An "epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European scholarship": in memoriam Romano Lazzeroni (1930-2020) - De Gruyter
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JSALL 2020; 7(2): 321–347
Domenica Romagno*
An “epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-
European scholarship”: in memoriam
Romano Lazzeroni (1930–2020)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jsall-2021-2033
Published online July 12, 2021
Romano Lazzeroni, a beloved Emeritus
Professor of Linguistics and Mentor at
the University of Pisa, passed away un-
expectedly on January 4th, 2020, at the
age of 89. Born in Pontedera, in the
province of Pisa, on October 28th, 1930,
Romano devoted his life to scientific
research and academia, from his inno-
vative work in the various fields and sub-
fields of Historical Linguistics and Indo-
European studies to his tireless work
ethic and generous advice and support
of students and colleagues, with a spe-
cial care towards younger scholars. After
graduating at the University of Pisa in
1952 and completing his PhD at the
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in 1953,
he conducted researches at the Univer-
sities of Pisa, Heidelberg and Bonn, and
became Associate Professor of Linguis-
tics at the University of Pisa in 1958 and
Full Professor in 1965. From 1966 until
his retirement, he taught Historical Linguistics at the University of Pisa and, for
I wish to thank Leonid Kulikov for giving me the opportunity to remember a common friend, Mentor
and source of inspiration. This paper is dedicated to all the past, present and future scholars at
whom Romano’s teachings, example and joyful generosity continue to be endlessly directed.
*Corresponding author: Domenica Romagno, Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics,
Linguistics Branch, University of Pisa, Via Santa Maria, 36, Pisa 56126, Italy,
E-mail: domenica.romagno@unipi.it, domenicaromagno@gmail.com322 Romagno
more than 20 years, he also taught Vedic and Sanskrit Languages and Linguistics at
the same university. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the international journals
Archivio Glottologico Italiano and Studi e Saggi Linguistici, two of the most influ-
ential journals in the fields of Historical and General Linguistics. His commitment
to his students and colleagues and to scientific research continued undiminished
during his long-lasting activities as Chief of the Department of Linguistics and of
the PhD program in Linguistics at the University of Pisa, Vice-Rector of the same
University, President of the Committee for Historical, Philological and Philo-
sophical Sciences of the Italian National Council of Research (CNR) and member of
the Board of Directors of that Council, member of the UNESCO Council for bilingual
education, Director of many advisory and evaluation boards of various in-
stitutions, including Italian and non-Italian Universities, and the Italian National
Council for Science and Technology.
Romano Lazzeroni is an “epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European
scholarship altogether”, as recently remarked by Leonid Kulikov (personal
communication). His legacy rests on a boundless scientific production, which
includes many different topics, methods and languages. In this paper, I will focus
on four main research lines, that testify to the way in which Romano constantly
looked at languages, that is, by considering them as systems governed by algo-
rithms and dependent on both socio-historical variables and neurocognitive
principles: 1. the morphosyntax/semantics interface; 2. the relationship between
linguistic and cultural reconstruction; 3. the linking mechanisms of conceptual
representations with linguistic categories; 4. the principles and patterns of lan-
guage change.
Romano’s research centered around the idea that languages are at the inter-
section between nature and culture (Lazzeroni 2005: 22) and benefitted from his
interdisciplinary or, rather, multidisciplinary attitude (Lazzeroni 2011a). His
ground-breaking work is characterized by a unique ability to change viewpoints
and methods (and, consequently, to open new pathways for research), to iden
tify the only possible balance between different planes of perspective (and,
consequently, to find order in the apparently chaotic heterogeneity of language),
to reconsider achievements traditionally taken for granted: “la verità non si
accetta” – he said in one of his memorable speeches – “il conformismo è il silenzio
della ragione, ma si cerca, e si cerca sempre e tenacemente, anche quando si ha
paura di trovarla” [Truth should not be just accepted, conformism is the silence of
reason: truth has to be sought, constantly and tenaciously, even when one is
afraid of finding it].An Epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European 323
1 Verb system and argument coding in the ancient
Indo-European languages: at the
morphosyntax/semantics interface
The complex system of relationships between the functional dimensions and
both the morphological and the syntactic dimensions of language was at the
center of Romano Lazzeroni’s interests for more than 60 years. In one of his first
papers (Lazzeroni 1956), that dates back to 1956, 11 years earlier than the seminal
work by Zeno Vendler on verb classes (Vendler 1967) and 20 years earlier than the
well-known book on aspect by Bernard Comrie (Comrie 1976), he investigated the
relationship between verbal aspect and negation in ancient Greek, by clearly
appreciating the distinction between the point of view on the event and the semantic
properties of the verb lexeme – something that the theoretical tools available at that
time made much more subtle than today. His qualitative and quantitative analyses
of the totality of the texts by Herodotus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plato, Aeschines,
Demosthenes, Isocrates and Thucydides led to the conclusion that in Ancient Greek,
like other languages, negation neutralizes the telic/atelic distinction and specifically
interacts with the perfective vs. imperfective viewpoint, but Ancient Greek is
distinctive in that this condition is represented not only at the lexical but also at the
morphological level, in relation to the use of certain grammatical categories to
encode aspectual notions. The relationship between negation and telos of the
denoted event has been largely investigated, in more recent years, from different
perspectives (cf. Hopper and Thompson 1980, among many others), in the organi-
zation, change and acquisition of various languages, from Slavic (Lindstedt 1995;
Slabakova 2001: 92–94; Willis 2013) to Romance (Manzini and Savoia 2011: 80–158;
Romagno 2015), from Ancient Greek (Romagno 2002, 2005: 27–38) to Chinese (Song
2018).
