Someone just informed me of something interesting about the very first vowel length pair mentioned in this thread...
And I think hīc ‘here’ versus hic ‘this’, unless they’re the same word or one is a form of the other?
They're not the same word. The former is an adverb while the latter is the nominative masculine singular form of the demonstrative pronoun.
W. Sydney Allen's Vox Latina has a small subsection dedicated to the nominative hic and the nominative/accusative hoc, "(iii) hic and hoc", in chapter 3 "Vowel Length", pages 75-77 in the 2nd edition. This screenshot comes from page 76.
It turns out there is a further difference between hīc 'here' and "hic", which is sometimes hĭc with a short ĭ (the original form) before a vowel-initial word, but is more often read "hĭcc" with a pronounced final geminate -cc. This is an analogy with *hŏd-cĕ > hŏcc > always spelled hŏc (but still pronounced "hŏcc" before a vowel). Allen pretty much says that dictionaries that print this demonstrative as "hīc haec hōc" (as Lewis & Short's does) incur in a mistake.
It's worth noting that in Pedecerto's large database of ancient hexameter and pentameter, the old original hĭc still occurs a little bit into Late Latin. It doesn't have any poetry lines that aren't hexameter/pentameter, but it nevertheless shows these instances:
Ennius: 1, Lucretius: 4, Vergil: 2, Claudian: 1, Tertullian: 2, Terentianus Maurus grammaticus: 1, Marius Victorinus: 1, Pope Damasus I: 1, Paulinus of Nola: 1, plus 2 instances in the Anthologia Latina (of unknown authorship).
And as Allen suggests, both hĭc with a short -ĭ- and a single -c, and "hic" read as "hĭcc", can be found in Plautus:
Sed quĭs
hĭc ést ho|mō, quem‿ante aedīs || videō‿hōc noctis? | Nōn placet.
H x H x | H x H x || u u x H x | H u H
'But who's that person who I see in front of the house at this time of the night? I don't like it.'
(EDIT: corrected translation of hōc noctis)
Amphitruo 292, trochaic septenarius
Clārē‿advorsum | fābulābor, ||
hic auscultet | quae loquar;
H x H x | H x H x || H x H x | H u H
igitur magi' dē|mum mâiōrem‿in || sēsē concipi|et metum.
u u x u u x | H x H x || H x H x | H u H
'I'll speak loudly, and may he hear what I say, so by the end of it he'll be in even greater fear.'
Amphitruo 300-301, trochaic septenarius
Séd quĭs
hĭc ést ho|mō...
||
hĭc(c) auscúltet | ...
Meanwhile, hŏc before a vowel is only attested 4 times in Pedecerto's database: Tertullian: 1, Dracontius: 1, Venantius Fortunatus: 1, plus 1 instance in the Anthologia Latina, so basically in only Late Latin authors (and very rarely at that!).
And example of hoc read as "hŏcc" in Ovid:
Carminis |
hoc ip|sum genus | inpār, | sed tamen | aptē
jungitur | hērō|us || cum brevi|ōre mo|dō.
'This very type of poem [the elegiac couplet] is unbalanced, but nevertheless the heroic [hexameter] fittingly joins the shorter [pentameter] measure.'
(
Amores 2.17.21-22)
tl;dr:
- hīc 'here'
- hic 'this X' (masculine nominative), pronounced hĭc before a consonant but usually as if "hĭcc" before a vowel, except hĭc is also possible
- hōc (ablative singular of hic and hoc)
- hoc 'this X' (neuter nominative/accusative), pronounced hŏc before a consonant but pretty much always as if "hŏcc" before a vowel
