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# Categories under pressure: the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French

Jasper Vangaever

► To cite this version:

Jasper Vangaever. Categories under pressure: the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French. Linguistics. Sorbonne Université; Universiteit Gent, 2021. English. NNT: 2021SORUL157. tel-03783513

HAL Id: tel-03783513

https://theses.hal.science/tel-03783513

Submitted on 22 Sep 2022

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SORBONNE UNIVERSITÉ / GHENT UNIVERSITY

ÉCOLE DOCTORALE V

Laboratoire de recherche EA 4509

Department of Linguistics

THÈSE

pour obtenir le grade de

- DOCTEUR DE L'UNIVERSITÉ SORBONNE UNIVERSITÉ

- DOCTOR IN LINGUISTICS OF GHENT UNIVERSITY

Discipline : Linguistique

Présentée et soutenue par :

Jasper VANGAEVER

le 15 septembre 2021

**Categories under pressure**

**The gerund and the present participle**
**from Late Latin to Old French**

**Sous la direction de :**

Mme Anne CARLIER – Professeure, Sorbonne Université

M. Giovanbattista GALDI – Professeur associé, Ghent University

Mme Marleen VAN PETEGHEM – Professeure, Ghent University

**Membres du jury :**

M. Bernard COMBETTES – Professeur, Université de Lorraine

M. Hendrik DE SMET – Professeur associé, KU Leuven

M. Paolo GRECO – Professeur associé, Università di Napoli Federico II

Mme Céline GUILLOT-BARBANCE – Maître de conférences HDR, ENS de Lyon

M. Harm PINKSTER – Professeur, Universiteit van Amsterdam
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Table of contents

<table><tr><td>Table of contents</td><td>iii</td></tr><tr><td>Acknowledgements</td><td>xiii</td></tr><tr><td>List of abbreviations and symbols</td><td>xxi</td></tr><tr><td>Introduction</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>1. Object of the thesis</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>2. Research questions</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>3. State of the art of the evolution of the gerund and the present participle</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>3.1. The gerund and the present participle in Classical Latin</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>3.2. The evolution of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>3.3. The evolution of the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French</td><td>9</td></tr><tr><td>4. The study of categoriality</td><td>11</td></tr><tr><td>5. Empirical basis</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>6. Grammatical traditions and terminology</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>7. Outline</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>Part I. State of the art</td><td>19</td></tr><tr><td>Chapter 1. The gerund and the present participle in Classical Latin</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>1.1. Introduction</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>1.1.1. Preliminary description of the gerund and the present participle</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>1.1.2. The system of non-finite verb forms</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td>1.1.3. Functional competition</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td>1.1.4. Aim of the chapter</td><td>28</td></tr><tr><td>1.2. The gerund</td><td>28</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.1. Morphological properties of the gerund</td><td>29</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2. Syntactic properties of the gerund</td><td>33</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2.1. Internal syntax of the gerund</td><td>33</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2.1.1. Internal syntactic complexity of gerund phrases</td><td>33</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2.1.2. Marking of the internal argument of the gerund</td><td>39</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2.2. External syntax of the gerund</td><td>40</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2.2.1. Adnominal gerunds</td><td>40</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2.2.2. Verb complement gerunds</td><td>45</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2.2.3. Adjective complement gerunds</td><td>48</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2.2.4. Adverb complement gerunds</td><td>51</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2.2.5. Adjunct gerunds</td><td>51</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.2.2.6. External syntactic profile of the gerund</td><td>58</td></tr></table>
Table of contents

<table><tr><td>1.2.3. Morphosyntactic profile of the gerund</td><td>61</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.4. Typological profile of the gerund</td><td>62</td></tr><tr><td>1.2.5. Competition with non-finite verb forms other than the present participle</td><td>64</td></tr><tr><td>1.3. The present participle</td><td>65</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.1. Morphological properties of the present participle</td><td>66</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2. Syntactic properties of the present participle</td><td>68</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.1. Internal syntax of the present participle</td><td>68</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.1.1. Internal syntactic complexity of present participle phrases</td><td>69</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.1.2. Marking of the internal argument of the present participle</td><td>72</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.2. External syntax of the present participle</td><td>72</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.2.1. Adnominal present participles</td><td>74</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.2.2. Subject predicate present participles</td><td>77</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.2.3. Object predicate present participles</td><td>80</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.2.4. Adjunct present participles</td><td>82</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.2.5. Present participles used in a progressive construction</td><td>93</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.2.6. Present participles used in a presentative progressive construction</td><td>96</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.2.7. Present participles used as syntactically finite verbs</td><td>103</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.2.2.8. External syntactic profile of the present participle</td><td>105</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.3. Morphosyntactic profile of the present participle</td><td>107</td></tr><tr><td>1.3.4. Typological profile of the present participle</td><td>109</td></tr><tr><td>1.4. Functional competition between the gerund and the present participle</td><td>110</td></tr><tr><td><b>Chapter 2. The gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French</b></td><td><b>117</b></td></tr><tr><td>2.1. The gerund and the present participle in Late Latin</td><td>118</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1. The gerund</td><td>118</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.1. Morphological changes of the gerund</td><td>118</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2. Syntactic changes of the gerund</td><td>121</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.1. Internal syntactic changes of the gerund</td><td>121</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.1.1. Internal syntactic complexity of gerund phrases</td><td>121</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.1.2. Marking of the internal argument of the gerund</td><td>124</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.2. External syntactic changes of the gerund</td><td>125</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.2.1. The nominal gerund</td><td>126</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.2.1.1. Adnominal gerunds</td><td>126</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.2.1.2. Verb complement gerunds</td><td>128</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.2.1.3. Adjective complement gerunds</td><td>131</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.2.1.4. Conclusion</td><td>132</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.2.2. The adverbial gerund</td><td>133</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.2.2.3. The verbal gerund</td><td>139</td></tr></table>
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<table><tr><td>2.1.1.2.2.4. External syntactic profile of the gerund</td><td>141</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.3. Morphosyntactic profile of the gerund</td><td>143</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.1.4. Typological profile of the gerund</td><td>144</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2. The present participle</td><td>145</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.1. Morphological changes of the present participle</td><td>145</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2. Syntactic changes of the present participle</td><td>146</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.1. Internal syntactic changes of present participle phrases</td><td>146</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.1.1. Internal syntactic complexity of present participle phrases</td><td>147</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.1.2. Marking of the internal argument of the present participle</td><td>148</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2. External syntactic changes of the present participle</td><td>149</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.1. The adverbial present participle</td><td>149</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.2. The adjectival present participle</td><td>152</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3. The verbal present participle</td><td>153</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3.1. Present participles used in a progressive construction</td><td>153</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3.2. Present participles used in a presentative progressive construction</td><td>155</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3.3. Present participles used as syntactically finite verbs</td><td>157</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3.3.1. Source 1. Present participles used in a progressive construction</td><td>159</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3.3.2. Source 2. Absolute adjunct nominative present participles</td><td>161</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3.3.3. Source 3. Conjunct adjunct nominative present participles</td><td>163</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3.3.4. Source 4. Anacoluthon</td><td>167</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3.3.5. Source 5. Apodotic use of coordinating conjunctions</td><td>168</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3.3.6. Source 6. Mistakes and mistranslations</td><td>169</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.3.3.7. Conclusion</td><td>169</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.2.2.4. External syntactic profile of the present participle</td><td>171</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.3. Morphosyntactic profile</td><td>172</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.2.4. Typological profile</td><td>172</td></tr><tr><td>2.1.3. Conclusion</td><td>173</td></tr><tr><td>2.2. The gerund and the present participle in Old French</td><td>174</td></tr><tr><td>2.2.1. Morphological merging of the gerund and the present participle</td><td>174</td></tr><tr><td>2.2.2. External syntax of the -ant form</td><td>183</td></tr><tr><td>2.2.2.1. The adjectival -ant form</td><td>183</td></tr><tr><td>2.2.2.2. The adverbial -ant form</td><td>184</td></tr><tr><td>2.2.2.3. The verbal -ant form</td><td>191</td></tr><tr><td>2.2.2.3.1. -Ant forms used in a progressive construction</td><td>192</td></tr><tr><td>2.2.2.3.2. -Ant forms used in a presentative progressive construction</td><td>195</td></tr><tr><td>2.2.2.4. Conclusion</td><td>199</td></tr><tr><td>2.2.3. Categorial distinction between the gerund and the present participle</td><td>199</td></tr></table>
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<table><tr><td>2.2.3.1. Splitter Hypothesis</td><td>202</td></tr><tr><td>2.2.3.2. Lumper Hypothesis</td><td>204</td></tr><tr><td>2.3. Conclusion and aim of the empirical part of this thesis</td><td>208</td></tr><tr><td>Part II. Empirical investigation</td><td>211</td></tr><tr><td>Chapter 3. Corpus, dataset, and methodology</td><td>213</td></tr><tr><td>3.1. Introduction</td><td>213</td></tr><tr><td>3.2. Research context: the PaLaFra project</td><td>213</td></tr><tr><td>3.3. Corpus</td><td>214</td></tr><tr><td>3.3.1. Late Latin</td><td>216</td></tr><tr><td>3.3.1.1. The BL2LAT corpus</td><td>216</td></tr><tr><td>3.3.1.2. The PALAFRALAT-V2-0 corpus</td><td>219</td></tr><tr><td>3.3.1.3. The Late Latin corpus of this thesis</td><td>221</td></tr><tr><td>3.3.2. Old French</td><td>223</td></tr><tr><td>3.4. Dataset and ambiguities with respect to morphosyntactic categorisation</td><td>226</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.1. The Late Latin gerund</td><td>228</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.1.1. -Ndum forms combined with a direct transitive verb</td><td>229</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.1.2. -Ndum forms combined with an accusative masculine or neuter singular noun</td><td>232</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.1.3. -Ndi forms combined with a genitive masculine or neuter singular noun</td><td>234</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.1.4. Final set of Late Latin gerunds</td><td>235</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.2. The Late Latin present participle</td><td>237</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.2.1. Present participles vs adjectives</td><td>239</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.2.1.1. Morphological distinction</td><td>239</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.2.1.2. Semantic distinction</td><td>241</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.2.1.3. Syntactic distinction</td><td>244</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.2.1.4. Conclusion</td><td>245</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.2.2. Nominalised vs non-nominalised present participles</td><td>246</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.2.3. Final set of Late Latin present participles</td><td>249</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.3. The Old French -ant form</td><td>252</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.3.1. Verb forms in -ant vs adjectives</td><td>254</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.3.2. Nominalised vs non-nominalised -ant forms</td><td>255</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.3.3. Final set of Old French verb forms in -ant</td><td>259</td></tr><tr><td>3.4.4. Final dataset</td><td>261</td></tr><tr><td>3.5. Ambiguities with regard to the syntactic use of the gerund, present participle, and -ant form</td><td>261</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.1. Adjuncts vs adnominal phrases</td><td>262</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.1.1. Prototypical adjuncts vs adnominal phrases</td><td>262</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.1.2. Ambiguous cases</td><td>266</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.2. Adjuncts vs verb complements</td><td>271</td></tr></table>
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<table><tr><td>3.5.2.1. Prototypical adjuncts vs verb complements</td><td>271</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.2.2. Ambiguous cases</td><td>272</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.3. Subject predicates vs forms used in a progressive construction</td><td>273</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.3.1. Prototypical subject predicates vs forms used in a progressive construction</td><td>273</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.3.2. Ambiguous cases</td><td>276</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.4. Adjuncts vs forms used in a progressive construction</td><td>280</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.4.1. Prototypical adjuncts vs forms used in a progressive construction</td><td>280</td></tr><tr><td>3.5.4.2. Ambiguous cases</td><td>281</td></tr><tr><td>3.6. Research procedure and methodology</td><td>291</td></tr><tr><td>3.6.1. Evolution of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin</td><td>291</td></tr><tr><td>3.6.1.1. Recapitulation of the research questions</td><td>292</td></tr><tr><td>3.6.1.2. Research procedure</td><td>294</td></tr><tr><td>3.6.2. Categorial status of the -ant form in Old French</td><td>295</td></tr><tr><td>3.6.2.1. Recapitulation of the research questions</td><td>295</td></tr><tr><td>3.6.2.2. Research procedure</td><td>296</td></tr><tr><td>3.6.3. Quantitative methods: statistical significance and productivity measures</td><td>298</td></tr><tr><td>3.6.3.1. Chi-square goodness-of-fit testing</td><td>298</td></tr><tr><td>3.6.3.2. Productivity</td><td>300</td></tr><tr><td><b>Chapter 4. The gerund in Late Latin</b></td><td><b>303</b></td></tr><tr><td>4.1. Introduction</td><td>303</td></tr><tr><td>4.1.1. Aim of the chapter</td><td>303</td></tr><tr><td>4.1.2. Methodology</td><td>305</td></tr><tr><td>4.1.3. Structure of the chapter</td><td>306</td></tr><tr><td>4.2. The nominal gerund</td><td>306</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.1. Adnominal gerunds</td><td>307</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.1.1. Frequency from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>307</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.1.2. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>309</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.1.3. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>310</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.1.4. Morphological marking of the gerund</td><td>315</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.1.5. Conclusion</td><td>319</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.2. Verb complement gerunds</td><td>319</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.2.1. Frequency from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>320</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.2.2. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>321</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.2.3. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>322</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.2.4. Morphological marking of the gerund</td><td>326</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.2.5. Conclusion</td><td>328</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.3. Adjective complement gerunds</td><td>329</td></tr></table>
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<table><tr><td>4.2.3.1. Frequency from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>329</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.3.2. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>330</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.3.3. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>331</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.3.4. Morphological marking of the gerund</td><td>334</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.3.5. Conclusion</td><td>336</td></tr><tr><td>4.2.4. General conclusion: the evolution of the nominal gerund</td><td>337</td></tr><tr><td>4.3. The adverbial gerund</td><td>340</td></tr><tr><td>4.3.1. Frequency from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>342</td></tr><tr><td>4.3.2. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>343</td></tr><tr><td>4.3.3. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>344</td></tr><tr><td>4.3.4. Morphological marking of the gerund</td><td>350</td></tr><tr><td>4.3.4.1. Frequency of ablative adjunct gerunds from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>353</td></tr><tr><td>4.3.4.2. Frequency of ablative adjunct gerunds within the period of Late Latin</td><td>354</td></tr><tr><td>4.3.5. Frequency of manner/instrumental/causal bare ablative adjunct gerunds</td><td>355</td></tr><tr><td>4.3.5.1. From Classical to Late Latin</td><td>357</td></tr><tr><td>4.3.5.2. Within the period of Late Latin</td><td>359</td></tr><tr><td>4.3.6. Conclusion</td><td>360</td></tr><tr><td>4.4. The verbal gerund</td><td>361</td></tr><tr><td>4.5. External syntactic profile</td><td>364</td></tr><tr><td>4.6. Morphosyntactic profile</td><td>367</td></tr><tr><td>4.6.1. From Classical to Late Latin</td><td>367</td></tr><tr><td>4.6.2. Within the period of Late Latin</td><td>368</td></tr><tr><td>4.6.3. Comparison between the three thematic domains</td><td>369</td></tr><tr><td>4.6.4. Comparison of the case forms</td><td>370</td></tr><tr><td>4.7. Typological profile</td><td>371</td></tr><tr><td>4.8. Conclusion</td><td>372</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Chapter 5. The present participle in Late Latin</strong></td><td><strong>375</strong></td></tr><tr><td>5.1. Introduction</td><td>375</td></tr><tr><td>5.1.1. Aim of the chapter</td><td>375</td></tr><tr><td>5.1.2. Methodology</td><td>377</td></tr><tr><td>5.1.3. Structure of the chapter</td><td>378</td></tr><tr><td>5.2. The adverbial present participle</td><td>379</td></tr><tr><td>5.2.1. Frequency from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>380</td></tr><tr><td>5.2.2. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>384</td></tr><tr><td>5.2.3. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>385</td></tr><tr><td>5.2.4. Case marking of the present participle</td><td>389</td></tr><tr><td>5.2.5. Conclusion</td><td>393</td></tr></table>
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<table><tr><td>5.3. The adjectival present participle</td><td>393</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.1. Adnominal present participles</td><td>394</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.1.1. Frequency from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>395</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.1.2. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>395</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.1.3. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>397</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.1.4. Case marking of the present participle</td><td>402</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.1.5. Conclusion</td><td>403</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.2. Subject predicate present participles</td><td>404</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.2.1. Frequency from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>404</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.2.2. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>405</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.2.3. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>406</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.2.4. Case marking of the present participle</td><td>412</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.2.5. Conclusion</td><td>413</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.3. Object predicate present participles</td><td>413</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.3.1. Frequency from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>413</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.3.2. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>414</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.3.3. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>415</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.3.4. Conclusion</td><td>419</td></tr><tr><td>5.3.4. General conclusion: the evolution of the adjectival present participle</td><td>420</td></tr><tr><td>5.4. The verbal present participle</td><td>423</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.1. Present participles used in a progressive construction</td><td>424</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.1.1. Frequency from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>426</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.1.2. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>426</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.1.3. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>427</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.1.4. Conclusion</td><td>432</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.2. Present participles used in a presentative progressive construction</td><td>433</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.2.1. Frequency from Classical to Late Latin</td><td>434</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.2.2. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>435</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.2.3. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>436</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.2.4. Case marking of the present participle</td><td>442</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.2.5. Conclusion</td><td>443</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.3. Present participles used as syntactically finite verbs</td><td>444</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.3.1. Frequency within the period of Late Latin</td><td>445</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.3.2. Frequency and productivity in the three thematic domains</td><td>446</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.3.3. Case marking of the present participle</td><td>448</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.3.4. Conclusion</td><td>449</td></tr><tr><td>5.4.4. General conclusion</td><td>450</td></tr></table>
Table of contents

<table><tr><td>5.5. External syntactic profile of the present participle</td><td>452</td></tr><tr><td>5.6. Morphosyntactic profile of the present participle</td><td>456</td></tr><tr><td>5.6.1. From Classical to Late Latin</td><td>456</td></tr><tr><td>5.6.2. Within the period of Late Latin</td><td>457</td></tr><tr><td>5.6.3. Comparison between the thematic domains</td><td>458</td></tr><tr><td>5.7. Typological profile of the present participle</td><td>458</td></tr><tr><td>5.8. Conclusion</td><td>459</td></tr><tr><td><b>Chapter 6. The -ant form in Old French</b></td><td><b>463</b></td></tr><tr><td>6.1. Introduction</td><td>463</td></tr><tr><td>6.1.1. Aim of the chapter</td><td>463</td></tr><tr><td>6.1.2. Methodology</td><td>466</td></tr><tr><td>6.1.3. Structure of the chapter</td><td>468</td></tr><tr><td>6.2. The adjectival -ant form</td><td>469</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.1. Adnominal -ant forms</td><td>469</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.1.1. Frequency</td><td>469</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.1.2. Frequency and productivity in the five thematic domains</td><td>470</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.1.3. Conclusion</td><td>477</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.2. Subject predicate -ant forms</td><td>477</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.2.1. Frequency</td><td>477</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.2.2. Frequency and productivity in the five thematic domains</td><td>478</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.2.3. Conclusion</td><td>485</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.3. Object predicate -ant forms</td><td>485</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.3.1. Frequency</td><td>485</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.3.2. Frequency and productivity in the five thematic domains</td><td>486</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.3.3. Conclusion</td><td>489</td></tr><tr><td>6.2.4. General conclusion: the evolution of the adjectival -ant form</td><td>489</td></tr><tr><td>6.3. The adverbial -ant form</td><td>492</td></tr><tr><td>6.3.1. Frequency</td><td>493</td></tr><tr><td>6.3.2. Frequency and productivity in the five thematic domains</td><td>494</td></tr><tr><td>6.3.3. Degree of categorial determinacy</td><td>500</td></tr><tr><td>6.3.4. Conclusion</td><td>502</td></tr><tr><td>6.4. The verbal -ant form</td><td>502</td></tr><tr><td>6.4.1. -Ant forms used in a progressive construction</td><td>504</td></tr><tr><td>6.4.1.1. Frequency</td><td>505</td></tr><tr><td>6.4.1.2. Frequency and productivity in the five thematic domains</td><td>507</td></tr><tr><td>6.4.1.3. Degree of categorial determinacy</td><td>515</td></tr><tr><td>6.4.1.4. Conclusion</td><td>516</td></tr></table>
Table of contents

<table><tr><td>6.4.2. -Ant forms used in a presentative progressive construction</td><td>517</td></tr><tr><td>6.4.2.1. Frequency</td><td>518</td></tr><tr><td>6.4.2.2. Frequency and productivity in the five thematic domains</td><td>519</td></tr><tr><td>6.4.2.3. Conclusion</td><td>525</td></tr><tr><td>6.4.3. General conclusion: the evolution of the verbal -ant form</td><td>525</td></tr><tr><td>6.5. External syntactic profile of the -ant form</td><td>527</td></tr><tr><td>6.6. Morphosyntactic profile of the -ant form</td><td>531</td></tr><tr><td>6.7. Typological profile of the -ant form</td><td>534</td></tr><tr><td>6.8. Degree of categorial (in)determinacy of the -ant form</td><td>535</td></tr><tr><td>6.9. Categorial distinction between the gerund and the present participle</td><td>537</td></tr><tr><td>6.10. Conclusion</td><td>541</td></tr><tr><td>Conclusion: Discussion of main results and perspectives for future research</td><td>543</td></tr><tr><td>1. Discussion of the main results of this thesis with reference to previous research</td><td>543</td></tr><tr><td>1.1. The evolution of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin</td><td>544</td></tr><tr><td>1.1.1. Predictions of the standard hypothesis</td><td>544</td></tr><tr><td>1.1.2. Some critical remarks</td><td>545</td></tr><tr><td>1.1.3. Novel insights emerging from the empirical investigation conducted in this thesis</td><td>547</td></tr><tr><td>1.1.3.1. The evolution of the gerund in Late Latin</td><td>547</td></tr><tr><td>1.1.3.2. The evolution of the present participle in Late Latin</td><td>550</td></tr><tr><td>1.2. The evolution of the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French</td><td>552</td></tr><tr><td>1.3. The impact of morphological merging and functional overlap of the gerund and the present participle on their categorial distinction</td><td>554</td></tr><tr><td>2. Directions for future research</td><td>558</td></tr><tr><td>Bibliographical references</td><td>563</td></tr><tr><td>1. Corpora and databases</td><td>563</td></tr><tr><td>2. Dictionaries</td><td>563</td></tr><tr><td>3. Scientific references</td><td>563</td></tr><tr><td>Appendices</td><td>587</td></tr><tr><td>Appendix 1. List of quoted texts</td><td>589</td></tr><tr><td>Appendix 2. List of texts included in the corpus of this thesis</td><td>597</td></tr><tr><td>Résumé substantiel en français</td><td>615</td></tr><tr><td>Nederlandse samenvatting</td><td>641</td></tr><tr><td>Résumé bref en français</td><td>642</td></tr><tr><td>Short summary in English</td><td>642</td></tr></table>
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>
Acknowledgements

This dissertation is the result of a long and intense journey. It started the first of July 2015 in Ghent, a
few days before obtaining my Master's degree in Latin and French linguistics and literature. I had just
finished my last exams and begun my annual student job as a lifeguard at the beach of Middelkerke.
Despite my holiday mood and the long, warm, and busy day at the beach, I opened my UGent mailbox
in the evening, in order to check whether I had received the reports of my MA thesis. I got a message
from Marleen Van Peteghem, my MA thesis supervisor, and so I expected to have received the reports
that I was thrilling to read. However, the message was about something completely different. Peter
Lauwers, one of my professors of French linguistics, had told her about a PhD position available at the
University of Lille, under the supervision of Anne Carlier. She did not yet have detailed information
about the project, but knew that it had a diachronic orientation and focused on the transition from Latin
to French. During my Master, I had expressed to Marleen my interest in pursuing linguistic research as
a PhD student. Since I had studied both Latin and French linguistics, she thought this project might be
an outstanding opportunity. Later that evening, she sent me more detailed information, obtained directly
from Anne. I got to know that the PhD position was part of a pioneering international project on the
transition from Late Latin to Old French, viz. the PaLaFra project (*Passage du latin au français: constitution et analyse d'un corpus numérique latino-français*), and that the topic of the dissertation was
not pre-established. I was very excited about the project, and sent my official application to Anne four
days later, on July 5.