In his 1956 study, preceded only by a short note by Vendryes (by which “il
semble qu’il y aurait contradiction à nier ce qui est en même temps affirmé comme
accompli” [it seems that there would be a contradiction in denying what is at the
same time affirmed as accomplished]: Vendryes 1946: 11) and a few sporadic
comments by Brunel (1939: 81, 98, 139, in which there is no clear distinction
between the notions of concreteness, perfectivity and telicity), Romano Lazzeroni
was the first to remark on the need for analyzing the alternation between affirmed
and negated event not only in relation to distinctions depending on verb seman-
tics, but also in relation to the morphological categories that represent comple-
mentary strategies to encode those distinctions. In Lazzeroni’s work, the ability to
combine different perspectives and methods constantly goes together with special324 Romagno
attention to the systemic nature of language: this distinctive sign of his break-
through research is the result of an original combination of deep and extensive
knowledge, freedom of thought and rigour in action.
The 1956 paper on aspect and negation in ancient Greek, together with the related
study published in 1957 (Lazzeroni 1957), opened up a new era in Indo-European
Linguistics, by indicating a novel direction, followed by a growing number of
scholars, both in Italy and abroad, and still recognized as indispensable to achieving
one of the most fundamental goals of Historical Linguistics and, especially, Indo-
European Linguistics: addressing historical questions guided by contemporary
theoretical advances and experimental achievements. Along this course and with
special attention to verb categories and argument coding, Romano Lazzeroni recon-
structed a complex and coherent system of correspondences between the ancient
Indo-European languages, in which the rationale for each element is established by
itself and, at the same time, is necessary to account for the other elements. This system
is mainly – but not exclusively – based on Greek and Indo-Iranian (in particular, Vedic
and Avestan) data: this relies on a principle of homogeneity of Greek and Indo-Iranian
verb and argument coding systems, that does not apply, to the same degree, to other
ancient Indo-European languages.1
In a long series of studies2, inaugurated by the 1977 masterpiece “Fra glottogonia e
storia: ingiuntivo, aumento e lingua poetica indoeuropea” – which reveals, even in its
title, Romano’s sharp, insightful and unconventional trait – he has shown that in an
archaic phase of the Greek and Indo-Iranian verb system (or, rather, in the Indo-
European tradition passed on into the Greek and Indo-Iranian verb system), the
relationship between verb lexeme and tense does not have a grammatical expression
(cf. Kuryłowicz 1932, 1964; Stang 1932; Thurneysen 1885). The system, instead, is
based on the distinction between state and process representation. The morpholog-
ical encoding of tense is realized through the gradual grammaticalization of two
deictic particles: -i, which marked proximity (e.g., Sanskrit bharati, as opposed to the
older form bharat) and, in a part of the Indo-European world that includes Greek,
Indo-Iranian and Armenian, *e- (> Indo-Iranian a-, the so-called “augment”), which
probably was a marker of distal deixis (e.g., Sanskrit a-bharat coexisted – and
gradually replaced – bharat, as opposed to bharati). The acquisition of the morpho-
logical expression of tense gave rise to a complex series of changes that obscured the
1 On the role that Greek and Indo-Iranian play in Indo-European reconstruction and with refer-
ence to the Indo-European verb system and argument coding strategies, cf. Wackernagel (1904,
1926); Narten (1964, 1968); Kurzová (1999), among many others.
2 See, in particular, Lazzeroni (1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983a, 1983b, 1984a, 1984b, 1985a,
1985b, 1987a, 1989, 1990, 1993b, 1994, 1996, 2000a, 2002a, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2011b, 2011c, 2014,
2015a, 2016a, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c).An Epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European 325
original situation. However, traces of that situation are present in the older stages of
the ancient Indo-European languages and did not escape Romano Lazzeroni’s genius:
as many of his studies have demonstrated, language change always entails a gradual
process in which old and new elements often coexist (Lazzeroni 2015a: 8).
Romano Lazzeroni’s account of the Indo-European verb system allowed him to
solve a large number of enigmas in Indo-European studies, in a unitary model. The
first enigma links the three elements, apparently unrelated, that constitute the title
of the 1977 masterpiece (see also Lazzeroni 1980, 1982, 1984a, 1984b, 2017b). The
term “injunctive” was coined by Brugmann (1880) to refer to those unaugmented
verb forms with primitive endings (incongruously called “secondary”) that are more
stably attested in Vedic and Avestan than in Homer (Hoffmann 1967). As regards its
meaning components, the injunctive shows a plurality of functions, including both
modal and non-modal values, that have long appeared incompatible: in fact, it takes
past tense endings, but may have present meaning; it does not take the augment, but
may have past meaning; it does not have modal markers, but it may have modal
values. By rigorously placing the diachronic perspective at the center of his analysis,
Romano Lazzeroni reconstructed the sequence of events that accounts for the
comparative data, both formally and functionally:
– the active injunctive encoded the representation of “tenseless” (above time)
processes;
– when the type *bhereti (Skr. bharati) was formed, with actual present meaning,
the injunctive *bheret (Skr. bharat) became the expression of non-actuality and,
consequently, of both the indefinite or “general” present (thus maintaining the
original value of the old indicative) and the past; moreover, it took modal
values, as opposed to the new indicative, marked with -i. Vedic and Avestan (in
which the augment is almost exclusively absent) show traces of this phase;
– the injunctive, as an expression of the past, was then marked with the augment:
the augmented forms differed from the corresponding unaugmented forms, as
they encoded past meaning, as opposed to timeless and modal meanings. This
phase largely corresponds to the situation attested in the R̥ gveda;
– the unaugmented injunctive, as an expression of the indefinite or “general”
present, disappeared under the pressure of the new present forms, marked
with -i. The present/past distinction included two functional units, one of
which had two formal variants: e.g., bharati (present) vs. a-bharat/bharat
(past). This phase corresponds to the Homeric and – with a few differences –
Atharvavedic situations;
– the type bharat (without augment) disappeared and, consequently, the func-
tional distinction became one between the present bharati and the past a-
bharat. This phase corresponds to the Classical Sanskrit, Old Persian and
Classical Greek data.326 Romagno
In conclusion, the results of Romano Lazzeroni’s research clearly show that the
free use of the augment in Homer cannot be attributed to the Indo-European poetic
language (on which see Wackernagel 1926: 211–222), but is a consequence of the
survival of the injunctive in the conservative tradition of poetry (Lazzeroni 1977:
30). The Mycenaean tablets – whose content is far from poetic – show that the
augment may also be absent in prose.
