The morphosyntax of transitions: a case study in Latin and other languages - 62

This book examines the cross-linguistic expression of changes of location or state, taking as a starting point Talmy's typological generalization that classifies languages as either 'satellite-framed' or 'verb-framed'.

In verb-framed languages, such as those of the Romance family, the result state or location is encoded in the verb.

In satellite-framed languages, such as English or Latin, the result state or location is encoded in a non-verbal element.

Theselanguages can be further subdivided into weak satellite-framed languages, in which the element expressing result must form a word with the verb, and strong satellite-framed languages, in which it is expressed by an independent element: an adjective, a prepositional phrase or a particle.

In this volume,Víctor Acedo-Matellán explores the similarities between Latin and Slavic in their expression of events of transition: neither allows the expression of complex adjectival resultative constructions and both express the result state or location of a complex transition through prefixes.

They are therefore analysed as weak satellite-framed languages, along with Ancient Greek and some varieties of Mandarin Chinese, and stand in contrast to strong satellite-framed languages such as English,the Germanic languages in general, and Finno-Ugric.

This variation is expressed in terms of the morphological properties of the head that expresses transition, which is argued to be affixal in weak but not in strong satellite-framed languages.

The author takes a neo-constructionist approach to argumentstructure, which accounts for the verbal elasticity shown by Latin, and a Distributed Morphology approach to the syntax-morphology interface.