Semantic roles and word formation. Instrument and Location in Ancient Greek

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Semantic roles and word formation

Instrument and Location in Ancient Greek*

Eugenio R. Luján & César Ruiz AbadUniversidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)

In functional-typological approaches to syntax the identification of semantic roles and the grammatical markers associated with them has been an important goal. In this paper it is argued that a similar approach to word formation patterns is possible and some criteria for the identification of the semantic roles in the domain of derivational morphology are provided. Agent, Instrument, and Location can be considered as different semantic roles in morphology, but polysemy between two or more of them is also frequent cross-linguistically. Deverbal suffixes employed in Ancient Greek for deriving instrumental and locative nouns are surveyed as a case study. The semantic analysis of the derivative nouns shows that those suffixes are also employed for building other nouns that are semantically related, but cannot be considered Instruments and Locations proper, such as non-prototypical instruments, prizes and rewards, and others. In general, when there is no specific suffix for a semantic role but a noun expressing it needs to be coined, suffixes for neighbouring semantic roles will be employed, depending on the available metaphor or metonymy that allows for the semantic extension. The comparison of these findings to the conceptual organization of grammatical morphemes in the same language (Greek) and in other languages in general reveals that both in syntax and morphology a similar semantic organization is found. However, the number of semantic roles that can be identified in syntax is higher than the number of semantic roles reflected in word formation patterns, so that semantic maps of word formation patterns are similar in shape but more reduced.

Keywords: Semantic roles; word formation patterns; nominal morphology; derivation; Instrument; Location; Agent; Ancient Greek; semantic maps

* This paper is part of the research project “Estudios de morfología nominal: lenguas paleo-hispánicas e indoeuropeas antiguas” (“Studies on noun morphology in Palaeohispanic and Old Indo-European languages”), which has the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI2012-36069-C03-02). The final version has greatly ben-efited from the comments and suggestions made by the editors and an anonymous reviewer, for which we are very grateful.


Eugenio R. Luján & César Ruiz Abad

1. Introduction

Multifunctionality in word formation patterns can be researched in regard to the semantic roles that the nouns built by means of those patterns express.1 Some nominal and adverbial formations appear to be related to various semantic roles according to their meanings. Typical examples include the following:2

(1) English suffix -er a. killer (Agent) b. lighter (Instrument)

(2) French suffix -oir a. débouchoir ‘plunger’ [from déboucher ‘unlock’] (Instrument) b. dortoir ‘dormitory’ [from dormir ‘sleep’] (Location)

(3) Diola suffix -a a. ɛliba ‘knife’ [from -lib ‘make slices’] (Instrument) b. atɛba ‘builder’ [from -tɛb ‘build’] (Agent)

This is also the case with so called Manner adverbs, such as English adverbs in -ly (quickly, eagerly, etc.), Spanish adverbs in -mente (educadamente ‘gently’, apro-piadamente ‘aptly’, etc.) and Ancient Greek adverbs in -ōs (alethôs ‘truly’, kalôs ‘beautifully’, etc.), to mention just a few cases. Their traditional label, “adverbs of manner”, just underlines their main uses, but it does not necessarily imply that they can only have that semantic value. As a matter of fact, Crespo (1997: 18) remarked that Greek adverbs in -ōs can be used not only for the semantic function Manner-Modality, but also for the functions Means-Intermediary and Reference, according to his classification.

These types of semantic constelations are frequent cross-linguistically, as shown in previous literature on this subject. Things being so, it is possible to apply to word formation patterns the kind of semantic analysis that has been employed with grammatical morphemes in functional-typological research. However, there will be some differences, too, and some adjustments will be needed. In this paper we will be concerned on how to approach such a problem from a typological perspective.

1. For the discussion of the concept of “multifunctionality” as a useful alternative to poly-semy and homonymy see Haspelmath (2003: 212–213). For a general overview of polysemy in word formation patterns see Booij (2007: 220–225).

. Further examples in other languages can be found in Luján (2010: 162–163) and Luschütsky & Rainer (2011 and 2013). The data of Diola have been taken from Comrie & Thompson (1985: 354).



Although word formation patterns have not been systematically analyzed from this perspective, in principle there is no reason to suppose that derivational mor-phemes behave so differently from grammatical morphemes (cases and adposi-tions). In fact, the findings of the studies on grammaticalization carried out in the last thirty years have shown that lexical and grammatical morphemes constitute a continuum and their meanings are organized in similar ways. They have core and peripheral meanings and the borders between those meanings are synchronic-ally fuzzy.3 As we have argued elsewhere (Luján 2010: 163–164), word formation patterns can be considered to be midway between lexical and grammatical mor-phemes: in contrast to the lexicon, there is a limited set of derivational morphemes and word formation patterns in any given language; in contrast to grammatical morphemes, these patterns are not mandatory, since word formation patterns can-not be appplied to every word of the same class and frequently it is not even easy to determine the criteria governing the distribution. Moreover, the same semantic content can be expressed by means of grammatical morphemes (cases and adposi-tions) or affixes in different languages.

Besides those mentioned above, further types of nominalizations can be ana-lyzed from this perspective.4 Comrie and Thompson (1985: 335–336) provide several cases of Objective, Manner and Reason nominalizations. Objective ones denote “the result or the typical or ‘cognate’ object of the action”. Thus in Zulu, a prefix for nouns in one of the non-human noun classes plus the suffix -o allows for such derivations, as in the following examples (Comrie & Thompson 1985: 356):

(4) -cabanga ‘think’ → mu-cabang-o ‘thought’; (Object)

(5) -cula ‘sing’ → i-cul-o ‘congregation, hymn’. (Object)

In most Indo-European languages no differentiated marker exists for that pur-pose. Instead, it is very common to use action nominalizations in a metonymic sense, and the output is then often lexicalized. Compare, e.g. creation in job cre-ation (Action) vs. the creation of an artist (Result), with the evolution Action > Result. In Ionic-Attic Greek, however, there are two different suffixes: result nouns are expressed by -ma, while action nouns by -sis, as we can see in the following examples (cf. Chantraine 1933: 190):

(6) didáskō ‘teach, learn’ → dídagma ‘what is learned’ (Result) → dídaksis ‘teaching, instruction’ (Action)

. See the general frame and the case studies in Geeraerts (1997).

. This does not involve that every type of nominalization can be linked to one or various semantic roles, as is obviously the case with action nouns, which would semantically corre-spond to the verb of a sentence and not to any of the participants.



A Manner nominalization expresses “way of ‘verb-ing’” (Comrie & Thompson 1985: 354). In Turkish, the suffix -(y)iš, with vowel harmony, is used in this sense: yürü- ‘to walk’ → yürü-yüs ‘way of walking’, ye- ‘to eat’ → ye-(y)iš ’way of eating’. Again metonymic shifts from action nouns are current in Indo-European lan-guages: cf. Walking is a great way to keep fit vs. his walking (Comrie & Thompson 1985: 354–355). In Gikuyu, a Bantu language, the circumfix mũ-…-ĩre has the same meaning: mũ-ina-ĩre ‘manner of singing’, mũ-thom-ere ‘manner of reading’ (Mugane 1997: 56). Accompaniment and Time nominalizations can be illustrated by Kabardian, a Northwest Caucasian language: lež′e-ɣw ‘workmate’ and laaža-ɣwa ‘worktime’, from laž′e ‘work’ (Mel’čuk 1997). The Reason nominalization is a less common pattern: it denotes ‘the reason for “verb-ing”’. Sundanese is the only example provided by Comrie & Thompson (1985: 356–357): paŋ-dataŋ ‘reason for arrival’, paŋ-daek ‘reason for being willing’.

