CLaSSES: a new digital resource for Latin epigraphy
Authors: Irene De Felice, Margherita Donati, Giovanna Marotta (Università di Pisa, CNR-ILC, 2014)
Topic: Latin Resources

Abstract
CLaSSES (Corpus for Latin Socio- linguistic Studies on Epigraphic textS) is an annotated corpus for quantitative and qualita- tive sociolinguistic analyses on Latin inscrip- tions. It allows specific researches on phono- ological and morphophonological phenomena of non-standard Latin forms with crucial ref- erence to the typology of the text, its origin and chronological collocation. This paper presents the first macrosection of CLaSSES, focused on the inscriptions from the archaic- early period.

Introduction
Available digital resources for Latin epigraphy include some important databases. The Clauss- Slaby database (http://www.manfredclauss.de/gb/index.html) records almost all Latin inscriptions (by now 696.313 sets of data for 463.566 inscriptions from over 2.480 publications), including also some pictures. It can be searched by records, province, place and specific terms, thus provid- ing users with quantitative information. The Epi- graphic Database Roma EDR (http://www.edr- edr.it/English/index_en.php) is part of the international federation of Epigraphic Databases called Elec- tronic Archive of Greek and Latin Epigraphy (EAGLE). It is possible to look through EDR both as a single database or together with its partner databases accessing EAGLE’s portal (www.eagle-eagle.it). 1 Although they collect a large amount of data, these resources cannot provide linguists with rich qualitative and quantitative linguistic information focused on specific phenomena. The need for a different kind of information automatically ex- tracted from epigraphic texts is particularly expressing when dealing with sociolinguistic is- sues. There is a current debate on whether inscriptions can provide direct evidence on actual linguistic variations occurring in Latin society or they cannot. As Herman (1985) points out, the debate on the linguistic representativity of inscriptions alternates between totally skeptical and too optimistic approaches. Following Herman (1970, 1978a, 1978b, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1990, 2000), we believe that epigraphic texts can be regarded as a fundamental source for studying variation phenomena, provided that one adopts a critical approach. Therefore, we cannot entirely agree with the skeptical view adopted by Adams (2013: 33-34), who denies the role of inscriptions as a source for sociolinguistic variation in the absence of evidence also from metalinguistic comments by grammarians and literary authors. That said, the current state-of-the-art digital resources for Latin epigraphic texts does not allow researchers to evaluate the relevance of inscriptions for a sociolinguistic study that would like to rely on direct evidence. Furthermore, it is worth noting that within the huge amount of epigraphic texts available for the Latin language not every inscription is equally significant for linguistic studies: e.g., many inscriptions are very short or fragmentary, others are manipulated or intentionally archaising. Obviously, a (socio) linguistic approach to epigraphic texts should take into account only linguistically significant texts.

Conclusion
CLaSSES is an epigraphic Latin corpus for quan- titative and qualitative sociolinguistic analyses on Latin inscriptions, that can be useful for both historical linguists and philologists. It is annotat- ed with linguistic and metalinguistic features which allow specific queries on different levels of non-standard Latin forms. We have here presented the first macrosection of CLaSSES, containing inscriptions from the archaic-early period. In the next future we will collect comparable sub-corpora for the Classical and the Imperial period. Moreover, data will be organized in a database available on the web.