Maria Isabel Jimenez Martinez
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Mitto, pono, pauso: on locative verbs in Latin and their evolution to the Romance Languages
The aim of this lecture is to discuss how the latin verbs mitto, pono and pauso become intertwined in certain contexts from Postclassical Latin onwards and to what extent the relations between them paved the way for mitto and pauso to assume the values it has today in the Romance languages.
To this end, I will
- describe the collocational verbs mitto, pono and pauso in Latin texts, especially of a technical nature (cooking, veterinary, medicine and agriculture), and to provide a detailed semantic-syntactic characterization of each of them;
- comment on the similarities and differences between them, in view of the fact that they are verbs that in some contexts are interchangeable. Explain what these contexts are and try to elucidate why.
- And explain the diachronic evolution of each of these verbs. Among them there are important differences in their evolution or in the preferential use by an author or a specific technical genre. These differences help, in turn, to better understand the historical evolution of each of these verbs in the Romance languages.
Collocations in diachrony from Latin to Romance Languages: some aspects related to their semantics
Among the memorised lexical units, a collocation is defined as a "restricted combinations of words whose frequency of co-occurrence is very high" (NGLE 2614), like fare paura (Italian) or Pause machen (German). They are, therefore, almost automatic combinations of words which "come out by themselves" and go practically unnoticed, but which, if they are not used as we know them, "sound bad" to us and usually indicate that the speaker does not have a full competence of our language.
These constructions are not immobile realities, but, as in the rest of the phenomena of language, they are renewed and adapted over time. In this lecture, I will present the different processes that affect this type of construction in its evolution from the Latin language to the different Romance languages, paying special attention to their semantic aspects, such as the metaphors used in them or the new meanings they generate.
ECLASS:
> Participants will receive a link for an e-class & dropbox.
