Syntaxe nominale et subordination en latin tardif

Résumé En

In many papers I have suggested the idea that the birth of the article in Romance languages was a consequence of the disappearance of the AcI and of the participial constructions no longer supported by the cases which fell out of use. The AcI was substituted by quod, quia, quoniam + sub./ind. even if it depended upon uerba dicendi and sentiendi. But this happened, rather than in Latin, in the Romance languages, while in Latin the AcI remained until the end, more or less challenged by quod, quia constructions. In the translation of the Bible St. Jerome eliminated almost all ille which was employed, on the contrary, in the Vetus Latina to translate the Greek and Hebrew article. Jerome, however, extended in the Vulgata the use of quod, quia + sub./ind., even in passages where the AcI was employed in the Vetus Latina, and this influenced the Latin of the Middle Ages. For St. Jerome wanted to make his own translation conform with the Hebrew text where the AcI was ignored and the declarative clause was either introduced by the conjunction כִּי (kī) or the invariant relative אֲשֶׁר (ᵓǎšεr) or expressed through direct speech. We have therefore to do with a personal and cultural reason for its use, not a natural development of the Latin language, and this supports my hypothesis.