Reversive constructions in Latin: the case of re- (and dis-)

This paper proposes a cognitive account on re- and dis- verbs based on the scrutiny of the Plautine corpus and Cato’s De agricultura. Re- and dis- exhibit significant differences as to the manner in which they come to a reversive function, and these differences can be traced back to the basic conceptual import of the two prefixes: while dis- is schematically connected with the idea of separation into two parts, re- basically refers to a rearward/reditive trajectory, connecting a point that has already been reached to the starting point. On the basis of this description, I analyze the semantic network of re- and dis- and the role of their conceptual structure in the spread from spatial to reversive values

Morphological word structure in English and Swedish : the evidence from prosody

Trubetzkoy's recognition of a delimitative function of phonology, serving to signal boundaries between morphological units, is expressed in terms of alignment constraints in Optimality Theory, where the relevant constraints require specific morphological boundaries to coincide with phonological structure (Trubetzkoy 1936, 1939, McCarthy & Prince 1993). The approach pursued in the present article is to investigate the distribution of phonological boundary signals to gain insight into the criteria underlying morphological analysis. The evidence from English and Swedish suggests that necessary and sufficient conditions for word-internal morphological analysis concern the recognizability of head constituents, which include the rightmost members of compounds and head affixes. The claim is that the stability of word-internal boundary effects in historical perspective cannot in general be sufficiently explained in terms of memorization and imitation of phonological word form. Rather, these effects indicate a morphological parsing mechanism based on the recognition of word-internal head constituents. Head affixes can be shown to contrast systematically with modifying affixes with respect to syntactic function, semantic content, and prosodic properties. That is, head affixes, which cannot be omitted, often lack inherent meaning and have relatively unmarked boundaries, which can be obscured entirely under specific phonological conditions. By contrast, modifying affixes, which can be omitted, consistently have inherent meaning and have stronger boundaries, which resist prosodic fusion in all phonological contexts. While these correlations are hardly specific to English and Swedish it remains to be investigated to which extent they hold cross-linguistically. The observation that some of the constituents identified on the basis of prosodic evidence lack inherent meaning raises the issue of compositionality. I will argue that certain systematic aspects of word meaning cannot be captured with reference to the syntagmatic level, but require reference to the paradigmatic level instead. The assumption is then that there are two dimensions of morphological analysis: syntagmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for decomposing words in terms of labelled constituents, and paradigmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for establishing relations among (whole) words in the mental lexicon. While meaning is intrinsically connected with paradigmatic analysis (e.g. base relations, oppositeness) it is not essential to syntagmatic analysis

English Word Formation Patterns and Translation thereof in the Institutional Register

Translation of institutional texts is a challenge for translators due to the im­portance of conveying the meaning of the context as accurately as possible. The production of a good translation of official documents such as regulations that reflect the institutional register requires consideration of differences in the source and target languages in terms of syntax and lexis. As often as not, this results in transformations in sentence structure and word formation. English word formation, due to different language characteristics differs from Lithua­nian in many ways. Although the definition of word formation is quite similar: 'Word-formation' is a traditional label, and one which is useful, but it does not generally cover all possible ways of forming everything that can be called a 'word'." (Bauer, 1983:9). The theoretical part of this paper discusses the main word formation types for the English and the Lithuanian languages. The sec­ond, empirical part, deals with the analysis of word formation types in the En­glish language, their transformations in the Lithuanian language and the most common transformation patterns. For the purpose, data from original bilingual documents of the European Union representing the institutional register were collected from EUR-Lex database

New Trends in Word-Formation Processes in English: an Analysis of the Latest OED Entries

