To <em>v</em> or not to <em>v</em> ? Theme vowels, verbalizers, and the structure of the Ancient Greek verb

Abstract

This paper offers a Distributed Morphology analysis of verbal theme vowels and primary verbal stem-forming morphology in Ancient Greek (AG). While verbal stem-forming morphemes are standardly analyzed as realizing Aspect in AG, I propose that both the inherited simple thematic and the athematic verbal stem-forming morphology of AG patterns as verbalizing morphology (v) according to a variety of diagnostics proposed in the literature, in particular idiosyncratic selectional properties of roots and the ability to form denominal and deadjectival verbs. Complex thematic suffixes moreover have the same distribution as simple thematic suffixes. These three classes of verbs (simple thematic, complex thematic, athematic) differ from synchronically denominal and deadjectival verbs, whose nominal stem-forming morphemes later became verbalizers in Modern Greek. This paper thus provides clear diagnostics for distinguishing between synchronically denominal, root-derived, and verbal-stem derived verbs in AG and morphologically similar languages. It also provides further evidence that verbal theme vowels occupy the same structural position and have broadly the same Aktionsart properties as other types of verbalizing morphology, contributing to the debate on the functional/semantic content of theme vowels in general.

Theme-vowel minimal pairs show argument structure alternations

“…For instance, Gribanova (2015) analyzes the theme vowel -a-in Russian as associated with the realization of the features on the Asp head. Grestenberger (2021) provides argumentation from the history of Greek for a connection between theme vowels and lexical aspect. propose that the theme vowel -i-in SC carries the feature [SCALE], which is considered crucial in deriving telicity in some approaches (e.g.…”