Volume 16, Issue 1 -

I discussed a passage in the Rhetorica ad C.Hernnium (82 BC) where two versions of the same talk are delivered ([1a] and [1b]), the former in a colloquial style, the second in a worse, almost “vulgar” Latin. The difference appears also in the two constructions (1a) coepit defricari (instead of *coeptus est defricari which is usually employed by Cicero, Caesar, Livy) and (1b) praesente multis (instead of *praesentibus multis ). The former construction is correct but less used by classical authors; the second is not correct and appears as a kind of “vulgar” Latin. However, the Auctor ad Herennium knew very well the differences, because he uses coeptum est dici (4.30.41) and contra intercedentibis collegis (1.12.21). It seems therefore that the Auctor established a kind of barrier inside of which the language, albeit low, was correct, outside incorrect, and acknowledged that inside/outside was ruled by gradation and frequency of use and social condition.

Latin deponents are usually treated as morphological idiosyncrasies in which the Middle morphology is not related to an anticausative (change of state), reflexive or passive syntactic structure, in which it would be expected and grammatically justified (Embick, David. 2000. Features syntax and categories in the Latin perfect. Linguistic Inquiry 31(2). 185–230; Xu, Zheng, Mark Aronoff and Frank Anshen. 2007. Deponency in Latin. In Matthew Baerman et al. (eds.), Deponency and morphological mismatches , 127–144. Oxford: Oxford University Press). Focusing on the non-denominal deponents, I show that these verbs are always reflexives or anticausatives. In the reflexive and anticausative structures a single argument gains two thematic roles , the most external one, doer for the reflexives, undergoer for the anticausatives, and a lower one ( holder of a state, benefactive , etc.). The Latin Middle morphology marks the external role as syntactically deactivated but semantically existential and allows for the assignment of the external role to a lower argument. The peculiarity of deponents is not the presence of the Middle, but the fact that, because of specific lexical constraints, these verbs cannot be present in an Active derivation. Similar lexically constrained verbs which can only appear in anticausative or reflexive structures are crosslinguistically attested: deponents are not Latin idiosyncrasies.

After defining grammatical (as opposed to lexical) homonymy as concerning either inflection or the conflict between different parts of speech, attention is paid to those contexts in which Varro and Quintilian dealt with processes falling under that concept. The paper remarks on the acute distinction Quintilian seems to make between lexical and grammatical homonymy by dealing with the former in relation to rhetoric and the latter within the grammatical chapters of book I. The similarity of Quintilian’s approach to homonymy is then shown with the use Apollonius Dyscolus would later make of the term synemptosis as a morphological coincidence of word forms. The parallel doctrine and terminology in later Latin traditions is also considered.

This paper aims to examine gerundial constructions found in some ninth-century legal documents produced in the Lombard duchy of Salerno and passed down by the so-called Codex diplomaticus Cavensis . Special attention is devoted to three kinds of constructions: the complement gerund governed by nouns, the gerund of purpose, and the adverbial gerund. In the first two of these syntactic domains, the variation between both different types of gerundial structures and infinitive constructions is analyzed, enabling us to observe both the spectrum of syntactic variability of the gerund and the dynamics of variation between these two verbal moods. To interpret this alternation, especially on dependence on nouns, a crucial role is played by sociolinguistic factors. In the last of the mentioned domains, the alternation between gerund and present participle is investigated.