Things went very fast. Anne invited me for an interview at the University of Lille two days later. I took the day off from my lifeguard student job and drove to Lille (if only we had known that we were both staying around Ostend these days). I got stressed upon arrival at the university, not so much for the interview, but to find my way in what appeared to be a labyrinth. I managed to locate Anne's office thanks to the instructions of some janitor and waited there for her arrival. Nerves started to pop up. A few minutes later, Anne arrived. As she greeted me, she immediately made me feel at comfort, and invited me kindly in her office. She presented the project in detail and set out the expectations of the successful candidate. I presented myself and asked all questions I had. All turned out splendidly. We were both positive about collaborating with each other, and Anne give me the time necessary to explore some practical issues before making a definitive decision. This did not take a long time. Three days later, on July 10, I contacted Anne to inform her of my decision. She found herself a PhD candidate, I myself found a supervisor and a project.

Thus, this dissertation would not have seen the light without Peter, Marleen, and Anne – and the
janitor, without whom I might perhaps still be erring in Lille’s labyrinth. Therefore, I wish to express
my greatest gratitude to all three of you: (i) to Peter, for informing Marleen about the available position and considering me a suitable candidate; (ii) to Marleen, for also thinking of me as a suitable candidate, transferring me all the information about the project, encouraging me to apply for it, and helping me completing my application form; (iii) to Anne, for having me invited for an interview, making me feel at ease from our very first encounter, and having enough confidence to embark me on your mission to explore the transition between Late Latin and Old French.

Anne has an exceptional expertise in Old French. She sometimes claims that (Late) Latin is not her strong suit, but that is just modesty talking. Anyhow, since my project focuses on both Late Latin and Old French and has a fundamental empirical orientation, she proposed to appoint a co-supervisor specialised in (Late) Latin. I instantly thought of Giovanbattista Galdi, one of my professors of Latin linguistics at Ghent University. His interest and expertise in substandard and Late Latin would be most welcome to bring this research to a good end. I am still very grateful that he enthusiastically accepted to co-supervise me during my trip through academia. In addition to Giovanni, we invited Marleen as a co-supervisor. Her expertise in Modern French and Romance in general would be a great asset to put in a comparative perspective the evolution from Late Latin to Old French to be discussed in my thesis. Marleen had been the supervisor of both my BA and MA thesis, so I was sure that I would again greatly benefit from her guidance. I am most grateful that she fervently accepted to continue supervising me for the past few years. The collaboration between Anne, at that time from the University of Lille, and Giovanni and Marleen, from Ghent University, led to the drawing up of a joint PhD convention.

On August 25, the four of us met for the first time, at Ghent University. We defined the topic of my thesis and made some practical arrangements. The first of October, I officially started my research activities. Now, 5,5 years later, I lay down my pen and submit the research I have been carrying out to a jury of specialists. I look forward to discuss my work with them and to come up with new ideas and perspectives for future research.

My 5,5-year journey between October 2015, when I officially started my PhD research, and June 2021, when I officially submitted it, has been quite an adventure. A rather atypical trajectory, involving a large number of people who have directly or indirectly contributed to the work submitted here. The following pages aim to express my sincerest gratitude to all people in issue.

First, I wish to say a few words of heartfelt thanks and high praise to my main supervisor, Anne. It might be a *cliché*, but in this case words are truly lacking to describe, even remotely, how much I have learned under your wings, how excellently you guided me during the entire process, how hard you kept encouraging me to push my limits, over and over again, how enthusiastically you incited me to keep extending my competences, how much you supported me in everything I have been doing, and so on. For 5,5 years, you have been tirelessly stimulating me on an intellectual level, always with the greatest possible pleasure. During these years, I got to know you as a truly brilliant linguist with an exceptional
empirical expertise, on the one hand, and an outstanding theoretical expertise, on the other. Additionally, you are gifted with the extremely valuable talent to always detect the bigger picture, and to present your argumentation in a crystal clear and convincing manner (you rightly describe yourself in this regard as a *maniaque de la structure*). My respect for you as a linguist is therefore tremendous. As a supervisor, you excel in striving to pass on these qualities to your students. Crucial in this regard has been our intense collaboration in view of (i) a joint presentation at the biennial conference of the *Société Internationale de la Diachronie du Français*, in January 2018 at the University of Neuchâtel, and, afterwards, (ii) its publication in *Le français moderne*. The intellectual growth that I experienced during this collaboration stimulated me to try acquiring these qualities myself and transpose them to my research activities. I did certainly not reach full mastership of them, but I nonetheless hope that you find some traces in this dissertation. Thesis-wise, you have always most carefully read anything I sent you and provided me with extremely useful feedback. As you are aware yourself, you are highly demanding (I mean this in an exclusively positive way). This systematically resulted in highly detailed comments and suggestions, on both the content and form of my writings. I cannot emphasise enough how much I appreciate all the time and all the effort you put in your evaluation of each and every of my texts, and how much all these texts have benefited from your insights, both content-wise and form-wise. I often wondered how you managed to combine all this time and effort consuming evaluations of my writings with your numerous other, at least equally time and effort consuming activities. All I can say is that, as a supervisor too, I have deepest respect for you. During our 5,5-year collaboration, I also got to know you as an extremely kind, cheerful, helpful, generous, and caring person with a keen sense of humour (and an adorable, though borderline kleptomaniac, bonnet-loving cat, Luna). It really has been most enjoyable to have you as a supervisor, on both an academic and a personal level. For all of this, and for all other things I could not mention here, I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to you, Anne.

Next, I would like to heartily thank my two co-supervisors, Marleen and Giovanni. It has truly been a great honour and a great pleasure to have both of you at my side during my PhD project. My collaboration with you, Marleen, goes back to my BA thesis at Ghent University, in 2013-2014. You made me feel at comfort from our very first meeting, and have since then been enthusiastically guiding me in all of my research activities. It is you who first introduced me in the world of linguistic research, and inspired me to pursue research in this field in the first place. I can therefore not stress enough how crucial your role has been in the first years of my academic career. As a linguist, I have always admired your fundamental data-driven approach, your excellent descriptive qualities, your masterful expertise in comparative linguistics, both Romance and non-Romance, and your brilliance in clarity of thought and expression. The things that I have learned from you during the past 7-8 years have stimulated me intellectually and contributed in many ways to the work submitted here. As a supervisor, I gained great gain from your extremely efficient, well-organised, and particularly encouraging guidance. You have the invaluable gift to always provide perfectly balanced feedback. Your mix of comments/suggestions,
on the one hand, and compliment, on the other, have always inspired me to keep going, even at times
when I could not see the wood for the trees. You always evaluated any of my writings with the greatest
thinkable enthusiasm and interest, and not exceptionally in an extremely limited stretch of time. How
you managed indeed to carefully read and comment some of my quite lengthy texts and send me your
detailed feedback only a few days later, sometimes even the following day, is an enigma to me. In any
case, it defines you as a supervisor that many PhD students can only dream of. As a person, I got to
know you as incredibly kind-hearted, amiable, generous, helpful, understanding, and wise. I wish to
thank you, Marleen, most warmly for all of this and for all your support and guidance during the past 7-
8 years. A special word of thanks also for your relentless encouragement and mental support during the
last months of my dissertation, which, as you know, have been extremely challenging and difficult.

Last, but not least, I wish to express a few words of gratitude to you, Giovanni. We first met in
the context of two Latin linguistics courses during my Master's year at Ghent University in 2014-2015.
As my professor, I instantly respected you not only for praiseworthy ability to speak Dutch after about
only a year upon your arrival in Ghent, but also for your great linguistic and philological competence in
especially, though not exclusively, less canonical Latin (in particular substandard and Late Latin). I was
therefore particularly thrilled that you accepted to guide me during my own exploration of Late Latin.
As a supervisor, you have always been supportive, optimistic, open to sometimes challenging new
analyses of mine, extremely detailed and nuanced in all comments on specific Late Latin passages, and
most helpful in basically any problem that I encountered in analysing the Late Latin data. I also had the
honour and pleasure to work closely with you with respect to (i) a joint presentation at the biennial
conference of the International Colloquium of Latin Linguistics, in April 2017 in Munich; (ii) its
publication in the proceedings of this conference; and (iii) another joint presentation at the biennial
conference of the members of the Greek and Latin linguistics section of the Dutch research school
OIKOS, in November 2017 in Katwijk. I have benefited greatly from this close collaboration, as well
as from your supervision during the past 5,5 years in general. On a personal level, I got to know you as
unbelievably good-hearted, caring, sociable, understanding, generous, entertaining, and humorous. It
has been a privilege and delight to work with you, and I look forward to continue our collaboration in
view of both the PaLaFra project and, hopefully, other projects that will cross our paths. For all this, and
many more, Giovanni, I would like to express my sincerest thanks to you.

Without these three finest supervisors of mine, the dissertation submitted here would never have
been possible. However, many other people have directly or indirectly contributed to this thesis.

From October 2015 to August 2018, I worked at the University of Lille within the context of a
PhD contract, funded by the French ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) and the German DFG
(Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) as part of the above-mentioned PaLaFra project. I wish to thank
both of these organisations for financially supporting not only my own research, but also the PaLaFra
project in general. At the same time, I want to express many thanks to the coordinators of the PaLaFra
project: Anne Carlier, Céline Guillot-Barbance, Maria Selig, Rembert Eufe, and Christian Wolf. They
set up a pioneering international project and succeeded in bringing together specialists of historical Latin
and historical French linguistics. They welcomed me with open arms as a new member, and immediately
invited me to contribute wherever I could. A word of thanks is also in place for the other members of
the PaLaFra project, who contributed in many different ways to the successful completion of the project:
Manuel Burghardt, Lieven Danckaert, Matthieu Decorde, Lars Döhling Serge Heiden, Naomi Kanaoka,
Alexei Lavrentiev, Sebastian Ortner, and Elisabeth Reichle. Thank you also, Anne, Céline, Maria, and
Lieven, for our current collaboration in view of the publication of the manual in the aftermath of the
PaLaFra project (Bridging the Gap between Late Latin and Old French: Empirical Investigations of
(Morpho)Syntactic changes), from which I learn quite a lot. Thank you, finally, all contributors to this
manual, who succeed in bridging the linguistic gap between Late Latin and Old French, on the one hand,
and the institutional gap between (historical) Latin and French linguistics, on the other, and in doing so
inspire to set up other collaborative, cross-fertilising projects.

I also aim to express gratitude to the department of STL (Savoirs, textes, langage [UMR 8163])
at the University of Lille, which gave me a warm welcome upon arrival, provided me a nice office, and
supported me financially for a number of research-related activities. Thank you also, members of this
department, for our occasional discussions about both linguistic and non-linguistic topics. You all
contributed to me having a wonderful time in Lille. Special thanks are to be made in this regard to my
fellow PhD students: Benoît, Pierre, Laurence, Mégane, Hanaa, Sequoya, and Bertille. Thank you also:
(i) Bert, for your help regarding cross-border taxation; (ii) Edouard, for your help with technical and
computer-related issues; and (iii) Justin, for your efficiency and help in administrative matters.

After my PhD contract ended, I remained active at the University of Lille as an associate lecturer and researcher (a so-called ‘ATER’, i.e. an *attaché temporaire d’enseignement et de recherche*). I held this position for the maximally allowed period of two years, from September 2018 to August 2020. I had the opportunity to teach different linguistics courses in the three Bachelor’s years and in different programmes, while at the same continuing my doctoral research thanks to the financial support of the department of STL. In addition to the people mentioned in the above paragraph, I wish to thank in this respect (i) Anne, for encouraging me to apply for this position, passing me ‘your’ diachronic linguistics course (that was quite an honour!), and providing me useful material for other courses as well; (ii) the members of the recruitment committee, for allowing me to be a part of STL’s *enseignants*; (iii) Antonio and Fayssal, for our collaboration for two particular courses; and (iv) Emmeline and Audrey, for your help with all practical and student-related issues during my two-year ATER-ship.

During my ATER-ship at the University of Lille, Anne got appointed as a professor at Sorbonne
University (in 2019). So as to keep benefiting from her supervision in the best possible circumstances,
I transferred my PhD project from the University of Lille to Sorbonne University in the course of 2020. Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that year, I have not been able to spend much time in this new environment, but I have nonetheless had the pleasure to meet some colleagues and exchange with them. I am particularly grateful in this regard to Gilles Siouffi, for inviting me the year before to the annual *journée doctorale* of the department STIH (Sens, Texte, Informatique, Histoire) – it was at that time already clear that I would transfer my PhD project to Paris, so it seemed a good idea to start participating in some of the department’s activities. Thank you also, Jean-Michel, for our interesting discussions about various topics.

After my two-year ATER-ship at the University of Lille, I obtained a one-year lectureship at KULeuven, Campus Antwerp (October 2020 – September 2021). The courses I have been teaching there continued stimulating me, and the funding I received allowed me to finish my dissertation under the best possible circumstances. I would like to express thanks in this respect to: (i) Peter Lauwers, for passing my name to Pascale Van Keirsbilck when she contacted you in the search for candidates for the position; (ii) Henri Bloemen and Pascale, for having recruited me and thus expressed confidence in me as a lecturer; (iii) Pascale once more, for helping me with various practical issues and for our collaboration, which was, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift from physical to online lessons, much less close than I wanted it to be.

From the beginning to the end of my PhD project (October 2015 – June 2021), I have remained connected to Ghent University under the terms of a joint PhD contract. I wish to thank the Department of Linguistics, the French Section, and the research groups GLIMS (Ghent University Research Group on Linguistic Meaning & Structure) and ΔiaLing for welcoming me with open arms and financially supporting me regarding various research activities. Thank you also, colleagues of these departments, for our interesting discussions at numerous activities. You made my time spent in Ghent extremely valuable and delightful. Special thanks are to be expressed in this respect to (i) my office companions Arne, Mihaela, Kirsten, Roxane, Kaat, and Liesbet; (ii) my countless fellow PhD students, in particular Simon, Arne, Mihaela, Antoine, Justine, Anaïs, Alessandro, Thomas, Aaricia, Evi, Hilde, Amélie, Emmeline, Linde, Fien, Sven, Margot, and Joren; and (iii) all doctoral and post-doctoral members of the Greek and Latin Sections. Thank you also: (i) Peter, for your everlasting interest and mental support during my entire 5,5 project; (ii) Chantal, for being the most cheerful, helpful, and efficient secretary one could possibly wish; (iii) Marleen, for all your time and effort spent on managing various kinds of administrative issues; and (iv) all professors whose courses I had the privilege to follow during my BA and MA programmes and gave me a solid basis to start my doctoral research.

In addition to the people mentioned above, I wish to explicitly thank:

(i) Alexei Lavrentiev, for helping me with various issues related to the practical exploitation of the Late Latin and Old French corpora elaborated within the context of the PaLaFra project;
(ii) Peter Lauwers (once again), for your role in: (a) two of the three academic positions that I have held until now (my PhD contract at the University of Lille and my lectureship at KULeuven) and (b) the one-year lectureship that I will hold from September 2021 to August 2022 at Leiden University;

(iii) Lieven Danckaert, for your useful advice and comments about some of my linguistic analyses of the Late Latin data and about some statistical issues;

(iv) Ludovic De Cuypere, for verifying my statistical analyses even at the end of my project and for your useful advice in this regard;

(v) all colleagues with whom I have held interesting and intellectually stimulating discussions during one or more of the various conferences that I have attended.

I would also like to express my gratitude to Bernard Combettes, Céline Guillot-Barbance, Hendrik De Smet, Paolo Greco, and Harm Pinkster, for accepting to be a member of the jury of this dissertation. I am most grateful for the time and effort you are willing to invest in carefully reading and evaluating my thesis. I look very much forward to exchange with you and have a stimulating discussion about the work presented here.

This dissertation would neither have been possible without the endless love and support of my family. My parents are the most wonderful you can imagine. Their unconditional support is inspiring, and has always allowed me to follow my dreams, no matter what and no matter where. It is indescribable how fortunate my brother and I are to have been born and raised in such a warm, close, and loving nest. I fail to find the words suitable to express how grateful I am for everything that they have done for us. So, thank you, my beloved parents, for having given us all chances to thrive, for making us who we are, for unconditionally being there for us, and simply for being and remaining yourselves. My brother is undoubtedly the best I could have ever wished. His support and love are exceptional, and his extreme kindheartedness, optimism, and playful character have enriched my life from my earliest memories onward. Thank you, my dear brother, for being who you are and making my life much more beautiful. My sister-in-law has been another essential source of support and inspiration. Her unlimited kindness, helpfulness, and sense of understanding is admirable, and her cheerfulness is contagious. So, thank you, dear Karen, for becoming such a welcome and valuable part of my life. My godchild, Finn, has made my life brighter since the day he was born. He might not yet realise it, but during this first year of his life, he has meant the world to me and given me the energy boosts necessary to bring this thesis to a good end. I also wish to thank the other members of my family, in particular my grandparents and my aunt and uncle, Linda and Luuk. Each of you have supported me endlessly, and have been there for me at any point in my life.
Like my family, my friends have been colouring and enriching both my life during the past 5,5 years and whole the period before. They form a heterogeneous group, of which some go several years back, while others have entered my life more recently. However, all of them play an important part in my life, and have been (and still are) making it so enjoyable. Thanks to each and every one of you, my dear Nick, Thomas, Olivier, Michèle, Arne, Ninya, Cedric, Sven, Hannelise, Aleksandre, Simon, Edwin, Margo, Clara, Rani, Kaatje, Laura, Hanne, and Sander. Special thanks are to be made to Nick and Arne, whose continuous mental support and encouragement during the last months of this thesis have helped me immensely to get through this extremely challenging and difficult period.

Finally, I would like to thank my new friends and colleagues at De Zonnegloed vzw. Since the day I started volunteering in this wild animal sanctuary (June 2021), I have been feeling most welcome and exceptionally at ease around you and all marvellous animals. Thank you for making my Saturdays beastly interesting, satisfactory, and enjoyable, Zenzi, Febe, Aitana, Simon, Bart, Robbe, Lynn, Jonas, Thijs, Imke, Jana, and Anneleen. Thank you also, Lieve and Karel, for having accepted me as a volunteer and for your extremely valuable and praiseworthy work.
List of abbreviations and symbols

This appendix presents all abbreviations and symbols used in this thesis. The abbreviations precede the symbols and are arranged in alphabetical order.

<table><tr><td>ABL</td><td>ablative</td><td>PST</td><td>past</td></tr><tr><td>AFF</td><td>affirmative</td><td>PTCP</td><td>participle</td></tr><tr><td>ART</td><td>article</td><td>Q</td><td>question particle</td></tr><tr><td>ACC</td><td>accusative</td><td>REFL</td><td>reflexive</td></tr><tr><td>DAT</td><td>dative</td><td>REL</td><td>relative</td></tr><tr><td>DEF</td><td>definite</td><td>SG</td><td>singular</td></tr><tr><td>DEM</td><td>demonstrative</td><td>SBJV</td><td>subjunctive</td></tr><tr><td>EXCL</td><td>exclamative</td><td>SN</td><td>syntagme nominal</td></tr><tr><td>F</td><td>feminine</td><td>SUP</td><td>supine</td></tr><tr><td>FUT</td><td>future</td><td>VOC</td><td>vocative</td></tr><tr><td>GEN</td><td>genitive</td><td>VP</td><td>verb phrase</td></tr><tr><td>GER</td><td>gerund</td><td>V.ANT</td><td>-ant form</td></tr><tr><td>GERV</td><td>gerundive</td><td>1</td><td>first person</td></tr><tr><td>IMP</td><td>imperative</td><td>2</td><td>second person</td></tr><tr><td>INCH</td><td>inchoative</td><td>3</td><td>third person</td></tr><tr><td>INDF</td><td>indefinite</td><td>??</td><td>grammatical, but</td></tr><tr><td>INF</td><td>infinitive</td><td></td><td>semantically incomplete</td></tr><tr><td>INT</td><td>interrogative</td><td>*</td><td>ungrammatical</td></tr><tr><td>INTENS</td><td>intensifier</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>LOC</td><td>locative</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>M</td><td>masculine</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>N</td><td>neuter</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>NEG</td><td>negation</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>NMLS</td><td>nominalisation</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>NOM</td><td>nominative</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>NP</td><td>noun phrase</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>OBJ</td><td>object case</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>OBL</td><td>oblique case</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>PASS</td><td>passive</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>PL</td><td>plural</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>PP</td><td>prepositional phrase</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>PRO</td><td>pronoun</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>PRS</td><td>present</td><td></td><td></td></tr></table>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>
# Introduction

## 1. Object of the thesis

This thesis is devoted to the study of the non-finite verb forms that are commonly identified as ‘gerunds’ and ‘present participles’. It seeks to empirically investigate the evolution of these forms in the transitory period between Late Latin and Old French, in order to account for the fundamental differences between these categories of non-finite verb forms in Classical Latin and Modern French.