. Semantic roles in word formation

If we adopt that perspective, it will be possible to apply to word formation patterns the kind of semantic analysis that has been used with grammatical morphemes in functional-typological research. As we said above, there will be some differences, so one of our main concerns in this part of the paper will be to discuss the type of adjustments needed in the methodology. In what follows we will leave aside adverbs and concentrate mainly on nominal word formation because this is the focus of our current research.

.1 Identifying semantic roles in word formation

Semantic roles can be defined according to the state of affairs or the event or action in which the participants take part. For instance, let us consider (7):

(7) John hit the door with a hammer.

The sentence expresses an action in which John can be analyzed as the Agent, door as the Patient and hammer as the Instrument. However, a fundamental difference to syntax is that in word formation there is no explicit state of affairs, event or action. This leads to the question how it is then possible to approach the semantic analysis of word formation from this perspective. Although we will specify the definitions of various semantic roles more precisely in § 3 below, it will be conve-nient to discuss the general methodology now.In word formation we can relate a pattern to a semantic role when the meanings of the words built according to that pattern are overtly construed in such a way



that they evoke an action, event or state of affairs in which the referent of the noun plays that semantic role. For instance, a runner is someone who runs, that is, it is the Agent in the action evoked by its meaning. And a cooker is an object with which one can cook food, that is, the Instrument in the action referred to. Obvi-ously, this does not mean that, from a syntactic point of view, runner or cooker cannot appear in a sentence in other semantic roles, as sentences (8)–(10) show.

(8) John killed the runner (Patient) with his car.

(9) Give it to the runner (Dative).

(10) Put it on the cooker (Location).

What matters is that, regardless of the syntactic function that they may have in every specific occurrence, the meaning of runner is construed in such a way that its referent is thought of as the Agent of the action “running” and that of cooker as the Instrument of the action “cooking”.

The meaning of some nouns can evoke an event or state of affairs in which they are participants even if they lack an overt marker. For instance, the meaning of a noun like road is construed in such a way that it is prototypically conceived as a Perlative and that of pen as an Instrument.5 However, they are not overtly marked as such from a morphological perspective. At first glance this would seem to be a problem for applying this kind of semantic analysis to word formation pat-terns, but, in fact, the situation is not much different from the syntactic domain. In some cases, no grammatical morpheme (preposition or case) is needed to express the specific semantic role that a given element plays in a sentence. Compare the following sentences:

(11) I went to the hospital.

(12) I went home.

Both hospital and home are Adlatives in their sentences; however, hospital needs a grammatical morpheme (preposition to) to mark its role in the sentence, while home does not. In the same way, English gardener or player are overtly marked as Agents by means of the suffix -er, while blacksmith or nurse are not. It is thus only in cases like gardener, sailor, shoemaker, hairdryer, or hanger, which are formed by

. This can be easily proved by searching for the definitions of such words in the dictionaries. E.g., the definition of those two words in the Webster’s Dictionary (1989 edition, New York) is as follows: road, “a strip of smoothed, cleared land, usually provided with a hard surface, for the passage from place to place of vehicles, riders, pedestrians etc.”; pen, “an instrument for writing in ink”.



means of affixes or through composition, that a given word formation pattern can be related to a semantic role.

Multifunctionality in word formation patterns reveals that semantic roles in morphology, like in the syntactic domain, are not clear-cut categories, but form a continuum. As a consequence, the researcher has to face two main problems: the first one is the interpretation of the empirical data, i.e. which semantic role cor-responds to a given derivative noun (cf. § 3.2); the second one is the identification of the different semantic roles in morphology, i.e. which ones are actual linguistic entities.

. Criteria for differentiating semantic roles

The problem of how to tell apart different semantic roles has been, in fact, a crux of this approach since Fillmore’s (1968) seminal paper “The case for case”. Even if the terms “semantic role” and “semantic function” frequently overlap in functionalist analyses, some scholars have tried to keep them separate. Crespo (1997: 6–7), in his comprehensive analysis of the semantic functions of Ancient Greek, defined a semantic role as the role played by a term (entity, state of affairs, possible fact or utterance) in the relation referred to by the predicate of the sentence. He stressed the fact that the number of semantic roles is unlimited, since the actual role depends on the lexical context both of the term and the predicate and also of the other participants in the event or state. Semantic functions, instead, express bun-dles of notions, and they can be characterized by their grammatical morphemes, showing the properties of the morphemes as regards coordination, apposition, juxtaposition, and answer to partial questions (Crespo 1997: 8–9).

The situation becomes even more complicated when we compare different languages and try to delimitate semantic functions cross-linguistically. In his study of temporal adverbs in the world’s languages Haspelmath (1997: 10–13), when dis-cussing the criteria to identify semantic functions, states:

A semantic function has been isolated when there is a significant number of languages which clearly distinguish this type from related ones in their means of expression […] It would be very difficult to base such a list on semantic criteria alone, because there would be no way of constraining the possible proliferation of functions.

In a more recent paper, he states (Haspelmath 2003: 217):

A function is put on the [semantic] map if there is at least one pair of languages that differ with respect to this function. […] In order to justify this distinction on our semantic map, we need at least one language that has different formal expressions for the two functions. […] This procedure is repeated as more languages are taken into account until no new functions are encountered.



We can thus rely on this criterion for word formation, too. No different semantic role should be distinguished unless there is at least one dedicated word formation pattern in a language that is used for a given semantic role but not for other.

Nevertheless, we must be conscious that a strict differentiation among seman-tic roles or functions is not possible. Givón (2001: 106–107) warns:

The distinction between a major type and a minor sub-type [of semantic role] is not a principled one, but rather a matter of pragmatic judgement. [… A] major semantic feature (or type) is simply one that has more extensive grammatical consequences. In defining each semantic role, we only define a prototype. Most members of a natural class tend to conform, more or less, to the class’s prototype. But every natural population also has less prototypical members that fit the prototype less well. Fortunately, such less prototypical members are – by definition – a minority.

Along the same lines, Luraghi (2003: 18), in her study of the Greek cases and prepositions, remarked:

In this book, I assume that SRs [semantic roles] are prototypical categories. This means that besides prototypical exponents of each SR one must allow for the existence of non-prototypical ones. Assuming prototypicality as a constituting feature of SRs has two advantages: in the first place it allows to capture the essential unity of conceptualization of a given situation in spite of the occurrence of different participants. Furthermore, it avoids multiplying SRs.

The impossibility of strictly defining the various semantic roles and entities used in the linguistic analyses on which semantic maps are based has led to alternative views, such as that found in Cysouw’s (2007, 2010) papers. He has introduced the term “analytical primitives” in order to avoid the problem of determining what kinds of entities are used for building a semantic map. An analytical primitive is defined as “any concept that is needed for the analysis of a particular set of data” (Cysouw 2007: 227). However, even if this approach simplifies the problem posed by the units of analysis, it has no support in the linguistic data themselves. If the difference between the concepts used in a semantic map depends on the necessity felt by the linguist, we run the risk of multiplying the concepts ad infinitum and, more importantly, making distinctions ad libitum, without a factual basis in the linguistic data.

