Ruinam dare : les complexités d’une construction latine à verbe support

Abstract

The concept of light verbs was introduced to Latin linguistics in 1996 and is now a recurrent topic in the ICLLs. In the communis doctrina, light verb constructions (LVCs) are made up of a deverbal noun accompanied by a verb of general content that becomes semantically bleached, resulting in a predicate whose complementation is related to the underlying predicate of the deverbal noun, whereas the verb becomes a mere vector of verbalisation. The verb ‘give’, because of the generic character of its lexical content, has given rise to a considerable number of LVCs, both in Latin and in other languages. Many of these have constantly attracted linguists’ attention. However, this is the first study specifically devoted to ruinam/as dare; this LVC turns out to be interesting, since it seems to contradict the postulate that when the verb that is related to the deverbal noun has a plurality of values, usually the LVC only develops one. Using a corpus of texts from the PHI, we have studied combinations in which ruina functions as the second argument of a bivalent predicate, and analysed in which case we can talk of LVCs, both with the verb dare as well as with others that fulfil a similar light verb function.