Early Latin – Morphosyntactic structures, Part 3
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Melo, Wolfgang de
Introduction to the topic of predication in Early Latin, with a focus on valency.
 Welcome now to Predication in Early Latin. In our previous slide, in our previous talks, we have looked at noun phrases and prepositional phrases. Now it is time to move to verbs. The verb is the central part of the clause. Some verbs are transitive, others are intransitive. A transitive verb requires a subject and an object. To find, needs someone who does the search and an object that can be found. An intransitive verb only requires a subject. To sleep affects only the person who is resting. We say that transitive verbs have a valency of two and intransitive verbs have a valency of one. A limited set of verbs has a valency of three such as to give, which needs a giver, a recipient and an object given. And there are also verbs with a valency of zero such as to reign. Now of course in English we say it reigns with a subject pronoun, but this subject pronoun is only there because of syntactic retirement requirements. It doesn't refer to anything. Now of course in Latin if you say blew it, it reigns. It's marked as a third person, but again that is simply because every finite verb needs a personal ending and the third person is default. Now in Early Latin you find an interesting phenomenon and it's been explained in different ways. You can see a subject pronoun here, lookisgit hockiam, it is turning light and hock looks very much like English it. Now in classical Latin you wouldn't have any pronoun here. You can't really say it reigns in classical Latin with an id or a hock. In Early Latin this hock here has been interpreted in different ways. I think the most likely interpretation is that it's not a proper subject pronoun, not a dummy pronoun like in English, but that it's a datic pronoun where it points to the sky. It's turning light here now. It's not in this respect a dummy pronoun as you find in English. Valency seems like a pretty straightforward concept and in theory it is, but the practical side isn't always equally simple. Sometimes it's not clear whether a verb is transitive or not. To sing can be used intransitively or transitively as in to sing a song. In English an object can't be left out easily so to sing on its own could be treated as intransitive. In Latin on the other hand ellipses of constituents understood from context is extremely common so it's not equally clear whether can are without expressed object should be treated as intransitive or not. Another complication arises from the fact that some verbs have alternative valency patterns. In English and Latin to open and apparire are good examples. If I open the door it follows that the door opens. In the first instance we have an inanimate subject functioning as agent and the inanimate object is a patient. In the second instance the inanimate entity has become the subject. Now you can see exactly the same thing happens in early Latin. We have appario ostium. I open the door or apparit ostium and you can see both exemplified in early Latin in the same playwright in plotters. So we have apparite haschia ambas foris, direct object, open, imperative, both wings of the door. But we also say foris apparit where foris is a subject the wing of the door opens and someone comes out. Agent and patient are not syntactic functions. Often subject and agent are identical and object and patient match but it's not always like that. Each and every verb requires certain semantic roles to be filled. Looking at the examples we have seen so far we can say that sing requires a singer and potentially a song while to find requires a person finding something in an object found. These semantic roles differ from verb to verb. It will be uneconomical to mark every semantic function differently. Languages typically group a number of minor functions together under macro roles such as agent, patient, recipient, beneficiary, location and so on. These macro roles seem identical or at least similar across languages. The reason we needed to go into this in so much detail is that it matters for verbs with a valency of two or three. With verbs of a valency of one that one constituent will be subject regardless of its semantic function. So for example to jump or in Latin salire takes an agent subject while to fall down or cadere takes a patient subject. But if the valency of a verb is two or higher the most agentive constituent will be subject and the constituent most affected by the verb will be direct object. Let us now look at a concrete example the verb to spray. Let's say we have a boy, a wall and paint. In this scenario the boy is the most agentive element so he will be subject but what will we choose as direct object? Well we have a choice. If the boy uses up the paint the paint will be highly affected so we can say the boy sprayed the paint, object on the wall. In this case the wall may or may not be covered fully but what if the wall is more fully affected? Let's say it sprayed completely then we can say the boy sprayed the wall, object with paint. In this case we leave it open whether or not a paint is used up. The same happens in Latin with donare to give or to present. It'll have an animate subject and then we have to mark the present and the recipient for case. The recipient can stand in the dative with the present in the accusative. In this case the present is marked as fully affected while the recipient is less affected. This construction can have a human or a divine recipient. The offering can be worldly or religious in nature but we can also put the recipient in the accusative and market is fully affected. In which case the present is in the ablative. Interestingly in this