It follows, then, that semantic roles, like most linguistic categories, cannot be kept distinct in a straightforward manner and appear to be organized in a core-periphery structure with more and less prototypical members inside it. However, this is not a reason to give up completely the search for some criteria that can be used to identify them, at least the major prototypes. From this perspective, it seems more advisable to keep to Haspelmath’s criterion in the analysis of word formation



patterns, so that semantic roles in word formation patterns will be only identified as different if they are expressed differently in the languages of the world.

This general principle can have various realizations in the languages:

a. The first, more straightforward possibility is that there exist different word formation patterns at least in one language for those semantic roles. They will be consequently identified as different semantic roles.

b. The second possibility is that a given semantic role, even if not having a dedi-cated word formation pattern of its own in any language, can be identified as such because it is grouped together with other semantic roles in differ-ent ways. For instance, the semantic roles Means and Intermediary may not be linked to exclusive formation patterns of their own, but might be identi-fied as separate semantic roles if they are grouped together with Instruments in a certain word formation pattern but they fall with Agents (and not with Instruments) in another, whether this happens in the same language or in two different languages.

c. The third criterion relies on the exclusion of contents. For instance, if a given word formation pattern includes Agents but Experiencers are excluded from it, while another pattern allows nouns referring both to Agents and Experiencers, they can be considered different semantic roles.

. Case study: Instrument, Location and related roles in Ancient Greek

Within the general frame presented in § 2, we will develop in this paper the anal-ysis of word formation patterns for Instrument and Location nouns in Ancient Greek as a case study. We will begin by defining the semantic roles Instrument and Location, and then provide an overview of the kind of semantic polysemy or multifunctionality in which they are involved in word formation. We will analyze in depth the data provided by word formation patterns in Ancient Greek from this perspective6 and will conclude with some typological considerations.

.1 Defining Instrument and Location

In the syntactic domain, Instruments are usually defined in contrast to Agents. Both are causal semantic roles, that is, they contribute to the carrying out of the

. In this paper the focus will thus be on deverbal derivational suffixes. In some cases, such as English screwdriver or Spanish abrelatas ‘tin opener’, certain patterns of composition can be related to these semantic roles, too.



action.7 The semantic features [control], [intentionality] and [animacy] make the difference between them. The prototypical Agent is positively marked for each of these features, while the prototypical Instrument is not (Cruse 1973; Schlesinger 1989); see the following sentences:

(13) John hit the horse with the stick.

(14) The clock was ticking so loudly that it woke up the baby.

(15) The wind blew the tree down.

(16) The key opened the door.

In (13) the prototypical Agent (John) shows all the three features, while the proto-typical Instrument (the stick) shows none. Agent is a complex category in itself. In the lowest rank of agentivity stand self-moving devices, such as the clock in (14), and natural phenomena, such as the wind in (15), usually called ‘Force’ or ‘efficient cause’ (Crespo 1997: 32). Like Instruments they do not have any of the above men-tioned features, but “they can act and move independently, and they are not under the control of another effector” (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997: 121). In Greek, they are coded by the same markers as prototypical Agents, so there is one single semantic role Agent-Force (Luraghi 2003: 321; Crespo 1997: 32–33).

Under certain conditions Instruments can be conceived of as Agents. In com-parison to the stick in (13), the key in (16) is coded as the subject because the Agent is no longer on the scene. Still it presents the feature [+manipulability] in contrast to Forces.

In a similar way, Instrument shows interferences with various other semantic roles, especially Means and Intermediary. This refers to an animate (Intermedi-ary) or inanimate (Means) entity by means of which the Agent brings about a state of affairs. Means and Intermediary share the feature [+manipulability] with Instrument. Luraghi (2003) has identified a separate semantic role Intermediary and has insisted on the notion of “split control” of the action. The Intermediary, as a human being, ultimately acts voluntarily; hence, it shares with the Agent the control of the action (Luraghi 1995: 264).

. See, e.g. Luraghi (2003: 30–38). This is broadly equivalent to Palancar’s (2002: 70–78 and 140–146) semantic macro-role Energizer. Croft (1991: 185) established a difference between antecedent and consequent roles inside the causal chain of events; the sematic roles under discussion would belong with the former.



In the morphological domain, Grossmann (1998: 387) defined Instruments in this way: “inanimate entities, indirect and non-intentional causes of an event, the potential function of which is usually serving to bring about an action.”8

In syntax Location is usually defined as the place where the state of affairs occurs. It does not belong to the causal domain but to the spatial one. However, since Space is often the source domain in the conceptualisation of the World, Location keeps relations with several other roles, especially the other spatial ones (Origin, Direction). Interferences between Location and Instrument are possible, too.

(17) He paid by credit card.

(18) By land, by sea, by air

(19) We travelled both by bus and by sea.

(20) Ambos viajamos con el autobús y por mar.

In (17) by credit card is an Instrument, while in (18) the same preposition has a local value. The identification of the role is not straightforward when the item referred to is a container or a vehicle (by car, by plane…). This fact is confirmed by (19), since coordination with Location is possible. This ambiguity is still more evident in other Indo-European languages. In (20), the Spanish translation of (19), the term referring to a vehicle can select the prototypical Instrument preposition con ‘with’, while the Location is expressed by por ‘by’.

In morphology, Location nouns have been defined as follows: “the derivatives whose referents play the semantic role of Location in the state of affairs repre-sented by the sentence in which they occur.”9 (Grossmann 1998: 388).

. The semantic roles Instrument and Location in word formation

As soon as we deal with the data, one realizes that in spite of the definitions given above, sometimes it is not easy to attribute a semantic role to a derivative noun. That should be hardly surprising, since linguistic categories are not clearly defined, but have a radial structure with prototypes. Even more, when deal-ing with word formation patterns and, especifically, with derivation, semantic

. “Entità inanimate, cause indirette e non intenzionali di un evento la cui funzione poten-ziale è quella di servire abitualmente a la realizzazione di un’azione.”

. “I derivati i cui referenti hanno il ruolo semantico di luogo nello stato di cose rappresen-tato dall’enunciato in cui occorrono.”


Semantic roles and word formation 1

slipperiness is more expected than in other domains such as grammatical mark-ers in sentence structure.

Agent itself is not a homogeneous semantic role in syntax and this is the case in word formation, too. For instance, in Spanish the feminine Agent suffix -dora (and its allomorphs) allows for coining nouns that have an agentive reading but denote inanimate entities: productora ‘production company’, constructora ‘construction company’ o planeadora ‘speedboat’, etc. The English suffix -er is even more com-plex: some -er nouns such as opener, chiller, or stunner can denote an event, but still have an agentive interpretation (Panther & Thornburg 2002: 283–284).10

The clearest case of interference between Agent and Instrument are the so-called “impersonal Agents” (Booij 1986; Ryder 1991). In Dutch this is exemplified by the polysemy of the word zender: (1) ‘person who sends’, (2) ‘radio/TV station’, and (3) ‘transmitter’. The first meaning refers to an animate, prototypical Agent, while the third refers, instead, to an entity that can be manipulated like an Instru-ment. Midway between them, the second meaning has an agentive interpretation, but it is neither a proper, animate Agent nor is easily controllable. This fuzzy limit between Agent and Instrument is well represented in modern languages by semi-automatic devices, such as sprinkler, hairdryer, etc.11 All of them are inanimate entities but have some control over the action (i.e. they are subject to manipulation but the Agent is more or less absent). According to Pustejovsky (1995: 99), every object has a particular telic use, such as cutting for a knife. The telicity is explicitly reflected in impersonal Agents and Instrument, since they can still be paraphrased as ‘X for verb-ing’, but this is not possible for animate Agents.

