Form: semantically significant form variation of a word
| Values: | Emp |
This is a morphological feature that marks a usually non-paradigmatic, and possibly not even standardised, variation in the form of a word which also determines a change in its meaning or use, or which is itself determined by a particular syntactic context.
Emp: emphatic form of a word
This value is marked for words which appear in an expanded, emphatic form with respect to some “more basic” form or that otherwise incorporate common emphatic elements, and that can be no longer analyzed as compounds if they ever were one.
In Latin, this phenomenon is particularly common, and limited, to functional words with a discoursive role (usually labelled as particles) and words in relational and deictic classes like pronouns and determiners. Strategies to mark emphasis are often specific to given word subclasses, like personal pronouns, and can often be traced back to demonstrative/pronominal/conjunctional or interjective elements.
Emphasis differs from degree in that it does not scale a quality or property, but it rather singles out an element in the clause and highlights or focuses it (so this feature can appear in conjunction with the relation advmod:emph) or otherwise strengthens it by extending its scope.
Examples
- enim is emphatic with respect to nam
- equidem is emphatic with respect to quidem
- ecce is a “presentative particle” in an emphatic form, also with a demonstrative -ce element
- in all these words, an e- element appears, which might be the same in all cases
- namque is another emphatic form of nam showing the common -que suffix for generalisation (cf. quis ‘who’ vs. quisque ‘whoever’)
- meopte shows an emphatic -pte suffix, which is added only to possessives
- semet shows an emphatic -met suffix, added nearly exclusively to personal pronouns (egomet, tibimet…), often treated as a clitic
- sese, emphasis by reduplication of the reflexive third person personal pronoun se (abl./acc. case)
- mehercle can possibly be seen as an emphatic form of the vocative of Hercules (me- might correspond to the first-person personal pronoun)
- īdem/eadem/ĭdem ‘the same’ is a strengthened form of the personal pronoun is/ea/id ‘he/she/it’ by means of the suffix -dem, of demonstrative origin
- quamquam or quanquam is an example of emphasis by reduplication
Note
This feature and its implementation will be slightly reworked.
Form in other languages: [ga] [gd] [gv] [ko] [la]