case the recipient is always human. Presumably Romans felt it was irreverent to mark the deity as being highly affected by a human gift. So let's look at an early Latin example. Two examples both coming from plotters, both coming from the same play. These two examples are only 120 lines apart. So here we have a master Amfitro and he has been given a golden bowl. So because it's a passive construction the golden bowl, Patera Aurea, turns from accusative to nominative and the recipient is in the dative Aero Amfitroni. But the same verb can be combined with a different verb frame and we have in line 137 corpacto amfitro sidonis donatus plurumis. So here we have an old accusative, a direct object turning into a nominative. So here we have the recipient nominative and the present stays in the ablative donis plurumis. Now the early Latin text corpus of course is limited and so the pattern that I have mentioned which we can see throughout Latin in classical and late Latin is not attested for early Latin. You can say marcus sakellum yobid donat marcus is dedicating a shrine to Jupiter where the deity is in the dative. But the construction where the deity is in the accusative is not attested and is presumably excluded. Latin like English can passivise verbs as we've just seen and in a prototypical passive two things are happening. The original patient object is promoted and becomes a patient subject and the original agent subject is demoted and either left out entirely or rendered as a prepositional phrase. Let's look at two examples. You can say Mary supports Jane and if you passivise it it turns into Jane is supported by Mary and that's pretty much like that in Latin too. Now the two languages also agree in broad semantic and pragmatic terms. For instance if I passivise a sentence the new subject has to be at least as strongly affected as the old object. So let's look at my examples on the slides. As I said if you have Mary and Jane they are equals but in this example here John and the Labour Party we don't have equals. So it's perfectly fine to say John supports the Labour Party but the passive the Labour Party is supported by John sounds distinctly odd and that is because they're not equals. The passive would be appropriate only if John can make a substantial contribution for example if he's a multimillionaire. Latin differs from English in one important respect only in Latin can intransitive verbs be passivised. We can see this in my first example a famous one. Itur in Antiquam Silvan from Virgil this one is a famous example literally one goes there is going into the ancient wood. What we have here is demotion of a vague agent no promotion is possible because it's a transit it's an intransitive verb. On the other hand you can also find similar things in Roman comedy but with different pragmatic functions so we have in conversation one man addressing another he says Salvi hello. Queer agitur what is being done. Now normally when you say how do you do in Latin you say queer agis what are you doing but if you want to be a bit more interesting you can passivise it and say what's happening what's being done and the reply is Statur Hick ad Hunk modum literally there is standing one stands here in this way. This is a facetious way of putting it the normal way would be to say Stur Hick ad Hunk modum but we have a passive here to demote the subject and it's simply done for humorous reasons there's no further reason for that. In most languages with an active passive distinction the passive is considerably rarer than the active but its exact frequency largely depends on genre and again this is true of Latin. The passive is much less common in plotters and terrenes than for example in Lucretius. The more former genres have generally more passives what you have to remember here is this is a genre difference it looks like a diachronic difference because plotters and terrenes are earlier but it's simply a genre difference. Most passives in plotters and terrenes demote the agent entirely and do not express it in a prepositional phrase with ab so we get the type Marcos Laudatur no agent expressed and it's common in plotters and terrenes. That type of passive is equally common in more formal genres but the passive is overall more common in formal genres because in many cases the agent is still expressed the type Marcos Laudatur agaio. This means essentially that in less formal genres it's mostly demotion which matters while in more formal ones it's often the case that promotion is the important element while demotion is simply a side effect and we want to keep the agent in some form or shape. But why would promotion be more important in formal texts? Well the answer seems to be that in formal texts sentences are generally longer comedy typically has short sentences maybe a main clause a main clause and a subordinate clause but typically it short sentences. In the classical periodic style a sentence comprises one main clause and all accompanying events are expressed in subordinate clauses. Such long sentences can become messy and difficult to follow so Roman authors needed certain strategies in order to keep them clear and neat. One such strategy is to keep the subject identical in main and subordinate clauses if at all possible and passivization often helps with that but demotion in such instances is not so deliberately it's simply a side effect and that is why the agentive passive is particularly common in formal texts. It looks like a diachronic difference because agentive passives are much more common in Cicero in Lucretius in Caesar but it's really just a difference of genre. Comedy has short sentences you don't need agentive passives. That's it on predication thank you very much and as we say in early Latin gratias will be as agor.