In Classical Latin, taken in this study as the period between the 3rd c. BC and the 2nd c. AD (see §1.1), the gerund and the present participle are two distinct categories of non-finite verb forms. From a morphological viewpoint, they are both built on the present stem of a verb, but to this stem are attached different morphemes: the gerund has the infix **-nd-** and a nominal ending (e.g. *lege-nd-i* ‘(of) reading’), whereas the present participle contains the infix **-nt-** and an adjectival ending (e.g. *lege-nt-es* ‘reading’) (Meiser 1998²: 226, 228; Pinkster 2015: 58, 60). In accordance with their nominal *vs* adjectival ending, the gerund is assigned case on the basis of its function or governing preposition, while the present participle is assigned case (and gender and number) through agreement with a noun. For instance, in (1) the gerund *defendendi* ‘to defend’ is in the genitive, since it is the adnominal argument of *potestatem* ‘opportunity’. In (2), on the contrary, the present participle *ardentes* ‘blazing’ is inflected in the nominative (feminine plural) through agreement with the noun *laminae* ‘metal plates’.<fnref n="1" />

(1) [...] *dat* *ipsa* *lex* *potestatem* **defende-nd-i** [...].
give.PRS.3SG INTENS.NOM.F.SG law.NOM.F.SG opportunity.ACC.F.SG defend-GER-GEN
‘The law itself gives the opportunity to defend (oneself).’ (Cic. *Mil*. 11.4)

(2) *Cum ignes arde-nt-es=que laminae [...] admovebantur [...].*
when fire.NOM.M.PL blaze-PTCP.PRS-NOM.M.PL=and metalPlate.NOM.F.PL bring_up.PST.PASS.3PL
‘When fire and blazing metal plates were brought up (...).’ (Cic. *Verr*. 2.5.163.8)

In line with their morphological properties, the gerund can fulfill a syntactic function characteristic of a noun, while the present participle can perform a syntactic function characteristic of an adjective (Palmer 1964: 320-321, 325; Pinkster 2015: 58, 60). For example, both forms can be used adnominally, with this

<footnote n="1">¹ All non-English examples cited in the present dissertation will be glossed according to the Leipzig Glossing Rules, available at https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/pdf/Glossing-Rules.pdf. Morpheme-by-morpheme glosses will be restricted to the two forms central to this study, viz. the gerund and the present participle. The most relevant grammatical information of the other forms will be provided in a non-morphemic way, i.e. after the lexical meaning and separated by dots. This grammatical information will not be restricted to overtly marked categories, but will also detail covert features. This strategy is in line with the general aim of this thesis to provide access to a large public of linguists, thus extending beyond the fields of (historical) Latin and French linguistics. To this end, all examples have also been translated as literally as possible. Another precaution made in this respect is that the meaning in the gloss is the one that the morpheme takes in the specific discourse context of the example, in order to avoid that differences between the discourse-independent meaning of a morpheme and its contextual interpretation presented in the translation disturb the grammatical analyses. All translations are mine, unless stated otherwise.</footnote>
difference that this use features a prepositional or genitive form in the case of the gerund (e.g. *defendendi* 'to defend' (1)), but an agreeing form in the case of the present participle (e.g. *ardentes* 'blazing' (2)). However, both forms may also be used in an adverbial way, i.e. in adjuncts (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 731-754, 771-792; Palmer 1964: 322-324, 326; Pinkster 2021: §16.87-§16.104, §21.7). Clear examples are the gerund *pultando* '(by) kicking' (3) and the present participle *pugnans* 'fighting' (4).

(3) **Pulta-nd-o** *pedibus* *paene* *confregi* *has=ce* [...] *fores.*
kick-GER-ABL foot.ABL.M.PL almost break.PST.1SG DEM.ACC.F.PL=DEM door.ACC.F.PL
'I almost broke these doors here by kicking (on them) by my feet.' (Pl. *Mos*. 453)

(4) *Ibi* *L. Cotta* **pugna-ns** *interficitur* [...].
there L. Cotta.NOM.M.SG fight-PTCP.PRS.NOM.M.SG kill.PRS.PASS.3SG
‘There is killed L. Cotta, as he was fighting.’ (Caes. *Gall*. 5.37.4)

Thus, the gerund and the present participle partly overlap with respect to their syntactic use. Importantly, this functional overlap does not raise a categorial issue, since forms displaying, e.g., adverbial external syntax can always be categorised as either gerunds or present participles on the basis of morphological grounds.

In Modern French, the labels ‘gerund’ and ‘present participle’ are also used to refer to two distinct categories of non-finite verb forms. From a morphological perspective, they are both built on the present stem of a verb and both contain the invariable ending -ant, but while the present participle is a bare form (e.g. *dans-ant* ‘dancing’), the gerund is always preceded by the morpheme *en* ‘in’ (e.g. *en dans-ant* ‘while dancing’) (Riegel *et al.* 1994⁴: 587-588). In syntactic terms, the present participle may occur in adjectival and adverbial configurations, like the adnominal form *donnant* ‘giving’ (5) and the adjunct form *sortant* ‘leaving’ (6), respectively. The gerund, on the contrary, always exhibits adverbial external syntax (e.g. *en chantant* ‘while singing’ (7)).

(5) *Pierre ouvre* *la* *fenêtre* **donn-ant** *sur la* *rue.*
Peter open.PRS.3SG ART.DEF.F.SG window.SG.F give-PTCP.PRS on ART.DEF.F.SG street.F.SG
‘Peter opens the window to the street.’

(6) **Sort-ant** *du* **métro**, *Pierre est tombé.*
leave-PTCP.PRS from;ART.DEF.M.SG subway.M.SG Peter be.3SG fall.PTCP.PST
‘Leaving the subway, Peter fell.’

(7) *Pierre est arrivé en chant-ant.*
Peter be.3SG arrive.PTCP.PST in sing.PTCP.PRS
‘Peter arrived (while) singing.’

As in Classical Latin, the gerund and the present participle thus have partly overlapping functional properties. Again, this overlap does not raise a categorial problem, since the two types of non-finite verb
forms are morphologically distinct. That is to say, all adjunct forms can be categorised as either gerunds or present participles on the basis of the presence *vs* absence of *en* 'in'.

A quick comparison of the morphological and syntactic properties of the gerund and the present participle in Classical Latin and Modern French allows formulating the following hypothesis about their evolution between the two languages: (i) from a morphological point of view, the gerund and the present participle become similar, but remain nonetheless distinct due to respectively the presence *vs* absence of *en* 'in'; (ii) from a syntactic perspective, the gerund specialises in adverbial external syntax at the cost of its nominal external syntax, whereas the present participle preserves both its adjectival and adverbial external syntax; (iii) from a morphosyntactic point of view, the gerund develops into an adverbial form of the verb, while the present participle keeps its ambivalent status as both an adjectival and adverbial form of the verb; (iv) from a categorial viewpoint, the gerund and the present participle remain distinct.

Though convincing at first glance, this hypothesis raises one fundamental question, namely how to account for the systematic use, in Modern French, of *en* 'in' before gerunds, but not before present participles. Given that the presence *versus* absence of this morpheme constitutes the only morphological difference between the two types of non-finite verb forms, the emergence of its use plays a key role in the evolution of the gerund and the present participle. For without this development, the gerund and the present participle would be morphologically identical. Given their functional overlap, *i.e.* their common use in adjuncts, it would therefore be impossible to categorise adjunct forms as either gerunds or present participles with absolute certainty. The result would be a situation of “categorial indeterminacy” (Aarts (2007: 4), *viz.* a situation in which the boundaries between the categories of the gerund and the present participle are blurred. The implications for the grammatical description of these forms would be drastic.

Interestingly, the question regarding the origin of the systematic use of *en* 'in' before the gerund raises more questions than it answers. Indeed, even though gerunds can be introduced by *en* 'in' already in Old French (e.g. *en plorant* 'while crying' (8)), the use of this morpheme before the gerund does not become systematic until the 17th c. (Sarré 2000: 51; Bazin-Tacchella 2020: 852). In 1679, the *Académie française* prescribes the use of *en* 'in' before the gerund, hereby cristalising, as shown by Sarré (2000: 51), the generalising tendency in language use to use this morpheme before adjunct *-ant* forms, but not before other types of *-ant* forms, such as adnominal forms.

However, the generalisation of *en* 'in' before adjunct *-ant* forms has not been completed, as many *-ant* forms occurring in adjuncts remain bare, *i.e.* non-introduced by *en* 'in', even in Modern French (e.g.

<footnote>(8) [...] *sospira et en plor-ant li demanda [...]*. sigh.PST.3SG and in cry-GER he.OBL.M.SG ask.PST.3SG
‘She sighed and asked him while crying (...).’ (Eneas 1676)</footnote>
sortant ‘leaving’ (6)). The question that arises is whether these bare adjunct -ant forms should be taken present participles or as gerunds. In the grammatical tradition of French, there is a striking consensus to consider the forms in issue as present participles. Thus, the recommendation of the *Remarqueurs* of the French Academy is held to have been meticulously followed and standardised, leading eventually to the sharp morphological distinction between the gerund and the present participle characteristic of Modern French.<fnref n="2" />

However, it is implausible – or at least highly questionable – that the prescription of the *Académie française* is followed meticulously and without any exception from 1689 onward. Hence, the question whether bare *-ant* forms used in adjuncts are present participles or gerunds remains open. In other words, some *-ant* forms appear nevertheless to be categorially indeterminate, making it impossible to establish a sharp boundary between the categories of the gerund and the present participle.

This categorisation issue of the *-ant* form in Modern French can only be resolved by empirically investigating the evolution of the gerund and the present participle between Classical Latin and Modern French. However, an in-depth corpus study of the two types of non-finite verb forms covering this entire span of more than 2,000 years is not feasible within the limits of this dissertation. Therefore, I will focus on the most crucial period in this time span, namely the transitional period between Late Latin and Old French.

## 2. Research questions

In order to examine the evolution of the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French in the light of their categorial distinction, I will investigate the morphological and syntactic changes of these forms, and explore to which extent these changes lead to shifts in morphosyntactic categorisation. Adhering to the widely accepted view that morphosyntactic categories are best defined on the basis of morphological and syntactic criteria (Trask 1999: 281; Aarts 2007: 2; Pullum 2009: 257), I will seek to measure the impact of the morphological merging of the gerund and the present participle in Old French on their categorial distinction. Does this merging blur the categorial distinction between these two types of non-finite verb forms, leading to some kind of categorial blend? Or does the distinction between these forms maintain itself on the basis of syntactic criteria, leading to a homonymic relationship?

These questions will be addressed on the basis of a quantitative corpus study. The corpus contains a large and varied sample of Late Latin and Old French texts, compiled in the context of the ANR/DFG project PaLaFra (see §5 below for more details). This thesis provides the first corpus-based quantitative

<footnote n="2">² It is worth mentioning here the work of Ayres-Bennet (2018), who has shown that the *Remarqueurs* have wrongly been seen as legislators imposing the norm of the *bon usage*, whereas they were rather fine observers of language use and of changes in language use.</footnote>
analysis of the evolution in issue, and hence it is pioneering in bridging this gap between Late Latin and Old French.

So as to gain more detailed insight into the question at stake, I will provide in the following section a brief overview of the state of the art of the evolution of the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French.

## 3. State of the art of the evolution of the gerund and the present participle

Before reviewing the state of the art of this evolution (§3.2-§3.3), it is necessary to position the gerund and the present participle in the system of non-finite verb forms in Classical Latin (§3.1).

### 3.1. The gerund and the present participle in Classical Latin

In addition to the gerund and the present participle, the Classical Latin system of non-finite verb forms comprises seven more types, namely the past participle, the future participle, the present infinitive, the past infinitive, the future infinitive, the gerundive, and the supine (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 662-792; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255-287; Palmer 1964: 317-327; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 341-395; Menge *et al.* 2000: 661-751; Pinkster 2015: 57-64). Depending on their morphological and syntactic properties, these forms are usually divided into two groups: nominal *versus* adjectival forms. The nominal forms correspond to the gerund, the supine, and the three types of infinitives, while the adjectival forms include the gerundive and the three types of participles. Notice, however, that Pinkster (2015: 64) defends a different analysis of the supine (cf. Chapter 1, §1.1.2).

In Classical Latin, this system of non-finite verb forms is relatively tightly organised, since each type of forms is specialised in distinct functional domains (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 662-792; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255-287; Palmer 1964: 317-327; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 341-395; Menge *et al.* 2000: 661-751; Pinkster 2015: 57-64). Within the group of the nominal forms, for instance, the gerund predominantly occurs in adnominal phrases and manner/instrumental/causal adjuncts, the infinitive in verb complements, and the supine in purpose adjuncts and adjective complements. Yet, this functionally motivated division of labour is a tendency rather than a rule, since several forms show an overlap of their functional domain(s) and, hence, compete with each other (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 662-792; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255-287; Palmer 1964: 317-327; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 341-395; Menge *et al.* 2000: 661-751; Pinkster 2015: 57-64, 2021: Ch. 15-17, 21 *passim*). For example, the infinitive competes with the gerund in some types of adnominal phrases (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 742-744; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 269; Palmer 1964: 320; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 350-351, 376; Menge *et al.*
2000: 746; Pinkster 2021: §17.13, §17.15), and the gerund and the infinitive both compete with the supine in purpose adjuncts, at least when the main verb denotes motion or transfer (Ernout & Thomas 1951: 260-262; Väänänen 1963³: 139; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 344-345, 378, 381; Stempel 1994: 236; Pinkster 2021: §16.86, §16.103, §16.112).

Another example of competition in the Classical Latin system of non-finite verb forms involves the two forms at the center of this dissertation, namely the gerund and the present participle. In adjuncts, these forms are specialised in different semantic values, leading to a kind of semantic complementary distribution, but sometimes, the gerund has a value characteristic of the present participle, and *vice versa* (Marouzeau 1910: 27, 79; Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 751-752; Lyer 1932: 384-389; Aalto 1949: 65-70; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 266-267; Laughton 1964: 21, 25-26; Palmer 1964: 324; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 379-380; Vester 1983: 101-125, 134-135; Menge *et al.* 2000: 740-741; Adams 2013: 725-740; Galdi & Vangaever 2019: 100-106; Pinkster 2021: §21.14). For instance, temporal adjuncts expressing a state of affairs<fnref n="3" /> co-occurring with the main state of affairs are typically headed by a present participle (e.g. *flens* ‘crying’ (9)), but sometimes an ablative gerund is used instead (e.g. *ornando* ‘cheering’ and *celebrando* ‘celebrating’ (10)).

(9) [...] *fle-ns*

*Petreius* *manipulos* *circumit* [...].

cry-PTCP.PRS.NOM.M.SG Petreius.NOM.M.SG maniple.ACC.M.PL go_around.PRS.3SG

‘Petreius goes around the maniples while crying.’ (Caes. *civ.* 1.76)

(10) [...] *vestrum* *egressum* *orna-nd-o* *atque celebra-nd-o* [...]

your.ACC.N.SG departure.ACC.N.SG cheer-GER-ABL and celebrate-GER-AB
*prosequebantur*.

escort.PST.3PL

‘They escorted your departure while cheering and celebrating.’ (Cic. *Pis.* 3)

## 3.2. The evolution of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin

In Late Latin, taken in this study as the period between the 3rd and the 10th c. AD (see §1.1), the system of non-finite verb forms is considered to be gradually restructured (Elcock 1960: 110-119; Harris 1978: 195-203; Bauer 1993a: 59, 2005). In this restructuring, a central role is held to be played by the evolution of the gerund and the present participle, which is claimed to be triggered by their functional competition with each other and with other types of non-finite verb forms. Roughly speaking, the gerund is argued

<footnote n="3">³ In this thesis, the term ‘state of affairs’ will be used as a cover term for anything that can be denoted by what Dik (1997: 51) calls a ‘nuclear predication’, i.e. a combination of a predicate and its arguments. This is also how this author uses this term in his *The Theory of Functional Grammar* (cf. Dik 1997: 105). States of affairs are semantically diverse, comprising the four well-known ‘situation types’ or ‘actional classes’ distinguished by Vendler (1957): states (e.g. *John is tall*), activities (e.g. *John ran in the park*), accomplishments (e.g. *John built a bridge*), and achievements (e.g. *John left*).</footnote>
to be progressively replaced by the infinitive in nominal external syntax (e.g. in adnominal phrases, as in (1)), so as to – indirectly – specialise in adverbial external syntax (i.e. its use in adjuncts, as in (4/10)).

During the Late Latin period, the gerund is claimed to specialise in this adverbial syntax also in a direct way, namely by gradually replacing the present participle in adjuncts. Corollarily, the present participle becomes completely reliant on its use in adjectival syntactic configurations (e.g. in adnominal phrases, as in (2)). Due to this substitution, the present participle is held to – indirectly – specialise in the external syntax of the adjective.

Noteworthily, the present participle is also considered to be progressively replaced by the gerund in progressive constructions (Aalto 1949: 75; Dietrich 1973: 305, 307; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 380). This is not surprising, given that the use of the gerund and the present participle in this construction is historically derived from their use in (a specific type of) adjuncts. Present participles such as *accusantes* ‘accusing’ (11) are thus held to be gradually substituted by gerunds like *mentiendo* ‘lying’ (12).

(11) *Stabant* etiam principes sacerdotum et scribae constanter stand.PST.3PL for chief.NOM.M.SG priest.GEN.M.PL and scribe.NOM.M.PL constantly *accusa-nt-es* eum.

accuse-PTCP.PRS-NOM.M.PL DEM.ACC.M.SG

‘For the chief priests and scribes were constantly accusing him.’ (Vulg. Luc. 23.9-10)

(12) [...] *contra illos* qui *mentie-nd-o* vadunt [...].

against DEM.ACC.M.PL REL.NOM.M.SG lie-GER-ABL go.PRS.3PL

‘(...) against those who go lying.’ (Carol. capit. 1a.810)

Due to these evolutions, the system of non-finite verb forms is argued to become more isomorphic: the infinitive specialises in nominal external syntax, the gerund in adverbial external syntax, and the present participle in adjectival external syntax.

Though set off in Late Latin, these specialisations are held to be completed only in the transition to Romance (and within the individual Romance languages themselves), in line with the more general trend toward morphosyntactic specialisation in this period (cf. Carlier & Combettes 2015). Note that this evolution is considered to hold for the transition from Late Latin to most Romance languages, but that some modern languages (and/or dialects) present a slightly different outcome for one or more non-finite verb forms (see the various chapters in Ledgeway & Maiden 2016).<fnref n="4" /> An in-depth analysis of the outcome of the gerund and the present participle in the different Romance languages falls outside the

<footnote n="4">⁴ Ledgeway & Maiden’s (2016) book is about the Romance languages (and dialects) in general. Hence, the various contributions contained in it do not deal with the gerund and the present participle in particular. The key information about these two forms in the distinct Romance varieties can nonetheless be found in the various chapters.</footnote>
scope of this dissertation. For reasons of simplicity, I will speak of Romance in general, bearing in mind
that the evolutions in issue do not apply equally to all varieties.

The above-sketched developments summarise the widely accepted hypothesis of the evolution of
the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin and in the transition to (Old) Romance. However, this
hypothesis has not yet been investigated by means of a quantitative corpus study, and hence it remains
unknown to which extent the predicted morphosyntactic shifts are corroborated by empirical evidence.
Indeed, the hypothesis in issue has mainly been formulated on the basis of the following types of data.

(i) Given that the Romance languages develop from different substandard varieties of Late Latin, the evolution of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin and in the transition to Old Romance has been established on the basis of empirical data as representative as possible of so-called ‘Vulgar Latin’, i.e. “the set of all those innovations and trends that turned up in the usage, particularly but not exclusively spoken, of the Latin-speaking population who were little or not at all influenced by school education and by literary models” (Herman 2000: 7; see also Väänänen 1963³: 3-6; Adams 2013: 10). However, the data investigated in this respect are scattered and have almost exclusively been studied from a qualitative point of view (e.g. Lyer 1932 and Adams 2013: 725-740 on adjunct gerunds and present participles). Moreover, most studies focus on the evolution of specific uses of the gerund or the present participle separately (e.g. Lyer 1932 on adjunct bare ablative gerunds), or on the evolution of only one of their competing uses (e.g. Vester 1983: 135-136, Adams 2013: 725-740, and Galdi & Vangaever 2019 on the competition between adjunct bare ablative gerunds and adjunct nominative present participles). However, since the evolution of the gerund and the present participle is held to be part of the much more general restructuring of the system of non-finite verb forms, it cannot be appropriately evaluated without investigating the evolution of the paradigms of the gerund and the present participle as a whole. Given the current absence of studies focusing on the evolution of all forms and uses of the gerund and the present participle, it thus remains an open question to which extent the presumed specialisation of the gerund in adverbial external syntax and of the present participle in adjectival external syntax is backed up by empirical evidence.

(ii) The evolution of the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Romance has furthermore been reconstructed in the light of empirical data taken from (Old) Romance languages. In most of these languages, the gerund can only exhibit adverbial external syntax or be used in a progressive construction, while the present participle can only display adjectival external syntax (Aalto 1949: 73; Elcock 1960: 110-111; Väänänen 1963³: 140-141; see also the various papers in Ledgeway & Maiden 2016). This functional split in (Old) Romance has been analysed as the outcome of ongoing changes in Vulgar Latin, and thus as indirect evidence in favour of the specialisation of the gerund and the present participle in respectively adverbial and adjectival external syntax. Yet, the question
remains to which extent these presumed specialisations manifest themselves in a direct way, viz. in an authentic sample of Late Latin data.

The crucial question emerging from (i-ii) is thus to which extent the traditionally hypothesised evolution of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin is confirmed by quantitatively significant shifts in their external syntax and morphosyntactic categorisation.

### 3.3. The evolution of the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French

This question is all the more pregnant in view of the evolution of the two types of non-finite verb forms from Late Latin to Old French. In this transitional period, the gerund and the present participle are both affected by a series of morphological and phonetic evolutions that ultimately lead to the same form for the two types of non-finite verbs, viz. a form built on the present stem of a verb and having (or at least developing) the invariant ending -ant (e.g. *plorant* ‘crying’ (13)) (Elcock 1960: 112; Ménard 1973: 170; Harris 1978: 200; Arnavielle 1984: 40; Buridant 2000: 237, 2019: 343; Wackernagel & Langslow 2009: 352 fn. 15; De Smet 2014: 39-40; Bazin-Tacchella 2020: 852-854).

(13) *Tristran l' a plor-ant saliée.*

Tristan she.OBJ.F.SG have.PRS.3SG cry-V.ANT greet.PTCP.PST.F.SG
‘Tristan greeted her while crying.’ (Bér. *Tristan* 3777)

Due to this morphological merging of the gerund and the present participle, the category of Old French -ant forms can no longer be established on the basis of morphological grounds (Bazin-Tacchella 2020: 852).<fnref n="5" /> However, from a “retrospective historical approach” (Aspland 1968: 151), two exceptions can be made.

(i) In Late Latin, the gerund, but not the present participle, can be governed by a preposition. Hence, all Old French prepositional -ant forms (e.g. *en fuiant* ‘when flying’ (14)) can in theory be taken as gerunds (Anglade 1958: 217; Ménard 1973: 173-175; Harris 1978: 199; Arnavielle 1984: 38-39; Jensen 1990: 322; De Smet 2014: 39).

