The Genitive in -īus of the Latin Pronominal Inflection
Abstract
The genitive of the traditionally so-called pronouns presents a weird form in -īus, with an -ī- that seems to resist abbreviation, at least in archaic Latin, despite it being placed before a vowel. Such an anomaly has been tried to be explained by formulating various theories, although unsatisfactorily in most cases. Among them, it seems to us that the explanation offered by A. Tovar, namely that it would be an old form of genitive in -ī- hypercharacterized with the genitive ending -os, continues to be the most accurate, although this author points out that its weak point is that he cannot «adduce any conclusive evidence to explain the conservation of intervocalic -ī-».
For our part, starting from this last theory, we will try to offer parallels of conservation of the intervocalic -ī- in Latin, that Tovar fails to allege, and to explain the different treatments of that -ī-, since it does not behave in the same way in all the forms considered nor in all the stages of Latin.
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