Other languages code Agent and Instrument in a different way. Spanish has three main deverbal suffixes for these meanings: -dor can denote Agents and pro-totypical Instruments; -dora is selected for self-moving devices; and -dero/-dera are used for Instrument and Location. Maa has an Agent suffix a-…-ani and an instrumental one -ɛt, cf. ɔl-adúŋònì ‘one who divides’ vs. en-duŋét ‘knife’ (Olsen & Payne 2009). This is also the situation in Classical Nahuatl: compare tlaxcalchiuani

1. Some researchers have proposed to analyze English -er as a nominalizer of the subject and not of the Agent (Levin & Rappaport 1988; Rappaport & Levin 1992; Bauer 1996 and others). In fact, nouns such as hearer, rememberer or knower are not Agents. It may be the case that grammatical roles play a role in these nominalization processes, too.

11. In fact, nouns referring to automatic devices have been considered the link between Agents and Instruments leading to the semantic extension Agent > Instrument (Booij 1986). However, Rainer (2005) showed that this is wrong, given that most of those nouns referring to machines were created in the Romance languages when the suffixes were already used for coining Instrument nouns.



‘person making tortillas’ vs. tlaxcalchiualoni ‘instrument for making tortillas’ (Luschützky & Rainer 2011).

We would like to pay attention now to other borderline cases. In some Indo-European languages animate entities, no matter the degree of control they may have, cannot display a prototypical Instrument suffix. So in Spanish it is not pos-sible to coin a noun with the suffix -dero for a person unless used in a metaphori-cal sense.12 However, in Maa we have ɔl-kípáár-ɛt ‘messenger, someone sent by an elderly or rich person; disciple’, from ɪpaaya ‘send’ (Olsen & Payne 2009). In order to coin a word denoting a person, the instrumental suffix -ɛt has been selected instead of the agentive one a-…-ani. The Maa derivative highlights the (partial) absence of control of the messenger and his dependency on the person who makes the assignment of sending. Semantically, it is an Intermediary and, as this category lacks a specific marker in word-formation, Maa codes the derivative noun with the closest one, Instrument -ɛt.13

In French, we find some marginal values of the prototypical Instrument- Location suffix -oir.

(21) Nous devons nous adapter pour ne pas être un 1pl must.1pl 1pl adapt for neg neg be an trébuchoir mais un attiroir. obstacle but an attraction ‘We must adapt, so that we are not an obstacle [lit. ‘stumbl-er’], but a center

of attraction [lit. ‘attract-er’].’

(22) La fortune du FN [Front National] vint précisément The fortune of_the FN (National Front) came exactly de cette faiblesse : le parti lepéniste était pour from this weakness the party of_Le_Pen was for la gauche le repoussoir idéal, fort en apparences, the left the stimulus ideal strong in appearances mais inoffensif en réalité. but harmless in reality ‘FN’s fortune came exactly from this weakness: Le Pen’s party was for the

Left the ideal stimulus [lit. ‘repel-er’], strong in appearances, but harmless in reality.’

1. E.g. coladero means ‘sieve’ or ‘place in which it is easy to slip in’, but metaphorically it can also refer to a bad goalkeeper.

1. Olsen & Payne (2009: 160) consider this nominalization a Theme, intended as “a non-agentive participant that is in the condition described by the verb stem, i.e. where no change in state occurs” or as “a participant undergoing literal movement or change in location but no other change in state” (Olsen & Payne 2009: 160).



In the foregoing examples only the agentive reading is possible, but the enti-ties are inanimate. Thus, they have been identified as Forces (Villoing & Namer 2008: 1558).14 We will see below (§ 3.3) some similar cases in Greek.

Another well-known interference between semantic roles is found in nouns of containers. As Meyer-Lübke (1890: 271) pointed out, it is not clear whether Ital-ian beccatoio ‘seedtray’ and abbeveratoio ‘drinking trough’ should be classified as Instruments or Locations. Facing the same problem with French -oir, some authors have stated that it is not possible to dissociate them (Corbin 1987: 247–248). Plénat (2005: 250) considers that the differentiation is not useful, since Location has no different means of expression. Against this view, Villoing & Namer (2008: 1553) argue that the distinction Instrument/Location does exist since new dever-bal nouns in -eur can be Instruments but not Locations (e.g. amortisseur ‘shock absorber’, from amortir ‘absorb’).15 Note that this is an application of our second criterion proposed at the end of § 2.2. Villoing and Namer (2008: 1553–1556) have gone further and they have proposed a test, (23)–(24), in order to classify a noun in one or the other category:16

(23) NP0 V W avec DET V-oir ↔ NP0 utilise DET V-oir pour Vinf W

(24) A quel endroit est-ce que NP0 V W ? Dans/sur DET V-oir

From the 639 ‘-oir tokens’ of their corpus, 587 (91,8%) were felicitously interpreted in one of the senses. Unfortunately, we have not found an objective way to apply the same tests to our corpus, as no one has real linguistic competence in Ancient Greek.

Finally, we have to recall that a well-known problem for semasiological studies in word-formation is the unpredictability of the semantic evolution of derivatives. This is also related to the classical difference between Wortbildungs-bedeutung ‘meaning of the word formation pattern’ and Wortbedeutung ‘meaning of the word’. For instance, French Instrument-Locative -oir in tiroir ‘drawer’ is apparently construed as the entity affected by the verb. However, when it was first

1. In fact, they chose the term ‘Cause’, but their examples fit with the definition of Force by Van Valin & LaPolla (1997: 121) that we mentioned above. In order to avoid any confusion with Cause, which is another differentiated semantic role both in French and in Greek, we keep the term Force.

1. In fact, the same argument is also mentioned by Corbin (1987: 247): “A priori, ces sens [Instrument et Lieu] sont différents. Par exemple, les noms construits en -on sur une base verbale peuvent avoir un sens instrumental (bouchon, guidon, lorgnon, pilon, etc.), mais pas un sens locatif” (“A priori, these meanings [Instrument and Place] are different. For instance, nouns in -on from a verbal base can have an instrumental reading, but not a locative one”). However, potentially any noun in -oir can have both meanings, and so she prefers to set only one RCM [règle de construction de mots (“word construction rule”)] (Corbin 1987: 248).

1. NP0= subject, V=verb, W=object, DET= determinant.



coined at the beginning of 15th century, the word referred to the ‘door handle’, so that the later meaning is the result of a metonymic extension. For English Agent-Instrument -er, it is possible to find similar cases: e.g. keeper may denote an entity that is subjectively construed as worthy of being kept, as in a sentence like ‘your boyfriend is a keeper’ (see more examples in Panther & Thornburg 2001: 173–174).

