Abstract
Preverbs are intriguing grammatical objects. Semantically, they form a lexical unit with the verb they modify, sometimes behaving like an affix and sometimes more like an independent word. In all cases, however, preverbs appear to form a complex predicate with the verb they modify. While the formation of such complex predicates in Germanic languages has always received a lot of attention, very few studies have been devoted to the description of complex predicates in Romance languages. This is partly due to the fact that most modern Romance languages appear to lack verb-particle constructions, using derivation (prefixation) as a means of modifying the semantic and morphosyntactic properties of the stem verb. Consequently, with the notable exceptions of Roeper and Keyser (1992) and of Di Sciullo (1996, 1999), very few researchers have tried to provide a unified analysis of particles and prefixes within a broader theory of complex predicates.
We wish to thank the participants of the Workshop on Preverbs held at the University of Nijmegen in January 2001 as well as an anonymous reviewer for useful suggestions and remarks. Part of this work was also presented at the following conferences: PREP 2000, LSRL, Going Romance and ICHL. The research in this paper was partially supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grants # 410-96-1445 and # 214-97-0016) and by Queen’s University’s Advisory Research Committee. We also wish to thank E. Hamacher for proofreading the text.
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Dufresne, M., Dupuis, F., Tremblay, M. (2003). Preverbs and particles in Old French. In: Booij, G., Van Marle, J. (eds) Yearbook of Morphology 2003. Yearbook of Morphology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-1513-7_3
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