Beschreibung:
<jats:sec><jats:title>Summary</jats:title><jats:p>This short paper addresses a very vexed issue, to which a huge literature has been dedicated so far: the origin of the so-called gerunds and gerundives in Latin. Any previous attempt has proved un- conclusive, mainly because of the proliferation of <jats:italic>ad hoc</jats:italic> rules assumed to account for the <jats:italic>nd</jats:italic>-forms and even more because of the plethora of solutions. Instead of assuming another etymon for the sake of antago- nism, this paper intends to reassess the whole issue within Latin itself: as shown by non-standard syntacti- cal features of Plautinian and Late Latin, there is a morphological relationship between the present parti- ciple and the ndō-gerund<jats:italic>,</jats:italic> used to express simultaneity. Whereas the previous scholarship has taken for granted the assumption that thematic verbs used to have a *-<jats:italic>odno</jats:italic>- suffix (cf. OLat. -<jats:italic>und</jats:italic>-), which led to tautological reconstructions totally unparalleled outside Italic, I would tentatively explain the unexpected <jats:italic>o</jats:italic>-grade of such forms by a crossing with the old <jats:italic>o</jats:italic>-grade participles (cf. OLat. *<jats:italic>uoluns</jats:italic> ‘willing’ reflected by <jats:italic>uoluntās).</jats:italic> Such an approach vindicates the ancient theory according to which <jats:italic>-andus</jats:italic> reflects <jats:italic>*-ātan-ó-</jats:italic> (< PIE <jats:italic>*-eh</jats:italic><jats:sub><jats:italic>2</jats:italic></jats:sub><jats:italic>-t>mṇn-ó-),</jats:italic> provided one assumes that a reanalysis of <jats:italic>*-ātan-ó-</jats:italic> was made as a “suffix” <jats:italic>*-tanos</jats:italic> following the thematic vowel of the first conjugation, which produced *<jats:italic>fer-e-tnó</jats:italic>- ‘ferendus’ from thematic *<jats:italic>fer-e</jats:italic>- ‘to bear’.</jats:p></jats:sec>