Abstract The locative alternation with intransitive verbs, which is quite productive in English, is also shown to be attested in Latin. In the theme/figure subject variant, the location surfaces as an oblique complement: e.g. oculis micat acribus ignis (Verg. Aen . 12.102) and Et resonet tota planctus in Aemilia (Mart. 6.85.6). In contrast, in the location/ground subject variant, the theme is typically expresssed via a nominal phrase in the ablative case (and less frequently in the genitive case): e.g. et crebris micat ignibus aether (Verg. Aen . 1.90) and resonat magnis plangoribus aether (Verg. Aen . 4.668). The two variants are shown to involve a different syntactico-semantic construal, with a different pragmatics as well. The meaning of the location subject variant is shown to go beyond the well-known “holistic effect” (i.e. its subject is “fully affected”): this variant entails theme and event abundance and so-called “dynamic texture”, whereby the events described by the verb happen simultaneously and repetitively throughout all parts of a space. Finally, we also provide a sketch of our syntactic approach to the event structure of some relevant verbs that enter into the intransitive locative alternation in Latin.
Abstract This work analyses the casual alternation between the accusative and dative cases for expressing the object of verbs of fear in Latin. First, it defines the two participants in any psychological event, the Experiencer and the Stimulus, and the two syntactic positions in which these entities can appear, either as subject or as object. Next, the alternations between accusative and dative with action verbs and with fear verbs are explained. The study draws two conclusions: from a semantic point of view, the dative characterises the Stimulus as what Pesetsky calls the Subject Matter of the emotion, and the accusative is the Target of the emotion; from a syntactic point of view, both constituents are argumental.
Abstract This paper discusses the relevance of semantic roles for the syntax of detransitivization in Classical Latin. In verbs entering the causal-noncausal alternation (e.g. John opens the door ∼ The door opens ), the subject of the causal alternant is semantically flexible and bears the semantic role of Effector, which can be realized as an Agent, Instrument, or Force. Whereas prototypical passives imply the presence of an external Agent, and the prototypical anticausative its absence, detransitivization with a Force is arguably a non-prototypical instance of both diatheses. This paper argues that the selection of the three anticausative strategies, i.e. the mediopassive, reflexive, and labile strategies, depends on the presence or absence of an external Force. Through a statistical analysis of Classical Latin data, this paper shows that the mediopassive strategy is more likely to occur with an external Force, and that the labile strategy mainly spreads to prototypical anticausatives. The reflexive strategy is never attested with an external Force, and therefore denotes exclusively internal causation, where the Effector and the Patient are coreferential.
This article investigates the notion of grammatical subject in impersonal predicates with non-canonical subjects in Early Latin. Impersonal constructions challenge traditional subject definitions, which typically emphasize verb agreement control, nominative case marking, and a preference for the Agent role. The aim of this research is to evaluate the subjecthood of accusative and dative arguments in impersonal predicates through syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic-referential tests applied to emotion and modal verbs in archaic Latin texts. The findings reveal that only the accusative argument in pudet-type constructions consistently fulfills the criteria for subjecthood across syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions, qualifying it as the (non-canonical) subject of the clause. In contrast, in placet-type constructions, dative and nominative arguments compete for subject status syntactically, suggesting that both can be considered potential subjects. This aligns with approaches in which predicates alternate between Dat-Nom and Nom-Dat frames. From a semantic and pragmatic perspective, however, the dative argument is more animate, definite, and topical than the nominative argument - hallmarks of prototypical subjects cross-linguistically. These findings underscore the importance of the semantic-cognitive component in Latin, where sentential topics are prioritized as potential subjects. This perspective highlights Latin's sensitivity to animacy, definiteness, and topicality in argument selection, expanding our understanding of subjecthood in non-canonical constructions.
In this paper we deal with verb-noun collocations as a mechanism for the creation of new meanings in verbs. We understand that the unitary character of these constructions together with their high productivity allows that, sometimes, the base noun is elided and the verb assumes the global meaning of the construction, as it happens with the English verb to play in its meaning 'to make an instrument sound', arising from collocations such as to play the guitar, the drum, etc. The verbs ponere and agere help us to explain this procedure of semantic change in the Latin language: their meanings 'to consider that a desired event depends on something (or someone)' and 'to live, to spend time', respectively, can be understood as the product of the simplification of the collocations spem ponere and uitam (or other temporal nouns) agere.
The non-standard Latin inscriptions of Durocortorum (modern Rheims) offer a unique profile among the inscriptions of the Northwest. They exhibit a reduced range of factors of Romanisation and of linguistic features, some of which, though, are unmatched within this regional corpus. The city's role as capital of the province Belgica and as the place of Clovis' christening contrasts with the lowest numbers of official and Christian inscriptions, whilst the unique successful resistance against Late Antique Germanic invaders chimes with the absence of Germanic names. Citizenship, military service, interethnic marriages and religion played an inferior role in the integration of a large resident Gaulish population that was achieved via economic opportunities (esp. pottery making) and the importation and production of amenity commodities (esp. oculist boxes) which the city's location at a crossroad of Roman roads favoured. While Gaulish substratum influence is limited proportionately to the writing occasions (-o(s), drop of -s and other final consonants, syncope, degemination), we find the first appellative in the Northwest (vi(m)pi 'pretty') and may claim Gaulish influence on the prominent vicious use of cases. The inscriptions further stand out by phonetic changes that are to be accounted for by assimilation or analogy as well as possibly by Gaulish (degemination) and Greek (degemination, loss of h and of nasal before stop) influence.
