<i>Mutatas dicere formas</i>: la lengua al servicio de la metamorfosis

Abstract

All along his work, Ovid mentions hundreds of transformations. In his narration, apart from a number of implicit allusions to metamorphoses, he creates a very complex system that combines lexical, semantic and syntactical resources, in order not to be repetitive. This allows him to expand greatly the list of verbs with which he can express explicitly the fact that an entity can change into another entity. So, if he is primarily interested in the agent or the cause of the metamorphosis, that is, the causative construction, he uses the verbs uerto, facio and muto (this last verb is his favourite one, and is probably used by Ovid for the first time with this sense) in active voice; when he wants to focus on the person who undergoes the change (inacusative construction), he uses uerto, facio and muto in passive voice, or the verb fio. But if he refers to a character who has the ability to metamorphose (inergative construction), he uses uerto in passive voice, or fio. In the cases of the verbs muto (in active or passive), uerto (in active or passive), eo (in passive), abeo (in passive), flecto (in passive), confero (in active), animo (in active), etc. the result of the transformation is often expressed with in + accusative. In the cases of uerto and muto, the result can be also codified as ablative without preposition; and with muto, cum + ablative is also possible. However, when the verbs facio and have the meaning of `transforming ´or `getting transformed into´ they don´t present any special construction. On the other hand, Ovid barely uses the verbs conuerto and transformo, which were already used by other authors before him.