Text Analysis and Comments
Many more European documents seem to confirm that the distinctive traits of Romance languages occurred all around the same time (e.g. France's Serments de Strasburg). Though initially hailed as the earliest document in Italian in the first years following Schiapparelli's discovery, today the record has been disputed by many scholars from Migliorini to Segre and Bruni, who have placed it at the latest stage of Vulgar Latin, though this very term is far from being clear-cut and Migliorini himself considers it dilapidated. At present, however, the Placito Capuano (960 A.D.) (the first in a series of four documents dating 960-963 A.D. issued by a Capuan court) is considered to be the first document ever written in Italian, although Migliorini concedes that since the Placito was put on record as an official court proceeding (and signed by a notary), Italian must have been widely spoken for at least one century.
Some words stick indeed to the rules of Latin grammar (boves with -es for the accusative plural masculine, alba with -a suffix for the plural neuter). Yet more are distinctly Italian, or belonging to the Veronese language, with no cases and producing the typical ending of Italian verbs: pareba (It. pareva), araba (It. arava), teneba (It. teneva), seminaba (It. seminava) instead of Latin parebat, arabat, tenebat, seminabat. Albo versorio and negro semen have replaced Latin album versorium and nigrum semen. Versorio is still the word for "plow" in today's Veronese dialect (and the other varieties of Venetian language) as the verb parar is still the word for 'push on', 'drive', 'lead' (in Italian spingere, guidare). Cortellazzo and Paccagnella say that the plural -es of boves may well be considered Ladin (a Romance language spoken in parts of Veneto, Trentino and South Tyrol) and therefore not Latin, but romance. Albo is early Italian, especially since German blank entered Italian usage later, leading to current Italian bianco (white).
Read more about this topic: Veronese Riddle
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