Moverunt per se navigia ipsa : The Syntax and Semantics of Anticausativisation and Lability in Early Medieval Latin in Gaul 1

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.