Open AccessSuperlexical versus lexical prefixes
Author(s) -
Eugenia Romanova
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
nordlyd
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1503-8599
pISSN - 0332-7531
DOI - 10.7557/12.69
Subject(s) - prefix , linguistics , verb , lexical definition , resultative , meaning (existential) , computer science , argument (complex analysis) , lexical item , mathematics , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , psychology , philosophy , biology , biochemistry , psychotherapist
This paper is intended to justify the classification of all the Rus- sian prefixes into lexical and superlexical. It gives semantic and syntactic criteria for distinguishing between the two groups, includ-\uding: the idiosyncratic or spatial lexical meaning versus operator-like function; the (in)ability to measure over objects and events; the (in)ability to stack; the (in)ability of a host verb to form secondary imperfective; attaching to (a)telic stems; the (in)ability to change the argument structure of a host verb. Applying these criteria results in finer gradation within the group of superlexical prefixes. It is ac- counted for by their different syntactic positions with respect to vP. At the end of the paper I speculate about the effect this architecture can have on the prefixation of unaccusative and unergative verbs