Many other elements define the solidity of Romano’s system, in which “tout se
tient” [everything holds together], across languages, and fundamental pieces of
the Indo-European tradition transferred in the historical languages are revealed
and incontrovertibly explained.
– He identified the rationale, diachronically based on both formal and functional
grounds, for both the distribution of the different present classes and their rela-
tionship with the aorist stem: in languages such as Greek and Indo-Iranian which
distinguish between present/imperfect and aorist stem, the polymorphism is a
consequence of the acquisition of a morphological expression of tense (Lazzeroni
2011c: 49). To mention only some of Romano’s insightful works on this topic, I
refer to his papers on root formations (Lazzeroni 1980, 1983a, 1985b, 1993a,
1993b, 2008), the role of *-ye-/-yo- (Indo-Iranian -ya-) in the expression of the
anticausative (Lazzeroni 2002a, 2004, 2017a), the strategies to encode causative
and transitive (Lazzeroni 2009, 2017c; see also 2011b), the solution to Kuiper’s
enigma (Lazzeroni 2008).
– He reversed the perspective on the supposed archaism of the Hittite verbal
system, by clarifying the sequence of events that culminated in the formation
of the monothematic paradigm, in which present and past have the same stem
(e.g., present: etmi ‘[I] eat’ < *ed-mi, past: etun): the lack of distinction between
imperfect and aorist in Hittite does not originate from a Pre-Indo-European or
Indo-Hittite phase, but is the consequence of the relatively recent acquisition
of the morphological expression of tense (Lazzeroni 2011c: 51). Basically, every
root injunctive produced a present and there were no residual injunctives to
form the aorist. In this scenario, the mystery of the Hittite -hi conjugation (on
which see Di Giovine 1996; Jasanoff 2003; Rose 2006, among others) can be
unraveled: Romano Lazzeroni showed how the -hi formations are related to the
so-called “resultative” perfect, that is, the more recent perfect that encodes the
state of the object, unlike the old perfect, that expressed the representation of
the subject’s state (Lazzeroni 2011c).
– He clarified the foundations for a full understanding of the development of the
Indo-European middle: it originally was a derivational category (in Joan Bybee’s
sense: Bybee 1985), but progressively became an inflectional one and encoded
new values: “in un sistema fondato sull’opposizione dei tempi erano contenute le
premesse perché le due diatesi, unite dal tratto della temporalità, diventassero,An Epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European 327
tendenzialmente, simmetriche” [a system based on the opposition of tenses
contained the grounds for the two diatheses, united by the temporality trait, to
become basically symmetrical] (Romano Lazzeroni 1990: 22).
– He provided fundamental contributions to the understanding of the relationship
between middle and perfect (Lazzeroni 1990, 2014; cf. Neu 1968, on Hittite), which,
in Romano’s model, constitute the two building blocks of the Indo-European
verbal system. The injunctive encoded the representation of process, whereas the
old perfect encoded the representation of state (Lazzeroni 1977, 1990, 2014). Both
perfect and middle – whose relationship is also manifested on formal grounds: see
the two archaic series of endings (cf. Kuryłowicz 1932; Stang 1932; Watkins 1969) –
expressed the notion of the subject’s state; however, their mutually exclusive
distribution, attested in Vedic (Di Giovine 1990–1996) and Greek (Romagno 2005),
can be accounted for in relation to the grammatical expression of different noetic
contents (Lazzeroni 1990): the middle, prototypically unaccusative, may include
dynamic semantic components; the perfect, instead, prototypically stative, ex-
cludes any dynamic semantic components and represents the state as a property or
condition of the subject (Romagno 2005, 2014, 2021). The perfect, in fact, remained
longer unaffected by the grammaticalization of tense.
– He provided the definitive answer to the long-debated question of the third
diathesis (cf. Jasanoff 1978; Oettinger 1976), which has been recognized not only
in Indo-Iranian (Kümmel 1996), but also in the Hittite “type -a middle” (Watkins
1969: 84): Romano Lazzeroni has shown that the so-called “stative” endings do
not belong to a third diathesis distinct from the middle, but correspond to the
original endings of the middle, that pertained at a phase antecedent to the
integration of the middle into the tense system and the consequent remodeling
of its endings on the basis of the active present endings. The so-called “stative”
endings, in fact, correspond to the functional prototype of the category, which
resisted the innovation longer (Lazzeroni 1990, 1993b, 2014, 2015a).
