Applicative and causative: some further reflections upon verbal prefixation in Greek and Latin

Many languages have different types of verbal derivation that affect the number and/or the typology of verb argument coding. Typically, the number of core arguments of the verb may either decrease or increase; alternatively, the number of core arguments does not change, but either the first or the second argument (or even both) change their semantic role. In the present paper, we study the following verbal constructions in Greek and Latin: applicative and causative. Typically, in the so-called ‘causative alternation’, the argument in the A function, that corresponds to the syntactic subject of the causative construction, becomes ∅ in the so-called 'inchoative' construction (Haspelmath, 1993); whereas, the argument in the O function, that corresponds to the syntactic direct object of the causative construction, takes the S function, that is, becomes the syntactic subject of the inchoative construction: “the sun melted the snow” vs. “the snow melted”. On the other hand, in the ‘applicative alternation’ (we use this term, as it is symmetrical to 'causative alternation'), S (the intransitive subject) becomes A (the transitive subject) in the applicative construction, and a peripheral argument becomes a core argument and, then, takes the O (transitive object) role: e.g., Italian: Maria piange per la morte di Mario “Maria is weeping for Mario’s death” vs. Italian: Maria piange la morte di Mario “id.”, but in the latter sentence “Mario’s death” corresponds to the direct object. In previous studies, applicative constructions have never (or very little) been investigated in Indo-European languages and, especially, Classical languages. In addition, the relationship between these constructions and the ‘causative alternation’ has not yet been addressed. In the present paper, we examine applicative and causative constructions in Greek and Latin and show that verbal prefixation represents a strategy to encode these categories. Moreover, we provide evidence that the two alternations are defined by the same parameters, that are manifested, though, in different degrees.