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In:Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14: Selected papers from the 46th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Stony Brook, NY
Edited by Lori Repetti and Francisco Ordóñez
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14] 2018
► pp. 263–278

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Chapter 15
Latin denominal deponents

A syntactic analysis

 | Università di Venezia Ca’ Foscari
Published online: 13 August 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.14.15pin
Abstract
Latin deponent verbs are usually analyzed as idiosyncratic forms whose Middle morphology does not correspond to the subjacent syntactic/semantic structure (Embick 2000, Xu et al. 2007). This paper shows that, for the deponents produced after the first half of the II cent. BCE (ex. ancillor ‘I serve’, dominor ‘I rule’, aquor ‘I go to get water’), the presence of the Middle morphology is syntactically justified. These deponents are denominals. Their event structure involves two events, a stative one, v-be°, whose complement is the verbalized nominal element, and a dynamic one, v-do°. The unique argument is both the HOLDER of the state and the DOER of the dynamic event. The Middle morphology allows for the identification between these two positions, as in a Middle reflexive derivation (Spathas et al. 2015).
Article outline
  • 1.Latin deponent verbs
  • 2.Deponent verbs as idiosyncratic forms
  • 3.The productive deponents: Denominal verbs
  • 4.Latin middle morphology, a formal analysis
    • 4.1The framework
    • 4.2The middle morphology
  • 5.Denominal deponents and the middle morphology
    • 5.1The identification type
  • 6.Conclusions and open issues
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Mateu, Jaume
2021. On the argument structure of complex denominal verbs in Latin: a syntactic approach. The Linguistic Review 38:2 ► pp. 267 ff. DOI logo

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