Nisi paria non pugnant: argument structure alternations with lexical reciprocal verbs in Latin

Lexical reciprocal verbs, defined as those verbs that inherently lexicalize a symmetric situation, e.g., consentio ‘agree’, occur in at least three distinct argument structure constructions, depending on whether their participants are expressed as a single (plural) subject, asymmetrically expressed – one as subject and the other one as oblique – or only one is overtly realized. Drawing from extensive data from a corpus of Latin texts (extracted from the LASLA corpus) and by resorting to quantitative analyses, I investigate the extent to which these three constructions are used with a sample of lexical reciprocal verbs and explore possible motivations for the alternation. Corpus data shows that a multiplicity of factors co-operate in motivating speakers’ choice of one construction over the other, pointing to the need to integrate fine-grained corpus analyses in the study of argument structure constructions and their alternations more generally.