(14) *Li leiuns en fui-ant / Sa trace vait*
ART.DEF.SBJ.M.SG lion.SBJ.M.SG in flee-V.ANT his.OBL.F.SG track.OBL.F.SG go.PRS.3SG
*cuvrant [...]*
cover.V.ANT

‘The lion covers his track while fleeing.’ (Ph. de Thaon *Bestiaire* 165-166)

<footnote n="5">⁵ For this and other reasons that will be mentioned *infra*, all Old French -ant forms will be glossed in a categorially neuter way, viz. as V.ANT instead of GER or PTCP.PRS. This choice is in line with one of the main aims of this thesis, namely to explore the categorial status of Old French -ant forms. The forms with the exact ending -ant (e.g. *plorant* ‘crying’ (13)) will not be glossed for case, gender, and number, unlike those with an inflectional variant of this ending (e.g. *ardanz* ‘burning’ (15)).</footnote>
(ii) In Late Latin, the present participle, but not the gerund, agrees with a noun in case, gender, and number. Therefore, all Old French **-ant** forms having an inflectional variant of the ending **-ant** (e.g. **ardanz** 'burning' (15)) can in principle be analysed as present participles (cf. Bazin-Tacchella 2020: 852-853). Note that, in Old French, the invariability of the present participle is still generalising, so that agreeing forms reminiscent of their Latin origin continue to be found, especially in adjectival syntactic configurations.

(15) [...] *S' el vient par aventure / U fus ard-anz*
    if she.SBJ.F.SG come.PRS.3SG by change.OBL.F.SG where fire.SBJ.M.SG burn-V.ANT.SBJ.M.SG
    *serat* [...].
    be.FUT.3SG
    'If by chance it (a beast) comes where there will be a burning fire (...).' (Ph. de Thaon *Bestiaire* 1314-1315)

Additionally, some **-ant** forms can be categorised on the basis of syntactic criteria (cf. Arnavielle 1984: 38). From a retrospective historical approach, forms performing a function accessible to the Late Latin gerund, but inaccessible to the Late Latin present participle, can in theory be taken as gerunds, whereas those having a function accessible to the Late Latin present participle, but inaccessible to the Late Latin gerund, can in principle be seen as present participles. For instance, in Late Latin, the present participle, but not the gerund, can occur in subject predicates. Hence, all Old French subject predicate **-ant** forms (e.g. *mordant* 'biting' (15)) can in theory be categorised as present participles.

(16) [...] *se moz i trouvez ja mis qui*
    if word.OBL.M.PL PRO.LOC find.PRS.2PL ever put.PTCP.PST.M.PL REL.NOM.M.PL
    *samblent mord-ant [...].*
    seem.PRS.3PL bite-V.ANT
    'If you ever find some words written here words that seem offensive (lit. 'biting') (...).' (J. de Meun *Rose* 15168-15169)

However, the Late Latin gerund and present participle also share some uses, namely in adjuncts and in progressive constructions. Hence, Old French bare forms having the exact ending **-ant** and occurring in adjuncts (e.g. *plorant* 'crying' (13)) or progressive constructions (e.g. *cherchant* 'pursuing' (17)) cannot be analysed as either gerunds or present participles with absolute certainty (cf. De Smet 2014: 39).

(17) *Forment alot Romeins cerch-ant [...].*
vigorously go.PST.3SG Roman.OBL.M.PL pursue-V.ANT
'He went vigorously pursuing the Romans.' (Wace *Brut* 12833)

Since morphological and syntactic criteria fail to unambiguously categorise all Old French **-ant** forms as either gerunds or present participles, the boundary between the two categories is at the least to some
extent blurred. Faced with this situation, scholars have dealt with the distinction between the categories
of the gerund and the present participle in Old French in two opposite ways.

Most authors hold that the gerund and the present participle still exist in Old French as two distinct
categories of non-finite verb forms, just like in Late Latin (Gougenheim 1929; Anglade 1958: 215-217;
Väänänen 1963³: 140-141; Ménard 1973: 169-175; Harris 1978: 199-201; Aravielle 1982, 1984: 38,
1997; Jensen 1990: 322-334; Buridant 2000: 324-327, 2019: 461). They claim that the morphological
merging of the two forms in Old French simply causes them to engage in a homonymic relationship. By
contrast, a few scholars argue that the morphological merging of the gerund and present participle causes
them to merge also on a categorial level (Adams 2003: 749; De Smet 2014: 40). This “conflation of the
two categories” (Adams 2003: 749) is considered to lead to a categorial blend, described by De Smet
(2014: 40) as an “all-purpose invariable non-finite form in -ant” that is “in syntactic terms neither a real
gerund nor a real participle”.

The question whether the gerund and the present participle survive in Old French as two distinct
categories or merge instead in a categorial blend should not be addressed from a purely theoretical point
of view. Indeed, this issue needs to be tackled on the basis of a quantitative corpus-based study, in the
first place to measure the precise degree of categorial (in)determinacy of the Old French -ant form. Such
a study could betoken whether the categorial indeterminacy of this form is a minor or major grammatical
problem, i.e. whether it holds for a small or large number of instances. In the light of this result, the two
hypotheses about the categorial distinction between the gerund and the present participle in Old French
could be evaluated appropriately. However, quantitative studies of the Old French -ant form focusing
on its categorial status are currently lacking. Hence, this area of research is to a large extent unexplored.

As mentioned in §2 above, the aim of this thesis is to empirically investigate the evolution of the
gerund and the present participle in Late Latin, and to examine the exact impact of their morphological
merging in Old French on their categorial distinction. However, this dissertation does not only intend to
contribute to the disciplines of (historical) Latin and French linguistics, but also to (historical) linguistics
in general, and in particular to the study of categoriality.

4. The study of categoriality

In (historical) linguistics, the concept of categoriality has been investigated quite extensively, especially
in the framework of Grammaticalisation Theory (e.g. Meillet 1912; Lehmann 1982³, 1985, 2002, 2005;
Heine et al. 1991; Hopper 1991; Heine 1993; Hopper & Thompson 1993²; Croft 2001; Haspelmath
2001; Wischer & Diewald 2002; Hengeveld et al. 2004; Himmelmann 2004, 2005; Traugott 2010).
However, the study of categoriality extends far beyond the domain of grammaticalisation, both in
synchronic and diachronic linguistics. For instance, Aarts (2007) provides a state-of-the-art discussion of morphosyntactic categorisation in Modern English, while many authors deal with diachronic shifts in the internal syntactic categorisation of the English gerund (e.g. Jespersen 1949: 108-150; Tajima 1985; Fanego 2004; for an exhaustive list of references, see Fonteyn 2016: 14). In this dissertation, the notion of categoriality will be examined on two different levels.

(i) With respect to Late Latin, I will investigate to which extent the gerund and the present participle specialise in respectively adverbial and adjectival external syntax. The type of categoriality studied here focuses on the syntactic use of the forms in issue, and aims to establish to which extent shifts in the frequency of these uses lead to shifts on the level of their morphosyntactic categorisation (cf. Himmelmann 2004: 33). From a typological point of view, non-finite verb forms usually show the external syntax of a noun, adjective, or adverb. Hence, a distinction is often made between nominal, adjectival, and adverbial forms of the verb (see, e.g., Haspelmath 1995: 4; Nedjalkov 1998: 421-422; Ylikoski 2003: 228). The quantitative corpus study of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin will allow identifying to which extent these forms develop into respectively an adverbial and an adjectival form of the verb. Thus, the study of categoriality pertaining to the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin boils down to a study of the morphosyntactic categorisation of two morphologically and categorially distinct types of non-finite verb forms.

(ii) As to Old French, I will seek to determine the impact of the morphological merging of the gerund and the present participle on their categorial distinction. The type of categoriality examined in this connection pertains to the validity of the categories of the gerund and the present participle as two distinct grammatical categories. Put differently, it seeks to explore to which extent the Old French *-ant* forms continue the categories of the gerund and the present participle, forged in the first place to describe two paradigms of non-finite verbs in Latin.

From a theoretical point of view, the main interest of this thesis lies in the assessment of the categorial indeterminacy of the Old French *-ant* form. As mentioned in §3.3, most scholars claim that the gerund and the present participle continue to exist in Old French as two distinct categories of non-finite verbs, while only a few authors defend the hypothesis of categorial merging. Noteworthily, the first group of scholars comprises practically all experts of historical French linguistics (Gougenheim 1929; Anglade 1958: 215-217; Ménard 1973: 169-175; Harris 1978: 199-201; Arnavielle 1982, 1984: 38, 1997; Jensen 1990: 322-334; Buridant 2000: 324-327, 2019: 461), while the second hypothesis has almost exclusively (at least most explicitly) been proposed from outside this research area, i.c. by the Latinist Adams (2003: 749) and the Anglicist De Smet (2014: 40). More recently, however, Bazin-Tacchella (2020: 852) leaves an opening for the hypothesis of categorial merging from within the field of historical French linguistics, though the absence of an explicit claim about the categorial status of the Old French *-ant* form calls for some vigilance in the evaluation of this author's contribution to the debate at stake.
The fact that the hypothesis of categorial merging has been put forward from outside the field of French (historical) linguistics and that most experts within this field of French (historical) linguistics continue regarding the gerund and the present participle as distinct categories of non-finite verb forms is highly relevant within the much more general debate about the status of linguistic categories. In this debate, two opposite positions can be distinguished.

(i) According to some authors, there exists a set of universally available categories from which each language makes a selection (e.g. Chomsky 1965: §1.5; Newmeyer 2007). Given that they are drawn from the same set, the categories selected by two or more languages are considered equivalent in each of the languages concerned, and hence the same labels are used in descriptive linguistics, on the one hand, and comparative/typological linguistics, on the other (cf. Haspelmath 2010: 663). For instance, Maling (2001) conceives of the dative case in Korean as the same category as the Icelandic dative case. In a similar vein, Aikhenvald (2004b) treats the adjective in Tariana on a par with the Russian adjective, and Kroeger (1993) does the same for the subject in Tagalog and English (see also Haspelmath 2010: 667). Some linguistic categories are even held to be universally instantiated, i.e. realised in all languages of the world. This claim has been made, e.g., for some morphosyntactic categories, such as the noun (cf. Baker 2003), the verb (cf. Baker 2003), and the adjective (cf. Dixon 2004). This view on linguistic categories is referred to as the “categorial universalism” (Haspelmath 2010: 663-664 *passim*), and is adopted in most formalist theories of language, such as Generative Grammar (Chomsky 1965: §1.5). Nonetheless, it has also been adopted by functionally oriented linguists, like Payne (1997), Corbett (2000), Van Valin (2005), and Dixon (2010) (for more details, see Haspelmath 2010: 664, 667).

(ii) The second group of authors rejects the idea of linguistic categories as cross-linguistic entities (e.g. Joos 1957; Dryer 1997; Croft 2000, 2001; Gil 2001; Lazard 2006; Haspelmath 2007, 2010, 2012, 2016; Cristofaro 2009; Lehmann 2018a: 28). They argue, on the contrary, that linguistic categories are language-specific, in the sense that “[E]ach language has its own categories” (Haspelmath 2010: 664). Hence, languages cannot be described on the basis of a predefined set of universally available categories (Haspelmath 2010: 664). They hold that categories may be similar across languages, but can in no case be equated with one another, since the formal and/or functional “criteria for category assignment are different from language to language” (Haspelmath 2010: 663). Compare the definite article in Romanian and French: in Romanian, it is a bound enclitic morpheme (e.g. *-ul* (18)), while in French, it corresponds to a free proclitic morpheme (e.g. *l’* (19)) (Vincent 2017).

<footnote>(18) *Om-ul* *cântă*.
man-ART.DEF sing.PRS.3SG
‘The man is singing.’</footnote>
(19) L' *homme chante*.
ART.DEF.M.SG man.M.SG sing.PRS.3SG
'The man is singing.'

This second view on linguistic categories goes back to the 20th c. structuralism (e.g. Boas 1911; Joos
1957), and is generally referred to as the “categorial particularism” (Haspelmath 2010: 664). For reasons
that will not be further examined here, the particularist view of linguistic categories is unquestionably
the most convincing.

The categorial particularism implies that languages cannot be described in terms of the linguistic categories that have been created for the description of other languages, since this leads to grammatical bias and controversial category assignments (Boas 1911; Haspelmath 2010: 664, 669). Nevertheless, the categorial particularism has been violated for quite some time, especially under the pervasive influence of the grammatical tradition of Ancient Greek and Latin (Haspelmath 2010: 664, 667, 675). Of particular interest for this this thesis is Guiraud’s (1963: 117) claim that the grammar of Old French has long been forced in the grammatical framework of Latin (see also Aspland 1968: 151-152). This raises the question whether the continued use of the labels ‘gerund’ and ‘present participle’ by most scholars from within the field of (historical) French linguistics to describe Old French *-ant* forms is to be seen as a violation of the categorial particularism, i.e. as an artificial imposition on the Old French *-ant* forms under the influence of the grammatical tradition of Latin, or whether it reflects, on the contrary, a linguistic reality. This issue will also be tackled on the basis of the empirical investigation carried out in this thesis.

5. Empirical basis

The research questions of this thesis will be investigated on the basis of large size of data taken from a
vast and varied corpus of Late Latin and Old French texts. The corpus that will be explored has been
elaborated in the context of the ANR/DFG project PaLaFra ("*Passage du latin au français: constitution
et analyse d'un corpus numérique latino-français*").<fnref n="6" /> This is the first large-scale international project
aiming to explore the linguistic and conceptual "no man's land" (Herman 2006: 184) between Late Latin
and Old French. Within the context of this project has been elaborated a digital and morphosyntactically
annotated corpus of Late Latin and Old French texts showing language use as representative as possible
of the language spoken in Gaul between Late Antiquity and the Early and High Middle Ages. Since this
corpus is the first to gather a quantitatively significant and diverse sample of Late Latin and Old French

<footnote n="6">⁶ The website of the PaLaFra project can be consulted at http://palafra.org (ANR-14-FRAL-0006). This thesis has been carried out within the context of this project, from which it also received a substantial part of its funding (October 2015-August 2018). The link between this thesis and the PaLaFra project will be specified in Chapter 3 (§3.2), along with other relevant background information about the PaLaFra project (and corpus).</footnote>
texts, it provides an unprecedented empirical base allowing to tackle the topic of this dissertation in the best possible way.

It should be emphasised from the very beginning of this thesis that, though the corpus compiled within the context of the PaLaFra project is – in comparison with the existing corpora – large and varied, it is well known that, from a sociolinguistic point of view, there is a significant gap between written and spoken language (cf. Herman 2006: 186). Most crucially, language change typically emerges in spoken language, and reaches the written language only in a later stage due to its more conservative character. Hence, the language observable in the (written) texts of the PaLaFra corpus might not faithfully reflect the ongoing changes in the spoken language. However, since there exist no records of spoken language from this period, there is no empirical evidence to examine the evolution of the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French (or of the language of this period in general) in a more precise way.

## 6. Grammatical traditions and terminology

A major challenge of this thesis is to provide a grammatically speaking coherent and unified account of the evolution of the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French. This is less evident than could be expected, since the evolution in issue corresponds to an evolution from a mother language to a daughter language. Despite being historically related, these languages have usually been examined by two distinct research communities: historical Latin linguistics and historical French linguistics. These communities have their own linguistic traditions, and, incidentally, their own terminology and analyses – which are sometimes in conflict. Therefore, the bridging of the linguistic gap between Late Latin and Old French also entails bridging the institutional gap between (historical) Latin and French linguistics. In order to bridge this gap, I will use in this thesis a neuter metalinguistic apparatus, based in particular on typological research about non-finite verb forms (e.g. Haspelmath 1995; Nedjalkov 1998; Ylikoski 2003). For the sake of clarity, however, traditional Latin and French terminology will be mentioned wherever necessary. The terminology used in this thesis is also theoretically neuter, in line with the more general aim of this study to be accessible to a large public. For this reason, the evolution of the gerund and the present participle will also not be examined within a specific theoretical framework (also because no such framework has an outspoken added value to the study of the evolution in issue). These choices are similar to those made in the manual to be published within the context of the PaLaFra project (Bridging the Gap between Late Latin and Early Old French: Empirical Investigations of (Morpho)Syntactic Changes, edited by Carlier et al.), to which this thesis makes a contributions (see Chapter 3, §3.2).
7. Outline

The evolution of the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French will be examined
in two steps. First, I will explore how this evolution has been dealt with in the existing literature (Part
1), and then I will empirically examine it in a large corpus of Late Latin and Old French texts (Part 2).

**Part 1** will be subdivided into two chapters. **Chapter 1** explores the morphological and syntactic
properties of the gerund and the present participle in Classical Latin, while **Chapter 2** investigates the
evolution of the two types of non-finite verb forms in Late Latin and in the transition from Late Latin to
Old French. Although it focuses on the period of Latin before that at the center of thesis, the first chapter
about the gerund and the present participle in Classical Latin is the indispensable starting point for the
study of their evolution in Late Latin and from Late Latin to Old French. At least three reasons can be
put forward.

(i) The forms and uses of the gerund and the present participle have been quite extensively described for Classical Latin, not only in traditional grammars (e.g. Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965; Menge et al. 2000) and the recent two-volume *Oxford Latin Syntax* of Pinkster (2015, 2021), but also in specialised studies of the gerund and the present participle (e.g. Aalto 1949 and Risch 1984 for the gerund; Marouzeau 1910 and Laughton 1964 for the present participle). On the contrary, the evolution of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin has been discussed in much less detail. As mentioned in §3.2, the current knowledge of this evolution is based on scattered empirical data focusing on specific forms and/or uses of the gerund and the present participle, on the one hand, and on empirical data taken from Romance languages and analysed retrospectively for Late Latin, on the other. A comprehensive quantitative corpus-based study of the various uses and forms of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin is currently lacking. Hence, it is not surprising that not all of these forms and uses in Late Latin have been properly exemplified and discussed (cf. Chapter 2 and the empirical part). For this reason, it is recommendable to explore the well-documented morphological and syntactic properties of the gerund and the present participle in Classical Latin and to exemplify their various forms and uses at this stage of the language before turning to their less documented evolution in Late Latin.

(ii) In addition to the practical factor in (i), the inclusion of Classical Latin widens the diachronic span of this study. In this way, the evolution of the gerund and the present participle can be evaluated on a larger scale, so as to gain a more complete insight into its long-term dynamics and driving forces. This widening of the diachronic span in this thesis is also in line with the fact that language change is a slow and gradual process (cf. de Saussure 1916; Hopper 1987; Labov 1994, 2001; Croft 2000). As we will see, the main changes of the gerund and the present participle take place in Late Latin and in the transition to Old French, but clear traces of them can be found already in Classical Latin,
especially in Vulgar Latin. So as to fully seize the evolution of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin, it is therefore worthwhile to look at their morphological and syntactic properties at this earlier stage of the language.

(iii) Finally, studies focusing on Late Latin or on the transition from Late Latin to (Old) Romance almost systematically include a comparison with Classical Latin. Thus, the approach adopted in this thesis follows the traditional *modus operandi* in diachronic research of Latin.

After having explored the formal and functional properties of the gerund and the present participle in Classical Latin (Chapter 1), I will examine their evolution from Late Latin to Old French (Chapter 2), still on the basis of the existing literature.

**Part 2** is devoted to the empirical investigation of the gerund and the present participle from Late Latin to Old French. This part is subdivided in four chapters. **Chapter 3** presents the corpus and dataset of this thesis, and expounds the methodology that will be used. The two following chapters are dedicated to the empirical analysis of the evolution of the gerund (**Chapter 4**) and the present participle (**Chapter 5**) in Late Latin. The final chapter empirically examines the categorial status of the *-ant* form in Old French (**Chapter 6**). In accord with the focus of this dissertation, Chapters 4 and 5 seek to explore to which extent the traditionally hypothesised specialisation of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin in respectively adverbial and adjectival external syntax is backed up by empirical data, while Chapter 6 aims to examine on the basis of these results the impact of the morphological merging of the gerund and the present participle in Old French on their categorial distinction.

The **Conclusion** discusses the main findings of the empirical investigation with reference to the previous research and provides directions for future research.
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>
# Part I. State of the art
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>
# Chapter 1. The gerund and the present participle in Classical Latin

## 1.1. Introduction

### 1.1.1. Preliminary description of the gerund and the present participle

In the grammatical tradition of Classical Latin, the labels ‘gerund’ and ‘present participle’ are used to refer to two distinct types of non-finite verb forms.<fnref n="1" /> The gerund is built on the present stem of a verb, and further contains the inflectional infix -nd- and one of the endings of the second declension neuter nouns (Meiser 1998²: 228; Menge *et al.* 2000: 726-727; Pinkster 2015: 58). It occurs in different types of phrases, among which adnominal phrases and adjuncts are most frequent (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 737-755; Aalto 1949: Ch. 4; Palmer 1964: 320-324; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 374-380; Menge *et al.* 2000: 736-744; Pinkster 2015: 58). The forms *fugiendi* ‘to escape’ (1) and *quaeritando* ‘from searching’ (2) illustrate respectively an adnominal and an adjunct gerund.

(1) [...] *fugie-nd-i* si *data* est occasio [...].
escape-GER-GEN if give.PTCP.PST.NOM.M.F.SG be.PRS.3SG chance.NOM.F.SG
‘If a chance to escape is given (...).’ (Plaut. *Capt.* 117)

(2) [...] *sum* *defessus* *quaerita-nd-o* [...].
be.PRS.1SG tired.NOM.M.SG search-GER-ABL
‘I am tired from searching.’ (Plaut. *Amph.* 1014)

Like the gerund, the present participle is built on the present stem of a verb, but to this stem is attached different inflectional morphology: the infix -nt- and one of the endings of the third declension adjectives (Marouzeau 1910: 2-4; Eklund 1970: 12; Meiser 1998²: 226; Pinkster 2015: 60). The present participle is also used in various types of phrases, the most frequent ones being the same as those mentioned for the gerund (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 763-792; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 273-275, 280-285; Laughton 1964; Palmer 1964: 325-326; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 386-390; Menge *et al.* 2000: 713-724; Pinkster 2015: 60-61). *Occidentem* ‘setting’ (3) and *flentes* ‘crying’ (4) exemplify respectively an adnominal and an adjunct present participle.

