Aspects of the verbal domain in Greek and Latin: Changing Valency and Actionality

This paper identifies three patterns of verbal prefixation that are shared by ancient Greek and Latin and explains them in a unitary model, in which valency change and actionality variation appear to be causally related. Moreover, the results of the study reported here are discussed in relation to evidence from other ancient Indo-European languages and from modern Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages of Europe, in order to address the question of whether and how verbal prefixation in the languages of Europe can be related to contact phenomena, genetic inheritance or typologically natural tendencies. Finally, a novel account is proposed in which verbal prefixation in ancient Greek and Latin is considered in relation to the categories of applicative and causative, represented here as gradients defined by the same parameters, which are manifested at varying degrees.