From nominalizer to verbalizer, from state to event: denominal verbs in -euō in early ancient Greek

This paper investigates the diachronic development of the Ancient Greek suffix - eu - from a nominal marker into a verbalizer, focusing on the transition of - euō verbs from stative to activity/eventive meanings. Building on Distributed Morphology and the Hale & Keyser/Harley framework of denominal verb formation, we argue that verbal - eu - emerged through the reanalysis of “deagentive” denominal verbs, i.e., verbs derived from agentive animate nouns. These verbs exhibit an inherent ambiguity between stative and eventive readings, which we analyze as reflecting Davidsonian state readings. Unlike Kimian states, Davidsonian states contain an event variable, making them compatible with event-related diagnostics such as manner adverbs, locative phrases, and perception verbs. This eventive potential provided the basis for a categorial shift whereby nominal - eu - was reinterpreted as an activity verbalizer. Corpus evidence from Homeric and early first-millennium BCE Greek shows that the earliest - euō verbs already patterned with Davidsonian states, suggesting that the reanalysis predates the Homeric period. We further argue that the morphosemantic properties of the suffix reflect those of its historically nominal base: the features [+ animate , + agentive ] of the base are transferred from the subject of the denominal verb to the verbal event itself, accounting for the animate, usually agentive subjects of early - euō verbs. This development illustrates how root-adjacent morphology can give rise to new verbalizers, reinforcing models in which the linear order of morphemes mirrors syntactic structure. It also contributes to the cross-linguistic understanding of the relationship between stativity, eventivity, and verbal derivation.