Janus-verbs: A proposal for formal-semantic representation

Abstract This paper deals with the semantic description of so-called Janus-verbs, derived verbs bearing opposite readings and scattered in Germanic, Romance, and Classical languages. The semantic and morphosyntactic features of these verbs will be discussed in order to explain how they semantically emerged and work. The aim of this paper is to propose a formal-semantic representation that is capable of describing the semantic alternation. We are not concerned with the question of how these morphological structures arose, but only with the semantic mechanism underlying the semantic shift. The paper adopts a semantic-formal approach within the framework of Two-level Semantics. It is shown that there is an intrinsic relationship between ablative prefixes and Janus-verbs, and argued that the coexistence of the original locative meanings with their different aspectual interpretations explain the emergence of the semantic alternation.