Abstract This article examines the syntactic, semantic and sociolinguistic variation in the coding of anticausativisation and lability in Early Medieval Latin in Gaul. Latin originally employed three noncausal strategies: the mediopassive (marked by the synthetic ‐r morphology or the analytic construction with esse ‘be’ + past participle), the reflexive (with the pronoun se ) and the labile strategy (unmarked active intransitive forms). Drawing on quantitative data from PaLaFraLat, a corpus of Early Medieval Latin in Gaul, this study investigates the syntax of anticausativisation and lability before the transition to Old French. I argue that the formal reorganisation of the mediopassive strategy should be considered as distinct from its functional specialisation as a passive marker. Regarding the alternation of these three strategies, I claim that the mediopassive underwent standardisation and that the distribution of reflexivity and lability is determined by an interplay between subject control and the lexical aspect of the predicate.
Tim A.F. Ongenae (Wed,) studied this question.