Support-verb constructions with carere ‘to be free (from)’ in the LatinISE corpus: The caritive in Latin

Abstract Support-verb constructions are combinations of a verb and a noun that fill the predicate slot of a sentence, as to make a suggestion in he made the suggestion that she join us . The article investigates whether carere ‘to be free from’ (+ ablative), unlike egere and indigere , in support-verb constructions, such as dolore careo ‘to be free from pain’, moves from lexical-phraseological to grammatical-analytical between the classical and post-classical periods, based on (i) the contiguity of components, (ii) the degree of component compatibility, and (iii) the spread across authors. The article argues that the classical verb of realisation becomes a support verb in post-classical times. The classical verb of realisation qualifies as a Caritive functioning as a low-scope scalar focus negative; the post-classical support verb seems to be semantically broader. Carere ‘to be free from’ never becomes an auxiliary verb but hovers at the syntax-lexicon interface throughout.