Publication details
Drawing the comitative area: the semantic network of co(-m/-n/-r/-l)-/cum in Plautus.
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | This talk will describe the semantic network of the Early Latin preposition cum and its relation with the preverb co(-m/-n/-r/-l). Although they individually received considerable attention, neither the relationship between preposition and preverb nor the relationship between the various senses included in their respective semantic networks has ever been systematically addressed. Luraghi (2010: 79) described cum as expressing the semantic role “comitative” with human referents (Catull. 67,35–36: sed de Postumio et Corneli narrat amore/cum quibus illa malum fecit adulterium ‘for she talks of the loves of Postumius and of Cornelius, with whom that one committed foul adultery’) and non-prototypical comitatives with inanimate entities (Cic. Catil.1,32: obsidere cum gladiis curiam ‘besiege the Senate-house with swords’). Accompaniment extends to instruments in Late Latin (vs. the universality of Lakoff & Johnson’s 1980 metaphor “an instrument is a companion”; Stoltz 1996). The preverb conveys sociative/comitative meanings (coadolesco ‘grow up together’) and reciprocity/symmetry (colloquor ‘talk each other’), intensifies the meaning of the verbal base or express completion (concaleo ‘become thoroughly warm’, commuto ‘change entirely’). Furthermore, co- is a transitiviser (Hofmann, Szantyr 1965; Leumann 1975; Moussy 2005;Revuelta Puigdollers 2015; Zaliznjack, Shmelev 2007). Based on cognitive grammar (Langacker 1991; Luraghi 2010), it will be argued that preverb and preposition share a basic semantics - the 'CUM relation', a functional universal according to Stoltz et al. 2006 - accounting for the entire set of concrete (e.g., comitative) and non-concrete (e.g., intensive) meanings they express. However, co-/cum instantiate the CUM-relation differently and diverse mechanisms are involved in the development of their semantic continua. Therefore, consistent with previous descriptions of preverbs and prepositions (e.g., Brucale, Mocciaro 2016), a differentiated analysis is required, involving different grammaticalisation paths, as well as lexicalisation phenomena. The analysis of the Plautin corpus, conducted on the Library of Latin Texts Online (LLT-A), allows us to trace the semantic maps of preposition and preverb in a specific phase of the language and to highlight the areas where they converge or diverge. |
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