Collocations as motivators of new verb meanings: the case of <i>ponere</i> and <i>agere</i>

Abstract In this paper we deal with verb-noun collocations as a mechanism for the creation of new meanings in verbs. We understand that the unitary character of these constructions together with their high productivity allows that, sometimes, the base noun is elided and the verb assumes the global meaning of the construction, as it happens with the English verb to play in its meaning ‘to make an instrument sound’, arising from collocations such as to play the guitar, the drum , etc. The verbs ponere and agere help us to explain this procedure of semantic change in the Latin language: their meanings ‘to consider that a desired event depends on something (or someone)’ and ‘to live, to spend time’, respectively, can be understood as the product of the simplification of the collocations spem ponere and uitam (or other temporal nouns) agere.