Summing up, in this section, we have discussed some of the major problems that need to be adressed when trying to identify semantic roles in word forma-tion. Two main, common fuzzy areas have been referred to, ‘Impersonal Agents’, which are mid-way between Agents and Instruments, and ‘containers’, which can be interpreted as Instruments and Locations. Futhermore, word formation pat-terns serve to coin new words and the lexikon is more likely to undergo unpredict-able semantic shifts than other domains. Due to specific semantic changes, a given derivative may not match exactly the definition of the prototypical Semantic Roles (as given in §3.1). As a result thereof, derivatives can display meanings that are somewhat unexpected from the prototypical value of the pattern.

. Instrument and Location in word formation in Ancient Greek

In this section, we will focus first on the three main deverbal suffixes which denote Instrument and/or Location in Ancient Greek:17 -tron, -thron, and -terion.18 We will then compare their behaviour to that of the suffix -te r.19

A preliminary remark must be made: Greek has a neuter gender and this is the gender of the nouns in -tron, -thron, and -te rion. It is also interesting that there is a formal relationship between the prototypical masculine Agent suffix -ter, with the long grade /e/ characteristic of the Nominative singular of liquid stems, and -tron, with the neuter ending -on and hence the zero grade suffix (cf. aroter ‘plougher’ vs. árotron ‘plough’). In Table 1 we have listed the meanings of -tron and words for each meaning occurring in the corpus.

1. See Chantraine (1933: 62–64, 330–334, 374–375) and Balles (2008: 191–192, 196–197) on these suffixes.

1. We have obtained the data of the suffixes -tron, -thron, and -terion from a corpus ranging from the 8th to the 5th century including the Iliad, the Odyssey, Hesiod, the Homeric hymns, Alcman, Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar, Hippocrates, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, and Lysias. We only take into account those nouns that were synchronically analyzable to a Greek speaker.

1. For the suffix -ter the whole corpus of Ancient Greek has been taken into account, but given its high productivity we have not elaborated complete lists.



Table 1. Meanings of -tron and words in the corpus

Instruments (30 derivatives)

ánkistron ‘fish-hook’ **ankízō *‘fish’amfíblēstron ‘casting-net’ amfibállō ‘throw round’árotron ‘plough’ aróō ‘plough’dértron ‘membrane which contains the bowels’ deírō ‘skin, flay’díoptron ‘means for seeing through’ dioráō ‘see through’élytron ‘covering’ eilyō ‘enfold’énoptron ‘mirror’ enoráō ‘see, look at’epíklintron ‘couch, arm-chair’ epiklínō ‘lie on’ésoptron ‘mirror’ eisoráō ‘look into’zôstra (pl.) ‘belt, girdle’ zonnumi ‘gird’thyretra (pl.) ‘door-casing, frame’ thyre ‘door’kátoptron ‘mirror’ kátopsis ‘sight’kéntron ‘horse-goad’ kentéō ‘prick, goad’lístron ‘tool for levelling’ lissós, -á, -ón ‘smooth’piéstron ‘spatula for children birth’ píezō ‘press’plástron ‘ear-ring’ plássō ‘mould’plêktron ‘instrument for striking the lyre’ plessō ‘strike’podó-psēstron ‘footwiper’ psáō ‘rub, wipe’róptron ‘the wood in a trap’ répō ‘incline, fall’semantron ‘seal’ semaínō ‘indicate’stégastron ‘cover, wrapper’ stegázō ‘cover’táraktron ‘tool for stirring with’ tarássō ‘stir’téretron ‘borer, gimlet’ teírō ‘bore through’hypáleiptron ‘spatula for spreading a salve’ hupaleífō ‘spread like salve’kheiromaktron and kheirómaktron ‘cloth for wiping the hands, towel’

mássō ‘knead’

Non-prototypical instruments

thélgētron ‘charm, spell’ thélgō ‘enchant’thélktron ‘charm, spell’ thélgō ‘enchant’loetrá (pl.) in the sense ‘water for the bath’ loéō ‘bath’podániptra (pl.) ‘water for washing the feet in’ níptrō ‘wash’phíltron in the sense ‘love-charm’ philéō ‘love’

(Continued)



Prizes (5 derivatives)

thréptra (pl.) ‘reward for rearing, made to nurses by parents’, ‘return made by children for their rearing’

tréphō ‘nourish’

kómistron ‘reward for carrying or for saving’ komízō ‘carry’ and ‘save’lytron ‘ransom’ lyō ‘unfasten’, ‘save’menytron ‘reward for information’ menyō ‘reveal’sôstra (pl.) ‘reward for saving’, ‘thank-offering for deliverance from a danger’

sozō ‘save’

Forces (1 derivative)

phóbētra (pl.) ‘terrors’ phobéō ‘terrify’

Containers (3 derivatives)

eksáleiptron ‘unguent-box’ eksaleíphomai ‘anoint’zygastron ‘box [which is closed like a yoke]’ zygón ‘a yoke’phértron ‘bier, litter’ phérō ‘carry’

Location (4 derivatives)

théatron ‘theatre’ theáō ‘contemplate’léktron ‘couch, bed’ lékhomai ‘lie down’loetrón in the sense ‘bathing-place’ loéō ‘bath’pístron ‘drinking-trough for cattle’ pipískō ‘give to drink’

Varia (4 derivatives)ékmaktron ‘impress’ ekmássō ‘mould’daitrón ‘portion’ daíō ‘divide’loetrón in the sense ‘bath’ loéō ‘bath’phíltron ‘love, affection’ philós, -á, -ón ‘beloved, dear’

The majority of the nouns in -tron are Instruments. We find just a few Loca-tion nouns and some containers. There is a group of non-prototypical Instruments, i.e. nouns denoting entities that have some degree of control over the action and cannot be easily manipulated, such as charms, e.g. thélktron ‘charm, spell’ (from thélgō ‘enchant’). Another group of nouns, usually found in the plural, is well rep-resented by polysemous sôstra (Pl.). It denotes both a prize-reward and a sacrifice for deliverance. This second possibility is not surprising since in Antiquity the relation god-devotee is one of mutual interest, and so the sacrifice is considered a kind of payment to the god. However, sôstra as a thanks-offering is not ‘something

Table 1. (Continued)



for delivering’ but ‘something paid as exchange of the delivrance’. In this second acception, sôstra do not represent an entity which precedes the action, that is, the ‘instrumental’ reading of the derivative denoting a sacrifice is no longer so clear. An interesting case is phóbetra (Pl.) ‘terrors, things that terrify’ – an instrumental reading is not possible, no Agent has been blurred from the scene and the entity is inanimate. It is thus a Force, like French trébouchoir ‘obstacle’, attiroir ‘attraction’, and repoussoir ‘stimulus’ (cf. § 3.2).20

Under the heading “varia” we have classified certain marginal, unpredictable meanings. Ékmaktron and daitrón ‘portion’ (< daíō ‘divide’) could be classified as result nouns. Loetrá has two meanings, ‘water for the bath’ and ‘bathing place’, but it is also attested as an action noun (cf. LSJ). Apart from their unpredictable meaning, all of them present some particularity. Ékmaktron is an absolute hapax in the Greek literature, while daitrón and loetrá have an uncommon accentua-tion. Finally, it could be assumed that unpredictable phíltron ‘love, affection’ could be the result of metonymic semantic change from the instrumental mean-ing ‘love-charm’ but we have no empirical data since both meanings are early attested.21

Suffix -thron has the same values as -tron, and, in principle, they are found in complementary distribution. -thron is productive (rentable in the sense of Corbin 1987: 42) when added to contracted verbs, which are blocked for -tron. In terms of availability (disponibilité in the sense of Corbin 1987), -thron is quite less produc-tive for two main reasons: contracted verbs are relatively uncommon and, accord-ing to Grassmann’s law, -thron becomes -tron if there is a voiceless aspirate stop in the base.22

. This noun is a neuter plurale tantum because it is a kind of collective. The existence of a differentiated neuter in Greek may help explain the coining of phóbetra with this suffix.