<footnote n="1">¹ Authors often adopt different periodisations of Latin (Pinkster 2015: 5). The most authoritative one is proposed by Haverling (1988: 20-23), and also used in, e.g., Cuzzolin & Haverling (2009) and Pinkster (2015, 2021). This periodisation distinguishes four periods: Early Latin (240 BC – 90 BC), Classical Latin (90 BC – 14 AD), Silver Latin (14 AD – 200 AD), and Late Latin (200 AD – 600 AD). Since the aim of this study is to investigate the evolution of the gerund and the present from Late Latin to Old French, the distinction between the three periods before Late Latin is less relevant, all the more because the use of the two types of non-finite verb forms is relatively homogenous in these periods. Therefore, these periods will be jointly referred to by the term ‘Classical Latin’, which thus covers the period between 240 BC and 200 AD. A similar approach is taken by Banniard (2019: 29), who is also concerned with the transition from Late Latin to Old French. Evolutions of the gerund and the present participle between 240 BC and 200 AD will of course be pointed out where appropriate.</footnote>
(3) *Alterum* *vergit* *ad Hispaniam* *atque occide-nt-em* *solem.*
*other.NOM.N.SG lie.PRS.3SG to Spain.ACC.F.SG and set-PTCP.PRS-ACC.M.SG sun.ACC.M.SG*
*‘The other (side) lies towards Spain and the West (lit. ‘the setting sun’).’ (Caes. *Gall.* 5.13.2)*

(4) [...] *fle-nt-es* *Caesari* *ad pedes* *proiecerunt* [...]
cry-PTCP.PRS-NOM.M.PL Caesar.DAT.M.SG to foot.ACC.M.PL throw.PST.3PL
‘They threw (themselves) at the feet of Caesar while crying.’ (Caes. *Gall.* 1.31.2)

The gerund and the present participle are part of a rich system of non-finite verb forms, including seven more types: the past participle, the future participle, the present infinitive, the past infinitive, the future infinitive, the gerundive, and the supine (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 662-792; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255-287; Palmer 1964: 317-327; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 341-395; Scherer 1975: 82-96; Menge *et al.* 2000: 661-751; Pinkster 2015: 57-64). As we will see throughout this study, the gerund and the present participle interact with several of these forms, and these interactions are of crucial interest for their evolution from Late Latin to Old French (or Romance, for that matter). Therefore, it is necessary to have a brief look at the other types of non-finite verb forms, which is the topic of the following section.

1.1.2. The system of non-finite verb forms

Depending on their morphological and syntactic properties, the non-finite verb forms of Classical Latin are usually divided in a group of ‘verbal nouns’ or ‘nominal/substantival forms of the verb’ and a group of ‘verbal adjectives’ or ‘adjectival forms of the verb’: the first group includes the gerund, the supine, and the three types of infinitives, while the second group comprises the gerundive and the three types of participles (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 662-792; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255-287; Palmer 1964: 317-327; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 341-395; Scherer 1975: 82-96; Menge *et al.* 2000: 661-751). Pinkster (2015: 57-64) maintains the distinction between nominal and adjectival forms, but separates the supine from the former. He argues that, though nominal from a historical point of view, the supine lacks typical nominal properties in Classical Latin, such as, for instance, the ability to be modified by an adjective or determiner. In what follows, I will give a brief description of the non-finite verb forms other than the gerund and the present participle. This overview is not exhaustive, but sufficient to determine the position of the gerund and the present participle within the Classical Latin system of non-finite verb forms.

The supine is built on the past stem of a verb and further contains the accusative or ablative ending of the fourth declension nouns, *viz.* respectively -um or -u (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 721; Hofmann
& Szantyr 1965: 380-382; Meiser 1998²: 225; Pinkster 2015: 64).<fnref n="2" /> The accusative supine mostly occurs in adjuncts expressing the purpose of a transfer or movement, such as *irrisum dominum* ‘to mock your master’ (5). As for the ablative supine, it usually depends on an adjective, like *factu* ‘to do’ (6) (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 721-724; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 261-262; Palmer 1964: 324-325; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 380-382; Scherer 1975: 88-89; Pinkster 2021: §16.112-§16.113).

(5) [...] *nunc venis* [...] *irris-um* *dominum*.

now come.PRS.2SG mock-SUP.ACC master.ACC.M.SG

‘Now you come to mock your master.’ (Plaut. *Amph*. 587)

(6) *Bonam* *atque iustam* *rem* *oppido* *imperas* *et fact-u*

good.ACC.F.SG and fair.ACC.F.SG thing.ACC.F.SG city.DAT.N.SG order.PRS.2SG and do-SUP.ABL

facilem.

easy.ACC.F.SG

‘You order something good and fair for the city and easy to carry out.’ (Ter. *Haut*. 704)

Regarding the present, past, and future infinitives, they each have an active and a passive form (Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255; Scherer 1975: 82; Meiser 1998²: 225; Pinkster 2015: 57).<fnref n="3" /> The present infinitives, both active and passive, and the past active infinitive are morphologically simple, while the past passive infinitive and the future infinitives, both active and passive, are complex: (i) the future active infinitive is contains a future participle and the present active infinitive *esse* ‘to be’; (ii) the future passive infinitive comprises an accusative supine and the present passive infinitive of the verb *ire* ‘to go’, *viz. iri*; and (iii) the past passive infinitive is composed of a past participle and the present active infinitive *esse* ‘to be’ (Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255; Meiser 1998²: 225; Pinkster 2015: 57). The morphologically simple infinitives and the future passive infinitive are invariable, while the participles included in the future active infinitive and the past passive infinitive are inflected for case, gender, and number through agreement with a noun (Pinkster 2015: 57). The morphology of the infinitive is illustrated for the verb *cantare* ‘to sing’ in Table 1.1.

<table><caption>**Table 1.1.** Morphology of the infinitive in Classical Latin (illustrated for the verb *cantare* ‘to sing’)</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Active</th><th>Passive</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Present</th><td><i>cantare</i> ‘to sing’</td><td><i>cantari</i> ‘to be sung’</td></tr><tr><th>Past</th><td><i>cantavisse</i> ‘to have sung’</td><td><i>cantatus esse</i> ‘to have been sung’</td></tr><tr><th>Future</th><td><i>cantaturus esse</i> ‘to be going to sing’</td><td><i>cantatum iri</i> ‘to be going to be sung’</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote n="2">² The accusative and the ablative supines are also known as respectively the first and the second supines (Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 380-383; Pinkster 2015: 64, 2021: §16.112-§16.113). Some authors analyse the second supine as a dative instead of an ablative (Elcock 1960: 110; Sihler 1995: 613; Meiser 1998²: 225; Fruyt 2019: 197), while others take some instances as datives, but others as ablatives (Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255, 261; Palmer 1964: 280, 325; Scherer 1975: 89; Wackernagel & Langslow 2009: 350-351). This debate is of little interest here.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Except for infinitives built on deponent verbs (Pinkster 2015: 57). As is well known, deponent verbs are morphologically passive, but semantically active (Pinkster 2015: 54). Hence, they can build only three infinitive forms: a passive present, a passive past, and a passive future form (Pinkster 2015: 54, 57).</footnote>
From a syntactic viewpoint, the infinitive can occur in different types of phrases (or clauses). However, its dominant use in verb complements (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 664-721; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255-258; Palmer 1964: 319-320; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 341-374; Pinkster 2015: 57-58, 2021: §15.91-§15.131). For instance, *invidere* ‘to be jealous’ (7) functions as the subject of the verb *cadit* ‘it befalls’, and *vereri* ‘to have shame’ (8) as the direct object of *perdidit* ‘he lost’. As for *loqui* ‘to speak’ (9), it is part of an accusative and infinitive construction, which serves as the direct object of the modal verb *volo* ‘I wish’.

(7) *Non cadit autem invid-ere in sapientem.*
NEG befall.PRS.3SG but be_jealous-INF.PRS to be_wise.PTCP.PRS.ACC.M.SG
‘But to be jealous does not befall the wise man.’ (Cic. *Tusc.* 3.21)

(8) *Hic ver-eri perdidit.*
DEM.NOM.M.SG have_respect-INF.PRS lose.PST.3SG
‘He lost his sense of shame (lit. ‘(the ability) to have respect’).’ (Plaut. *Bacch.* 158)

(9) *Vera volo loqui-Ø te [...].*
true.ACC.N.PL wish.PRS.1SG tell-INF.PRS you.ACC.M.SG
‘I wish that you tell the truth.’ (Plaut. *Amph.* 751)

Turning to the past and future participles, they are built on the same verb stem and both have one of the inflectional endings of the first or second declension adjectives (Meiser 1998²: 226-228; Pinkster 2015: 60). This ending is directly attached to the verb stem in the case of the past participle, while in the case of the future participle it is related to it through the infix -ur-. The present and future participles lack a passive form, while the past participle does not exist in the active. Hence, the paradigm of the participle is defective (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 762; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 273; Menge *et al.* 2000: 708-711; Haug 2012: 292; Pinkster 2015: 60). This paradigm is illustrated for the nominative masculine singular forms of the verb *cantare* ‘to sing’ in Table 1.2.

<table><caption>**Table 1.2.** Paradigm of the participle in Classical Latin (illustrated for the nominative singular forms of the verb *cantare* ‘to sing’)</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Active</th><th>Passive</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Present</th><td><i>cantans</i> ‘singing’</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><th>Past</th><td>-</td><td><i>cantatus</i> ‘having been sung’</td></tr><tr><th>Future</th><td><i>cantaturus</i> ‘going to sing’</td><td>-</td></tr></tbody></table>

Like their present counterparts, the past and future participles can be used in various ways, e.g. in adnominal phrases and adjuncts (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 763-780; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 276-280; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 390-393; Scherer 1975: 95-96; Menge *et al.* 2000: 713-720; Pinkster 2015: 60-61). These uses are illustrated for the present participle in respectively (3) and (4), and will therefore not be exemplified for the past and future participles.
The final type of non-finite verb forms is the gerundive. This form is built on the present stem of a verb, and further contains the inflectional infix -nd- and one of the endings of the first or second declension adjectives (Meiser 1998²: 228; Menge et al. 2000: 727; Pinkster 2015: 62). It shares the infix -nd- with the gerund. This morphological similarity has usually been explained from a historical perspective (Menge et al. 2000: 727). It is argued that the two forms are not equally old, but that the gerund is older and the source of the gerundive (Ribezzo 1926: 77; Aalto 1949: 24-32, 119-134; Scherer 1975: 91-92; Stempel 1994; Jasanoff 2006; Kircher-Durand 2008; Pinkster 2015: 64), or *vice versa* (Weisweiler 1890: 89; Bayard 1902: 27; Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 727-728; Weerenbeck 1927: 225, 250; Risch 1984: 159-163; Meiser 1998²: 228).<fnref n="4" /> While the historical relation between the gerund and the gerundive is subject to debate, their synchronic status as two distinct types of non-finite verb forms is uncontroversial (Menge et al. 2000: 727).

The gerundive typically has a passive and deontic value, and can be used in a personal or impersonal structure (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 728-734; Aalto 1949: 99-115; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 273, 285; Palmer 1964: 321; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 369-374; Risch 1984: 28-50; Menge et al. 2000: 727, 730-736; Pinkster 2015: 62-63, 288-300).<fnref n="5" /> The impersonal gerundive has the invariable ending -ndum, and forms a passive and deontic verbal periphrasis with the auxiliary esse 'to be'. The agent of this periphrasis, if expressed, is mostly coded by a dative NP (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 729; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 286; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 369-370; Scherer 1975: 90-91; Risch 1984: 43; Pinkster 2015: 62, 296-297).<fnref n="6" /> An example of this impersonal gerundive construction is *moderandum est mihi* 'I have to control' (10).

(10) *Linguae modera-nd-um est mihi.*
tongue.DAT.F.SG control-GERV-NOM.N.SG be.PRS.3SG I.DAT.M.SG

'I have to control my tongue (lit. 'my tongue is to be controlled by me').' (Plaut. *Curc.* 486)

<footnote n="4">⁴ The most authoritative defendants of these hypotheses are respectively Aalto (1949: 24-32, 119-134) and Risch (1984: 159-163), who discuss the main arguments in this debate. Most scholars nonetheless give historical priority to the gerund. The idea that the gerund and the gerundive have a common origin is nowadays widely accepted, but this has not always been the case. Some authors ascribe them a distinct origin and consider their morphological similarities accidental (Ruddimann 1823 (II): 307; Corssen 1863: 134). For details, see Aalto (1949: 24-25).</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ Since it mostly has a passive and deontic value, the gerundive has often been described as a future passive participle (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 727-728; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 273; Palmer 1964: 321; Pinkster 2015: 62), filling one of the gaps in the paradigm of the participle (see Table 1.2). However, the passive and/or deontic value of the gerundive is sometimes subtle or even absent (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 728; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 370-371; Pinkster 2015: 288-300 provides a detailed discussion). Its deontic value (the so-called 'notio necessitatis') is most apparent when it forms a verbal periphrasis with the auxiliary esse 'to be' (Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 371; Menge et al. 2000: 730-734; Pinkster 2015: 298; see the running text). In contrast with the gerundive, the gerund mostly has an active value. However, like the passive value of the gerundive, the active value of the gerund is a tendency rather than a rule (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 728-729; Scherer 1975: 90; Menge et al. 2000: 729-730; Pinkster 2015: 286-288).</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ A few authors analyse such -ndum forms as nominative gerunds serving as the subject of the verb esse 'to be' (Hahn 1943; Aalto 1949: 92-98; Flobert 1975: 466). I will return to this issue in §1.2.1. In some cases, the agent of the impersonal gerundive is marked in the prepositional ablative, the preposition being *a(b)* 'by' (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 730-731; Scherer 1975: 90-91; Menge et al. 2000: 734; Pinkster 2015: 297).</footnote>
As opposed to the impersonal gerundive, the personal gerundive agrees with a noun in case, gender, and number (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 729-734; Aalto 1949: 99-115; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 371-372; Risch 1984: 28-50; Menge *et al.* 2000: 730-735; Pinkster 2015: 62-63). It also has various uses. For instance, *contemnenda* ‘to be despised’ (11) occurs in an adnominal phrase, while *legendus* ‘to be read’ (12) forms a passive and deontic verbal periphrasis with the auxiliary *erit* ‘he will be’ (the agent of this periphrasis is expressed by the dative pronoun *vobis* ‘you’).

(11) *Et Hasdrubalem propediem adfore cum manu and Hasdrubal.ACC.M.SG soon arrive.INF.FUT with company.ABL.F.SG haudquaquam contemne-nd-a. by_nomeans despise-GERV-ABL.F.SG* ‘And (they said that) Hasdrubal would soon arrive with a company that should by no means be despised.’ (Liv. 30.7.10)

(12) *Idem nunc vobis Naso lege-nd-us erit. same.NOM.M.SG now you.DAT.M.PL Naso.NOM.M.SG read-GERV-NOM.M.SG be.FUT.3SG* ‘You should read the same Naso now (lit. ‘the same Naso should now be read by you’).’ (Ov. *rem*. 72)

In Classical Latin, the system of non-finite verb forms is relatively tightly organised, since each type of non-finite verb forms is specialised in different functional domains (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 662-792; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255-287; Palmer 1964: 317-327; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 341-395; Menge *et al.* 2000: 661-751; Pinkster 2015: 57-64). For example, within the group of the nominal forms of the verb, taken here as including the supine, the infinitive typically occurs in verb complements, the gerund in adnominal phrases and manner/instrumental/causal adjuncts, and the supine in purpose adjuncts and adjective complements. However, this division of labour is a tendency rather than a rule, since several forms compete with each other in one or more functional domain(s) (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 662-792; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255-287; Palmer 1964: 317-327; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 341-395; Menge *et al.* 2000: 661-751; Pinkster 2021: Ch. 15-17, 21). For instance, the infinitive sometimes competes with the gerund in adnominal phrases (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 742-744; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 269; Palmer 1964: 320; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 350-351, 376; Menge *et al.* 2000: 746; Pinkster 2021: §17.13, §17.15), and the gerund and the infinitive both compete with the supine in purpose adjuncts, at least when the main verb expresses a transfer or movement (Ernout & Thomas 1951: 260-262; Väänänen 1963³: 139; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 344-345, 378, 381; Stempel 1994: 236; Pinkster 2021: §16.86, §16.103, §16.112).

Functional competition is not only an integral part of the system of non-finite verb forms in Classical Latin, it is also the driving force behind the evolution of the gerund and the present participle in Late Latin and in the transition from Late Latin to Old French (or Romance in general). Therefore, it merits a more detailed discussion, which will be provided in the following section.
1.1.3. Functional competition

In linguistics, the concept of functional competition is a commonly used metaphor to refer to “the selection struggle among alternative forms at language production” (Fonteyn 2019: 53; see also Berg 2014; Fonteyn 2016: 31-32; De Smet et al. 2018: 198). The strength of this struggle depends on the degree of formal and functional similarity between the alternative forms: the higher is their degree of formal or functional similarity, the stronger is their competition (Fay & Cutler 1977; Berg 2014: 344). Competition has been shown to be strongest when the alternative forms show both formal and functional similarities (Shallice & McGill 1978; Berg 2014: 344; see also Fonteyn 2016: 31).

When two or more forms engage in competition over some functional domain, two main scenarios can be distinguished (Traugott & Trousdale 2013: 18; Fonteyn 2016: 32, 2019: 53; De Smet et al. 2018: 198). Either one of the alternatives is favoured and causes its competitor(s) to decline or even disappear (Leech et al. 2009), or each of the alternative forms subsists, but specialises in different functional domains or ‘niches’ (Torres Cacoullos & Walker 2009). The outcomes of these scenarios, referred to by De Smet et al. (2018: 198) as respectively ‘substitution’ and ‘differentiation’, have a similar effect on the language system: they increase its degree of isomorphism (Bates & MacWhinney 1982; Mondorf 2011: 397; Degand & Fagard 2012: 154; Fonteyn 2016: 32, 2019: 53; Nuyts & Byloo 2015: 34; De Smet et al. 2018: 198-199). Isomorphism can be described as the situation in which there is a functionally motivated division of labour between the forms of a given language system, in line with the more general principle that “a difference in syntactic form always spells out a difference in meaning” (Bolinger 1968: 127; see also Bolinger 1977; Haiman 1980; Dixon 1984; Givón 1985; Wierzbicka 1985; Goldberg 1995, 2006; Croft 2001; Fertig 2013). Languages are often held to naturally evolve toward an increasing degree of isomorphism, ideally providing their users with one form for one function or functional domain (Bolinger 1977; Haiman 1980; Wierzbicka 1988). Hence, the concept of competition has come to play an important role in diachronic linguistics (see, e.g., De Smet 2008a, 2008b, 2013; Torres Cacoullos & Walker 2009; Leech et al. 2009; Degand & Fagard 2012; Fonteyn 2016, 2019; De Smet et al. 2018; Fonteyn & Maekelberghe 2018).<fnref n="7" />

In Late Latin and in the transition from Late Latin to Old French (or Romance, for that matter), the system of non-finite verb forms is drastically restructured (Elcock 1960: 110-111; Väänänen 1963: 138-141; Bauer 1993, 2005). In this restructuring, a central role is played by the evolution of the gerund and the present participle. As mentioned earlier, the driving force behind the evolution of these forms is

<footnote n="7">⁷ In diachronic linguistics, it is usually held that competition and isomorphism are strongly correlated: competition is considered to lead to either substitution or differentiation, and thus to an increased degree of isomorphism. However, based on the evolution of the English gerund, De Smet (2008a, 2008b, 2013) argues that functional competition only settles in terms of substitution or differentiation when one of the competing forms has significant advantages over the other. In other words, an increased degree of isomorphism is a frequent, but non-compulsory outcome of functional competition (see also Fonteyn 2016: 31-32, fn. 4).</footnote>
functional competition, in particular those between the gerund and the infinitive (Aalto 1949: 73; Elcock
1960: 110-111; Väänänen 1963³: 139; Bauer 1993, 2005) and between the gerund and the present
participle (Aalto 1949: 73; Elcock 1960: 111; Väänänen 1963³: 140; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 373,
377, 384; Vester 1983: 135-136; Kooreman 1989; Bauer 1993, 2005; Maraldi 1994; Adams 2003: 748-
749, 2013: 725-740; Pinkster 2021: §21.14). Although these competitions are strongest in Late Latin,
there are clear traces of them already in the Classical period, especially in substandard varieties (Kühner
& Stegmann 1914⁵: 663, 742-743; Lyer 1932: 384-389; Aalto 1949: Ch. 4; Väänänen 1963³: 139-140;
Palmer 1964: 320, 324; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 350-351, 374-380, 383; Vester 1983: 101-121;
Adams 2013: 725-726; Galdi & Vangaever 2019: 103-106; Pinkster 2021: §17.13-17.15, §21.14). For
this reason, the description of the gerund and the present participle in Classical Latin is the indispensable
starting point for the study of their evolution in Late Latin and in the transition from Late Latin to Old
French.

1.1.4. Aim of the chapter

The aim of this chapter is to explore the morphological and syntactic properties of the gerund (§1.2) and
the present participle (§1.3) in Classical Latin, and to examine to which extent these forms compete with
each other already at this stage of the language (§1.4). The competition between the gerund and the
infinitive will also be investigated, but since it concerns the present participle only in an indirect way, I
will discuss it in the section dealing with the gerund. Attention will also be paid to the competition of
the gerund and the present participle with the other types of non-finite verb forms (throughout §1.2 and
§1.3).

1.2. The gerund

This section will first explore the morphological (§1.2.1) and syntactic properties (§1.2.2) of the gerund.
On the basis of these properties, I will determine its morphosyntactic (§1.2.3) and typological profiles
(§1.2.4). The morphosyntactic profile of the gerund will be obtained by mapping its morphological and
syntactic properties on the morphosyntactic categories of Classical Latin, while its typological profile
will be established by mapping its morphosyntactic profile on Haspelmath's (1995: 4) typology of non-
finite verb forms. The functional competition between the gerund and the infinitive will be explored in
§1.2.2.2 on the external syntax of the gerund, and synthesised in §1.2.5.
1.2.1. Morphological properties of the gerund

From a morphological perspective, the gerund displays verbal and nominal properties: it is verbal in that
it is built on the present stem of a verb, which ends in -a, -e, or -ie depending on its conjugational class,
and nominal by having one of the endings of the second declension neuter singular nouns (Meiser 1998²:
228; Menge et al. 2000: 726-727; Pinkster 2015: 58). The ending of the gerund is attached to the verb
stem through the inflectional infix -nd-. As mentioned in §1.1.2, the gerund shares this infix with the
gerundive. The gerund is marked for the nominal categories of case, gender, and number, but not for the
verbal categories of person, number, tense, and mood (Pinkster 2015: 50, 58).

