I longa in hiatus in Corpus Vindolandense

Abstract

The Corpus Vindolandense includes the oldest extant Latin handwritten documents in Britain written between the 1^st and 3^rd century CE. One of the most interesting phenomenon concerns the so-called I longa. Actually, this graphic feature may mark the vowel, but also the palatal glide in hiatus. Our analysis concerns this latter case, i.e. the spelling phenomenon where [i] in hiatus context loses its status of syllabic nucleus, becoming a glide. Since in the Corpus Vindolandense I longa in hiatus occurs quite often, we assume that the gliding of i in hiatus occurred in Latin as spoken in Vindolanda. The process can be described as an instance of the sociolinguistic variation because its frequency reflects diaphasic and diastratic dynamics.