Hooray, another linguist's brains to pick. Welcome, rbarr.

When I was doing some research for another question (my Latin study ended in the sixth form, although my interest in Rome and Latin has never ceased), I came across a page which described research that was being carried out on graffiti on the walls of various places that Roman "tourists" - usually legionnaries, I would imagine - saw fit to write or scribe. A kind of classical "Kilroy was here" thing. From memory, the graffiti were all deemed to be written during the Imperial period, most probably up to the Antonine period, although some (in Pompeii and Herculaneum) could not be later than 79AD, could they?

The upshot of it seemed to be that even as early as AD79 word order had got sloppy and word endings were - um, ablating.

I would be delighted if you or someone else could point me at that research again. It was embedded in a page I found while I was looking for something else, and no amount of Googling seems to be able to get it back!


The idiot also known as Capfka ...