These are only some of the enigmas of the Indo-European verb system that have
been solved through the exceptional intelligence of Romano Lazzeroni. We could
discuss many other fundamental achievements in this field for which we are
thankful to Romano’s research. I would add only a further remark on the results of
a growing number of independent studies on different Indo-European languages,
that are robustly consistent with Lazzeroni’s model of the Indo-European verbal
system. To mention only some of these important contributions, refer to Stephanie
Jamison’s (1983) and Leonid Kulikov’s (2012a, 2012b) researches on Sanskrit, and
to Helena Kurzová’s researches on Greek, Latin and other ancient Indo-European
languages (1993, 1999, 2011, 2014).328 Romagno
Romano Lazzeroni’s ground-breaking research also provided fundamental
contributions to the understanding of argument coding strategies in the ancient
Indo-European languages: in particular, he opened up new avenues to under-
standing the alternation between canonical and non-canonical marking of core
arguments (cf. Aikhenvald et al. 2001) in relation to semantic roles, syntactic
functions and the properties of the referent of the subject/object nouns. His
studies, that combined a rigorous analysis of Indo-European data with theoretical
and typological investigations, shed new light on a series of apparently unrelated
phenomena that can be explained on the basis of a “universal” (both typological
and cognitive) principle (cf. Dixon 1994): languages do not show typological
“pureness”; the phenomena that do not follow the dominant type can be
accounted for in relation to the unbalance between conceptual-semantic repre-
sentations and systemic constraints (cf. Cennamo 2001; Romagno 2011; among
others). Romano Lazzeroni’s studies (see, in particular, Lazzeroni 1995a, 2002b,
2002c, 2013a, 2015b, 2017d) showed that also in the ancient Indo-European lan-
guages, the argument coding system – whose principles have long been debated
(cf. Cuzzolin 1998; Dardano 2013; Drinka 1999; Pooth et al. 2019; Rumsey 1987;
Uhlenbeck 1901; Villar 1984) – is governed by mechanisms of interaction (and,
sometimes, conflict) between semantic roles, syntactic functions and referential
properties (in particular, animacy and individuation). I will mention here only his
brilliant contributions on the metaplasm of gender, the origin of the thematic
neuter (the so-called “weak” neuter), and the non-canonical marking of subject
(see, in particular, Lazzeroni 2002b, 2002c). Romano’s in-depth investigations into
Sanskrit, Greek, Iranian, Hittite, Latin and Romance varieties have shown that:
– the selection of gender (animate vs. inanimate) is related to the semantic role
of the argument that has the subject or object function, respectively;
– the accusative subject represents a semantically based marking, independently
of gender selection: the semantically non-canonical subject (that is, the under-
goer subject) takes the canonical marker of the object; the accusative, in fact, is
the typical case of the object, whose referent is prototypically inanimate and
unagentive, but not of the subject, whose referent is prototypically animate and
agentive;
– only thematic neuter nouns frequently have an allomorph of animate gender
that belongs to the same inflectional class. The presence of variants with animate
gender corresponding to the athematic (the so-called “strong”) neuter nouns,
instead, always entails metaplasm of inflectional class (e.g., Greek ὄναρ/ὄνειρος,
Sanskrit svar/sūraḥ, etc.). It is worth remarking that athematic neuter nouns
represent the oldest members of the neuter category;An Epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European 329
– the paradigm of weak neuter nouns – unlike the strong neuter – differs from
the paradigm of weak (i.e., thematic) animate nouns only in the nominative
(in Sanskrit, in fact, the weak neuter nouns have an animate vocative);
– in conclusion, weak neuter nouns correspond to a group of old thematic animate
nouns that became neuter when their accusative was generalized as a marker of
the (semantically non-canonical) subject: “il nominativo neutro tematico è omo-
fono dell’accusativo tematico animato perché è l’accusativo tematico animato”
[the neuter thematic nominative is homophonous with the animate thematic
accusative, because it is the animate thematic accusative] (Lazzeroni 2002b: 317).
2 Cultural reconstruction between linguistics and
philology
Romano Lazzeroni’s studies on the Indo-European verb and argument coding
systems benefitted from his love for Vedic. He is one of the most eminent scholars
in Old Indic Linguistics and, in particular, in Vedic and Sanskrit Linguistics. As
remarked in the citation for the so-called “Gonda Prize”3 awarded to Romano in
1999, his contributions show an extraordinary ability to interpret the Vedic texts –
which appear, as is well known, impenetrable in many respects – and to recon-
struct their cultural background, by combining rigorous philological analyses with
both theoretical investigations and typological observations. The studies collected
in the volume La cultura indoeuropea (Lazzeroni 1998) – which has also been
translated in Portuguese (Lazzeroni 1999b) – together with many other works by
Romano Lazzeroni, testify to the impact of his scholarship on Oriental Studies. I
will mention only two of those masterpieces: his study of the organization of living
and non-living entities and his study of the relationship between nectar and am-
brosia and the Indo-European representation of death.
In the first study, Romano Lazzeroni reconstructed a coherent system of con-
ceptual representations in which movement is the distinctive feature of life and feet
are the symbol of movement. He showed how the correspondence between Vedic
taxonomy and Iguvine taxonomy that is manifested in the long-debated formula
“bipeds and quadrupeds” can be accounted for only in a conceptual-semantic space
based on the representation of the living world as “something that moves, that goes”
(jágat-, Pre-Vedic term!), as opposed to the non-living (inanimate) world, which is
3 The “Gonda Prize” is an international prize for oriental studies awarded by the International
Institute for Advanced Asian Studies (CESMEO, Turin). It is named by the famous scholar who
received it in 1988: http://www.cesmeo.it/premi_borse/premi_borse.htm.330 Romagno
represented as “something that stays” (sthā-). Both in Vedic and in Classical
Sanskrit, only human beings, but not birds, are defined as “bipeds”: birds, in fact,
use wings, but not feet, to move. On the contrary, the exclusion of birds from the
biped category does not belong to the Greek and Roman cultures. However, the
comparison between different ancient Indo-European languages reveals that the
formula “bipeds and quadrupeds” belongs to the Indo-European tradition. Romano
Lazzeroni, via his brilliant and rigorous analysis of the Vedic texts, reconstructed a
complex cosmogonic system in which the principles underlying the representation
and organization of living and non-living entities are clearly explained, and the
rationale for the above-mentioned formula is provided. Therefore, it became clear
that the whole conceptual-semantic system that includes this formula belongs to the
Indo-European tradition. Relics of this system, which in the Vedic texts is coherently
structured, survived in various areas: adapted (in Iranian), reinterpreted (in Greek),
fossilized (in Umbrian). In conclusion, Romano Lazzeroni demonstrated that the
formula “bipeds and quadrupeds”, which is attested also in the Iguvine Tablets, as a
part of a prayer (in the dative plural: dupursus peturpursus), is not a relic of the Indo-
European poetic language, but the expression of a socio-culturally determined
interpretation of the world that was transferred into poetry.
