Est modus in… verbo. Valori della maniera e associa

Abstract

The present study investigates the semantics of manner of motion verbs used as predicative heads of constructions expressing motion events in Italian, French and Spanish. The corpus-based investigation, carried out on a diachronic corpus consisting of the traslations of an original Latin text (Livy’s ‘Ab Urbe Condita’) into the three languages investigates in three different time stages, revealed that the semantics of manner of motion verbs can be described in terms of basic values, which be conveyed individually or in association with additional manner or path values following a cluster of neighbouring, inferagle meaning. The existence of such clusters may be taken as a key to describe phenomena of variation and change in the encoding of motion events: staritng from a core meaning, other peripheral meanings can be inferred, thus favouring the emergence of never usage strategies, as wel as o newer semantic and syntactic patterns.