The actantial structure of derived change-of-state verbs in the old Romanian language (I)

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the actantial structure of eventive verbs, obtained by the derivational formula prefix + nominal base (noun/adjective/numeral) +lexical grammatical suffix], included in the general class of change-of-stateverbs, characterized by the [+ dynamic] feature, such as a se înnoi (‘to renew’), a se înălbi (‘to whiten’), a se întări (‘to harden’), a înflori (‘to blossom’),a se îmbogăţi (“to grow rich”), highly frequent in old Romanian. Our corpus consists of representative texts –originals and translations –from the early age of the literary Romanian language, comprising the 1532-1640 and 1640-1780 stages. Our approach aims, on the one hand, to identify the actants this classes of verb allow, considering the syntactic pattern of transitive and intransitive verbs, and, on the other hand, to describe the thematic roles they impose on the nominal, depending on their semantic-syntactic matrix, based on the scheme of semantic functions (arguments), such as patient, experiencer

Keywords

• verb
• change of state
• eventive
• actant
• scheme of thematic roles
• syntactic pattern