Nasal Presents in Latin between Root, Aspect and Actionality: A Nanosyntactic Account

Nasal presents look puzzling due to a number of morphological characteristics. Notably, -n patterns in an unexpected fashion with respect to both (i) the thematic element -ā (sequences like ✶-ā-n-ĕre and ✶-n-ā-re are disallowed, but the latter can appear if a prefix is inserted), and (ii) the perfect stem formatives, as -n is mostly deleted in the perfect stem, but (iii) this does not hold in perfects like iu-n-c-s-ī. In this paper, I will try to account for these characteristics assuming that the nasal morphs are basically transitivity markers, i.e. is they belong to the domain of actionality, and within the framework of Nanosyntax. In detail, I will account for (i) showing that -n and -ā do not co-occur since they are triggered by different morpho-syntactic constraints; as to (ii), I will propose that strong perfect morphs not only realize tense/aspect properties but also contain the Aktionsart layer, driving the drop of -n. The preservation of -n (iii), in turn, is due to a gradual shift of -s towards the status of “weak” perfect formative, which blocked the deletion of preceding actional morphs. Keywords: Nasal presents, Nanosyntax, verbal morphology, Aktionsart