[Abstract] It is widely accepted that language changes; this change goes simultaneously with the evolution of the world. Phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics or pragmatics have evolved and then been examined by linguistics. Word-formation processes have been a widely studied issue because of its complexity and interest; recently, the new tendencies in word-formation patterns have been a recurrent subject of study but have not been explored in great depth. This paper aims to analyse the 712 words included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) during 2020 in order to obtain a pattern of the most dominant processes of formation of new words and the essential semantic fields. To this end, some previous knowledge of word-formation was essential, in addition to the need to refer to those few studies on the latest trends. Access to the OED was then required, and, by using the list with the words provided by the OED, an analysis of word-formation processes and semantic fields was carried out. But first, a selection of different sources was needed for the overview of the diverse word-formation processes. My findings show that word formation processes have changed but perhaps not as much as expected: traditionally, compounding and affixation were the most important processes, and this continues to be this way. Nevertheless, new processes are becoming more important –clipping, blending or conversion–; at the same time, some others appear to be quite unproductive –initialisms, acronyms, reduplication or back-formation–. Besides, borrowing has been fundamental in the production of new words and its importance will be mentioned in this study, although it is not really a word-formation process. As a result, language changes but very slowly, and the so-called minor word-formation processes are these days more important than, for instance, during the Old English period. Apparently, both word-formation processes and semantic fields continue to be quite traditional and not much modification has taken place. Ease is going to influence the selection of the processes of formation of new words; for instance, compounding is much easier and then more productive than blending. Moreover, many words come from specialized fields –linguistics, gastronomy, fashion, health–, whereas semantic fields –such as Internet and technologies–, which were expected to be more dominant, are not so essential. Further research could be carried out with the focus on words related to a particular semantic field, for instance, health. Studying words specifically related to the pandemic would also be valuable since Covid-19 has not finished yet. Other lines of study could also possibly delve into the patterns of formation of clippings or blendings or into the analysis of the many borrowings that were included during the referred year.Traballo fin de grao (UDC.FIL). Inglés: estudios lingüísticos y literarios. Curso 2020/202

The semantics of noun-to-verb zero-derivation in English and Spanish

This paper has been supported by the Spanish State Research Agency (SRA, Ministry of Science and Innovation) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) (Ref. PID2020- 119851GB-I00-AEI-10.13039-501100011033).The semantics of zero-derivation/conversion has attracted renewed interest both as a subject of description and as a means towards refined descriptions of the process. This paper takes the latter stance and compares which semantic categories occur in zero-derivation/conversion and in overt affixation in two languages with a different morphological model: English and Spanish. For attestation and distribution of the semantic categories, the paper relies on a stratified sample of denominal verbs collected from two comparable corpora: the British National Corpus and the Corpus de Referencia del Espanol Actual. The sample consists in sets of ca. 50 denominal verb-forming resources, one per affixation process, namely affixation by -ate, -(i)fy, -ize/-ise, -en, en- in English, a- horizontal ellipsis -ar, en- horizontal ellipsis -ar, -ear, -ecer, -(i)ficar, -izar in Spanish, and zero-derivation/conversion in both languages. The results are contrasted within and across affixes/processes, within each language and across the two languages for the adequacy of a description as zero-derivation or as conversion. Statistical analysis shows that the process/affixes form a cline with overlaps and closer associations between specific affixes/processes and semantic categories, but no clear divide between zero-derivation/conversion and the rest of processes as far as the semantic categories are concerned.Spanish State Research Agency (SRA, Ministry of Science and Innovation)European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) PID2020-119851GB-I00-AEI-10.13039-50110001103

Diachrony and typology of Slavic aspect: What does morphology tell us?