Romano’s investigation into the Indo-European representation of death
unraveled the mystery of the two types of food of the gods that guaranteed
eternal life, as they were complementary antidotes to death. In the Homeric
poems, nectar (νέκταρ) and ambrosia (ἀμβροσίη) occur together and do not
differ either in function or in the way they are taken. By combining a linguistic
and a philological perspective, Romano Lazzeroni, once more, provided an
insightful interpretation of the historical memory transferred into the texts,
and reconstructed a complex system of correspondences between different
ancient Indo-European languages (in particular, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin),
that is based on common noetic matrices. The etymology of Greek νέκταρ
reveals the descriptive value of something that “crosses, passes over” (and,
therefore, wins) “death” (νεκ-, cf. Latin nex, Greek νέκυς, plus*tr̥/ *ter(ə)), but
does not provide a reason for this representation. Romano has shown that the
reason can be identified by reconsidering Greek data in relation to data coming
from the Vedic texts and the Latin tradition. The Vedic world distinguishes
natural death from accidental (premature) death: the former is a consequence
of age, whereas the latter is caused by any other factors (in the Atharvaveda,
the non-natural types of death are a hundred: cf. II, 28, 1). Only premature
death represents an evil to be warded off and overcome; victory over prema-
ture death is represented as an action of “going across” it (tarati). At the other
side of the Indo-European world, in Archaic and Classical Latin, nex is the
marked term to refer to death, as it denotes premature death, as opposed toAn Epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European 331
mors, which denotes the natural death or the generic notion of death. There-
fore, in the Greek word νέκταρ, the lexeme that in Latin denotes premature
death is combined with the verb base *ter(ə), which in Vedic refers to victory
over this type of death. It is, then, clear that the conceptual-semantic repre-
sentation underlying this expression is Indo-European. The correspondence
remains to be explained between beating death and “crossing” death. Romano
Lazzeroni’s acute analysis of Vedic texts provided a brilliant explanation for
this correspondence as well. In Vedic culture, bad things, including death,
which is the worst evil, are represented as narrow things (aṁhas-); winning
over death (and other evils) is represented as going across narrows. Further-
more, the Greek term for ambrosia includes the term for natural death:
ἀμβροσίη < *n̥ mr̥t-. It is, then, clear why the two types of food of the gods,
nectar and ambrosia, occur together: one is the antidote to premature death,
while the other is the antidote to natural death. In conclusion, the Greek names
for the food of the gods reveal the binary Indo-European notion of death.
In these and other studies for which we are thankful to Romano Lazzeroni’s
genius, the typology of the Indo-European sign established by Walter Belardi
(Belardi 1985, 1990, 1993) became a fruitful tool for linguistic and philological
interpretation and cultural reconstruction.
The mention of the “Gonda Prize” gives me the opportunity to recall the
attitude that Romano had towards prizes and awards. He received a huge number
of distinguished honours, prizes and awards, and was Founder, Member, Pres-
ident and Honorary Member of many prestigious national and international
scientific societies, including – to mention only some – the Accademia dei Lincei,
the Italian Society for Historical Linguistics (Società Italiana di Glottologia), the
Italian Association for Sanskrit Studies, the Cambridge Academy of Europe, the
International Institute for Etruscan and Italic Studies, the International Institute
for Advanced Asian Studies. Romano considered any honour or award as a token
of responsibility towards his students and colleagues and of commitment to
scientific research: he destroyed any traces of the citation for the “Gonda Prize”
and discreetly donated the money to the Linguistics Branch of the Pisa University
Library, which still has one of the most important European collections of
Oriental Studies and, in particular, of Indian studies. Romano’s spirit was
incompatible with any kinds of self-celebration: when the Gold Medal for Meri-
torious Scientists in Education, Culture and Art was awarded to him by the
Presidency of the Italian Republic, he neither participated in the award ceremony
nor shared the information with anyone; many of his colleagues and friends only
read about it in the national newspapers.332 Romagno
3 Conceptual representations and linguistic
categories in synchrony and diachrony
Romano’s works display special attention to the linguistic organization of con-
ceptual and empirical data and, consequently, to the relationship between graded
noetic categories and discrete formal categories. He was the first who introduced
the prototype theory and the family resemblance model (Berlin and Kay 1969;
Rosch and Mervis 1975; Wittgenstein 1953) into Indo-European Linguistics (cf.
Lazzeroni 1990, 1995b), thus revolutionizing – once more – the perspective on old
and unsettled questions and identifying new problems and novel solutions.
One of the central and long-lasting debates about the ancient Indo-European
languages (dating back to Pāṇini’s work) is the diversity of usage types and func-
tions of the middle category. The aporia whereby middle markers appear to be
associated with a variety of meanings has been solved by Romano Lazzeroni (Laz-
zeroni 1990), who proposed to change the perspective on voice (and, in particular,
on middle voice) and consider it as a “natural category” (in Eleanor Rosch’s terms:
Rosch 1973, 1978; cf. Taylor 1989), in which it is possible to identify a prototype,
corresponding to the most central members, and various peripheral members,
linked to the prototype via a similarity relationship. This idea not only solved some
systemic aporias that appeared to be irreducible (such as the lack of diathetic
distinctions in the imperative: the agentivity required by the imperative is incom-
patible with the middle prototype; the middle imperative is the product of a process
that made the two diatheses symmetrical), but also opened up new avenues of
research on the Indo-European voice system, that continue to provide the most
robust and consistent results and to indicate the most promising developments.
