Reading a paragraph of Latin without attention to word order entails losing access to a whole dimension of meaning.
"[1] Studying word order in Latin helps the reader to understand the author's meaning more clearly.
In the past 100 years, especially since the advent of computerised texts, Latin word order has been extensively studied with a view to elucidating the principles on which it is based.
Two major recent works on Latin word order, based on different approaches, are those of Devine and Stephens (2006) and Olga Spevak (2010).
It is generally agreed that pragmatic factors such as topic and focus, contrast, emphasis, and heaviness play a major role in Latin word order.
[4] Other factors that play a role in word order are semantic (for example, adjectives of size usually precede the noun, and those of material more often follow it).
[13] Olga Spevak (2010), on the other hand, basing her work on theories of functional grammar, rejects that approach.
"[14] She stresses that according to the principles of functional grammar, as outlined by the Dutch linguist Simon Dik, words take their positions in a sentence according to a certain template, not by being moved from elsewhere.
Powell, in his review of Spevak's book, commented that "nobody has yet succeeded in unifying the insights of all the different scholarly approaches to the fascinating and peculiar problem of Latin word order".
In his view, an approach that combines the various schools of thought on Latin word order "may succeed in finding a more satisfactory solution".
Several recent books, such as those of Panhuis and Spevak, have analysed Latin sentences from a pragmatic point of view.
For example, in the sentence below, the topic is "in the bathhouse" (balneārea), which has been previously mentioned, and the sub-topic is the hot-room (assa) (since it can be assumed that all bath-houses have a hot room); the new information is that Cicero has moved the hot room, and the place to which he has moved it: Similarly, in the following example, the new information is the sumptuousness of the funerals in question: In the following example, where the adverb celeriter "quickly" is placed early in the sentence, the main information is the action "took up arms"; the speed is subsidiary information (Devine and Stephens use the terms "nuclear focus" and "weak focus" for this):[25] Often the verb can be part of the topic,[27] as in the following example.
The fact that war was waged on both land and sea is a weak focus placed in penultimate position; but the new and surprising information is that the number of Roman legions was no fewer than 23, and this comes at the beginning of the sentence before the topic: In the following sentence with antithesis, two topics, "the land journey" and "the journey by sea", are contrasted.
[41] Another example is the following, where the phrase "this place" (namely the city of Laurentum which was mentioned in the previous sentence) is in the emphatic penultimate position, as though it were the focus: No recordings exist of Latin from the classical period, but it can be assumed that differences in emphasis in Latin were shown by intonation as well as by word order.
[43][44] Euphony and rhythm undoubtedly played a large part in Roman writers' choice of word order, especially in oratory, but also in historians such as Livy.
Statements from the writers themselves make it clear that the important consideration was the clausula or rhythm of the final few syllables of each clause.
Cicero himself, commenting on a speech of the tribune Gaius Carbo, quotes the sentence below, which apparently caused the audience to burst into shouts of approval:[45] He notes that the sentence would be ruined rhythmically if the word order of the last three words were changed to comprobāvit fīlī temeritās.
In another passage from the same work, Cicero criticises a sentence from the orator Crassus on the grounds that it sounds like a line of iambic poetry.
[46] The 1st-century A.D. teacher of oratory, Quintilian, remarks that hyperbaton (switching words round) is often used to make a sentence more euphonious.
He gives the example of the following sentence from the opening of Cicero's prō Cluentiō:[47] Quintilian says that in duās partīs dīvīsam esse would be correct, but "harsh and inelegant".
In Sallust, who has a rather conservative style, the verb sum (except where existential) tends to go at the end of the sentence.
[79] Sometimes, even if the verb does not come at the beginning of the sentence, the suddenness of the action can be shown by placing it earlier in its clause.
[155] Some kinds of adjectives are more inclined to follow the noun, others to precede, but "the precise factors conditioning the variation are not immediately obvious".
[156] In Caesar and Cicero, it has been found that the majority (60%–80%) of ordinary adjectives, not counting pronominals and numerals, precede their nouns.
Adjectives describing the type of something, such as ligneus "wooden", oleārius "designed for oil" or novus "new" always follow the noun in Cato, but can come either before or after in Columella.
[177] In the following example, "these particular" floods are contrasted with some earlier ones which lasted a shorter time: Sometimes they are merely brought to the front to emphasise them.
But when used with hōra, they follow: Possessive adjectives, such as meus "my", suus "his/their", are fairly evenly distributed (68% preceding in Caesar, 56% in a sample of Cicero speeches).
[219][220] In English the order usually given is: Determiner > Number > Opinion > Size > Quality > Age > Shape > Colour > Participle forms > Origin > Material > Type > Purpose (for example, "those two large brown Alsatian guard dogs").
Examples are enim "for", autem "however, moreover", and vērō "indeed", which virtually always come after the first full word of the sentence (not counting prepositions) and are never the first.
A functionalist, on the other hand, would say that haec naturally comes first as the topic, then sī in its normal place, then the unemphatic pronoun, without anything being moved.