In this article we consider the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition, a well-known example of viewpoint aspect which establishes a classificatory grammatical category by means of stem derivation. Although Slavic languages are not unique in having developed a classificatory aspect system, a survey of such systems shows that the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition is a particularly rare subcase of such systems, first of all because it combines prefixing with suffixing patterns of derivation. We therefore explore the morphology involved, tracing its development from Proto-Indo-European into Early Slavic. The emergence of Slavic aspect is atypical for grammatical categories, and it deviates considerably from mainstream instances of grammaticalization in many respects. We show that there is a strong tendency (i) towards abandonment of highly lexically conditioned and versatile suffix choices in Proto-Indo-European and in Common Slavic, which led to fewer and more transparent suffixes, and (ii) towards concatenation, away from originally non-concatenative (fusional) schemata. Furthermore, we compare Slavic with some other Indo-European languages and inquire as to why in Europe no other Indo-European group beyond Slavic went so far as to productively exploit newly developed prefixes (or verb particles) merely for use as aspectual modifiers of stems and to combine them with a (partially inherited, partially remodelled) stock of suffixes to yield a classificatory aspect system. The Slavic system, thus, appears quite unique not only from a typological point of view, but also in diachronic-genealogical terms. Based on this background, amplified by some inner-Slavic biases in the productivity of patterns of stem derivation, we pose the provocative question as to whether the rise and consolidation of the stem-derivational perfective/imperfective opposition in Slavic was favoured by direct and indirect contacts with Uralic (Finno-Ugric) and Altaic (Turkic) populations at different periods since at least the time of the Great Migrations

Osamostaljeni prefiksi i gramatikalizacija vida u južnoslavenskim jezicima

This paper establishes the term ORPHAN PREFIX for a Slavic prefix that no longer shares a dominant spatial meaning with its cognate preposition. Most Slavic prefixes do share such a dominant spatial meaning with their cognate prepositions, cf., e.g., the Russian prefix v- and preposition v, both meaning ‘into.’ Orphan prefixes appear to be an important component of many Slavic aspectual systems. However, in most Slavic languages there is at most one prefix that has lost the semantic connection to its cognate preposition and come to function primarily as a grammatical marker of perfectivity. Only three Slavic prefixes are in fact to be consid-ered orphan prefixes, and each only in some Slavic languages. A first case is Bulgarian iz- ‘out,’ as its cognate preposition iz is no longer used in the spatial meaning ‘out of.’ The most extreme case is Bulgarian po-, which no longer shares the spatial meaning of SURFACE CONTACT with the preposition po to any significant degree. Another important case is the hy-brid prefix s-/z- in Slovene, which arose due to the phonetic coalescence of sъ- ‘together, down from’ and jьz- ‘out’ after the fall of the jers and which as a perfectivizing prefix has lost its semantic connection to s ‘with, down from’ and iz ‘out of’ to varying degrees in Slovene. This paper presents an overview of perfectivizing prefixation in three South Slavic languages, Bulgarian, Croatian and Slovene. It is argued that though the loss of a dominant spatial mean-ing is necessary for a given prefix to be grammaticalized as a purely perfectivizing prefix in an individual Slavic language, this process is neither predictable nor necessary for the mainte-nance of a Slavic-style aspect system (cf. standard Croatian, where no orphan prefix exists and no such grammaticalization has taken place). Building on this line of thinking, the paper argues that the facts from South Slavic support recent views on grammaticalization, that there is no “grammaticalization” process per se, only semantic changes that lead to grammaticaliza-tion as an epiphenomenal result.U ovom se radu uvodi pojam osamostaljeni prefiks (engl. orphan prefix) za slavenski prefiks koji više ne dijeli temeljno prostorno značenje sa svojim prijedložnim parnjakom. Većina slavenskih prefiksa nosi takvo jedno temeljno prostorno značenje koje se bilježi i u njihovih srodnih prijedloga, usp. npr. ruski prefiks v- i prijedlog v, koji oba znače ‘u’. Osamostaljeni prefiksi po svemu sudeći predstavljaju važan segment brojnih slavenskih aspektualnih sus-tava. Međutim, u većini slavenskih jezika postoji najviše jedan prefiks koji je izgubio seman-tičku sponu sa svojim prijedložnim parnjakom i koji je prvenstveno preuzeo funkciju gramatičkog obilježja perfektivnosti. Samo se tri slavenska prefiksa može smatrati osamostaljenim prefiksima, i pritom svaki od njih samo u nekim slavenskim jezicima funkcionira kao takav. Prvi je slučaj slučaj bugarskog prefiksa iz- ‘iz’, s obzirom da se njegov prijedložni parnjak iz više ne upotrebljava u prostor-nom značenju ‘iz’/‘izvan’. Najdrastičniji je primjer bugarski prefiks po- koji s prijedlogom po više ne dijeli u značajnijoj mjeri prostorno značenje DODIR S POVRŠINOM. Drugi je važan primjer hibridni prefiks s-/z- u slovenskom, koji je nastao fonetskim stapanjem su- ‘zajedno, niz’ i jüz ‘iz’/’izvan’ nakon gubitka jera, i koji je, kao perfektivizirajući prefiks, u različitoj mjeri izgubio svoju semantičku vezu sa s ‘s, niz’ i iz ‘iz’/’izvan’ u slovenskom jeziku. U ovome radu daje se pregled perfektivizirajućih prefiksa u trima južnoslavenskim jezicima, bugarskom, hrvatskom i slovenskom. Ističe se činjenica da, unatoč tome što je gubitak temel-jnog prostornog značenja nužan preduvjet za gramatikalizaciju danog prefiksa u čisti perfek-tivizacijski prefiks u pojedinom slavenskom jeziku, taj proces nije niti predvidiv niti je nužan za postojanost vidskog sustava slavenskoga tipa (usp. standardni hrvatski u kojemu ne postoje osamostaljeni prefiksi i u kojemu nije nastupila takva gramatikalizacija). Na temelju takvih promišljanja. u ovom se radu ističe tvrdnja da činjenice iz južnoslavenskih jezika idu u prilog novijim tumačenjima gramatikalizacije, prema kojima process gramatikalizacije ne postoji kao takav, već postoje samo semantičke promjene uslijed kojih dolazi do gramatikalizacije kao epifenomenalne pojave

