Multiply Prefixed Verbs in Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian: Chapter 1

This paper deals with differences between compositional and non-compositional prefixed verbs in Slavic. Using a paraphrase test, it classifies prefixed verbs into four categories. In the course of this, it is shown that non-compositional prefixed verbs do not form a unified class. The paper provides a syntactic and semantic analysis of the particular classes and argues that also prefixed verbs with an idiomatic meaning can receive a compositional analysis. Non-compositional prefixed verbs are incrementally derived but the meaning of their parts can be updated under certain circumstances.

The Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics, 2014

The paper discusses a set of verbal prefixes which, when added to a verb together with a reflexive morpheme, change the verb’s meaning always in the same manner. The prefixes form a sequence according to the degree of intensity with which they modify the verbal action. We present the process of verb intensification in three Slavic languages, namely Czech, Slovak and Russian.

from their corresponding Russian prefix. 2 These prefixes are: od-/ot-, where Polish uses the voiced variant of the consonant; roz-/raz-, where, in the majority of cases, Russian uses raz-instead of roz-, although roz-is not unheard of; 3 przy-/pri-, where in Polish, the original r palatalizes to rz before front vowels; prze-/pere-, where not only does r palatalize to rz before front vowels as in przy-, but we can also observe East Slavic polnoglasie in pere-, while noting metathesis of the Common Slavic *tert-group in prze-; and z-/s-, where, as with od-, Polish utilizes the voiced variant of the consonant as the basic form. 4

2010

The empirical base of this paper is the system of verb prefixes in Slavic languages, with a focus on Serbo-Croatian (SC). The paper especially targets the asymmetries between the so-called external and internal (or superlexical and lexical) prefixes, but it eventually proposes a general analysis for the verbal prefixation in SC.

This paper is devoted to Old Church Slavonic (OCS) and Old Russian (OR) compound verbs with stacked prefixes. Although prefixes are a well investigated topic as regards modern Slavic languages, multiple prefixation in ancient Slavic languages still needs to be extensively explored. This work is a further step in this direction: via a careful manual scrutiny of the relevant data automatically extracted from the TOROT Treebank, we compare OCS and OR prefix orderings and we analyze multiply prefixed verbs both semantically and syntactically. As regards semantics, prefix stacking only rarely results in a fully compositional compound. More often, the resulting compounds are partially compositional or lexicalized. However, OCS and OR prefixes still retain (at least partially) their lexical value and are far from being pure perfectivity markers. Consequently, this also affects their syntactic behavior: the lexical modifications brought about by prefixes sometimes have the side effect of modifying the case taken by verbal compounds.

Филолог – часопис за језик књижевност и културу

The Latin language was the Lingua Franca of the ancient world, and the precursor of Romance languages. As such, it had a huge influence on European languages, and we can find elements of Latin both in English and in Serbian. In this paper, four Latinate verb prefixes with spatial and temporal meanings have been examined, and those are: trans-, re-, intra-, and post-, and their frequencies and productivities in both languages have been calculated. The analysis was made on the English corpus BNCweb, and the Serbian corpus srWaC, based on the hypothesis that these prefixes would be more frequent and productive in English, which was more exposed to Latin and Romance languages.

Tense, mood and aspect: theoretical and …, 2007

Linguistics, 1998

We argue that a large class of Russian prefixed verbs has essentially the same semantic structure as resultative constructions in English of the type paint the door green. We analyze both phenomena as instances of lexical subordination: although it is syntactically a secondary predicator, green expresses the primary ("core") semantic predication, while paint is a secondary subordinated semantic predicate. The expression therefore means 'cause to become green by painting. In the Russian vyteret' stol 'wipe down the table' (literally Out-wipe table'), the prefix vy-is semantically primary and the verb stem is subordinated. By virtue of this shared semantic structure, Russian prefixation can only access internal arguments (objects, or subjects of unaccusatives) and Russian prefixed verbs may support "fake" or unselected object constructions, akin to English resultatives such as drink the pub dry or sing oneself hoarse. From pisat' 'write' we have ispisat' rucku Out-write pen, 'to run out of ink (of a pen) 1 , in which the direct object 'pen is not selected by pisat' 'write'. Since these unselected objects are arguments of the prefixed verb complex, we conclude (with Goldberg 1995, against Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995) that unselected objects in English resultatives are also arguments (of the construction). We extend our analysis to the steal/rob alternation and offering an explanation of why in some languages, verbs of manner of motion (e.g. run,) behave like unergative verbs while the same verbs with directional complementsjadjuncts (e.g. run into the room) behave like unaccusative verbs. We discuss the repercussions for the interpretation of notions such as " complex predicate" and "construction."

Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 2003

The Slavic and East European Journal, 1981

Russian Linguistics, 2021

This study tests the morphological gradience theory on Russian prefixed verbs. With the help of a specially designed experiment, in which participants were asked to evaluate the semantic transparency of a prefixed nonse verb given in minimal context, as well as to semanticise it by suggesting an existing Russian verb with the same prefix, we offer evidence that these verbs can be analysed as constructional schemas and that the degree of their morphological decomposition depends upon the different levels of activation of their sequential and lexical links. We prove that speakers of Russian are very sensitive to the etymological connection between verb prefixes and the prepositions they are related to. Thus, prefix-stem constructions with prefixes that correspond to prepositions are more likely to be morphologically decomposed, while prefix-stem constructions with prefixes that do not relate to prepositions tend to be regarded as single lexical units. Moreover, the general, highly abstract semantics of Russian prefix-stem constructions, especially of those that retain their 'prepositional' meaning, is undoubtedly accessible to language users, which is confirmed by the fact that the interpretability of these constructions is affected by priming.