“ 'Lepidus uiuis': Semantic Content and Functional Gradation in Secondary Predicates”

Abstract

On the basis of an initial analysis of the syntactic and semantic status of the constituents of the plautine expression lepidus vivis, this paper aims to confirm the hypothesis that there is a correlation between the semantic content of the elements of a message in which a Secondary predication appears, and the degree to which these elements are necessary for the message to fulfil its communicative function. To this end, the Predicate Frames of the verb vivo are first established on the basis of lexical data and cross-linguistic comparison. The analysis itself, using a corpus comprising Latin comedy and Augustan poetry, identifies and describes the main types of contexts that can be found - more and less assimilable to those of a copulative nature -, and shows the conditions under which the Secondary predicate can denote state and/or permanent quality as well as adequately fulfilling its communicative purpose. Among the conclusions is that the loss of semantic weight in the predicate in fact drives a more necessary lexical presence of the specification provided by the Secondary predicate, whereas this need is significantly less when the verb is more fully realised from a predicative point of view.