Whatever happened to the English prefix, and could it stage a comeback? A corpus-based investigation

This paper revisits the historical shift in English verb-particle combinations from prefixed to prepositional and adverbial forms based on qualitative and quantitative examples. It is argued that the reasons for the disappearance of the English prefix are more complex than previously thought. The paper proposes a combination of competition-based and systemic reasons while allowing for additional influence by other developments, such as verb frequency and spelling habits. A corpus-based study shows that the development is not irreversible, since due to the influence of computer-mediated communication there may be a revival of prefix verbs modelled after Old English templates.Der Artikel befasst sich mit dem Wandel der englischen Partikelverben von präfigierten zu präpositionalen und adverbialen Formen auf der Basis qualitativer und quantitativer Beispiele. Es wird argumentiert, dass die Gründe für das Verschwinden des englischen Präfixes komplexer sind als bisher dargestellt. Der Artikel schlägt eine Kombination von wettbewerbsbasierten und systemischen Faktoren unter Berücksichtigung anderer Entwicklungen vor, wie Verbhäufigkeit und Rechtschreibgewohnheiten. Eine korpusbasierte Studie zeigt, dass die Entwicklung nicht irreversibel ist, da es aufgrund des Einflusses computergestützter Kommunikationsformen möglicherweise zu einem erneuten Auftreten präfigierter Verben nach dem Muster altenglischer Formen kommt