1. See infra stérgethron, with the same polysemy.

. This is an oversimplication, but we will not go here into the details. We would just like to mention other phonetic factors that play a role in the distribution of the suffixes and explain some of the apparent exceptions. Bases ending in a consonantal cluster usually select -ethron: mélp-ethron and stérg-ethron (and maybe hélkethron < helkéo or hélko?) and, according to Grassmann’s law of dissimilation, thélgethron (but thélktron with a verbal base ending in a consonantal cluster). -stron also competes with -thron when the base is monosyballic: podó-pse-stron, pí-stron. Cases of hesitation can be easily found: kláïstron/kleîthron, the com-pounds amphí-blestron/ém-blethra (from bállo, ble-), kállyntron/kállynthron, enkoímetron/enkoímethron, etc. The same distributon is observed in the femenine, homofunctional forms in -tra, -thra, and -stra.



Table 2. Meanings of -thron and words in the corpus


árthron ‘joint’ ararískō ‘join together’hélkēthron ‘stock of the plough’ helkéō ‘drag about, tear asunder’kleîthron ‘bar for closing a door’ kleíō ‘close’kykēthron ‘ladle for stirring’ kykéō ‘stir’ (used in a metaphorical way, cf. LSJ)mélpēthra ‘plaything’ mélpō ‘celebrate with song and dance’skandálēthron ‘stick in a trap for animals on which the bait is placed and which shuts the trap’

skandále id.


pharyngethron ‘throat’ phárynks id.psílōthron ‘depilatory’ psilóō ‘strip bare’

Prizes (1 derivative)

epíbathron ‘passenger’s fare’ epibaínō ‘go upon, board’


báthron ‘base’ baínō ‘walk, step’ptolíēthron ‘citadel’ ptólis id.reîthra (pl.) ‘that which flows, a river, stream’ réō ‘flow, run, stream’

Varia (1 derivative)

stérgēthron ‘love itself ’ < stérgō ‘charm’ loéō ‘bath’

Due to the restrictions of this suffix, the number of nouns in -thron in the corpus is quite limited. As with -tron, they are for the most part Instruments.23

-te rion is a more complex suffix because its derivatives can be the result of more than one rule of word formation:

1. The “plain” suffix -terion is originally an accumulation of the Agent suffix -ter plus the denominal Instrument and Location suffix -ion (Chantraine 1933: 62). However, from an early date there are nouns in -terion with the suf-fix added directly to a verbal base, with no corresponding Agent. The fact that

. The only remarkable case is stérgethron ‘love itself ’. It is also attested with the instru-mental meaning ‘love-charm’. However, the former, current meaning is attested since the 5th c. B.C., while the latter occurs only in the 1st c. Therefore, a semantic extension from the predict-able, instrumental meaning cannot be argued for.



the Agent suffix -te r was progressively replaced by -tes also played a role in the grammaticalization of -te rion.

2. There are reasons24 to think that -terion has been used as a padding suffix to complete a verse.

3. There are also relational adjectives in -ter-ios (Agent -ter + adj. -ios). They can provide additional derivative nouns in -te rion by elision of the noun that they originally modified or by substantivization by means of the neuter singular or, more often, the neuter plural. Elisions are well represented by medical terms: next to occurrences in which the adjective is substantivized, they frequently appear in the same texts as adjectives agreeing with neuter nouns of generic meaning such as phármakon ‘remedy, medicine’ or prosthetón ‘pessary’.25

The number of words occuring in the corpus might give the impression that Instrument is the most represented category for this suffix, too. However, it should be noted that 15 nouns are non-prototypical Instruments from medical jargon, all of them found in Hippocrates, whose work amounts to more than a third of the corpus. Celebrations, rituals etc. constitute a heterogeneous category and the number of words must also be taken with caution. As in the case of prizes-rewards and sacrifices in -tron, offerings, presents and prizes are quite similar. And the relation between offerings and celebrations/rituals is one of part-whole.26 Out of the corpus we have found the polysemous word anakalypteria (pl.) ‘festival of unveiling, when the bride first took off her maiden veil, and received presents from the bridegroom’ and ‘the presents themselves’ (from anakalyptō ‘unveil onself ’, cf.

. Evidence comes from eklyterion, keleterion, kleroterion, thelkterion, thyterion, threpterion, zeukterion, lyterion, physeterion, and khalinoteria, which only occur in metrical texts. They are hapax or quasi-hapax in Greek literature and all of them have synonyms which are of common use. For example, eklyterion, thelkterion, threpterion, and lyterion have a parallel form in -tron.

. One may argue that different rules would require an analysis of different homonymic suffixes. We have chosen an integrated approach because the rules can be only identified at an abstract level. The probable (originally) ellipsis in medical jargon of non-prototypical Instru-ments is only true for some terms since others, such as alekseterion, pyriāterion, pianterion, and enkyeterion, have no corresponding adjective. The pattern has hence been “grammatical-ized”. The same is true for nouns of festivals and sacrifices, which are supposed to have been derived by means of the neuter plural (but there is also opteria, without the corresponding adjective). The only formal difference – and a reasonable measure to keep to the idea of homonym suffixes – lies in the number (singular or plural) of the derivative nouns (but cf. mysterion and the poetic hapaxes thyterion and lyterion). Another reason is that such an a priori so heterogeneous suffix is semantically coherent, as we will see.

. Metonymy plays thus an important role in the semantic changes involved in these and other similar instances. In a cognitive perspective they can be accounted for as the result of figure/ground effects inside the same frame (Koch 2001).



Table 3. meanings of -terion and words in the corpus


ampykterion ‘horse’s headband’ ampykter id.zeukterion ‘yoke’ zeúgny mi ‘yoke’physēte rion ‘wind-instrument, pipe’ physáō ‘blow’khalinōteria (pl.) ‘mooring-cables’ khalinóō ‘bridle’perēterion ‘borer’ peráō ‘pierce’,


aleksēterion ‘remedy, medicine’ aléksō ‘ward off, defend’dēlēterion ‘poison’ deléomai ‘damage’enkyēte rion ‘drug which promotes conception’

enkyéomai ‘to be borne in the womb’

elaterion ‘squirting cucumber’ and ‘drug prepared therefrom’ elaúnō ‘drive away, expel’thelkterion ‘charm’ thélgō ‘enchant’iāterion ‘mode of cure, cure’ iáomai ‘cure’katharterion ‘purgative’ kathaírō ‘purify’kēlēterion ‘charm’ keléō ‘charm’kyēterion ‘drug which promotes conception’ kyéō ‘be pregnant with’malthakte rion ‘emollient’ malthássō ‘soften, soothe’, peirāterion ‘test’ peiráō ‘test’pianterion (pl.) ‘fattening food’ piaínō ‘fatten’pyriāterion ‘vapour-bath’ pyriáō ‘foment’skheterion ‘remedy [against hunger]’ ékhō ‘check, keep’phyteuterion ‘layer’ phyteúō ‘plant’

