Workshop “L’estudi de la variació sintàctica: eines pràctiques i aspectes teòrics” Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. Vitoria-Gasteiz, 12th December 2013 1 Change in functional morphemes or change in roots?: Diachronic variation in psych predicates from Latin to Catalan * Víctor Acedo-Matellán (victoracedoma@yahoo.com) Universidade do Minho 1 Introduction • In this work I focus on three types of expression of psychological eventualities found along the Latin-Catalan history and lost in modern Catalan: COMPLEX PREFIXED PSYCH VERBS IN LATIN (1) Latin (Plaut. Truc. 2, 1, 41; II c. BC) 1 Ut de frumento anseres abs-terreret. that away_from wheat.ABL duck.ACC.PL away-frighten.IPFV.SBJV.3SG ‘So that he frightens the ducks away from the wheat.’ ANALYTIC PSYCH PREDICATES IN OLD CATALAN (2) Old Catalan (Poesies [A. March], poem 70, l. 44; XV c.) Pren delit en s’aymia mirar. takes delight in the=beloved look.INF ‘He takes delight in looking upon his beloved.’ DATIVE EXPERIENCER VERBS OF REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING IN OLD CATALAN (3) Old Catalan (El cavaller i l’alcavota, p. 213, l. 17; XV c.) Los noms [...] no li recorden. the names not DAT.3SG remember.PL ‘She does not remember the names.’ • Immediate aim: to show two different types of linguistic change affecting the expression of psych eventualities from Latin to Catalan, on the one hand, that accounting for the dissappearance of complex prefixed psych verbs (1) and, on the other hand, that accounting for the disappearance of certain analytic psych constructions (2) and Dative Experiencer (DatExp) verbs of remembering and forgetting (3). • Overarching aim: to distinguish the mechanism producing language change in a strong sense (a) from other superficial mechanisms (b): a) a change in the specification of functional morphemes, be this specification syntactically relevant (Real-Puigdollers 2013) or only relevant at PF (Acedo- Matellán 2010). b) changes in the encyclopaedia entries of particular roots or conceptually defined groups of roots, affecting the association of roots to structures; changes in the analytic/synthetic morphophonological expression of the same * This research has been possible thanks to grant SFRH/BPD/90892/2012 from the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portuguese Ministério da Educaçao e Ciência, and also to project FFI2010- 20634, funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. 1 If not otherwise indicated, the references for the Latin examples have been extracted from Lewis & Short 1879, and the examples and references of Old Catalan have been extracted from the on-line CICA corpus (Torruella, Pérez Saldanya & Martines 2013).