Possible evidence for the transition from late Latin to proto-Romance is sought in Latin funerary inscriptions. Tendencies towards (S)VO order in more familiar registers are known to exist from Plautus onwards (Adams 1976, Pinkster 1991). A candidate for a later Latin development foreshadowing Old Romance is Verb-Subject order with ‘unaccusative’ intransitive verbs (Russo 2000), possibly featuring verb-second patterns (Salvi 2000).

 

The present research supports these claims, using early Christian funerary inscriptions, a register known to illustrate vernacular developments in phonology and morphology (Gaeng 1968, 1977). A comparison is made with preferred word orders of relevant expressions in earlier Latin epitaph inscriptions shows clear differences in wording and positional preferences. Overall, a sharp distinction was found in later epitaphs between transitive and unaccusative intransitive verbs as regards the rate of VS, an outcome seen as supporting the proto-Romance origins of unaccusativity claimed by Russo (2000). This distinction is not present in the pre-Christian inscriptions. Possible reasons for rejecting inscriptional data as evidence for late Latin word order are addressed and found not to be compelling. The relationship between the formulaic language of inscriptions (Mednikarova 1999) and productive word order is discussed in the light of these findings.