On the encoding of negation by source prefixes and the satellite-/verb-framed
typology: evidence from Latin and Spanish
Elisabeth Gibert Sotelo
(Universitat de Girona)
This paper deals with Talmy’s (2000) typological distinction between satellite-framed
systems and verb-framed ones by examining the expression of negation through
directional prefixes. Particularly, the use of Latin and Spanish source prefixes to encode
negation is addressed.
The label source prefix is used here to identify directional prefixes the basic
meaning of which is that of ‘direction FROM’. Latin source prefixes were used to
encode different sorts of source-oriented motion: ab- was used to encode ‘direction
away from’ (cf. ab-duco ‘to lead away’), de- expressed ‘direction (down) from’ (cf. deduco ‘to bring away, to bring down’), dis- denoted ‘motion from one point in different
directions’ (cf. di-duco ‘to draw apart’), and the basic meaning of ex- was that of
‘direction out from’ (cf. e-duco ‘to draw out’). The piece of meaning these Latin
prefixes shared, thus, was that of ‘direction from a source’. Des- emerged in Castilian
Romance as the evolution of dis- as well as the evolution of the amalgam de+ex (cf.
Brea 1976). This new prefix replaced its Latin antecedents in the derivational processes
and kept the source-oriented value that had been common to all of them (cf. desviar ‘to
deviate, to turn aside’). Because of their source value, these prefixes, either in Latin or
in Romance, show a clear preference for codifying change of place or change of state
events. Nevertheless, the essential value of direction from a source can be projected to
more abstract domains, which can give rise to metaphorical interpretations closely
linked to the sphere of negation.
In Latin, the combination of source prefixes with speech verbs gives rise to
predicates encoding ways of denying; cf. ab-iuro ‘to deny on oath’, de-hortor ‘to
encourage not to‘, or dif-fiteor ‘to deny by confession‘. As noticed by García Hernández
(1980: 130) and Acedo-Matellán (2016: 131-132), in these cases the prefix does not
deny the content of the base verb (i.e. it does not create antonyms of the unprefixed
verb), but takes scope over the object it selects, as illustrated below:
(1)
[Eam] consanguineam
esse ab-dicant.
her.ACC consanguineous.ACC be.INF away-proclaim.3PL
‘They proclaim her not to share the same blood.’
[Pacuv. Trag. 55; apud. Acedo-Matellán 2016: 131 (177)]
(Latin)
(2)
poenam
suam
dis-suadentes.
punishment.ACC their. ACC different_ways-advise.PTCP.PRS.NOM.PL
‘Advising not to be punished‘.
[Perseus: Tac. Ann. 13, 26].
(Latin)
In Spanish, the source prefix des- can develop a negative meaning when combined with
stative verbs; cf. des-agradar ‘to dislike’, des-confiar ‘to distrust, to not trust’. In these
cases, the source prefix takes scope over the verbal base, and the resulting prefixed verb
expresses the opposite state of that encoded by the unprefixed verb, as shown in (3):
(3)
(Spanish)
El ruido
no es más que aquellos sonidos que nos
des-agradan.
The noise
not is more than those sounds that we.DAT from-like
‘Noise is nothing but the sounds that we dislike’.
[CREA: 2004. PRENSA: El Periódico Mediterráneo, 21/05/2004]
The different behaviour of Latin source prefixes, in which the prefix takes scope over
the object of the verb, and the Spanish source prefix des-, which takes scope over the
verbal root, is directly related to the well-known distinction between satellite-framed
languages and verb-framed languages (Talmy 2000). In the Latin examples, which show
the satellite-framed pattern, the prefix acts as the main predicate of the construction and
encodes the idea of denial, and the verbal root is identified with a Co-event expressing
the manner of the denial event: by proclaiming in (1) and by advising in (2). The
Spanish example in (3), by contrast, does not show the satellite-framed procedure, since
in it the verbal root is not identified with a Co-event, but rather with an abstract Ground
interpreted as a state.
As argued by Acedo-Matellán & Mateu (2013) and Gibert Sotelo (2015),
conflation of the Ground in the verb root is a pattern widely attested in Romance
languages, and is one of the ways in which verb-framedness emerges. The present
study, thus, provides further evidence of the fact that the evolution from Latin to
Romance conveyed the shift from a satellite-framed system with a Co-event conflation
pattern (Latin) to a verb-framed system with a Path conflation pattern (Spanish, and
Romance in general), a change extensively studied by Acedo-Matellán (2006) and AcedoMatellán and Mateu (2013) for Catalan.
In accordance with the above facts, a nanosyntactic analysis of the Latin vs. the
Spanish constructions is provided so as to shed light on this typological distinction and
make clear that both the Latin source prefixes and the Spanish one lexicalize a Source
path that is identified with the idea of negation because of the syntactic context in which
it is embedded.
References
Acedo-Matellán, V. 2006. Prefixes in Latin and Romance and the satellite-/verb-framed
distinction. In Actes del VII Congrés de Lingüística General (CD-ROM). Barcelona:
Universitat de Barcelona. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000295
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García Hernández, B. 1980. Semántica estructural y lexemática del verbo. Tarragona:
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Gibert Sotelo, E. 2015. Asymmetries between goal and source prefixes in Spanish: a
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