Annachiara Clementelli

The aim of this project is to analyze the transformations of the gerund in the Latin ablative case. While both the starting point—mainly nominal usage in the archaic and classical ages—and the endpoint—predominantly verbal behavior in the Romance languages that preserve it—are well known, the transition between these two stages remains unexplored. This transition must have already begun in Latin, as suggested by the semantic changes (broadening of meaning) and syntactic changes (increased internal syntactic complexity) to which the Latin ablative gerund is subject. This study aims to analyze these phenomena through a quantitative and qualitative investigation of a broad corpus of texts (3rd century BCE – 6th century CE), offering new contributions to Latin and Romance linguistics.