The use of the prototype and family resemblance model in investigations into the
grammatical gender of the ancient Indo-European languages (see, in particular,
Lazzeroni 1992a, 1993a) allowed Romano to clarify fundamental aspects of a category
that has been defined as “one of the still unsolved puzzles of linguistic science”
(István 1959: 1). His 1993 suggestion is still crucially valid: “molto del genere gram-
maticale resta enigmatico. Ma se rifletteremo sui principi costitutivi delle categorie
linguistiche e sulle relazioni cognitive espresse dalle categorie grammaticali, forse il
genere grammaticale ci apparirà meno fantastico della classificazione degli animali
nell’Emporio celeste di Borges” [much of grammatical gender remains enigmatic. But
if we reflect on the constitutive principles of linguistic categories and on the cognitive
relationships expressed by grammatical categories, perhaps grammatical gender will
appear less fantastic than the classification of animals in Borges’ Celestial Emporium]
(Lazzeroni 1993a: 16).An Epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European 333
We could discuss many other brilliant studies that Romano Lazzeroni conducted
on the relationship between conceptual categories and linguistic categorization. I will
mention only two further works on ancient Indo-European languages: his work on the
vexata quaestio of the agent nouns in *-tér and -tor (Lazzeroni 1992b) and his work on
action nouns (Lazzeroni 1997, 2012a). In the former, Romano explained the alternation
between the two series of derivatives in relation to the different degrees of animacy
(Silverstein 1976) and individuation (Timberlake 1977) of their referent. In the second,
that comprises two studies (Lazzeroni 1997, 2012a), he showed that: 1. the differences
in morphological and syntactic behavior between action nouns and agent nouns can
be explained within a gradient of nouniness vs. verbiness; 2. the degree of proto-
typicality of each of the two categories depends on the distinct parameters defining the
gradient, but interacts with the structural constraints of the system (see, in particular,
Lazzeroni 2012a). The results of these studies – like many if not all of Romano’s
studies – have important implications that go largely beyond the specific cases under
investigation and can be related to two fundamental principles that are both theo-
retical and methodological: 1. the hierarchies underlying the linguistic encoding of
noetic categories should be interpreted as representations that are not only multi-
factorial but also multidimensional; 2. the classification of a given category on the
basis of certain features or dimensions depends on the functional principles governing
the system in which that category is encoded, either morphologically or syntactically.
The definition of prototype includes both the notion of frequency (and the
related notion of cognitive salience) and the notion of markedness (and the related
notion of extension: “the unmarked term […] may have or may acquire greater
reference potential (extension) than its marked opposite” [Andersen 2001b: 48]).
The crucial role of markedness in language (and beyond) is strictly related to the
notion of local markedness: that is, the degree of markedness of a given element
can be measured (only) in relation to a given category or dimension or context.
Local markedness determines so-called “markedness agreement” (in Henning
Andersen’s terms: Andersen 1980, 2001a, 2001b), which – as Romano Lazzeroni
showed in many studies – critically operates in language organization and change.
When innovations correspond to the creation of a category, the linguistic change
first affects the less marked, more prototypical elements, and progressively rea-
ches the more marked, less prototypical ones; the opposite pattern characterizes
innovations that can be interpreted as category merging or loss (Andersen 1990,
2001a, 2001b; Timberlake 1977). Romano Lazzeroni’s research on many ancient
and modern Indo-European languages showed how this principle governs a large
number of different phenomena: e.g., the Indo-European grammaticalization of
tense, that started from the indicative, as it is less marked in relation to tense
distinctions, compared to the subjunctive and optative, that encode the non-
factual and counterfactual modality, respectively (cf. Lazzeroni 1977, 1984a,334 Romagno
1984b, 2016b, 2018a, 2018b, 2019b); the progressive loss of the locative from Latin
to Romance (cf. Lazzeroni 2005); the syncretism of the genitive and ablative in
ancient Greek and Sanskrit (cf. Lazzeroni 2005); the merging of the auxiliaries in
the compound tenses of various ancient and modern Indo-European languages (cf.
Lazzeroni 2013b); the progressive loss of the dual in ancient Greek (cf. Lazzeroni
1960), which reveals how a universal cognitive principle underlies a typological
“universal” (see Greenberg 1963); to mention only some of the categorization
processes, on which Romano shed new light by clearly explaining their functional
architecture in both synchrony and diachrony.
The important contribution of Andersen’s markedness theory to the under-
standing of the principles and patterns of language change has been repeatedly noted
by Romano Lazzeroni, who called Henning Andersen “one of the greatest linguists of
the last few centuries”. The identical expression was used by Henning Andersen to
refer to Romano Lazzeroni: the reciprocal esteem between these two giants of Lin-
guistics dates back many years, even if they met in person only recently, during the
22nd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, held in Naples in 2015.
4 Principles and patterns of language change
Language change is the common superordinate theme connecting all the lines of
research discussed so far. To the best of our knowledge, Romano Lazzeroni’s
studies represent the most significant contribution to the elaboration of a holistic
theory of language change, which is one of the main goals in language sciences.
As regards the hendiadic – and certainly not dichotomous – relationship be-
tween language organization and change (which Romano, with his inimitable style,
used to remark the importance of from the first lecture of any Historical Linguistics
class for undergrads, and on which Eugenio Coseriu wrote definitive pages: Coseriu
1952, 1958, 1966, 1994), it will be enough here to note that André Martinet, one of the
godfathers of structuralism, chose a diachronic point of view for the summa of his
theoretical investigations (Économie des changements phonétiques: Martinet 1955):
the dynamic perspective is probably the most appropriate to clarify the principles
that govern language systems, as innovations yield critical phases in which systems
have to reorganize.
Romano Lazzeroni constantly emphasized the need for an explanation of
language change that includes both the formal and the functional dimensions of
language in a unitary and coherent model, and showed that to achieve this goal it
is necessary to look at languages as both natural and cultural products (Lazzeroni
1987b, 2005): understanding the principles and mechanisms of languageAn Epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European 335
organization, change, acquisition and loss requires us to disentangle socio-
historically determined from “universal”, neurobiologically determined factors.