This paper provides a corpus-based quantitative diachronic analysis of the evolution of the preverbs ab- and ex- in Latin, focusing on their expression of the Source in motion verbs. Drawing on a corpus spanning between the 3rd century BCE and the 2nd century CE, the study examines the frequency and syntactic patterns of these preverbs, revealing interesting shifts over centuries. Initially more frequent than ex- in Early Latin, ab- undergoes a significant decline in frequency during Classical and Post-Classical Latin, while ex- maintains relatively consistent usage over centuries. Additionally, ab- is prefixed to fewer verbal bases compared to ex-, with abeo prominently attested in Plautus' Amphitruo and Mostellaria, persisting until the 2nd century CE. With respect to the syntactic encoding of the Source, Early Latin shows ab- verbs favoring CasePrev and PrepPrev constructions, while ex- verbs prefer PrepPrev. In Classical Latin, ab- verbs shift towards CasePrev or PrepNonPrev, whereas ex- verbs maintain CasePrev and PrepPrev structures, with an increasing use of CasePrev. Post-Classical Latin sees ab- verbs shifting predominantly to PrepNonPrev constructions, contrasting with the continued use of CasePrev and PrepPrev by ex- verbs. This detailed analysis contributes to our understanding of syntactic change and semantic bleaching in Latin.
The etymology of Latin signum 'mark, sign' and its Sabellic cognates such as Oscan segn & uacute;m 'statue' has long been disputed. I reevaluate the two main hypotheses as to what verbal root of Proto-Indo-European underlies these forms: *sekH- 'cut' (Lat. sec & omacr;) or *sek w - 'follow' (Lat. sequor). The former, though well received among scholars, will turn out to be problematic from a phonological standpoint; while the syncope of the vocalized laryngeal in the putative reconstruction *sekH-no- and the subsequent voicing assimilation of *k before n could account for Latin signum, the same explanation is not applicable to the Sabellic data due to the forms like Oscan akene & iacute; 'year' with a voiceless velar. The reconstruction *sek w -no- thus enables us to pursue a unitary treatment for both Latin and Sabellic. Furthermore, I argue that the wide range of semantics of signum can be better explained by *sek w -. As the Germanic derivative *sek w -ni- shows (e.g., Gothic siuns 'sight, appearance'), the underlying notion 'follow' of the verbal root is used as not only 'physically follow' but also 'visually follow'; this binary value is sufficiently broad to encompass the various senses of our 'sign' words.
This article reexamines a thorny and much-debated issue of Latin and Romance studies, i.e. the loss of contrastive vowel length, which Latin had but which did not survive into any Romance language. Among the crucial evidence for assessing the chronology and exact course of the demise of Latin vowel length are the metalinguistic testimonies of grammarians. These have recently received accurate treatment and have been invoked by some (most notably, M. Mancini) to oppose the traditional view, dating back to H. Schuchardt, according to which contrastive vowel length was lost when an open syllable lengthening rule came into being, and to argue instead that its demise was caused by a sound change lengthening all stressed vowels independently of syllable structure during the imperial age. The present article reassesses the relevant testimonies by the grammarians placing them first within the framework of the artigraphic tradition to which they pertain and thereby weighing their value as witnesses to ongoing sound change, concluding that the evidence supports the traditional view. The latter is, finally, further corroborated by prosodic evidence from Gellius' Noctes Atticae and Virgilius grammaticus' Epitomae, who, at both ends of the period under consideration, attest to the fading of the vowel length contrast and to the subordination of vowel length not only to stress but also to syllable structure.
Latin, like several other Indo-European languages, resorts to (at least) two distinct syntactic patterns to form comparative complementation: clausal comparatives, where the degree taken as the standard of comparison is expressed by a full or reduced clause introduced by a particle, generally quam; phrasal comparatives, where the standard of comparison is represented by a single phrase, typically an NP or a DP, marked for the ablative case. The aim of this contribution, couched within the Principles and Parameters framework, is to clarify the derivation of these two constructions. In fact, the analytic options available turn out to be quite restricted. There is little doubt that all particle constructions originate as full clauses and can be reduced/elided when the lexical/structural environment allows it. As for the ablative construction, the direct analysis, in which the case-marked nominal is directly inserted in the immediate vicinity of the comparative word X-er, is quite natural. However, following recent analyses developed for other languages, we will argue that phrasal comparatives are also derived from clauses in which the CP layer is silent, except for its specifier, which is the position in which the standard is marked for the ablative case. This analysis succeeds in transparently representing and explaining the quite unusual restriction formulated by some Latin scholars, according to which the ablative competes with the quam construction only when it represents what would be a nominative or an accusative in a quam-clause. Our conclusions are supported by a careful analysis of quam-constructions (Section 2), where distributional properties, the behavior of reflexives and of negative polarity items, and the reduction processes involved are precisely explored, and by a precise account of the case-construction (Section 3), in which the structure behind it is carefully probed, keeping in mind the claim that the restrictions it obeys reflect the effect of general morphological and syntactic formal principles.