Orphan Prefixes and the Grammaticalization of Aspect in South Slavic

This paper establishes the term ORPHAN PREFIX for a Slavic prefix that no longer shares a dominant spatial meaning with its cognate preposition. Most Slavic prefixes do share such a dominant spatial meaning with their cognate prepositions, cf., e.g., the Russian prefix v- and preposition v, both meaning ‘into.’ Orphan prefixes appear to be an important component of many Slavic aspectual systems. However, in most Slavic languages there is at most one prefix that has lost the semantic connection to its cognate preposition and come to function primarily as a grammatical marker of perfectivity. Only three Slavic prefixes are in fact to be considered orphan prefixes, and each only in some Slavic languages. A first case is Bulgarian iz- ‘out,’ as its cognate preposition iz is no longer used in the spatial meaning ‘out of.’ The most extreme case is Bulgarian po-, which no longer shares the spatial meaning of SURFACE CONTACT with the preposition po to any significant degree. Another important case is the hybrid prefix s-/z- in Slovene, which arose due to the phonetic coalescence of sъ- ‘together, down from’ and jьz- ‘out’ after the fall of the jers and which as a perfectivizing prefix has lost its semantic connection to sъ ‘with, down from’ and iz ‘out of’ to varying degrees in Slovene. This paper presents an overview of perfectivizing prefixation in three South Slavic languages, Bulgarian, Croatian and Slovene. It is argued that though the loss of a dominant spatial meaning is necessary for a given prefix to be grammaticalized as a purely perfectivizing prefix in an individual Slavic language, this process is neither predictable nor necessary for the maintenance of a Slavic-style aspect system (cf. standard Croatian, where no orphan prefix exists and no such grammaticalization has taken place). Building on this line of thinking, the paper argues that the facts from South Slavic support recent views on grammaticalization, that there is no “grammaticalization” process per se, only semantic changes that lead to grammaticalization as an epiphenomenal result

Old Church Slavonic roots of the present-day Polish anticausative system

W niniejszym artykule zostało zaproponowane wyjaśnienie istnienia różnic pomiędzy prefiksacją syntetycznych i analitycznych czasowników antykauzatywnych w języku polskim na podstawie historii ich rozwoju w językach słowiańskich, z uwzględnieniem staro-cerkiewno-słowiańskiego. Zaobserwowano, że syntetyczne czasowniki antykauzatywne przyjmują łatwo prefiksy zmieniające aspekt czasownika, ale nie jego znaczenie leksykalne, podczas gdy takie ograniczenie nie istnieje dla formacji analitycznych. Sytuacja ta wywodzi się z systemu, jaki istniał jeszcze w staro-cerkiewno-słowiańskim, w którym analityczne formacje były podstawą strony "zwrotnej", wchodzącej w skład systemu stron charakterystycznych dla odmiany w tym języku. Wskutek tego formacje analityczne otrzymywały te same elementy prefiksalne co czasowniki oparte na identycznych rdzeniach, ale realizujące stronę czynną, to jest te prefiksy, które również mogły istotnie modyfikować znaczenie czasowników. Inaczej działo się w przypadku syntetycznych antykauzatywów. Już w czasach wczesnosłowiańskich były one elementami leksykonu i nie miały innych skojarzonych z nimi form czasownikowych, lecz jedynie leksemy przymiotnikowe i rzeczownikowe (dla których to form system słowiański nie oferował licznych wzorców prefiksalnych). Wskutek tego czasowniki syntetyczne wzbogacały się o prefiksy realizujące tylko opozycje aspektowe, a nie funkcje słowotwórcze. W niniejszym tekście historia obu grup czasowników została prześledzona od czasów wczesnosłowiańskich poprzez fazy pośrednie do dziś.In this paper we will present a theory on the source of prefixation differences between Polish analytic and synthetic anticausatives. Analytic anticausatives are freely prefixed with superlexical, lexical and 'pure perfectivizer' prefixes, while synthetic anticausatives show propensity for 'pure perfectivizers', if indeed they are prefixed at all. We have looked for a source of this distinction in OCS anticausative morpho-syntax. We claim that OCS analytic anticausatives are formed within the limits of the voice system of OCS as middle voice word-forms. As such, they have the same rich prefix inventory as other verbal stems that have the same roots, with some of the prefixes introducing changes in verbal lexical meaning. On the other hand, synthetic anticausatives are already at this time members of the OCS lexicon, mostly without any related verbal forms, but sharing roots with nouns and adjectives (for which prefixation is not a frequent operation in Slavic languages). The prefixes appearing with synthetic anticausatives have the function of realizing the viewpoint aspect, rather than word-formational functions. We have traced the distinction between the two classes of anticausatives from the OCS times to Present-Day Polish, quoting also some intermediate stages in the history of these verbs