Within a tridimensional representation of language change (on which see
Belardi 1978; Labov 2001; Trudgill 1983; Weinreich et al. 1968, among others),
Romano Lazzeroni’s researches on Indo-Iranian, Greek, Aegean-Anatolian, Italic,
Latin and Romance (Lazzeroni 1967, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1984b, 1991a, 1999a, 2006,
2007, 2012b) showed how variation and change (including those that are due to
contact: Lazzeroni 1983b; cf. Mancini 2008, 2013) involve not only time and space,
but also the sociocultural stratification of speech communities, and demonstrated
that, if it is true that the observation of ongoing changes in modern languages is
especially fruitful, it is also true that, if investigations into past languages exploit the
perspectives and methods refined by studying present languages, linguists can
reach the other side of Labov’s purpose, that is, the understanding of the present by
explaining the past: “capire il presente spiegando il passato” (Lazzeroni 1991b: 217).
Lazzeroni’s model stands at the intersection of three planes, with an increasing
degree of abstractedness and a decreasing degree of variability (see, in particular,
Lazzeroni 2005, 2015c, 2016b, 2018a, 2018b, 2019b, 2019c, 2020):
1. the plane of the relationship between linguistic phenomena and historical
accidents: the actualization of language systems is historically determined and,
therefore, language systems depend on sociocultural variables;
2. the plane of the relationship between conceptual representations and linguistic
categories: languages are cognitive tools that convey an interpreted reality and,
therefore, testify to the way in which speakers represent and organize the world
in a given chronotope;
3. the plane of the relationship between language systems and the neurocognitive
mechanisms underlying their functional organization: languages are the most
typical product of the human brain (the “miracle” of language is the distinctive
feature of humans: Maffei 2018) and, therefore, depend on the principles that
govern brain activity.
Within this model, Romano Lazzeroni’s research, which benefitted from his pene-
trating overall view and his extraordinary ability to rapidly recognize the pattern of
relationships between different phenomena, identified the constants (the “univer-
sals”) that define the principles of language change (the same – as he showed – that
underlie language acquisition: Lazzeroni 2005) and allow him to explain and foresee
(but never predict!) its pathways: as Romano used to remark during his lectures, the
patterns of language change can be foreseen, but are never predictable, because
they also depend on the numerosity and variability of historical accidents. Lazzer-
oni’s “universals” can be summarized in the following:336 Romagno
A. the tension between discrete forms and noetic continua: human memory limi-
tations require to encode into discrete units a variety of meanings that are
organized in gradient (“fuzzy”) categories, whose boundaries are blurred and
overlapping. The studies on the processes of category creation, merging and loss
mentioned above provided a clear explanation of some possible patterns of
language change;
B. the tension between declarative memory and procedural memory: the former
supports the storage of data and information, whereas the latter supports the
processing of connections and rules that entail the automatic production and
comprehension of linguistic units. A principle of economy of the memory system
underlies the functional organization and change of languages. Speakers, in fact,
use strategies that operate at a superordinate level relative to the single units, and
exploit procedural memory in preference to declarative memory (cf. Lazzeroni
1992a, 2000b, 2015c, 2016b, 2019b, 2020).
Romano Lazzeroni’s research showed how the principle of economy of the memory
system can account for a large number of (apparently unrelated) linguistic changes
that occur in different Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages, and
provided a definitive solution to crucial questions in Historical Linguistics, from
the so-called “symmetrical” changes (first reported but not explained by Hermann
Paul: Paul 1880; see also Giannelli 1973, among many others) to Sapirian drift
(Sapir 1921), from the evolutionary interpretation of language change (cf. Croft
2000) to the long-debated issue of the extension of the scope of application of a
given rule (cf. Kiparsky 1968). Romano has clearly explained the internal structure
of the “symmetric” patterns of change: the innovation first affects a single member
of a given category and progressively rises to the superordinate category level, thus
involving all the category members. This allows the speakers to memorize only one
“new” rule for all the constituents of the category involved in the change.
In Vedic, for instance, when both Proto-Indo-European *e and *o became a (by
following a symmetrical pattern: the change should have first affected the anterior
vowel, as shown by the Aryan loan words in Finnic), the -ă inflectional class (< PIE
*-o) was associated with the masculine gender, and the -ā class (< PIE *-ā) with the
feminine. In this phase, the quantity of the vowel was a gender marker only for -a
nouns. Throughout the history of the Sanskrit language, the grammatical gender of
all vowel classes of nouns has been progressively redistributed on the basis of the
quantity of the vowel. In the first phase, if a stem ended in -ă, the noun was
masculine; whereas if a stem ended in -ā, the noun was feminine; in the final
phase, attested in Middle Indic, all the nouns in short vowels were masculine,
whereas all the nouns in long vowels were feminine (Lazzeroni 1992a).An Epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European 337
In this and many other changes, of which Romano Lazzeroni explained the
pattern and identified the underlying principles, the change in the scope of appli-
cation of the rule corresponds to the transfer of the rule to a more abstract level, in
order to favor the automatic production (and comprehension) of the correct forms:
that is, the speakers do not need to memorize the new forms one by one, but only the
rule that generates them; in this way, they are able to produce all the correct forms
only by applying the rule to a class of units (e.g., the vowel nouns).
Furthermore, as Romano’s innovative studies have demonstrated, the principle
of economy of the memory system underlies the numerous cases of changes of the
“paradigm structure conditions” (in Wolfgang Wurzel’s terms: Wurzel 1984, 1989; cf.
Carstairs 1987). In Latin, when -os became -us (lupos > lupus), there were conditions
in place for the merging of the second and the fourth inflectional classes. At a first
glance, one could think that a complete merger occurred. However, Romano Laz-
zeroni uncovered a completely different process (Lazzeroni 2000b). The fourth class
survived in Romance, in a certain number of relics: e.g., Central/Southern Italian:
la mano – le mano (“hand”), la fico – le fico (“fig”), la peco – le peco (“sheep”), etc.;
Calabria and Campania varieties: la nuoro – le nuoro (“daughter in law”), etc. (cf.