Containers (5 derivatives)

thymiāte rion ‘censer’ thymiáō ‘burn incense’, klērōterion ‘urn for casting lots or votes’ kleróō ‘vote’aporranterion ‘a vessel for sprinkling with holy water’ aporraínō ‘sprinkle’, perirranterion ‘vessel for lustral water’ perirraínō ‘sprinkle’, poterion ‘drinking-cup’ poter id.


akrōterion ‘prominent part’ ákros, -a, -on ‘highest’bouleuterion ‘council-chamber’ bouleúō ‘deliberate’desmōterion ‘prison’ desmotes ‘prisoner’dikasterion ‘court of justice’ dikázō ‘judge’

(Continued)


Semantic roles and word formation 1

enēbēterion ‘place of amusement’ enebáō ‘spend one’s youth in’ergasterion ‘workshop, manufactory’ ergázō ‘work’, eunāterion ‘bed-chamber’ eunáō ‘sleep’logisterion ‘the place at Athens where the logistaí met’ logízomai ‘calculate’khresterion in the sense ‘seat of an oracle’ khráō ‘proclaim’prēterion ‘place for selling, market’ práō ‘sell’phrontisterion ‘place for meditation’ phrontízō ‘consider’, phylakterion ‘fort’ phylássō ‘keep watch’

Celebrations, rituals, offerings, presents, prizes (14 derivatives)

diabate ria (pl.) ‘offerings before crossing the border’ diabaínō ‘cross’ eklyte rion ‘expiatory offering’ eklyō ‘set free’thoināterion ‘meal, feast’ thoináō ‘feast, sacrifice’threpterion ‘reward for rearing, made to nurses by parents’, ‘return made by children for their rearing’

tréphō ‘nourish’,

thyte rion ‘sacrifice’ thyō ‘sacrifice’thōsterion ‘banquet’ thôsthai ‘feast’lyterion ‘expiatory offering’ lyō ‘atone for’meilikteria (pl.) ‘propitiations’ meilíssō ‘appease, propitiate’mysterion ‘mistery, sacred rite’ myéō ‘initiate into the mysteries’nikēterion ‘prize of victory’ nikáō ‘win’nympheute ria (pl.) ‘offerings for the marriage’ nympheúō ‘marry [a woman]’khreste rion in the sense ‘an offering for the oracle’ khráō ‘proclaim’opteria (pl.) ‘presents upon seeing or for the sight of a person’ horáō ‘see’, pasteria (pl.) ‘feast on sacrificial meats’ patéomai ‘eat’

Varia (3 derivatives)

sōteria (pl.) ‘things saving, deliverance’ sozō ‘save’drasterion ‘energy, activity’ drasterios ‘active, efficacious’khrēsterion in the sense ‘oracular response’ khráō ‘proclaim’

LSJ). Note that on the one hand these meanings form a continuum; on the other, it is difficult to identify the semantic role at the end of this continuum, especially when it comes to names of celebrations and rituals.

Under the heading ‘varia’ we have grouped together, again, the marginal, unpredictable meanings. Sōteria (pl.) ‘things saving, deliverance’ could be a Force but the scarsity of instances do not allow for a clear interpretation of this derivative noun or for establishing the differences to the commoner femenine noun sōtería

Table 3. (Continued)



‘deliverance’. Drasterion ‘energy, activity’ is an abstract noun denoting the quality of the adjective drasterios ‘active, efficacious’, i.e. it is a probable case of substan-tivization of the neuter singular of an adjective. It might be interpreted as Force, but this is not so straightforward. Like loutrá/loutrón, khresterion shows a complex polysemy: it can refer to the seat of an oracle, an offering for the oracle and an oracular response. The polysemy may be the result of metonymic extensions (cf. ‘oracle’ in English) or of analogy to other -ion derivatives such as mateîon in the sense of ‘oracular response’ (from mántis ‘diviner, seer’).

After analyzing the data of these three suffixes now it is the turn of -ter. In Greek, like in other Old Indo-European languages, this suffix was primarily used for deriving Agent nouns. However, we find instances of other meanings, too:27

a. Agents: thyter ‘sacrificer’ (cf. thyō ‘sacrifice’), lymanter ‘spoiler, destroyer’ (cf. lymaínomai ‘outrage’), therapeuter ‘attendant’ (cf. therapeúō ‘do service to’).

b. Forces: prester ‘hurricane’ (cf. pre thō ‘blow out’).c. Instruments: glypter ‘chisel’ (cf. glyphō ‘engrave’), kalypter ‘covering, lid,

tile(s)’ (cf. kalyptō ‘cover’), katalepte r ‘strap for holding fast’ and ‘clamp’ (cf. katalambánō ‘seize’), klōster ‘spindle’ (cf. klóthō ‘spin’), kolapte r ‘chisel’ (cf. koláptō ‘carve, engrave’), pote r ‘drinking cup’ (cf. pínō ‘drink’).

d. Body parts: mykte r ‘nostrils’ (cf. myssomai ‘blow the nose’).e. Means: halteres ‘weights [held in the hand to give impetus] in leaping’ (cf. hál-

lomai ‘spring, leap’).f. Containers: thermanter ‘pot for boiling water’ (cf. thermaínō ‘warm, heat’),

hepseter ‘dish or pan for boiling’ (cf. hépsō ‘boil’), khōneuter ‘hollow in which metal was placed for melting’ (cf. khoaneúō/khōneúō ‘cast in a mould’).

g. Locations:28 bater ‘that on which one treads, threshold’ and ‘place from which one jumps’ (cf. baínō ‘walk, step’), embater ‘threshold’ (cf. embaínō ‘step in’), klinter ‘couch’ (cf. klínō ‘cause to lean, make to slope’), kampter ‘bend, angle’ and ‘turning-point’ (cf. kámptō ‘bend, curve’).

Even if the suffix was originally used for deriving Agents, when employed for Instruments and Locations we find a similar polysemy and similar intermediate and non-prototypical meanings as with the three suffixes previously surveyed.

In fact, a detailed analysis of the attested history of this suffix in Ancient Greek shows that it has gone through various consecutive phases in which the main meaning of the suffix has shifted from one semantic role to another. We can summarize the evidence as follows:

. See Chantraine (1933: 321–329) and Balles (2008: 183 and 190).

. Balles (2008: 196–197) does not list -ter among the suffixes deriving nomina loci.



i. In the oldest records of the Greek language (i.e. in the Mycenaean dialect of the Linear B tablets, which dates back to the 2nd millennium BC) -ter occurs frequently with Agents and is extremely rare for Instruments.29

ii. In the earliest records of 1st millennium Greek, i.e. in the Homeric poems, there is an increase of the number of Instruments in -ter. Nevertheless, Agents still outnumber Instruments as the most common reading of nouns in -ter. This also seems to be the situation in dialects other than Ionian-Attic.

iii. Interestingly, in the Ionian-Attic dialects -ter was given up as a productive suffix for the formation of Agent nouns and was productive only for deriving Instruments.30

The findings of our investigation into the meanings of the deverbal suffixes used for the derivation of Instruments and Location nouns in Ancient Greek allow for establishing the semantic map of Figure 1.31

-te¯rion and -tron

PrizesForce

-te¯r

Agent Instrument

Containers

Place

-thron

Figure 1. Semantic map of the suffixes for instrument and location in Ancient Greek

. See Hernández (2005). The lack of more Instrument nouns in -ter in the extant Mycea-nean texts cannot be explained away as due to the textual types represented in them, given that Instrument nouns do occur frequently in them.

