Chapter 15 - Some Syntactic Features of Latin Legal Texts

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.