Latin denominal deponents, a Syntactic Account

Latin deponent verbs are usually analyzed as idiosyncratic forms whose Middle morphology does not correspond to the subjacent syntactic/semantic structure (Embick 2000, Xu et al. 2007). This paper shows that, for the deponents produced after the first half of the II cent. BCE (ex. ancillor ‘I serve’, dominor ‘I rule’, aquor ‘I go to get water’), the presence of the Middle morphology is syntactically justified. These deponents are denominals. Their event structure involves two events, a stative one, v-be°, whose complement is the verbalized nominal element, and a dynamic one, v-do°. The unique argument is both the HOLDER of the state and the DOER of the dynamic event. The Middle morphology allows for the identification between these two positions, as in a Middle reflexive derivation (Spathas et al. 2015).