Ditransitive verbs in Latin: A typological approach

Abstract

Abstract This paper aims to describe the behavior of Latin verbs with three arguments basically encoding the transfer of a Theme from an Agent to a Recipient: these verbs, labelled as ditransitives within the framework of linguistic typology, will be analyzed here on the basis of this theoretical approach. Across languages, the object arguments of ditransitives may be marked as the Patient of monotransitives or differently from it, giving rise to various types of alignment: the most frequent are the indirective, the secundative and the neutral alignment. In Latin, these three basic types of alignment are attested with ditransitives in the active and passive voice, although they are differently distributed across the lexicon. Moreover, some verbs allow more than one type of encoding of the relevant arguments, showing alternating alignments. I shall focus on the reasons of the distribution and alternation of the three types, with the goal of providing a point of departure for a deeper understanding of ditransitives in the Latin language.