Rohlfs 1949–1954). All these nouns are feminine, and so are the nouns that passed
from other classes to the fourth (e.g., la suoro – le suoro “sister”). The pattern by
which the speakers preserved the two inflectional classes is, then, clear: despite the
merging of the two nominatives – which originally functioned as paradigm structure
conditions – the two classes have been preserved by changing their distinctive
feature, that is, the ending of the nominative was replaced with the grammatical
gender. All the masculine nouns of the fourth class, in fact, went to the second;
conversely, all the feminine nouns of the second class went to the fourth, which kept
its own original feminine members and took “new” feminine nouns from other
classes. The mixed paradigms of senatus and domus show the ongoing process. As is
clear, the scope of application of the rule that assigned nouns to their inflectional
class did not widen; rather, the features that identified the paradigms were replaced,
in order to preserve the mechanism that allows speakers to automatically assign
each noun to its class, on the basis of a feature that operates at the category level
and, therefore, is shared by all members of the inflectional class.
The principle of economy of the memory system operates not only in morphology
and in phonetics – as shown above – but also in syntax: it will be enough to mention
here the so-called “solidarity principle”, dynamically investigated by Hawkins (1979,
1983), but already present in one of Greenberg’s (1963) “universals”.
In conclusion, Romano Lazzeroni clearly demonstrated how Sapir’s drift (Sapir
1921), Kiparsky’s principle of maximization (Kiparsky 1968) and Croft’s evolutionary
theory refer to epiphenomena of functional constraints that have a universal value,
as they rely on cognitive and neurobiological principles.338 Romagno
The crucial role of memory can be observed also in the organization of so-called
“irregular” forms, that is, the forms that need to be memorized one by one: “non sarà
un caso” – Romano Lazzeroni wrote (Lazzeroni 2019b: 178; cf. Lazzeroni 2005: 14–16) –
“che le forme irregolari – e in particolar modo le più irregolari quali sono le forme
suppletive – appartengano invariabilmente e in ogni lingua alle parole con l’indice di
frequenza più alto” [it is no coincidence that the irregular forms – and especially the
most irregular such as suppletive forms – invariably and in every language belong to
the words with the highest frequency index]: frequency is a powerful support to
memory. When the frequency level decreases, like in language acquisition and loss, in
fact, automatic processing prevails, going even beyond etymological borders; for
instance, “incorrect” forms such as the following have been reported: Italian *ando –
andiamo, from andare ‘go’ (modelled on the regular paradigm amo – amiamo, from
amare “love”); gallo (masculine) –*galla (feminine) ‘rooster’ (modelled on the type
gatto (masculine) – gatta (feminine) ‘cat’, etc.; (cf. Antinucci and Miller 1976; Giacalone
Ramat 1983, 2003; Lazzeroni 2005, 2020; Sasse 1992).
Furthermore, the principle by which speakers privilege processing (supported
by procedural memory), in preference to storage (supported by declarative mem-
ory) also operates in the organization of irregular or sub-regular paradigms of
words with a high or very high degree of frequency: we refer, for instance, to the
long-debated issue of the partition of the paradigm in ancient and modern Indo-
European languages, on which Romano Lazzeroni, once more, wrote memorable
pages (Lazzeroni 2015c).
To summarize and conclude, Romano Lazzeroni’s investigations into various
ancient and modern Indo-European languages clearly showed how speakers
organize (or re-organize) irregular and sub-regular forms – be they innovations or
residuals – in a “schema” (in the sense used by Bybee and Slobin 1982), on the
basis of common features: this mechanism helps automatic processing and,
therefore, reduces memory load. The schema entails the use of rules that operate at
the category level and not at the unit level, and whose more or less probabilistic vs.
invariable character may change over time. As shown by Romano Lazzeroni, the
diachronic perspective is also the most appropriate to appreciate the “scalar
character of (morphological) irregularity” (Ramat 1985).
5 The teaching and mentoring of Romano
Lazzeroni
In the final section of this modest token of gratitude to a giant of science and big-
hearted mentor, I would like to provide a small portrait of Romano Lazzeroni as a
brilliant and unique teacher.An Epoch in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European 339
In Romano’s activity, scientific research and higher education have always
been inseparable. This tight link is based on both his strong belief that education is
impossible if it is not animated – inspired, encouraged, renewed – by the spirit of
research and his profound desire to share his path with younger scholars (who – in
Romano’s world – also included undergraduate students). He used to say that “one
of the greatest joys in life is appreciating how young eyes can shine as the mind
runs a new adventure”. In Romano’s idea of academia, there were no temporal,
environmental, spatial or national borders, no ideological barriers, no separation
between areas of knowledge, including both humanities and science.
The Department of Linguistics of the University of Pisa was constantly animated
by his presence: when conferences or other important commitments did not take him
outside Pisa, Romano was at work every day, all day long, until very late, and always
available – and even delighted – to welcome students and colleagues, independently
of their background or academic position. No one left Romano’s office without a
precious suggestion or an illuminating answer. Having a conversation with him was
always an entertaining experience: his profound and sharp mind was accompanied
by an extraordinary sense of humor, that made even the most complex phenomenon
or the most critical situation clear and light.
Romano Lazzeroni was everyone’s teacher, probably because he considered
anyone – and, in particular, the younger – a teacher. Remembering a well-known
avant-propos by Meillet, he used to joke about his activity as a teacher by saying
that scholars grow up by themselves. His example, instead, profoundly and clearly
shows that scholars grow up thanks to the generosity of their mentors and that the
greatness of a mentor is measured by his ability to set his students free to make
their own choice and find their own way. Romano constantly advised his students
to follow the teachings and research perspectives and methods of other scientists
and professors as well; he never considered his students as property but, rather, as
someone to respect and support.
One of the foundational principles of his teaching relied on his in-depth
awareness of the limits of our activity, as both researchers and educators. He strongly
believed that the main progress in scientific research does not come from (or with)
authority, but from being part of a community, in which each piece of research opens
up the way for further research, thus contributing to a potentially unlimited process
(Lazzeroni 2019a). Romano’s legacy will always be part of this process.
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