Contrary to regular nouns, the gerund lacks a form in the nominative, and thus has a defective
paradigm. To be more precise, it is considered lacking a form in this case by most authors (e.g. Kühner
& Stegmann 1914⁵: 736-755; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 265-268; Palmer 1964: 320-324; Hofmann &
Szantyr 1965: 374-380; Risch 1984: 93-99; Stempel 1994: 236; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737-743; Pinkster
2015: 58, 301-303), while a few authors do recognise the existence of a nominative gerund (e.g. Hahn
1943: 286-290; Aalto 1949: 92-98; Flobert 1975: 466). The question whether the gerund has a form in
the nominative depends on the analysis of forms in -ndum combined with a dative NP and a third person
singular form of the verb *esse* ‘to be’, like *cantandum* ‘singing’ in *cantandum mihi est* ‘I have to sing’.
Most authors analyse these forms as impersonal gerundives forming a passive and deontic verbal
periphrasis with the verb *esse* ‘to be’ (e.g. Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 730; Ernout & Thomas 1951:
286; Palmer 1964: 321; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 369, Risch 1984: 41-43, 186-188; Menge *et al.* 2000:
733-734; Pinkster 2015: 301-303), but some take them as nominative gerunds functioning as the subject
of *esse* ‘to be’ (e.g. Hahn 1943: 286-290; Aalto 1949: 92-98; Flobert 1975: 466). In the former analysis,
the dative NP functions as the agent of the verbal periphrasis, while in the latter it serves as the dative
possessor of the gerund (Pinkster 2015: 301). The existence of a nominative gerund is rejected in the
first analysis, but recognised in the second. Following most authors, I will analyse the -ndum forms
concerned as impersonal gerundives, thus conceiving of the gerund as non-existent in the nominative.<fnref n="8" />

A similar discussion can be observed for the accusative gerund. According to most authors, it is
always governed by a preposition, mostly *ad* ‘to’ (13) (e.g. Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 749; Ernout &
Thomas 1951: 265; Palmer 1964: 322; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 377-378; Scherer 1975: 89; Risch
1984: 96-97; Menge *et al.* 2000: 727, 737-738; Pinkster 2015: 58).<fnref n="9" />

<footnote n="8">⁸ A discussion of the main arguments *pro* and *contra* both hypotheses can be found in, e.g., Hahn (1943: 286-290), Aalto (1949: 92-98), and Pinkster (2015: 301-303). See also Risch (1984: 186-188).</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ Other prepositions attested with an accusative gerund are in ‘to’, *ob* ‘on account of’, *ante* ‘before’, *inter* ‘during’, *propter* ‘because of’, and *circa* ‘regarding’ (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 749-751; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 265; Aalto 1949: 86-88; Palmer 1964: 322; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 377; Scherer 1975: 89-90; Risch 1984: 97; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737). Kühner & Stegmann (1914⁵: 749, 751) also mention *erga* ‘toward’, but the only example provided by them exemplifies a NP containing a personal gerundive instead of a gerund phrase.</footnote>
(13) [...] *omnis sese multitudo ad cognosce-nd-um effudit.*
all.NOM.F.SG REFL.ACC.F.SG crowd.NOM.F.SG to find_out-GER-ACC pour_out.PST.3SG
'The whole crowd poured out to find out (about the ship).' (Caes. *civ.* 2.7.3)

However, a few authors also recognise the existence of a bare accusative gerund (e.g. Aalto 1949: 82-86; Blümel 1979: 86; Bauer 1993: 67). The question whether the gerund exists in the bare accusative depends on the analysis of forms in *-ndum* combined with a direct transitive verb, such as *cantandum* 'singing' in *cantandum censeo* 'I believe that I should sing'. Most authors take these forms as impersonal gerundives forming a passive and deontic verbal periphrasis with an implicit infinitive *esse* 'to be' within an accusative and infinitive construction (e.g. Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 730-731; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 286; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 377-378; Menge *et al.* 2000: 734-736; Pinkster 2015: 303-304), but some authors analyse them as bare accusative gerunds serving as the direct object of the transitive verb (e.g. Aalto 1949: 82-86; Blümel 1979: 86; Bauer 1993: 67). The existence of a bare accusative gerund is rejected in the former analysis, but recognised in the latter. Like most authors, I will take the *-ndum* forms in question as impersonal gerundives, thus considering the gerund non-existent in the bare accusative.<fnref n="10" />

As for the genitive gerund, it is mostly bare, especially in adnominal phrases (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 737-746; Aalto 1949: 58-62; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 267-268; Palmer 1964: 323; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 374-376; Risch 1984: 93-95; Menge *et al.* 2000: 738-740; Pinkster 2015: 58). The coordinated forms *dormitandi* 'to sleep' and *cunctandi* 'to hesitate' (14), which depend on the abstract noun *copia* 'opportunity', are cases in point.

(14) *Non [...] tibi dormita-nd-i nec cuncta-nd-i copia est.*
NEG you.DAT.M.SG sleep-GER-GEN NEG hesitate-GER-GEN opportunity.NOM.F.SG be.PRS.3SG
'You do not have the opportunity to sleep or to hesitate.' (Plaut. *Epid.* 162)

In purpose adjuncts, the genitive gerund is often combined with a preposition (Menge *et al.* 2000: 740; Pinkster 2021: §16.103).<fnref n="11" /> In Classical Latin, this preposition corresponds to *causa* 'for the sake of' or *gratia* 'for the sake of', which are in fact bare ablative nouns reanalysed as prepositions by means of a grammaticalisation process (Miniconi 1951: 121-134; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 133; Moussy 1966: 303-325; Pinkster 2015: 912).<fnref n="12" /> These forms typically follow the gerund, so that they technically qualify

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ The main arguments in this debate are discussed by, e.g., Aalto (1949: 82-86) and Pinkster (2015: 303-304). It is worth noting that, while the existence of the bare accusative gerund in Classical Latin is subject to debate, its existence in Late Latin is uncontroversial (Aalto 1949: 86; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 378; Bauer 1993: 67; Pinkster 2015: 305, 2021: §15.137-§15.138, §16.100). See §2.1.1.1.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ Several authors mention that the genitive gerund is often combined with *causa* ‘for the sake of’ or *gratia* ‘for the sake of’ (e.g. Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 744), but only a few of them take these combinations as prepositional genitive gerund phrases (e.g. Menge *et al.* 2000: 740; Pinkster 2021: §16.103). For an explanation, see the running text and the following footnote.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Grammaticalisation processes are slow and gradual processes, in which at least one, but typically several synchronic stages are characterised by formal and/or functional ambiguity between a source and a target analysis (Hopper 1991: 22-24; Hopper & Traugott 1993: 124-126; Heine 1993: 54-56, 2002: 86). Hence, it is not surprising that some genitive gerunds combined with *causa* ‘for the sake of’ or *gratia* ‘for the sake of’ can be taken as either bare gerunds heading an adnominal phrase (source</footnote>
as postpositions instead of prepositions (Menge *et al.* 2000: 740). However, for the sake of simplicity, they will be referred to as prepositions, as in Pinkster (2015: 1176, 2021: §16.103). As an example of a prepositional genitive gerund phrase, consider the purpose adjunct clause *cohortandi gratia* ‘in order to encourage’ (15).

(15) *Multa* [...] *ad te* **cohorta-nd-i** gratia scripsimus.<fnref n="13" />
many.ACC.N.PL to you.ACC.M.SG encourage-GER-GEN for_the_sake_of write.PST.1PL
‘I have written many things to you for the sake of encouraging (you).’ (Cic. *off*. 3.6.11)

Regarding the dative gerund, it is always bare – Latin lacks prepositions assigning this case to their complement (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 746-749; Aalto 1949: 63-65; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 265-266; Palmer 1964: 322; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 376-377; Risch 1984: 93; Menge *et al.* 2000: 741-743; Pinkster 2015: 58). The dative gerund is extremely rare, but nonetheless has different uses. For example, *alligando* ‘to bind together’ (16) occurs in a purpose adjunct, while *scribendo* ‘at the writing’ (17) is the complement of the verb *adessent* ‘they were present’.

(16) *Utuntur in vinea alliga-nd-o fasces [...].*
use.PRS.3PL in vineyard.ABL.F.SG bind_together-GER-DAT bundle.ACC.M.PL
‘They use (rushes) in the vineyard to bind bundles together.’ (Varro *ling*. 5.31.137)

(17) [...] *cum=que* [...] *omnes=que* iidem **scribe-nd-o** *adessent* [...].
when=and all.NOM.M.PL=and same.NOM.M.PL write-GER-DAT beollove.SBJV.PST.3PL
‘And when all the same persons were present at the writing (of the decree) (...).’ (Cic. *har. resp*.
13)

Finally, the ablative gerund is predominantly bare, but can nevertheless be governed by a preposition, mostly *in* ‘in’ (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 751-754; Aalto 1949: 65-72; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 266-267; Palmer 1964: 324; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 379-380; Risch 1984: 95-96; Menge *et al.* 2000: 738, 740-741; Pinkster 2015: 58).<fnref n="14" /> The ablative gerund is chiefly used as the head of an adjunct, irrespective of whether it is bare or prepositional. For instance, the bare ablative gerund *cunctando* ‘by hesitating’

<footnote>analysis) or prepositional gerunds heading an adjunct phrase (target analysis). Their analysis ultimately depends on factors such as their degree of desemanticisation, decategorisation, and recategorisation (cf. Hopper 1991: 22, 28-31; Heine 1993: 54-56, 88-99, 112-116, 2002: 86). The genitive marking of the gerunds is reminiscent of their original function as the modifiers of the nouns *causa* ‘for the sake of’ or *gratia* ‘for the sake of’, in line with the principle of syntactic reanalysis described by Langacker (1977: 58) as “the change in the structure of an expression or class of expressions that does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modification of its surface structure”. Quantitatively speaking, many combinations of a genitive gerund and *causa* ‘for the sake of’ or *gratia* ‘for the sake of’ allow an analysis as both NPs including an adnominal bare genitive gerund and as adjunct prepositional genitive gerund phrases. This might explain why many authors mention the frequent use of *causa* ‘for the sake of’ and *gratia* ‘for the sake of’ in combination with a genitive gerund without analysing them as prepositions (see the preceding footnote). However, there are strong arguments in favour of the prepositional status of at least some of these forms, and hence I will follow Menge *et al.* (2000: 740) and Pinkster (2021: §16.103) in recognising the existence of prepositional genitive gerunds.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ Notice that the form *scripsimus* ‘I have written’ is a plural of modesty (the subject is Cicero himself).</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Other prepositions attested with an ablative gerund are *de* ‘regarding’, *ex* ‘from’, *pro* ‘instead of’, and *a(b)* ‘from’, *cum* ‘with’, *sine* ‘without’, and *super* ‘during’ (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 751, 753-754; Aalto 1949: 70-72; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 266; Palmer 1964: 324; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 380; Risch 1984: 96; Menge *et al.* 2000: 738).</footnote>
(18) and the prepositional ablative gerund *in circumeundo* ‘in going around’ (19) act as respectively a causal and a temporal adjunct.

(18) *Unus homo nobis cuncta-nd-o restituit rem.*

one.NOM.M.SG man.NOM.M.SG we.DAT.M.PL hesitate-GER-ABL restore.PST.3SG state.ACC.F.SG

‘One man (alone) restored the state for us by hesitating.’ (Cic. *off.* 1.84)

(19) [...] *in circumeu-nd-o exercitum animadvertit [...].*

in go_around-GER-ABL army.ACC.M.SG observe.PST.3SG

‘In going around the army he observed (...).’ (Bell. Afr. 82.1)

Like that of regular nouns, the case form of the gerund depends on its function and/or its governing preposition (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 736-755; Aalto 1949: Ch. 4; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 265-268; Palmer 1964: 320-324; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 374-380; Risch 1984: 93-99; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737-743; Pinkster 2015: 58). For example, *cunctando* ‘by hesitating’ (18) is marked in the bare ablative because it functions as a causal adjunct (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 751-752; Lyer 1932; Aalto 1949: 66-67; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 379; Vester 1983: 101-121; Menge *et al.* 2000: 740-741; Pinkster 2021: §16.101), while *cognoscendum* ‘to find out’ (13) is assigned the accusative by the preposition *ad* ‘to’ (Pinkster 2015: 1230). In (19), the gerund phrase is a temporal instead of a purpose adjunct, so that the preposition *in* ‘in’ assigns the ablative case to *circumeundo* ‘going around’ instead of the accusative (Pinkster 2015: 1230-1231).

Except for some copular and modal verbs, such as *esse* ‘to be’, *posse* ‘to be able to’, and *velle* ‘to want’, all verbs can build a gerund, even meteorological verbs like *pluere* ‘to rain’ (Pinkster 2015: 58). Witness (20), where the meteorological form *pluendo* ‘by raining’ serves as a causal adjunct.

(20) [...] *qui* [...] *diceret* omnem aquam oportere

REL.NOM.M.SG say.SBJV.PST.3SG all.ACC.F.SG water.ACC.F.SG need.INF.PRS

*archeri* quae *pluendo* crevisset.

keep_away.INF.PRS.PASS REL.NOM.F.SG rain-GER-ABL rise.SBJV.PST.3SG

‘(...) who said that all the water that had risen because of the rain needed to be kept away.’ (Cic. *top.* 38)

The morphology of the gerund in Classical Latin is presented for the verb *cantare* ‘to sing’ in Table 1.3.

<table><caption>**Table 1.3.** Morphology of the gerund in Classical Latin (illustrated for the verb *cantare* ‘to sing’)</caption><thead><tr><td>Case form</td><td>Prepositional/bare</td><td>Example</td><td>Translation</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Accusative</td><td>Prepositional</td><td>ad canta-nd-um</td><td>‘to singing’</td></tr><tr><td>Genitive</td><td>Prepositional/bare</td><td>canta-nd-i</td><td>‘of singing’</td></tr><tr><td>Dative</td><td>Bare</td><td>canta-nd-o</td><td>‘for singing’</td></tr><tr><td>Ablative</td><td>Prepositional/bare</td><td>canta-nd-o</td><td>‘by singing’</td></tr></tbody></table>
Since it lacks a form in the nominative and is always prepositional in the accusative, the gerund is usually considered the suppletive form of the infinitive, which, as for it, only exists in the nominative and is practically always bare in the accusative (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 662-663; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255; Väänänen 1963³: 140; Palmer 1964: 320-321; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 341, 369; Scherer 1975: 89; Stempel 1994: 236; Bauer 2005: 515; Menge *et al.* 2000: 727-728, Pinkster 2015: 58-59).<fnref n="15" /> In other words, the gerund acts as “the oblique case of the infinitive” (Palmer 1964: 320).<fnref n="16" /> This relation of morphological complementarity between the two forms plays an important role in the evolution of the gerund in Late Latin and in the transition from Late Latin to Old French (see Chapter 2, §2.1.1.2.2).

### 1.2.2. Syntactic properties of the gerund

After having explored the morphological properties of the gerund, I will examine in this section its syntactic properties. I will first look at its internal syntax (§1.1.2.1), and then at its external syntax (§1.1.2.2).

#### 1.2.2.1. Internal syntax of the gerund

Two factors regarding the internal syntax of the gerund will be studied: the internal syntactic complexity of gerund phrases (§1.2.2.1.1) and the marking of the internal argument of the gerund (§1.2.2.1.2).

##### 1.2.2.1.1. Internal syntactic complexity of gerund phrases

In Classical Latin, the internal syntactic structure of gerund constituents shows different degrees of complexity (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 734-736; Lyer 1932: 224-232; Aalto 1949: Ch. 4; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 263; Palmer 1964: 321-324; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 373-374; Scherer 1975: 93-94;

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ The oldest instances of the prepositional infinitive are found in Cicero’s *De finibus bonorum et malorum*. They correspond to two coordinated present infinitives governed by the preposition *inter* ‘between’ (i) (Aalto 1949: 88 fn. 2; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 256; Palmer 1964: 318; Scherer 1975: 86).</footnote>

<footnote>(i) [...]ut *inter* *optime* **valere** *et gravissime* **aegrotare** *nihil* that between perfectly *be_healthy._INF.PRS and very seriously *be_ill._INF.PRS nothing.ACC.N.SG prorsus *dicerent* *interesse* [...]. absolutely say.SBJV.PST.3PL lie-between.INF.PRS ‘(...) they said that there is absolutely no difference between being perfectly healthy and being very gravely ill.’ (Cic. fin. 2.43)</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ Similar wordings are found elsewhere. For instance, Hofmann & Szantyr (1965: 341) write that “*das Gerundium in erster Linie einer Neubelebung der idg. Kasusbedeutung des Infin. dient und ihn so in den oblique Kasus ergänzt*”. In a similar vein, Väänänen (1963³: 140) states that “[*L[e gérondif fournit à l’infinitif des cas obliques*]”. Waiving the traditional term ‘oblique case’, Pinkster (2015: 58-59) asserts that “the forms of the gerund have from Antiquity onwards been described as genitive / dative / accusative / ablative forms of the infinitive”. Some authors also take the supine as a suppletive form of the infinitive (e.g. Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255; Väänänen 1963³: 139).</footnote>
Risch 1984: 97-99; Menge et al. 2000: 728-729, 743-744; Pinkster 2021: §14.12). The constituents with the lowest degree of complexity only contain the gerund, like *iocandi* ‘of joking’ (21).

(21) [...] *si rei dignitas adimet ioca-nd-i*
if case.GEN.F.SG seriousness.NOM.F.SG take_away.SBJV.PRS.3SG joke-GER-GEN
*facultatem* [...].
opportunity.ACC.F.SG
‘If the seriousness of the case takes away the opportunity to joke.’ (Cic. *inv.* 1.25)

These constituents can be divided in four groups.

(i) Some constituents contain the gerund because its arguments and possibly also adjuncts are semantically and syntactically shared with the main clause (Francis & Tatum 1919: 66; Kooreman 1989: 224; Pinkster 2021: §14.12).<fnref n="17" /> This is the case in (22), where the implicit subject and direct object of *commemorando* ‘by recalling’ are coreferential with respectively the subject and the direct object of the main verb *renovare* ‘to revive’.

(22) [...] *nolo eam rem commemora-nd-o renovare [...].*
not_want.PRS.1SG DEM.ACC.F.SG event.ACC.F.SG recall-GER-ABL revive.INF.PRS
‘I do not want to revive this event by recalling (it).’ (Cic. *Quinct.* 70)

The states of affairs denoted by these gerund constituents are ‘specific’ (Lehmann 1988: 191), in that they involve concrete arguments with actual referents. The effect of the semantic and syntactic sharing of arguments and adjuncts between two clauses is described by Lehmann (1988: 199) in terms of ‘interlacing’ (see also Davison 1979: §4.1; Foley & Van Valin 1984: §6.3)<fnref n="18" />. Depending on the number of constituents shared, clauses are more or less interlaced.

(ii) The second group of gerund constituents only contain the gerund because the state of affairs denoted by it is ‘deactualised’ (Dik 1985: 11) or ‘typified’ (Lehmann 1988: 191). That is to say, the gerund is used in an ‘absolute way’ (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 728; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 263; see also Dik 1985: 11, 1997: 89). The arguments of these gerunds do not have a concrete reference, which causes the state of affairs to have “a generic, habitual or potential reading rather than a reading which directly designates some actual state of affairs” (Dik 1985: 11).<fnref n="19" /> Examples of this type of gerunds are *iocandi* ‘of joking’ (21) and *loquendi* ‘of speaking’ (23).

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ For a general discussion of the semantic and syntactic sharing of constituents between two linked clauses, see, e.g., Davison (1979: §4.1), Foley & Van Valin (1984: §6.3), and Lehmann (1988: 191, 199-201).</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ Hofmann & Szantyr (1965: 526) use the term ‘synsemy’ for the semantic sharing of constituents between two clauses.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Focusing on the subject of the gerund, Kühner & Stegmann (1914⁵: 728) state that “*von dem bekannten oder unbekannten Subjekt wird ganz abstrahiert, um die Handlung oder den Zustand an sich desto nachdrucksvoller hervortreten zu lassen*”.</footnote>
(23) [...] *meam* *partem* **loque-nd-i** et tuam trado tibi [...].
my.ACC.F.SG part.ACC.F.SG speak-GER-GEN and your.ACC.F.SG grant.PRS.1SG you.DAT.M.SG
'I grant you (both) my part of speaking and yours.' (Plaut. *Asin*. 517)

Syntactically speaking, the first group of gerund constituents have the internal structure of a clause, while the second group are structurally equivalent to abstract (de)verbal NPs (Adams 2013: 736). In this study, the term ‘gerund phrase’ will be used to refer to gerund clauses and gerund NPs in a more general way, the latter being preserved for specific instances of gerund clauses and NPs. As for the term ‘gerund construction’, it will be restricted to contexts in which the term ‘construction’ stands for a linguistic structure defined as such within the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar, namely a unique, conventionalised, and arbitrary form-function pairing with a specific degree of internal complexity and lexical specificity (Goldberg 1995: 4, 2006: 3; Croft 2001: 18).

(iii) The third group of gerund phrases with a minimal degree of internal syntactic complexity only contain the gerund because it is built on an impersonal verb (e.g. *pluendo* 'by raining' (20)).

(iv) The fourth and final group is represented by constituents in which the arguments of the gerund are implicit without being semantically and syntactically shared with the main clause. Consider (24), where the implicit subject of *sedendo* 'by sitting' and *spectando* 'by watching' corresponds to the speaker, in this case an unidentified old man.

(24) *Lumbi sede-nd-o, oculi specta-nd-o dolent [...].*
loins.NOM.M.PL sit-GER-ABL eye.NOM.M.PL watch-GER-ABL hurt.PRS.3PL
'My loins hurt from sitting, my eyes from watching.' (Plaut. *Men*. 882)

Gerund phrases with a higher degree of internal syntactic complexity than in (21-24) contain the gerund and an additional constituent, which may be an argument of the gerund or an adjunct. For example, in (25) *addendo* 'by adding' governs the noun *supplicationes* 'thanksgivings' as its direct object, and in (26), *versando* 'by rolling' takes the noun *manibus* 'with their hands' as its instrumental adjunct.

(25) *An supplicationes adde-nd-o diem contaminari*
Q thanksgiving.ACC.F.PL add-GER-ABL day.ACC.F.SG pollute.INF.PRS.PASS
*passus es [...]?*
allow.PTCP.PST.NOM.M.SG be.PRS.2SG
'Did not you allow the day to be polluted by adding thanksgivings?' (Cic. *Phil*. 2.110.13)

(26) [...] *deinde pilae manibus versa-nd-o efficiuntur [...].*
then ball.NOM.F.PL hand.ABL.F.PL roll-GER-ABL form.PRS.PASS.3PL
'Then they are formed into balls by rolling (them) by hand.' (Vitr. 7.11.1)

The implicit arguments of these gerunds may be shared with the main clause, deactualised, or inferable from the discourse context. For instance, the implicit subject of *addendo* 'by adding' (25) is not
coreferential with the subject of the main verb *contaminari* ‘to be polluted’, but with the agent of this verb, which corresponds to the subject of the superordinate verb *passus es* ‘you allowed’. And in (26), the direct object of *versando* ‘by rolling’ is coreferential with the subject of the main verb *efficiuntur* ‘they are formed’, while its subject corresponds to the agent of this verb. Since the passage in (26) is part of an instruction describing how to make the colour blue, the subject of the gerund corresponds to anyone tempting to make this colour on the basis of Vitruvius’ recipe.