 Welcome now to Predication in Early Latin. In our previous slide, in our previous  talks, we have looked at noun phrases and prepositional phrases. Now it is time to  move to verbs. The verb is the central part of the clause. Some verbs are  transitive, others are intransitive. A transitive verb requires a subject and an  object. To find, needs someone who does the search and an object that can be  found. An intransitive verb only requires a subject. To sleep affects only the  person who is resting. We say that transitive verbs have a valency of two  and intransitive verbs have a valency of one. A limited set of verbs has a  valency of three such as to give, which needs a giver, a recipient and an object  given. And there are also verbs with a valency of zero such as to reign. Now of  course in English we say it reigns with a subject pronoun, but this subject  pronoun is only there because of syntactic retirement requirements. It  doesn't refer to anything. Now of course in Latin if you say blew it, it reigns.  It's marked as a third person, but again that is simply because every finite  verb needs a personal ending and the third person is default. Now in Early  Latin you find an interesting phenomenon and it's been explained in  different ways. You can see a subject pronoun here, lookisgit hockiam, it is  turning light and hock looks very much like English it. Now in classical Latin  you wouldn't have any pronoun here. You can't really say it reigns in classical  Latin with an id or a hock. In Early Latin this hock here has been  interpreted in different ways. I think the most likely interpretation is that  it's not a proper subject pronoun, not a dummy pronoun like in English, but that  it's a datic pronoun where it points to the sky. It's turning light here now.  It's not in this respect a dummy pronoun as you find in English.  Valency seems like a pretty straightforward concept and in theory it  is, but the practical side isn't always equally simple. Sometimes it's not clear  whether a verb is transitive or not. To sing can be used intransitively or  transitively as in to sing a song. In English an object can't be left out  easily so to sing on its own could be treated as intransitive. In Latin on the  other hand ellipses of constituents understood from context is extremely  common so it's not equally clear whether can are without expressed object  should be treated as intransitive or not. Another complication arises from the  fact that some verbs have alternative valency patterns. In English and Latin  to open and apparire are good examples. If I open the door it follows that the  door opens. In the first instance we have an inanimate subject functioning as  agent and the inanimate object is a patient. In the second instance the  inanimate entity has become the subject. Now you can see exactly the same thing  happens in early Latin. We have appario ostium. I open the door or apparit ostium  and you can see both exemplified in early Latin in the same playwright in  plotters. So we have apparite haschia ambas foris, direct object, open,  imperative, both wings of the door. But we also say foris apparit where foris is  a subject the wing of the door opens and someone comes out. Agent and patient are  not syntactic functions. Often subject and agent are identical and object and  patient match but it's not always like that. Each and every verb requires  certain semantic roles to be filled. Looking at the examples we have seen so  far we can say that sing requires a singer and potentially a song while to  find requires a person finding something in an object found. These semantic  roles differ from verb to verb. It will be uneconomical to mark every semantic  function differently. Languages typically group a number of minor functions  together under macro roles such as agent, patient, recipient, beneficiary, location  and so on. These macro roles seem identical or at least similar across  languages. The reason we needed to go into this in so much detail is that it  matters for verbs with a valency of two or three. With verbs of a valency of one  that one constituent will be subject regardless of its semantic function. So  for example to jump or in Latin salire takes an agent subject while to fall  down or cadere takes a patient subject. But if the valency of a verb is two or  higher the most agentive constituent will be subject and the constituent most  affected by the verb will be direct object. Let us now look at a concrete  example the verb to spray. Let's say we have a boy, a wall and paint. In this  scenario the boy is the most agentive element so he will be subject but what  will we choose as direct object? Well we have a choice. If the boy uses up the  paint the paint will be highly affected so we can say the boy sprayed the  paint, object on the wall. In this case the wall may or may not be covered fully  but what if the wall is more fully affected? Let's say it sprayed completely  then we can say the boy sprayed the wall, object with paint. In this case we leave  it open whether or not a paint is used up. The same happens in Latin with  donare to give or to present. It'll have an animate subject and then we have to  mark the present and the recipient for case. The recipient can stand in the  dative with the present in the accusative. In this case the present is marked  as fully affected while the recipient is less affected. This construction can  have a human or a divine recipient. The offering can be worldly or religious in  nature but we can also put the recipient in the accusative and market is fully  affected. In which case the present is in the  ablative. Interestingly in this case the recipient is always human. Presumably  Romans felt it was irreverent to mark the deity as being highly affected by a  