Le costruzioni a verbo supporto in latino: habeo + Sintagma Preposizionale

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the light verb constructions (LVCs) of Latin, particularly when these employ the verb habeo with a Prepositional Phrase (PP) consisting of the preposition in + a noun in the ablative case, or simply with a noun in the ablative case. The LVCs in Latin are a very interesting argument, in particular because Latin have a bounded corpus; indeed, for the boundedness of data, it is impossible to apply all developed tests to define this particular kind of constructions. Since the second half of the twentieth century, many scholars have been interested in the description of the LVCs in Latin. After some works devoted to the study of singular items constituting a LVC — nouns (Bader, 1962; Helander, 1977) and verbs (López Moreda, 1987) — attention has been focused on the analysis of the constructions as a whole. A study of remarkable importance in this regard is the one of Rosén’s (1981), who, in her volume Studies in the Syntax of the Verbal Noun in Early Latin, identifies four kinds of analytic forms, defined as analytic or periphrastic forms, then divided into distinct classes depending on the kind of phrase in which appear a deverbal noun and a verb with a general semantic value. After Rosén, many other scholars, in recent years, have been interested in the identification of LVC, including Roesch (2001), Baños (2012, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2015, 2016), Jiménez (2011, 2016), Marini (2000, 2010), Mendózar Cruz (2015), Pompei (2016). Most of these scholars focused their attention on identification and description of most frequent Latin LVCs, namely those in which the support verb co occurs with a noun in the object position, except for Baños (2016) and Pompei (2016a). In particular, Pompei (2016a) analyses the constructions in which a support verb enters into relationship with a N(-ACC), or with a PP, or with an adverb. The basic idea, in this work, is that others parts of speech, besides the name, entering into a relationship with a support verb, can express a predicative value. For example, in some Italian constructions, in which a PP appears combined with a neutral support verb (like stare di guardia ‘to stand on guard’, prendere in considerazione ‘to take into account’), the predicative value seems to be expressed by the set of semantic values of the preposition and of the noun. This idea is also supported by the possibility of the PP — in this case represented by di guardia ‘on guard’ — to be combined with a noun — as in persona di guardia ‘person on guard’ — often characterized by a unspecific semantics, as the one of the support verbs. This can take place according to the co-composition principle mentioned by Pustejovsky (1995). Starting from the idea of coding the predicativeness by the PP, or simply by the name in the ablative case, in this thesis some Latin constructions, in which appears habeo + PP, have been identified (in memoria habeo, in animo/animo habeo, in numero/numero habeo, in loco/loco habeo, in vinculis habeo, in armis habeo) and analysed trying to show they can be considered LVCs. This thesis consists of two parts: the first one (chap. I, II and III) has a theoretical nature, while the second one (chap. IV, V, VI) is devoted to the analysis of the collected data. In the first chapter we tried to give a complete description of the various developed theories on LVCs and of the numerous studies dealing with syntax/lexicon interface phenomena. The first studies date back to the late XIX century, when Paul (1880) proposed, for the first time, a classification of lexical combinations of one language into two groups: schöpferischen Gruppen (‘productive groups’), including phrases you can freely create in the speech, with an unlimited number of possible combinations; and stehende Formeln, permanent constructions in the lexicon that, on the one hand, forms a syntactic block and, on the other hand, can express a different semantic value than the singular meaning of their constituents. Also in the field of Structuralism, combinations of words attracted the attention of many European scholars, from Ferdinand de Saussure — who was interested in when he had to deal with the issue of syntagmatic and associative relations — and his student Charles Bally (§ 1.3.2), up to the studies of Firth (§ 1.3.3), Benveniste (§ 1.3.5), Martinet (§ 1.3.5) and Lyons (§ 1.3.6). Finally, we describes the latest theories on word combinations, since the studies conducted by the research group of the Laboratoire d’Automatique Documentaire et Linguistique (LADL) of the University of Paris, led by Maurice Gross (1975; 1988) — which develops a syntactic analysis method called theorie lexique-grammaire — and Sens-texte theory developed by Mel’čùk in the same years, up to the Construction Grammar (Fillmore, Kay & O'Connor, 1988), the Generative Lexicon (Pustejovsky, 1995) and the Construction and Categories Grammar developed by Simone (2006a, 2006b, 2007). In the second chapter the attention has been particularly focused on the descriptions of LVCs. To provide a comprehensive definition of the phenomenon, we analysed the constituents of a LVC, which is neutral support verb — but also support verb extensions — and predicative noun, and we described tests to individuate a LVC. The third chapter considers the description of the state of art on Latin LVCs and it analyses the elements constituting constructions we are going to discuss, paying particular attention to the description of the verb habeo and the noun in ablative case. Finally, we described the methodologies and the equipment used to investigate these particular constructions. The second part of this thesis is about the analysis of the data we collected from the corpus of Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, and it is articulated in three chapters in which we analysed some constructions of the verb habeo combined with a PP or, simply, with a name in ablative case. The division of the chapters has been organized starting by the noun with a higher level of abstractness, like memoria and animo, up to concrete nouns, like vinculis and armis. In particular, in the fourth chapter we analysed the constructions in memoria habeo and (in) animo habeo, in the fifth chapter (in) numero habeo and (in) loco habeo, and in the sixth and last chapter in vinculis habeo and in armis habeo. To describe the LVCs, we used different parameters: i) the possibility that the construction has a semantic value more or less abstract; ii) the possibility that the PP, or simply the noun, can appear with others basic support verbs, like sum; iii) the possibility that the PP, or simply the noun, can appear with extensions of support verb; iv) the possibility to have a synthetic form of the verb expressing the same semantic value of LCV; v) the possibility that PP, or simply the noun, can have a greater or lesser level of referentiality; vi) the possibility that the construction is more or less cohesive