Gerund constituents with still a higher degree of internal syntactic complexity contain the gerund, its internal argument(s), and one or more adjuncts. However, such instances are rare in Classical Latin (Lyer 1932: 226-228; Palmer 1964: 321-324; Pinkster 2021: §14.12). A clear example is given in (27): the pronoun *iis* ‘them’ is the internal argument of *utendo* ‘by using’, while the coordinated adverbs *prudenter* ‘prudently’ and *magnifice* ‘splendidly’ are manner adjuncts. The subject of *utendo* ‘by using’ is coreferential with the subject of the main verb *effecit* ‘he made’, and hence left implicit inside the gerund clause.

(27) Iis simul prudenter simul magnifice ute-nd-o
DEM.ABL.F.PL simultaneously prudently simultaneously splendidly use-GER-ABL
effecit [...] ut [...].
make.PST.3SG that
‘By using them both prudently and splendidly, he made that (...).’ (Liv. 33.21.2)

Gerund phrases with a maximal degree of internal syntactic complexity also contain an explicit subject, but in Classical Latin such cases are extremely rare (Pinkster 2021: §14.12). As an example, consider the clause headed by *aestimando* ‘by estimating’ (28): the subject of this gerund is coreferential with the subject of the main verb *permensus* ‘(after he) measured’, but it is anaphorically repeated inside the gerund clause by the emphatic pronoun *ipse* ‘himself’. In addition to this subject, the gerund clause contains the associative adjunct *secum* ‘to himself’<fnref n="20" /> and the subordinate clause *quid in fronte paterent singuli* ‘how much each stone individually extended in height’, serving as the direct object of *aestimando* ‘by estimating’. As for the coordinated clause headed by *numerando* ‘by counting’, it only contains the gerund and its direct object *lapides* ‘stones’. Its subject is coreferential with the subject of the main verb *permensus* ‘(after he) measured’ without being anaphorically repeated inside the gerund clause.

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Associative adjuncts express “in the company of whom or together with whom (or its opposite: without whom) a person or thing is involved in a state of affairs” (Pinkster 2015: 897). On the associative value of *secum* ‘to himself’, see, e.g., Pinkster (2015: 1121-1122).</footnote>
(28) [...] unus ex Romanis [...], **numera-nd-o** lapides
one.NOM.M.SG from Roman.ABL.M.PL count-GER-ABL stone.ACC.M.PL
**aestima-nd-o=que** ipse secum quid in fronte
estimate-GER-ABL=and INTENS.NOM.SG REFL.ACC.M.SG;with INT.ACC.N.SG in front.ABL.F.SG
paterent singuli altitudinem muri [...] extend.SBJV.PST.3PL each.NOM.M.PL height.ACC.SG wall.GEN.M.SG
permensus [...], ad Marcellum rem defert.
measure.PTCP.PST.NOM.M.SG to Marcellus.ACC.M.SG situation.ACC.F.SG report.PRS.3SG
'One of the Romans, after measuring the height of the wall by counting the stones and by estimating
himself in himself how much each stone extended in height, reported the situation to Marcellus.'
(Liv. 25.23.11)

As apparent from the preceding examples, when the subject of the gerund has a concrete reference, it is
usually coreferential with the subject of the main clause (22/27/28) or at least with the agent of the main
state of affairs (25/26) (Aalto 1949 78; Kooreman 1989: 220; Adams 2013: 736; Pinkster 2021: §14.12,
§21.14). Only when it needs to be inferred from the discourse context, as in (24), may it violate this
tendency (Svennung 1935: 425; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 380; Adams 2013: 736).

According to Lehmann (1988: 191-197), the higher is the degree of internal syntactic complexity of a clause, the lower is its degree of 'desententialisation', i.e. the degree to which it has lost typical features of a finite clause. The lower is the degree of desententialisation of a clause, the higher is its degree of finiteness. As such, the gerund phrases exemplified in this section show a decreasing degree of desententialisation and an increasing degree of finiteness, except *numerando lapides* 'by counting the stones' (28), which has more or less the same degree of desententialisation and finiteness as the clauses in (25) and (26) (see also Kooreman 1989: 226).

It is important to note that, in Classical Latin, the number of gerund phrases with a high degree of internal syntactic complexity is low (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 735; Lyer 1932: 226-228; Palmer 1964: 321-324; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 373-374; Risch 1984: 97; Kooreman 1989: 223-225; Bauer 1993: 63, 2005: 516; Pinkster 2021: §14.12). Consequently, their mean degree of finiteness is also low (Lehmann 1988: 191-197; Kooreman 1989: 226).<fnref n="21" /> This is mainly due to the competition between the gerund and the gerundive: gerund phrases with an explicit direct object compete with NPs containing a personal gerundive in different syntactic functions. At this stage of the language, the latter are preferred over the former, especially in standard varieties (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 734-735, 745-746; Lyer 1932: 231-232; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 263; Palmer 1964: 321-323; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 372-373, 375; Scherer 1975: 92; Kooreman 1989: 223-225; Menge *et al.* 2000: 736-737; Pinkster 2021: §14.12). For instance, adnominal gerund phrases like *legendi epistulas* 'to read the letters' (29), in which

<footnote n="21">²¹ The mean degree of internal syntactic complexity is highest in bare genitive and bare ablative phrases (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 735; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 264; Palmer 1964: 321; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 373-374; Scherer 1975: 92).</footnote>
the gerund is the head and the noun *epistulas* ‘letters’ its direct object, are less common than adnominal NPs like *legendarum epistularum* ‘to read the letters’ (30), in which the noun *epistularum* ‘of the letters’ is the head and the gerundive *legendarum* ‘to read’ its modifier (Bauer 1993: 64).

(29) *Tempus lege-nd-i epistulas.*
*time.NOM.N.SG read-GER-GEN letter.ACC.F.PL*
‘The time to read the letters.’ (Bauer 1993: 64)

(30) *Tempus lege-nd-arum epistularum.*
*time.NOM.N.SG read-GERV-GEN.F.PL letter.GEN.F.PL*
‘The time to read the letters (lit. ‘of the letters that should be read’).’ (Bauer 1993: 64)

Although NPs with a personal gerundive are, globally speaking, more common than gerund phrases with an explicit direct object, there are some configurations in which the latter are preferred (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 734-736; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 264-265, 268; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 372-373; Kooreman 1989: 224; Menge *et al.* 2000: 743-745). For example, they are preferred over genitive plural NPs containing a personal gerundive for phonetic reasons, because they allow avoiding the succession of the phonetically heavy endings *-orum* and *-arum* (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 736; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 264; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 373; Menge *et al.* 2000: 744). Gerund phrases like *pila coniciendi* ‘to throw spears’ (31), in which the gerund *coniciendi* ‘to throw’ is the head and the noun *pila* ‘spears’ its direct object, are thus more common than NPs like *pilorum coniciendorum* ‘to throw spears’ (32), in which the noun *pilorum* ‘of spears’ is the head and the gerundive *coniciendorum* ‘to be thrown’ its modifier.<fnref n="22" />

(31) [...] *ut spatium pila in hostes conicie-nd-i non*
*that space.NOM.N.SG spear.ACC.N.PL to enemy.ACC.M.PL throw-GER-GEN NEG*
*daretur.*
give.SBJV.PST.3SG
‘(...) that no space was given to throw spears upon the enemy.’ (Caes. *Gall.* 1.52.3)

(32) [...] *ut spatium pilorum in hostes conicie-nd-orum non*
*that space.NOM.N.SG spear.GEN.N.PL to enemy.ACC.M.PL throw-GER-GEN.N.PL NEG*
*daretur.*
give.SBJV.PST.3SG
‘(...) that no space was given to throw spears upon the enemy (lit. ‘of the spears that needed to be thrown upon the enemy’).’ (Menge *et al.* 2000: 744 [adapted from Caes. *Gall.* 1.52.3])

<footnote n="22">²² For an overview of the contexts in which the two types of constituents are preferred or even compulsory, see, e.g., Kühner & Stegmann (1914⁵: 745-746), Ernout & Thomas (1951: 264-265, 268), Hofmann & Szantyr (1965: 372-373, 375), and Menge *et al.* (2000: 736-744).</footnote>
As we will see in the following section, gerund phrases with an explicit direct object can be divided in two groups depending on how this argument is marked.

### 1.2.2.1.2. Marking of the internal argument of the gerund

In Classical Latin, the internal argument of the gerund is usually marked in the same way as when it is governed by a finite verb (Ernout & Thomas 1951: 263; Palmer 1964: 321; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 369; Bauer 1993: 65, 2005: 516). Consider (27) and (31), in which the internal argument of *utendo* ‘by using’ (27) and *coniciendi* ‘to throw’ (31) is marked in respectively the ablative and the accusative, just like when it is governed by a finite form of *uti* ‘to use’ (27) and *conicere* ‘to throw’ (31). Occasionally, however, the internal argument of the gerund is marked in the same way as when it depends on a noun (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 744-745; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 268; Palmer 1964: 321-322; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 374-375; Risch 1984: 192-195; Menge *et al.* 2000: 729).<fnref n="23" /> Witness (33), in which the forms *infitiandi* ‘to deny’ and *defendendi* ‘to defend’ select the NP *earum rerum* ‘these deeds’ as their internal argument. This argument is marked in the bare genitive, just like prototypical adnominal NPs, while finite forms of the verbs *infitiari* ‘to deny’ and *defendere* ‘to defend’ assign the accusative to their internal argument.

(33) [...] *earum*
DEM.GEN.F.PL but
neque **infitia-nd-i**
NEG deny.GER-GEN
reliquit [...].
leave.PST.3SG
autem rerum
nullam sibi
iste
deed.GEN.F.PL
rationem
reason.ACC.F.SG
no.ACC.F.SG
neque **defende-nd-i**
defend-GER-GEN
DEM.NOM.M.SG
facultatem
opportunity.ACC.F.SG
Verr. 2.47)

According to Lehmann (1988: 191-197), non-finite clauses showing verbal internal syntax have a higher degree of finiteness than those displaying nominal internal syntax. As such, the gerund clauses in (27) and (31) are more finite than the ones in (33). From a diachronic perspective, the number of gerunds having nominal internal syntax decreases from the 1st c. BC onward, causing the number of gerunds with the internal syntax of a verb to become even more dominant (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 745). In this way, the mean degree of finiteness of gerund phrases increases from as early as the 1st c. BC onward.

A parallel can be drawn in this regard with the English gerund. Like its Classical Latin counterpart, the English gerund can have nominal or verbal internal syntax, as shown for the form *eating*

<footnote n="23">²³ The term “principium-generandi-animalium-Konstruktion” is sometimes used for this type of gerund phrases (Risch 1984: 192; Menge *et al.* 2000: 729).</footnote>
in respectively (34) and (35): in (34), the internal argument of this form is realised by the PP *of cats and dogs*, just like when it functions as the modifier of a noun (e.g. *the life of cats and dogs*), while in (35), it is instantiated by the NP *cats and dogs*, just as when it is governed by a finite form of the verb *to eat* (e.g. *some people actually eat cats and dogs*) (Fonteyn 2019: 1).

(34) *Campaigns are being waged against the Republic of Korea where laws forbidding the eating of cats and dogs, the latter a traditional source of medicinal potency, are openly flouted.* (Fonteyn 2019: 1)

(35) *The population, though reduced to eating cats and dogs, fought back, however, so long as their ammunition lasted.* (Fonteyn 2019: 1)

In English linguistics, these two types of gerunds have been labelled in various ways, but nowadays the terms ‘verbal gerund’ and ‘nominal gerund’ are used most consistently (e.g. in Fanego 2004; Kranich 2007; Alexiadou 2013; De Smet 2008a, 2008b, 2013; Fonteyn 2016, 2019).<fnref n="24" /> These labels will also be used in this thesis to describe the Latin gerund, but instead of referring to gerunds with verbal or nominal *internal* syntax, they will be used to refer to gerunds with verbal or nominal *external* syntax (see §1.2.3).

### 1.2.2.2. External syntax of the gerund

The external syntax (or distribution) of the gerund concerns the inventory of its syntactic uses. In Classical Latin, these uses are diverse: the gerund can occur in an adnominal phrase (§1.2.2.2.1), a verb complement (§1.2.2.2.2), an adjective complement (§1.2.2.2.3), an adverb complement (§1.2.2.2.4), or an adjunct (§1.2.2.2.5) (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 736-755; Aalto 1949: Ch. 4; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 265-268; Palmer 1964: 320-324; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 374-380; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737-743; Pinkster 2021: Ch. 15-17). The following sections will explore these uses of the gerund and examine to which extent the gerund competes in them with the infinitive and other types of non-finite verb forms (the competition between the gerund and the present participle will be discussed separately in §1.4). The study of the different uses of the gerund will serve to establish its external syntactic profile (§1.2.2.2.6), i.e. the inventory and relative frequency of its uses in a given corpus.

#### 1.2.2.2.1. Adnominal gerunds

In Classical Latin, the gerund often acts as the head of an adnominal phrase (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 737-738, 750; Aalto 1949: Ch. 4; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 267; Palmer 1964: 322-323; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 374-376; Menge *et al.* 2000: 738-739; Pinkster 2021: §17.17-17.18, §17.20). These constituents depend on a noun whose referent they define, describe, or classify independently of the

<footnote n="24">²⁴ An overview of the labels used can be found in, e.g., Hudson (2003: 579 fn. 2) or Fonteyn (2019: 62 fn. 1).</footnote>
state of affairs in which it takes part (Woodcock 1959: 50; Pinkster 2015: 965-966). For instance, *ad pugnandum* ‘to fight’ (36) depends on the coordinated nouns *studium* ‘eagerness’ and *virtus* ‘courage’, and specifies their referents by restricting their interpretation to the area of warfare.

(36) Ne militibus [...] neque equitibus [...] studium ad NEG soldier.DAT.M.PL NEG horseman.DAT.M.PL eagerness.NOM.N.SG to **pugna-nd-um** virtus=que deerat. fight-GER-ACC courage.NOM.F.SG=and lack.PST.3SG ‘The eagerness and courage to fight did not lack to the soldiers nor the horsemen.’ (Caes. *civ.* 2.41.3)

Depending on whether they are semantically necessary or optional, a distinction can be made between respectively argumental and non-argumental adnominal gerund phrases (Pinkster 2021: §17.17-§17.18, §17.20).<fnref n="25" /> The former, especially the bare genitive ones, mostly depend on an abstract noun whose meaning alone does not suffice to form a (contextually) meaningful information unit (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 737; Aalto 1949: 58-59; Palmer 1964: 323; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 375; Menge et al. 2000: 738-739; Pinkster 2015: 966, 2021: §17.17-§17.18). Examples are the bare genitive clause *existumandi cotidianae vitae consuetudinem* ‘to judge the habit of her daily life’ (37) and the prepositional accusative phrase *ad accusandum* ‘to accuse’ (38), depending on respectively *copiam* ‘opportunity’ (37) and *facultas* ‘opportunity’ (38).

(37) [...] ea res dedit [...] existuma-nd-i DEM.NOM.F.SG event.NOM.F.SG give.PST.3SG judge-GER-GEN copiam cotidianae vitae consuetudinem [...]. opportunity.ACC.F.SG daily.GEN.F.SG life.GEN.F.SG habit.ACC.F.SG ‘This event gave (us) the opportunity to judge the habit of (her) daily life.’ (Ter. *Haut*. 282-283)

(38) [...] ut [...] mihi summa facultas ad accusa-nd-um that I.DAT.M.SG highest.NOM.F.SG opportunity.NOM.F.SG to accuse-GER-ACC daretur [...]. give.SBJV.PST.PASS.3SG ‘(...) that the greatest opportunity to accuse was given to me.’ (Cic. *Verr*. 2.178)

However, they can also depend on other types of nouns, like nouns denoting personal agents (e.g. *fictor* ‘forger’), properties (e.g. *celeritas* ‘speed’), or duration (e.g. *dies* ‘day’) (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 737-738; Aalto 1949: 58-60; Palmer 1964: 323; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 375; Menge et al. 2000: 739-740; Pinkster 2021: §17.17-§17.18). Witness (39), in which *fandi* ‘of speaking’ is dependent on the noun *fictor* ‘forger’, which denotes a personal agent and requires a complement as much as the transitive verb *fingere* ‘to forge’ to which it is related.

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Pinkster (2015: 965-966) speaks of ‘adnominal arguments’ and ‘(optional) attributes’, respectively.</footnote>
(39) *Non hic Atridae* nec **fa-nd-i** fictor Ulixes.
NEG here son_of_Atreus.NOM.M.PL NEG talk-GER-GEN forger.NOM.M.SG Ulysses.NOM.M.SG
'The sons of Atreus (are) not here nor Ulysses, the forger of fables (lit. 'of talking').' (Verg. *Aen.* 9.602)

By contrast, non-argumental adnominal gerund phrases provide additional information about the referent of a noun, i.e. information that is not required for the NP to form a (contextually) meaningful information unit (Pinkster 2021: §17.17, §17.20). For instance, *ad nocendum* ‘to harm’ (40) depends on the noun *scelera* ‘evil’. It restricts the interpretation of this noun, but the meaning of this noun alone suffices in fact to form a (contextually) meaningful information unit.

(40) Nec bestiarum solum ad **noce-nd-um** scelera sunt, sed
NEG beast.GEN.F.PL alone to harm-GER-ACC evil.NOM.N.PL be.PRS.3SG but
interim aquarum quoque ac locorum.
at_thesame_time water.GEN.F.PL also and region.GEN.M.PL

‘The evil to harm does not only come from the beasts, but at the same time also from the waters and the regions.’ (Plin. *nat.* 25.20)

In line with the more general distinction between complementation and modification, argumental and non-argumental adnominal gerund phrases can be said to respectively ‘complete’ and ‘modify’ the head noun (Quirk *et al.* 1985: 65; Pinkster 2015: 965-966). The question whether adnominal gerund phrases are argumental or non-argumental will play no role in this study. What is more relevant for the purpose of this thesis is the case marking of the gerund.

In Classical Latin, adnominal gerunds most often stand in the bare genitive (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 737-738; Aalto 1949: 58-60; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 267; Palmer 1964: 323; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 374-376; Menge *et al.* 2000: 738-740; Pinkster 2021: §17.17-§17.18, §17.20). This marking does not contribute a specific meaning to the NP, but simply indicates that the gerund is syntactically dependent on a noun (Woodcock 1959: 50; Pinkster 2015: 1203). As such, the meaning of the NP entirely depends on the meaning of its constitutive parts and the discourse context, as in (37) and (39) (Woodcock 1959: 50; Pinkster 2015: 1203).

Apart from the bare genitive, adnominal gerunds may be marked in the prepositional accusative and the prepositional ablative (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 750; Aalto 1949: 71-72, 86-87; Palmer 1964: 322; Menge *et al.* 2000: 738; Pinkster 2021: §17.18, §17.20). The case form of the gerund is assigned by the preposition, which contributes moreover a specific meaning to the NP. The interpretation of this NP is thus mainly compositional (cf. Pinkster 2015: 1030). For instance, prepositional accusative forms are mostly governed by *ad* ‘to’, which usually contributes a final meaning to the NP (e.g. (36/38/40)) (Aalto 1949: 86-87). As for the prepositional ablative forms, they are mostly introduced by *in* ‘in’, which typically carries a temporal value (Aalto 1949: 71-72; Menge *et al.* 2000: 738). Witness (41), where the phrases *in agendo* ‘in operating’, *in conficiendo* ‘in executing’, and *in providendo* ‘in planning’ denote
the states of affairs during which a general should have the qualities expressed by respectively *industria*
'thoroughness', *celeritas* 'rapidity', and *consilium* 'wisdom'.

(41) Neque enim illae sunt solae virtutes
NEG for DEM.NOM.F.PL be.PRS.3PL only.NOM.F.PL quality.NOM.F.PL
imperatoriae [...] labor in negotiis
belonging_to_a_general.NOM.F.PL application.NOM.M.SG in work.ABL.N.PL
fortitudo in periculis, industria in age-nd-o
courage.NOM.F.SG in danger.ABL.N.PL thoroughness.NOM.F.SG in do-GER-ABL
celeritas in conficie-nd-o, consilium in provide-nd-o [...].
rapidity.NOM.F.SG in execute-GER-ABL wisdom.NOM.N.SG in plan-GER-ABL

'For these are not the only qualities belonging to a general: application in work, courage in danger, thoroughness in operation (lit. 'in doing'), rapidity in execution (lit. 'in executing'), wisdom in strategy (lit. 'in planning').' (Cic. *Manil*. 29.6)

In adnominal phrases, the gerund competes sometimes with the infinitive (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 742-744; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 269; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 376; Menge et al. 2000: 746; Pinkster 2021: §17.13, §17.15), and sometimes with NPs containing a personal gerundive (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 745-746, 750; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 374-375; Menge et al. 2000: 736-737; Pinkster 2021: §17.17-§17.20). Adnominal infinitives are much less frequent than their gerund competitors, especially in standard varieties, but they have nonetheless been attested from the earliest texts onward (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 742-744; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 269; Aalto 1949: 61-62; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 269; Palmer 1964: 320; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 350-351; Menge et al. 2000: 746-748; Pinkster 2021: §17.13-§17.15). In (42), the infinitive clause *benefacta cumulare* 'to pile up good deeds' serves as the adnominal argument of the abstract noun *occasio* 'opportunity', and can be replaced by, e.g., the genitive gerund *cumulandi* 'to pile up'.

(42) [...] nunc adest occasio benefacta cumulare [...].
now be_present.PRS.3SG opportunity.NOM.F.SG good_deed.ACC.N.PL pile_up.INF.PRS
'Now is the opportunity to pile up good deeds.' (Plaut. *Capt*. 423-424)

The types of nouns allowing an adnominal infinitive are less diverse than in the case of adnominal gerunds. The same holds for the syntactic contexts in which these nouns may occur (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 742-744; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 350-351; Menge et al. 2000: 746-747; Pinkster 2021: §15.128, §17.13-§17.15). According to Pinkster (2021: §15.128, §17.13-§17.15), adnominal infinitives may depend on three groups of nouns: (i) subject or object predicates nouns (e.g. *occasio* 'opportunity' (42)); (ii) nouns semantically related to a verb that can take an infinitive clause as its direct object (e.g. *cogitatio* 'reflection' (43)); and (iii) nouns used in a light verb construction (e.g. *consilium* 'plan' (44)).
(43) Cogitatio igitur diuturna nihil esse in
reflection.NOM.F.SG so continued.NOM.F.SG nothing.ACC.N.SG be.INF.PRS in
re mali dolori medetur [...].
situation.ABL.F.SG evil.GEN.N.SG pain.DAT.M.SG heal.PRS.3SG
‘So continued reflection that there is no evil in this situation heals the pain.’ (Cic. *Tusc*. 3.74)

(44) [...] te [...] consilium cepisse hominis propinqui
you.ACC.M.SG plan.ACC.N.SG take.INF.PST man.GEN.M.SG close.GEN.M.SG
fortunas [...] evertere.
fortune.ACC.F.PL ruin.INF.PRS
‘You made the plan to ruin the fortunes of a man close to you.’ (Cic. *Quinct*. 53)

Although, globally speaking, gerunds prevail over infinitives in adnominal phrases, the latter are preferred with nouns acting as subject or object predicates, as in (42) (Perrochat 1932: 170-187; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 376; Menge et al. 2000: 747; Pinkster 2021: §15.128). A relatively rare instance of an ad-nominal gerund depending on a subject predicate noun is *tacendi* ‘to be quiet’ (45).