. There are few exceptions to this rule, such as lymanter ‘spoiler, destroyer’ in Xenophon or therapeuter ‘attendant’, which is employed by various authors.

1. Semantic maps are expected to be of universal validity, but they are implicitly based in language-specific semantic maps. See François (2008) for a neat example of the application of the methodology to the domain of lexical semantic associations, in which language-specific semantic maps are provided as the basis for the general semantic map of the notion ‘breathe’.



. Comparing Instrument and Location in grammatical morphemes and word formation patterns

It is interesting to compare now the findings in the domain of word formation to grammatical morphemes (cases and prepositions). According to Crespo’s (1997) data, grammatical morphemes serving to express Instrument and Location are also used at least for the expression of one of the following:32

a. Accompaniment,b. Means-Intermediary + Cause,c. Means-Intermediary + Price.

If we compare this situation to our findings in the domain of word formation we can gain more insight into the nouns that we have classified as Prizes or non-prototypical Instruments. In Ancient Greek, as in most languages,33 there are no specific markers for deriving nouns expressing Accompaniment, Cause, Prize, or Means-Intermediary. However, as we saw above (§ 3.3), all the suffixes employed in this language to derive Instrument and Location nouns also provide nouns with meanings in the area of Means-Intermediaries, Causes, and Prizes. The situation is, indeed, less clear-cut with word formation patterns than with syntactic mark-ers and this has to do with the problem of identifying the semantic roles of a word formation pattern and of the words built by means of it (§§ 2 and 3.2). However, in the same way as the grammatical morphemes employed for the expression of Instrument and Location in syntax are used for other semantic roles, too, it is not surprising that in word formation Instrument and Location behave as adjacent prototypes inside a fuzzier area. This allows for employing Instrument-Location suffixes to coin nouns which are not exactly Instruments nor Locations, but are semantically related to those notions.

As for containers, word formation patterns reflect a similar situation to grammatical morphemes (Wackernagel 1922: 304; Luraghi 2004: 28). It is well known that if the lexeme to which a given grammatical morpheme is added refers to a vehicle or container, the semantic roles Location and Instrument can be hardly distinguished. This explains instances of coordination like (19) above for English or (25) for Greek (Thukydides 4.25.7, quoted by Crespo 1997: 30).

. The only possible exception would be the genitive, but it is quite doubtful that it can be used for the semantic function Instrument (Crespo 1997: 14). Greek adverbs in -êi are employed for Instrument, Location, and Means-Intermediary.

. See the remarks in § 3.2, and especially, Comrie & Thompson (1985) and Mel’čuk (1997).



(25) katà gên kaì taîs nausìn háma estráteuan by earth.acc and the.dat.pl ship.dat.pl together fought.3pl ‘They fought both by earth and with the navy.’

For Homeric Greek Luraghi (2004) has analyzed in detail the container scheme and she has shown how in Greek locative prepositions like en ‘in’ are used for the expression of Containment and they are employed with means of transportation, too, as in (26) (Il.12.16, quoted by Luraghi 2004: 37).

(26) Argeîoi d’ en neusì phílen es Argive.nom.pl ptc in ship.dat.pl dear.acc.f to patríd’ ébesan homeland.acc.f went.3pl ‘The Argives had gone back in their ships to their dear motherland.’

Exceptionally the plain dative (i.e. with instrumental reading) is found, too, as in (27) (Od.10.502, quoted by Luraghi 2004: 37).

(27) eis Áidos d’ ou po� tis amphíketo to Hades.gen ptc neg ptc indf.nom come.aor.m.3sg neí melaínei ship.dat.f black.dat.f ‘No man ever reached Hades with a black ship.’

In a broader perspective, our results in the domain of word formation – even if limited to one specific language in this paper – seem to fit with the findings of general works about the structure of the conceptual space reflected in syntactic markers. We can compare our findings to the diachronic semantic map proposed by Narrog (2010: 242) for the Instrument-Companion domain (Figure 2). In this map, Location is adjacent to Instrument and they are also connected to other semantic roles, some of which express notions related to those found for the word formation patterns that we have analyzed in detail in this paper.

Clausalcoordination

Physicalproximity Co-participant Location

DurationRoute

Cause/reason

Passive agent

Ergative agentSourcePossession

Comitative InstrumentNP-coordination

Material

Temporal “from”

Figure 2. Semantic map of the instrument domain with directionality (Narrog 2010: 242)



. Concluding remarks

In functional-typological approaches to syntax the identification of semantic roles and the grammatical markers (cases and adpositions) associated with them has been an important goal. In this paper we have argued that a similar approach to word formation patterns is possible. Elaborating on the definitions and methodol-ogy employed in syntactic studies, we have provided criteria for the identification of the semantic roles in the domain of derivational morphology.

The information provided by typological studies on word formation (e.g. Com-rie & Thompson 1985 and Mel’čuk 1997) shows that, according to those criteria, Agent, Instrument, and Location can be considered as different semantic roles in morphology, since there are languages in which different dedicated suffixes are used for each of them. However, polysemy between two or more of these semantic roles is also frequent cross-linguistically (Bauer 2000; Luschützky & Rainer 2011 and 2013).

As a case study we have focused on the deverbal suffixes employed in Ancient Greek for deriving instrumental and locative nouns. Based on the actual nouns occurring in a representative corpus of Ancient Greek literature, we have com-piled exhaustive lists of the nouns derived by means of the three most productive suffixes in that domain: -tron, -thron, and -terion. The semantic analysis of those nouns has shown that besides instrumental and locative nouns, the suffixes are used for deriving other nouns that are semantically related, but cannot be consid-ered Instruments and Locations proper. Among them we find nouns referring to non-prototypical instruments, prizes and rewards, and others. Quite interestingly, the suffixes are also frequently used for deriving nouns of containers, which are semantically related both to Instruments and Locations. Furthermore, the seman-tic analysis of one of the most important Agent suffixes in Ancient Greek (-ter) has revealed that it developed a polysemy similar to that found in the other three suffixes.

We have compared our findings in morphology to the conceptual organiza-tion of grammatical morphemes in the same language (Greek) and in other lan-guages in general. And it appears that both in syntax and morphology a similar semantic organization is found. This fits well with the fact that the conceptual semantic organization of morphemes, whether these are grammatical morphemes (cases and prepositions) or derivational ones, is expected to be the same (Luján 2010: 171–172). This seems to be evidence for arguing that there are certain under-lying mental structures that would be reflected both at the syntactic and the mor-phological level. This can be proved, for instance, by the position of containers: both in syntax and in word formation patterns containers are midway between Instrument and Location.

The number of semantic roles that can be identified in syntax is higher than the number of semantic roles reflected in word formation patterns. In this sense,



semantic maps of word formation patterns are expected to be similar to those that can be drawn for syntax but more reduced (Luján 2010: 171). For this reason, when there is no specific suffix for a semantic role such as Means-Intermediary but a noun expressing it needs to be coined, suffixes for neighbouring semantic roles (Location and Instrument) will be employed, depending on the available meta-phor or metonymy that allows for the semantic extension.

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Documents

Semantic roles and word formation. Instrument and Location in Ancient Greek