Etymological dictionaries of Latin - whether by Ernout and Meillet, Walde and Hofmann, or de Vaan - show that the origin of mulier remains uncertain. In response, the authors propose a new etymology, pursuing a previously unexplored approach. A formal analysis, grounded in historical phonetics and comparative Indo-European linguistics, is complemented by a cultural interpretation of the hypothesized meaning. This latter perspective likewise reveals notable parallels with conceptions attested in other Indo-European traditions.
In this short etymological note, we derive Lat. nota 'mark, sign' from the PIE root *gnet- 'press, knead' (OE cnedan, OCS gnet-, etc.). It is argued that nota < *gnoteh (2) initially denoted impressed or branded marks, in contradistinction to signum < *seknom (from the root of seco 'cut'), which denoted carved or incised signs.
Qui pro quo is an excellent means of creating a comic effect in ancient drama, particularly in the comedies of Plautus. In this study, qui pro quo is metaphorically transferred from drama to grammar and applied to the phenomenon of substituting one grammatical category for another. First, I will introduce the notion of canonical and non-canonical grammatical meaning, which is crucial for the idea of grammatical qui pro quo. The concept of oppositions and neutralisation will be proposed as a scientific hypothesis to explain why language employs this strategy. Then I will analyse the qui pro quo technique within the categories of tense and mood (e.g., Praesens pro futuro, Futurum pro praesente, Imperfectum pro praesente, Indicativus pro coniunctivo, Infinitivus pro indicativo, Indicativus pro imperativo, etc., nine patterns in all). After considering verbal categories, the sentential qui pro quo will be observed in five types of sentences with different illocutionary force. Finally, the effect of the phenomenon in question on the insubordinate ut-, si-, and quasi-clauses will be shown. In the end, I will summarise the findings and explain the mechanism of grammatical qui pro quo as manifestation of the neutralisation principle.
Longstanding debate persists regarding the classification of Latin ecce as word class. While some scholars regard it as a particle or demonstrative, others characterize it as an interjection. This study examines the implications of these approaches and analyzes the behavior of ecce in Archaic Latin according to different grammatical and semantic criteria. The analysis confirms that ecce functions primarily as a predicative demonstrative. Furthermore, it contends that ecce can be specifically categorized as a presentative predicative demonstrative. These results suggest that the interjectional use of this demonstrative must have arisen only secondarily.
After the merger of the perfect and aorist stems, the resulting perfectum stem in Latin kept its less central functions such as resultativity and ingressivity as marked aspectual meanings in its semantic potential. Occurring first in literary and especially poetic text, as a dormant, archaic function, its use was revived in the 4th century due to intensifying exchanges with New Testament Greek, where the ingressive aorist was still more productive. The current paper examines, on the basis of a representative sample selected from all relevant time periods and various text types, perfectum stem forms of a substantial number of stative verbs in a close-reading process, in order to ascertain more accurately the dynamics of the diachrony of Latin ingressivity. The occurrence rate of this form-function pairing is compared to significant alternations of a number of contextual factors, such as discourse type, mood, predicate fronting and the dynamics in the system of lexical ingressivity.
Lexical reciprocal verbs, defined as those verbs that inherently lexicalize a symmetric situation, e.g., consentio 'agree', occur in at least three distinct argument structure constructions, depending on whether their participants are expressed as a single (plural) subject, asymmetrically expressed - one as subject and the other one as oblique - or only one is overtly realized. Drawing from extensive data from a corpus of Latin texts (extracted from the LASLA corpus) and by resorting to quantitative analyses, I investigate the extent to which these three constructions are used with a sample of lexical reciprocal verbs and explore possible motivations for the alternation. Corpus data shows that a multiplicity of factors co-operate in motivating speakers' choice of one construction over the other, pointing to the need to integrate fine-grained corpus analyses in the study of argument structure constructions and their alternations more generally.
This article discusses discontinuity of the noun phrase, i.e. the separation of adjectival, genitival, or other modifiers from their head noun in Latin legal texts from the Republican period. Despite the common view that discontinuity, often termed 'hyperbaton', is a stylistic device, the study shows that discontinuity is also found in legal texts. Discontinuity mainly occurs with relative and indefinite pronouns as well as with genitival modifiers, and it is pragmatically motivated. Additionally, noun and prepositional phrases are regularly split by the enclitic coordinators -que 'and' and -ve 'or' in legal texts.