(45) **Tace-nd-i** tempus est [...].
be_quiet-GER-GEN time.NOM.N.SG be.PRS.3SG
‘It is time to be quiet.’ (Plaut. *Poen*. 741)

The competition between adnominal gerunds and infinitives is particularly clear in examples like (46), where the gerund clause *eludendi senes* ‘to fool the old men’ and the infinitive clause *Phaedriae curam adimere argentariam* ‘to take away Phaedria’s financial worries’ are coordinated by the conjunction *et* ‘and’ as the adnominal arguments of the abstract noun *occasio* ‘opportunity’ (Ernout & Thomas 1951: 269; Pinkster 2021: §17.15).

(46) Summa elude-nd-i occasio est mihi nunc
highest.NOM.F.SG fool-GER-GEN opportunity.NOM.F.SG be.PRS.3SG I.DAT.M.SG now
senes / et Phaedriae curam adimere
old_man.ACC.M.PL and Phaedria.GEN.F.SG worry.ACC.F.SG take_away.INF.PRS
argentariam [...].
financial.ACC.F.SG
‘Now I have the perfect opportunity to fool the old men and to take away Phaedria’s financial worries.’
(Ter. *Phorm*. 885-886)

As for the competition between adnominal gerunds and NPs containing a personal gerundive, it has been discussed in §1.2.2.1.1 with respect to the internal syntax of the gerund. As mentioned there, adnominal NPs with a personal gerundive are typically preferred over gerund phrases with an explicit direct object, especially in standard varieties. Instead of gerund clauses like *eludendi senes* ‘to fool the old men’ (46), it is thus more common to find NPs such as *causae dicendae* ‘to speak the case’ (47).
(47) [...] *dies causae dice-nd-ae venit.*

*day.NOM.M.SG*   *case.GEN.F.SG*   *speak-GERV-GEN.F.SG*   *come.PRS.3SG*

‘(...) the day came to speak the case (lit. ‘of the case that needed to be spoken’).’ (Liv. 38.50.10)

1.2.2.2.2. Verb complement gerunds

The gerund can also occur in verb complements (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 747-748; Aalto 1949: Ch. 4; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 266; Palmer 1964: 323; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 377; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737-743; Pinkster 2021: §15.136-§15.138). It then acts as an argument of a verb, and is thus semantically and syntactically necessary (Dik 1997: 86-87; Pinkster 2015: 11). Gerund phrases can act as the second or third argument of a verb, but not as its first argument, *i.e.* its subject (Pinkster 2015: 301-303, 2021: §15.135-§15.138). *A scribendo* ‘from writing’ (48) and *ad cogitandum* ‘to think’ (49) are respectively the second argument of *abhorret* ‘it recoils from’ and the third argument of *instituere* ‘to get to’.

(48) [...] *a scribe-nd-o* [...] *abhorret animus.*

*from write-GER-ABL*   *recoil.PRS.3SG*   *mind.NOM.M.SG*

‘My mind recoils from writing.’ (Cic. *Att.* 2.6.1)

(49) *Ita sum inritatus, animum ut nequeam ad*

*so be.PRS.1SG*   *irritated.NOM.M.SG*   *mind.ACC.M.SG*   *that be_unable.SBJV.PRS.1SG to*

**cogita-nd-um instituere.**

*think-GER-ACC set_up.INF.PRS*

‘I am so irritated that I am unable to get my mind to think.’ (Ter. *Phorm.* 240)

The argumental character of these phrases is apparent from their inability to be omitted without affecting the core meaning and/or grammaticality of the sentence (Dik 1997: 86-90). For instance, the omission of *a scribendo* ‘from writing’ (48) and *ad cogitandum* ‘to think’ (49) changes the meaning of the verbs *abhorret* ‘it recoils from’ (48) and *instituere* ‘to get to’ (49): the former becomes deactualised (Dik 1985: 11) and is thus interpreted in an absolute way, while the latter takes a different meaning (‘to apply to’ > ‘to set up’), as shown in respectively (50-51).

(50) *Abhorret animus.*

*recoil.PRS.3SG*   *mind.NOM.M.SG*

‘My mind shrinks back.’ (adapted from Cic. *Att.* 2.6.1)

(51) *Ita sum inritatus, animum ut nequeam instituere.*

*so be.PRS.1SG*   *irritated.NOM.M.SG*   *mind.ACC.M.SG*   *that be_unable.SBJV.PRS.1SG set_up.INF.PRS*

‘I am so irritated that I am unable to set up my mind.’ (adapted from Ter. *Phorm.* 240)

An even clearer example is given in (52): the omission of *canendo* ‘singing’ makes the meaning of the verb *desiste* shift from ‘stop’ to ‘stand off’, as evidenced in (53).
(52) [...] “desiste cane-nd-o, / nata”, ait [...].
stop.IMP.PRS.2SG sing-GER-ABL daughter.VOC.F.SG say.PRS.3SG
“‘Stop singing, (my) daughter”, he said.’ (Stat. *Theb*. 4.583-584)

(53) *Desiste.*
stand_off.IMP.PRS.2SG
‘Stand off.’ (adapted from Stat. *Theb*. 4.583-584)

In line with the more general fact that the distinction between arguments and adjuncts is gradient rather than discrete (Dik 1997: 87), it is sometimes difficult to establish whether gerund phrases are verb complements or adjuncts (Pinkster 2021: §16.100). This issue is important for the empirical examination of this study, and will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3 (§3.5.2).

Like adnominal gerunds, verb complement gerunds can be marked in various ways. They can also be bare or prepositional. The bare forms often stand in the dative (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 747-748; Aalto 1949: 63-64; Palmer 1964: 323; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 376-377; Menge *et al.* 2000: 741-743; Pinkster 2021: §15.137). In (54), the dative gerund clause *Epidicum quaerendo* ‘to look for Epidicus’ is the second argument of the light verb construction *operam dabo* ‘I will make an effort’.

(54) *Ego* [...] *Epidicum* *operam* ***quaere-nd-o*** *dabo*.
I.NOM.M.SG Epidicus.ACC.M.SG effort.ACC.F.SG look-GER-DAT do.FUT.1SG
‘I will make an effort to look for Epidicus.’ (Plaut. *Epid*. 605)

Verb complement gerunds also stand in the dative in a number of verbal expressions. The most frequent of these is *scribendo adesse* ‘to attend the writing (of a document)’ (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 747-748; Aalto 1949: 64; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 266; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 376-377; Menge *et al.* 2000: 743; Pinkster 2021: §15.137). In this expression, illustrated in (55), the second argument of *scribendo* ‘the writing’ is usually implicit, but easily inferable from the discourse context.

(55) *Cato* [...] ***scribe-nd-o*** *adfuit* [...].
Cato.NOM.M.SG write-GER-DAT beollo.PST.3SG
‘Cato attended (lit. ‘was present at’) the writing (of the decree).’ (Cic. *Att*. 7.1.4)

The other bare marking of verb complement gerunds is the ablative, which is extremely rare (Pinkster 2021: §15.137-§15.138). It is illustrated by *canendo* ‘singing’ (52) and *sequendo* ‘pursuing’ (56).

(56) [...] *desperatione* tandem fessum absistere ***seque-nd-o*** coegit.
despair.ABL.F.SG finally tired.ACC.M.SG stop.INF.PRS pursue-GER-ABL force.PST.3SG
‘Finally, he forced (him), as he was tired by despair, to stop pursuing.’ (Liv. 29.33.8)

Verb complement gerunds can furthermore be marked in the prepositional accusative and the prepositional ablative (Aalto 1949: 86-87; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737-738; Pinkster 2021: §15.137-
§15.138). The former are mostly governed by *ad* ‘to’ (49), which contributes again a final meaning to the gerund phrase (Aalto 1949: 86-87; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737). The ablative forms are predominantly introduced by *a(b)* ‘from’ (48), which expresses metaphorical distance or separation (Pinkster 2021: §15.137-§15.138).

As in adnominal phrases, in verb complements the gerund competes sometimes with the infinitive (Pinkster 2021: §15.138), and sometimes with NPs including a personal gerundive (Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 376-377; Menge *et al.* 2009: 737-743; Pinkster 2021: §15.137). This use is in fact the dominant use of the infinitive, and so verb complement infinitive clauses are much more frequent than their gerund counterparts (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 664-721; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 255-258; Palmer 1964: 319-320; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 341-374; Pinkster 2015: 57-58, 2021: §15.91-§15.131). In (57), the infinitive clause is *haec sperare* ‘to hope for these things’ is the second argument of *merui* ‘I deserved’.

(57) Haec merui sperare?
DEM.ACC.N.PL deserve.PST.1SG hope.INF.PRS
‘Did I deserve to hope for these things?’ (Prop. 2.5.3)

The fact that the gerund may compete with the infinitive in verb complements is evident from the comparison of examples like (58) and (59): in (58), the second argument of *impedire* ‘to hinder’ is realised by the gerund phrase *ad transeundum* ‘to cross’, while in (59), it is instantiated by the infinitive clause *me et hunc Sulpicium haec exquirere* ‘(that) Sulpicius here and I ask for this’.

(58) [...] cum altitudine aquae tum etiam rapiditate fluminis not_only depth.ABL.F.SG water.GEN.F.SG but_also even rapidity.ABL.F.SG current.GEN.N.SG ad transeu-nd-um impedirentur.
to cross-GER-ACC hinder.SBJV.PST.PASS.3PL
‘They were hindered to cross (the river) not only by the depth of the water, but also by the strength of the current.’ (Caes. *civ.* 1.62.2)

(59) [...] me enim et hunc Sulpicium impedit
I.ACC.M.SG for and DEM.ACC.M.SG Sulpicius.ACC.M.SG hinder.PRS.3SG
pudor [...] haec [...] exquirere [...].
modesty.NOM.M.SG DEM.ACC.N.PL ask_for.INF.PRS
‘For modesty hinders that Sulpicius here and I ask for this.’ (Cic. *de orat*. 1.163)

As for the competition between verb complement gerunds and NPs including a personal gerundive, the latter are again preferred over gerund clauses containing an explicit object, especially in standard varieties (Pinkster 2021: §15.137). Gerund clauses such as *Epidicum quaerendo* ‘to look for Epidicus’ (54) are thus less common than NPs like *lamentando filio* ‘to lamenting for her son’ (60).
(60) *Thetis* [...] *lamenta-nd-o* pausam fecit filio.
Thetis.NOM.F.SG lament-GERV-DAT.M.SG end.ACC.F.SG do.PST.3SG son.DAT.M.SG
‘Thetis put an end to lamenting for her son (lit. ‘to her son who needed to be lamented for’).’ (Plaut.
*Truc*. 731)

1.2.2.2.3. Adjective complement gerunds

Like verbs, adjectives may require a complement and/or be expanded by optional constituents (Pinkster 2015: 215, 1074). In Classical Latin, these two types of constituents depending on an adjective may be realised by a gerund phrase, though only when the governing adjective is a subject or object predicate (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 737-750; Aalto 1949: Ch. 4; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 267; Palmer 1964: 322-323; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 375-377; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737-743; Pinkster 2021: §15.139, §17.31-§17.32, §17.34).<fnref n="26" /> For example, *bellandi* ‘to fight’ (61) depends on the adjective *cupidi* ‘eager’, which acts as the predicate of the subject noun *homines* ‘men’ and governs the gerund as its second argument.<fnref n="27" /> In (62), *ad narrandum* ‘to tell’ is dependent on the adjective *tutus* ‘safe’. This adjective is the predicate of the subject NP *hic locus* ‘this place’ and takes the gerund phrase as an optional modifier.

(61) [...] *homines* **bella-nd-i** cupidi magno dolore
man.NOM.M.PL fight-GER-GEN eager.NOM.M.PL great.ABL.M.SG grief.ABL.M.SG
*adficiebantur*.
afflict.PST.PASS.3PL
‘The men eager to fight were afflicted by a great grief.’ (Caes. *Gall*. 1.2.4)

(62) *Non satis tutus est ad narrandum hic locus.*
NEG enough safe.NOM.M.SG be.PRS.3SG to tell-GER-ACC DEM.NOM.M.SG PLACE.NOM.M.SG
‘This place is not safe enough to tell (you).’ (Ter. *Phorm*. 818)

In the literature, constituents of the types exemplified by *bellandi* ‘to fight’ (61) and *ad narrandum* ‘to tell’ (62) are often referred to as respectively ‘adjective complements’ and ‘modifiers of the adjective’, in line with the more general distinction between complementation and modification (Quirk *et al.* 1985: 65). The question whether gerund constituents depending on an adjective are complements or modifiers is of no interest in this study. For practical reasons, I will use the term ‘adjective complement’ as a non-

<footnote n="26">²⁶ For an overview of the adjectives capable of governing a gerund phrase, see Pinkster (2021: §17.31). See also Kühner & Stegmann (1914⁵: 737, 746-747), Hofmann & Szantyr (1965: 375, 377), and Menge *et al.* (2000: 737, 740, 743). In the course of time, the inventory of these adjectives extends, especially in Late Latin (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 749; Aalto 1949: 59; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 377; Pinkster 2021: §17.31).</footnote>

<footnote n="27">²⁷ The adjective *cupidus* ‘eager’ requires a second argument as much as the verb *cupere* ‘to wish’, to which it is related both semantically and formally (Pinkster 2015: 215).</footnote>
technical cover term for both types of constituents, parallel to the use of the term ‘adnominal phrase’ for both arguments and modifiers of nouns.<fnref n="28" />

Like the two preceding types of gerunds, adjective complement gerunds can be marked in various ways, and may be bare or prepositional. The bare markings include the genitive and the dative, and are assigned by the governing adjective (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 737, 746-747; Aalto 1949: 58-60, 63-65; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 267; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 375, 377; Menge *et al.* 2000: 740, 743; Pinkster 2021: §15.139, §17.31-§17.32).<fnref n="29" /> For instance, *cupidi* ‘eager’ (61) imposes the genitive on *bel-landi* ‘to fight’, while *commune* ‘common’ (63) assigns the dative to the coordinated forms *ediscendo* ‘to learning by heart’ and *scribendo* ‘to writing’.

(63) *Illud edisce-nd-o scribe-nd-o=que commune est [...].*
DEM.NOM.N.SG learn_by_heart-GER-ABL write-GER-ABL=and common.NOM.N.SG be.PRS.3SG
‘This is common to learning by heart and to writing.’ (Quint. *inst.* 11.2.35)

As for the prepositional markings, they include the accusative and the ablative (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 749-751; Aalto 1949: 71-72, 86-88; Palmer 1964: 322; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737; Pinkster 2021: §15.139, §17.31-§17.32). As always, the accusative forms are predominantly governed by *ad* ‘to’, which usually endows the adjective phrase with a final value (e.g. (62)) (Aalto 1949: 86-87; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737). The ablative forms are extremely rare and practically always introduced by *in* ‘in’ (Aalto 1949: 71). In (64), the prepositional ablative phrase *in diligendo* ‘in making our choice’ depends on the adjective *felices* ‘fortunate’ (note that the preposition *in* ‘in’ does not have its default temporal value, but serves to restrict the interpretation of this adjective) (Aalto 1949: 71-72).

(64) [...] *si minus felices in dilige-nd-o fuissemus [...].*
if less happy.NOM.M.PL in choose-GER-ABL be.SBJV.PST.1PL
‘(...) if we had been less fortunate in choosing (...).’ (Cic. *Lael.* 60)

Another similarity with the preceding types of gerunds is that adjective complement gerunds compete
sometimes with infinitives (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 742; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 269; Hofmann &
Szantyr 1965: 350-351, 375, 378; Pinkster 2021: §15.138, §17.27-§17.29), and sometimes with NPs
including a personal gerundive (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 745-746; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 268;
Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 377; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737-743; Pinkster 2021: §17.31-§17.34). Adjective
complement infinitives are less common than their gerund counterparts and their use is more restricted,

<footnote n="28">²⁸ In order to avoid confusion with the technical term ‘adjective complement phrase’, which refers to argumental constituents depending on an adjective, the term ‘adadjectival phrase’ could be used, in analogy to the term ‘adnominal phrase’. The form ‘adadjectival’ is used by some authors, e.g. Lehmann (2018b: 23), but for reasons of euphony, I will not use it in this study.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹ Kühner & Stegmann (1914⁵: 754) and Hofmann & Szantyr (1965: 379) also mention the bare ablative, but the gerunds cited by them are either governed by adjectives that assign the dative to their complement, like *par* ‘equal’ (*cf*. Pinkster 2015: 217), or used in passages whose textual transmission is uncertain, the prepositional ablative reading with *in* ‘in’ being an alternative for the bare ablative reading (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 754). It is only in Late Latin that some adjective complement gerunds can unambiguously be taken as bare ablatives (Pinkster 2021: §15.139; see §2.1.1.2.2.1.3).</footnote>
but they have nonetheless been attested from the earliest period onward. They mostly depend on an adjective that is semantically and sometimes also formally related to a verb capable of taking an infinitive clause as its direct object (Ernout & Thomas 1951: 269; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 350; Pinkster 2021: §17.27-§17.29). An example of such an infinitive clause is *se hasce aedis vendidisse* ‘(that) he sold this house’ (65), which depends on the adjective *maestus* ‘sad’ (the related verb is *maerere* ‘to be sad’).

(65) *Sed ut maestus est se has=c' vendidisse* but how sad.NOM.M.SG be.PRS.3SG REFL.ACC.M.SG DEM.ACC.F.PL=DEM sell.INF.PST ‘But how sad he is that he sold this (house here)!’ (Plaut. *Most*. 796)

The competition between the gerund and the infinitive in adjective complements is manifest from the comparison between (61) and (66): in (61), the adjective *cupidus* ‘eager’ selects the gerund *bellandi* ‘to fight’ as its complement, while in (66) it governs the infinitive clause *falsis attingere gaudia palmis* ‘to touch his joy with his unreal hands’.

(66) [...] *cupidus* falsis attingere gaudia palmis [...].
eager.NOM.M.SG false.ABL.F.PL touch.INF.PRS joy.ACC.N.PL hand.ABL.F.PL
‘(...) eager to touch the joy (of his heart) with his false hands.’ (Prop. 1.19.9)

Concerning the competition between adjective complement gerunds and NPs with a personal gerundive, the latter are once again preferred over gerund phrases containing an explicit direct object (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 745-746; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 268; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 377; Pinkster 2021: §17.31). Thus, gerund clauses like *equites quoque tegendo* ‘to conceal even the horsemen’ (67) are less common than NPs such as *referundae gratiae* ‘to return thanks’ (68).

(67) [...] *equites* quoque **tege-nd-o** satis latebrosum
horseman.ACC.M.PL also conceal-GER-DAT enough full_of_lurking.places.ACC.M.SG
*locum* circumvectus [...].
place.ACC.M.SG ride_around.PTCP.PST.NOM.M.SG
‘(...) after riding around this place full enough of lurking places to conceal also the horsemen (...).’
(Liv. 21.54.1)

(68) **Referu-nd-ae** ego habeo linguam natam
show-GERV-DAT.F.SG I.NOM.M.SG have.PRS.1SG tongue.ACC.F.SG be_born.PTCP.PST.ACC.F.SG
*gratiae*.
gratitude.DAT.F.SG
‘I have a tongue born to show gratitude (lit. ‘for gratitude that should be shown’).’ (Plaut. *Persa* 428)
1.2.2.2.4. Adverb complement gerunds

The gerund can also occur in adverb complements (Aalto 1949: 86-87; Menge *et al.* 2000: 742; Pinkster 2021: §17.35). As in the case of adjective complements, the term ‘adverb complement’ is taken here as a cover term for both arguments and modifiers of adverbs. An example of an adverb complement gerund phrase is *ad innitendum* ‘to lean’ (69), which depends on the adverb *idonee* ‘suitably’.

(69) Cum primum [...] gressum reciperavi, nondum quidem ad innite-nd-um
when first step.ACC.M.SG recover.PST.1SG not_yet_ indeed to lean-GER-ACC
idonee [...].
suitably
‘As soon as I recovered the use of my leg (lit. ‘my step’), not yet indeed in a way suitable to lean (on
it) (...).’ (Apul. *flor*. 16.23-24)

Adverb complement gerunds are extremely rare throughout the history of Latin (Pinkster 2021: §17.35). In the few examples cited in the literature, they stand in the accusative and are governed by the preposition *ad* ‘to’ (e.g. (69)) (Aalto 1949: 86-87; Menge *et al.* 2000: 742; Pinkster 2021: §17.35). The rareness of this type of gerunds lines up with the more general observation that subordinate clauses are practically never governed by an adverb. This is due to the risk of “an overload of information” at a relatively low level in the hierarchical structure of the sentence (Pinkster 2021: §17.35). No examples have been reported in the literature of adverb complement infinitives and NPs with a personal gerundive (Pinkster 2021: §17.35). Hence, this type of gerunds might be exempt from competition with them.

1.2.2.2.5. Adjunct gerunds

The final use of the gerund in Classical Latin is as the head of an adjunct phrase (Kühner & Stegmann 1914⁵: 731-754; Aalto 1949: Ch. 4; Ernout & Thomas 1951: 266-268; Palmer 1964: 322-324; Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 376-380; Menge *et al.* 2000: 737-741; Pinkster 2021: §16.99-§16.104).<fnref n="30" /> Adjuncts are syntactically and semantically optional constituents on the level of the VP or the clause as a whole. They form a heterogeneous group, but essentially resemble each other by modifying the state of affairs denoted by the main verb in some way or other (Dik 1997: 87; Pinkster 2015: 12). Witness *pultando pedibus* ‘by kicking by my feet’ (70) and *vescendo* ‘to eat’ (71), which function as respectively a manner and a purpose adjunct.

<footnote n="30">³⁰ Other terms used for this type of constituents are, e.g., ‘adverbial modifiers’ (Dik 1997: 51) and ‘adverbials’ (Quirk *et al.* 1985: 49; Pinkster 2015: 12).</footnote>