Modern German allows expressions such as Geld versaufen or Fett wegtrainieren, which feature an object that could not be selected by the verb alone in the absence of the verb particle. Compounds of this sort are resultative insofar as they express a change in the object’s location or state indirectly brought about; the base verb indicates the event bringing about the change — which, however, does not affect the object directly —, the verb particle expresses the resulting state. Such constructions also exist in Indo-European languages such as Indo-Iranian, Greek and Latin, but have hitherto been scarcely studied systematically; this study attempts to bridge this gap.
Modern German allows expressions such as Geld versaufen, sich eine Stelle erkämpfen, sich einen Bauch anessen or Fett wegtrainieren; however different they may appear, these expressions have one thing in common: they contain an object that cannot be selected by the verb in the absence of the verb particle (indeed, sentences such as *Geld saufen, *eine Stelle kämpfen, *einen Bauch essen, *Fett trainieren are unacceptable). Compounds of this sort are resultative insofar as they express a change in the object’s location or state indirectly brought about: the base verb merely expresses the event as a result of which the object, without being directly affected, undergoes the change in location or state; the subsequent state, however, is indicated by the verbal particle, the actual bearer of the overall meaning of the verbal expression. Indeed, constructions of this kind also occur in ancient Indo-European languages, notably in Indo-Iranian, Greek and Latin, but had never been the subject of a comprehensive study. This study attempts to bridge this gap by examining this special particle-verb construction, which has received little attention to date, in Indo-Iranian, Greek and Latin.
What may at first glance appear to be a marginal peculiarity proves, upon closer inspection, to be of broader typological relevance: the construction is restricted to so-called ‘satellite-framed’ languages and is largely absent from ‘verb-framed’ languages such as Romance (within Talmy’s well-known typology). It thus constitutes an important feature for understanding typological variation and its historical development.
With Vedic ápa √yaj ‘to sacrifice (evil) away’, i.e. ‘to remove from the world by means of sacrifice’, as Paradebeispiel, the work offers a comprehensive study of this construction type in Indo-Iranian as well as in the classical languages of Europe. A critical overview of the statements made to date regarding constructions of the ápa-√yaj-type is followed by a detailed analysis, organised by type, of relevant examples in the languages in question. A brief diachronic outlook concludes the study by outlining possible developmental trajectories of the construction across different languages.
As a pioneering study of a phenomenon that has thus far received little attention, the work addresses not only specialists in Indo-European linguistics, but also offers valuable insights for scholars in Indology, Iranian studies, Greek and Latin philology, as well as general linguistics.
Thiago Mendes Venturott was born in 1996 in São José dos Campos, Brazil. After studying Romance Studies (Portuguese), Classical Philology (Greek) and Historical and Comparative Linguistics at the Universities of São Paulo (2014–2018) and Cologne (2019–2021), he obtained his PhD from the University of Würzburg in 2025. From November 2021 to May 2023, he was a research associate at the Würzburger Altertumswissenschaftliches Zentrum (WAZ). Following a year as a project assistant at the Chair of Comparative Philology in Würzburg (January–December 2022), he has been a research assistant there since January 2023.
https://www.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de/vgsp/personal/thiago-mendes-venturott/
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