Iterative or stative? New morphosemantic analyses of Latin lūgeō ‘mourn’ and doleō ‘feel pain’

Abstract

Abstract This paper will start by focusing on the morphosemantics of a Latin verb lūgeō ‘mourn’, which represents an emotion felt by people mentally excruciated by their loved one’s death. Traditionally, it has been believed that the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *leu̯g- ‘break’ underlies lūgeō, but recently this etymology has been challenged. However, I will support the traditional ‘break’ hypothesis through a novel semantic comparison to doleō ‘feel pain’, a verb also expressing a type of sensation humans often experience. Since its underlying root *delh 1 - means ‘hew, split’, similar to ‘break’, the semantic development of doleō would provide a neat parallel for lūgeō. Having salvaged the connection with *leu̯g-, I will advocate a stative formation (with *-eh 1 -i̯é-) for lūgeō instead of the more commonly presumed iterative reconstruction (with *-éi̯e-). The analysis conducted for lūgeō turns out to be useful for doleō, too; I will propose that the latter verb’s wider semantic range is best explained as the result of the convergence of two formations, a stative form meaning ‘feel pain’ (with *-eh 1 -i̯é-) and an iterative form meaning ‘habitually give pain to’ (with *-éi̯e-, as previously assumed for this verb).