Denominal verbs in *-ye/o- at the syntax-semantics interface. Insights from ancient Greek and Latin

The research focuses on *-ye/o- denominal verbs and aims at: 1) identifying the semantic classes of denominal verbs attested in a. Greek and Latin; 2) determining the extent to which the semantic and grammatical features of the lexical base affect the actionality, telicity, and voice of a denominal verb. In a. Greek and Latin, the suffix *-ye/o- is usually added to either nouns, adjectives, or adverbs to derive verbs. As a consequence, the research is primarily focused on denominal verbs in *-ye/o-, but it also considers the deadjectival and deadverbal verbs in *-ye/o- collected in the corpora. Since *-ye/o- does not convey any specific semantic value, the question of how denominal verbs acquire their syntactic and semantic properties needs to be clarified. This study tests the hypothesis that the actionality, telicity, and voice of a denominal verb are affected by the following semantic and grammatical features of the lexical base: a) ± mass/count; b) ± abstract/concrete; c) degree of animacy and agentivity of the referent of the lexical base; d) type of word class (i.e., noun, adjective, adverb). The analysis adopts the syntax-semantics interface framework. The a. Greek corpus consists of 343 denominal verbs (8th B.C. - 4th A.D.) collected from Fraenkel (1906), Barber (2013), and by using DELG and TLG. The Latin corpus consists of 343 denominal verbs (3rd B.C. - 1st A.D.) collected from Mignot (1969), Flobert (1975), and by using DELL and TLL. The results of this study showed that: 1. a. Greek and Latin possess ten main classes of denominal verbs, classified on the basis of the role played by their lexical base: AGENT, QUALITY, PRODUCT, SCOPE, INSTRUMENT, SOURCE, LOCATUM, LOCATION, BENEFICIUM, TIME verbs. 2. the mass/count distinction has an impact on the telicity of a denominal verb; 3. the abstract/concrete opposition affects the actionality of a denominal verb; 4. the degree of animacy and agentivity of the referent of the lexical base affects both the actionality and the voice of a denominal verb; 5. the type of word class determines the semantic class of a denominal verb.