Social Sciences
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Samuel Douglas
Date Deposited: 17 Jun 2016 16:11
Last Modified: 01 Feb 2023 09:09
URI: https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/598

Administrator Actions (login required)

Edit Item - Repository Staff Only Edit Item - Repository Staff Only