On Saying Yes in Latin

ON SAYING YES IN LATIN

It is well known that Latin has no word for yes. If asked how Romans said yes, a Latinist will come up with one of the Plautine or Terentian terms, such as ita, ita vero, maxume or similar. Some will know that repeating a finite verb also works. There seems to be a stark contrast between modern languages—which usually have one inconspicuous, yet indispensable word for yes—and Latin (and also Greek) with either no word for yes or a plethora of them, depending on the point of view.

It is true that European words for yes seems to be relatively young. Meillet observed that every Romance language had to find its own word for yes (Meillet 1951: 1). According to Pokorny, in Indo-European, a positive response might have been given in the form of a sentence, even if a shortened one (1927: 237–238). Holger Thesleff—who is to my knowledge, the only other researcher, who was ever interested in yes in Latin—speculates that the repetition of the finite verb (called explicit anaphora by him) is the most ancient type of confirmative or negative reply and that the substitutes (ita, sic, etc.) are secondary developments from it (1960: 10).

It would be instructive, then, to learn what the situation was in Latin: how did a Roman confirm an idea or agree to a proposition? However, yes is a feature of conversation and we have none of that available to us. The closest thing to Latin conversation are the comedies by Plautus and Terence and yet even these are literary texts only representing conversation: it is a matter of debate, to what extent they represent ‘real’ Latin conversation. But whatever Latin they represent, it must have been understood and liked by the audiences, so studying them with due caution does provide some answers on Latin conversation.

The topics I will address in my paper are the following:

• Nature of the sources. To what extent can the written sources provide information on positive responses, which are typical for the spoken discourse?
• Pragmatics. Does the choice of a particular confirmation strategy depend on pragmatic conditions?
• Social factors. Does the choice depend on the situation? For instance, does the choice of a particular positive response depend on characters or the situations they find themselves in? In this section I examine the conversations between masters and slaves, men and women, to see whether social conditions influence the choice of a positive response.

The findings will contribute to the growing body of research into the pragmatics of Latin, they will improve the reading of Plautine and Terentian comedies, and offer an insight, limited as it may be, into Latin conversation.