human gift. So let's look at an early Latin example. Two examples both coming  from plotters, both coming from the same play. These two examples are only 120  lines apart. So here we have a master Amfitro and he has been given a golden  bowl. So because it's a passive construction the golden bowl, Patera Aurea,  turns from accusative to nominative and the recipient is in the dative  Aero Amfitroni. But the same verb can be combined with a different verb frame  and we have in line 137 corpacto amfitro sidonis donatus plurumis. So here we  have an old accusative, a direct object turning into a nominative. So here we  have the recipient nominative and the present stays in the ablative donis  plurumis. Now the early Latin text corpus of course is limited and so the pattern  that I have mentioned which we can see throughout Latin in classical and late  Latin is not attested for early Latin. You can say marcus sakellum yobid donat  marcus is dedicating a shrine to Jupiter where the deity is in the dative.  But the construction where the deity is in the accusative is not attested and  is presumably excluded. Latin like English can passivise verbs as we've  just seen and in a prototypical passive two things are happening. The original  patient object is promoted and becomes a patient subject and the original agent  subject is demoted and either left out entirely or rendered as a prepositional  phrase. Let's look at two examples. You can say Mary supports Jane and if you  passivise it it turns into Jane is supported by Mary and that's pretty  much like that in Latin too. Now the two languages also agree in broad semantic  and pragmatic terms. For instance if I passivise a sentence the new subject has  to be at least as strongly affected as the old object. So let's look at my  examples on the slides. As I said if you have Mary and Jane they are equals but  in this example here John and the Labour Party we don't have equals. So it's  perfectly fine to say John supports the Labour Party but the passive the Labour  Party is supported by John sounds distinctly odd and that is because they're  not equals. The passive would be appropriate only if John can make a  substantial contribution for example if he's a multimillionaire. Latin differs  from English in one important respect only in Latin can intransitive verbs  be passivised. We can see this in my first example a famous one.  Itur in Antiquam Silvan from Virgil this one is a famous example literally one  goes there is going into the ancient wood. What we have here is demotion of a  vague agent no promotion is possible because it's a transit it's an  intransitive verb. On the other hand you can also find similar things in Roman  comedy but with different pragmatic functions so we have in conversation  one man addressing another he says Salvi hello.  Queer agitur what is being done. Now normally when you say how do you do in  Latin you say queer agis what are you doing but if you want to be a bit more  interesting you can passivise it and say what's happening what's being done and  the reply is Statur Hick ad Hunk modum literally there is standing one stands  here in this way. This is a facetious way of putting it the normal way would be  to say Stur Hick ad Hunk modum but we have a passive here to demote the  subject and it's simply done for humorous reasons there's no further reason for  that. In most languages with an active passive distinction the passive is  considerably rarer than the active but its exact frequency largely depends on  genre and again this is true of Latin. The passive is much less common in  plotters and terrenes than for example in Lucretius. The more former genres have  generally more passives what you have to remember here is this is a genre  difference it looks like a diachronic difference because plotters and terrenes  are earlier but it's simply a genre difference. Most passives in plotters and  terrenes demote the agent entirely and do not express it in a prepositional  phrase with ab so we get the type Marcos Laudatur no agent expressed and it's  common in plotters and terrenes. That type of passive is equally common in more  formal genres but the passive is overall more common in formal genres because in  many cases the agent is still expressed the type Marcos Laudatur agaio. This  means essentially that in less formal genres it's mostly demotion which  matters while in more formal ones it's often the case that promotion is the  important element while demotion is simply a side effect and we want to keep  the agent in some form or shape. But why would promotion be more important in  formal texts? Well the answer seems to be that in formal texts sentences are  generally longer comedy typically has short sentences maybe a main clause a  main clause and a subordinate clause but typically it short sentences. In the  classical periodic style a sentence comprises one main clause and all  accompanying events are expressed in subordinate clauses. Such long sentences  can become messy and difficult to follow so Roman authors needed certain  strategies in order to keep them clear and neat. One such strategy is to keep  the subject identical in main and subordinate clauses if at all possible  and passivization often helps with that but demotion in such instances is not  so deliberately it's simply a side effect and that is why the agentive  passive is particularly common in formal texts. It looks like a diachronic  difference because agentive passives are much more common in Cicero in Lucretius  in Caesar but it's really just a difference of genre. Comedy has short  sentences you don't need agentive passives. That's it on predication thank  you very much and as we say in early Latin gratias will be as agor.
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