The Dominant Participle Construction as a Syntax-Semantics Interface Phenomenon:The Case Study of Latin

Abstract

The syntactic representation of participles has remained a disputed issue at the centre of linguistic research for some time. Much of the confusion surrounding participles is the result of their categorial indeterminacy, which ranges between the category of verbs and adjectives. The blended categorial properties of participles are mirrored in their flexible syntactic distribution. For example, participles are flexible enough to fulfil prototypical adjectival functions in attributive and copular structures, e.g. ‘the sewed button’ and ‘the button is sewed’, while they may also exhibit a verbal distribution in periphrastic occurrences, e.g. ‘Duna has sewed the button’. In such a way, the categorial flexibility of participles allows for a wide spectrum of different uses.