The goal of this paper is to give a brief outline of the synchronic conditions which trigger the emergence of aspectual values in Latin verbal prefixes. In particular, I will show that such a possibility is not the result of bare semantic effects, lexicalization of idioms or compounding strategies
rather, aspectual preverbation crucially has to do with syntactic factors, namely the argument structure of the verb, the prepositional character of the prefixes, and the interactions between those components.