Abstract
This paper puts forward a formal analysis of the semantics of Russian verbal prefixes that is formulated within the framework of degree semantics. Prefixes are analyzed as degree modifiers. The paper demonstrates how this analysis captures the properties of pere-, one of the most complex and challenging verbal prefixes in Russian. It is proposed that spatial, temporal, excessive, comparative, and iterative uses of this prefix can all be unified under a scalar approach. The distinctions observed between these uses are largely restricted to the types of scale and comparative standard that are involved in the semantics of the verbal phrase.
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Notes
Alternatively, points and intervals can be distinguished in terms of their semantic type, with points denoting degrees and intervals, sets of degrees. This approach is perfectly compatible with the analysis of verbal prefixes provided below, but as stated above, I choose to ignore the distinction, mainly for reasons of exposition. It should also be noted that, unlike Kennedy (2001), I do not treat every degree as an interval that starts at the zero value on the scale. For instance, 30˚ on a temperature scale is treated below as a point, and not as an interval between the zero and the thirty values. As will be discussed later in this section, not all scales to be involved begin with a zero value.
Following Kennedy and Levin (2002), I assume that the degree variables get bound via existential closure (if not bound by some operator before existential closure applies).
Another example of an interval scale is a musical scale that orders notes—do, re, etc.; cf. Hardegree (2001) for details.
In Slavic languages, verbal prefixation is strongly associated with perfectivization. However, Isačenko (1960/2003), Filip (2000) and Janda and Nesset (2010) argue convincingly that prefixes should not be analyzed as perfectivizers. Crucially for the present purposes, in many cases, the same prefix may appear both in a perfective verb and in an imperfective one, which points to the compatibility of its semantics with both aspects. For instance, both the perfective perepisat’ ‘rewrite’ and its imperfective counterpart perepisyvat’ contain the prefix pere- under its iterative use. The prefix makes the same contribution to the meaning of both verbs; their aspectual difference depends rather on the presence versus absence of the imperfectivizing suffix -yva.
As I show in Kagan (2012, in preparation), a somewhat more complex version of the Scale Hypothesis is needed in order for it to be extended to certain prefixes. However, for our present purposes, the present version will be sufficient.
As I argue in Kagan (in preparation), the following tendency holds across prefixes: if the verbal stem lexicalizes a scale, the prefix will apply to this scale. If the stem does not lexicalize a scale but the object does, the prefix will apply to the scale contributed by the object. Finally, if neither the stem nor the object contributes a scale, the prefix applies to a time scale. (See also Součková 2004a, 2004b for a similar generalization on the prefix po- in Czech.) Idiosyncratic requirements of individual prefixes may overrule this general tendency, however.
For a detailed discussion of various uses of pod-, see Kagan (2012).
The division into sub-uses assumed in this paper is based on the division provided by Shvedova et al. (1982:365–366). I depart from Shvedova et al. in (i) not relating to uses they mark as non-productive and (ii) unifying their types (8) and (9) under temporal pere- (but the two uses will be distinguished as separate sub-types). The reason for the latter unification is based on the fact that both uses are characterized by a temporal meaning.
Within Janda’s classification, only one configuration out of nine is described as scalar (although the configuration contains three sub-meanings). But in the present paper, the uses of pere- are divided into a smaller number of groups. (In particular, Janda distinguishes between several uses of the prefix that are unified here within the group of spatial pere-, since all of them involve the semantic component of spatial crossing.) As a result, the uses taken by Janda to be scalar correspond to three out of the five groups listed in Section 4.1.
The Free Dictionary, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cross.
Dictionary.com, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cross.
Crucially, spatial pere- is acceptable with so-called unidirectional verbs of motion (e.g., letet’ ‘fly’) but not with multi-directional ones (e.g., letat’ ‘fly’). The former denote events of motion in a single direction. The latter can express events of motion “in various unspecified directions” (Forsyth 1970), motion “here and there,” “there and back,” etc. In other words, the former but not the latter have a directed path inherent in their meaning. The incompatibility of pere- with multi-directional verbs shows that the prefix does not contribute a path scale of its own but rather applies to the scale provided by the verb. Therefore, it receives a spatial meaning only with those verbs that contribute a path scale for independent reasons. See also Kagan (in preparation) for a detailed discussion.
I am grateful to Malka Rappaport Hovav for the discussion of this issue.
One of the alternatives is for the degree argument to undergo quantifier raising and leave a trace, which gets interpreted as a variable, afterwards bound by an existential quantifier. The precise mechanism is not crucial for the present purposes.
Standard tests suggest that with most verbs, this is a presupposition. But with perebolet’, the eventuality of sickness appears to be entailed.
The discussion in this section is largely based on Kagan (2011), where this sub-meaning of pere- is addressed.
The verb pererasti is rather interpreted as containing comparative pere-, cf. Sect. 5.4.
By analogy, the verb perevesit’ (pere-weigh) does not receive the excess meaning of weighing too much, but this meaning is present in the noun pereves ‘overweight’.
I assume that these verbs lexicalize the property of loudness. For instance, kričat’ ‘shout’ can be paraphrased as ‘orally produce a loud sound’.
It appears to be more generally true that with unidirectional verbs of motion like idti or bežat’, most prefixes can only receive the most basic spatial meaning (e.g. spatial pere-).
With this use, the relation of upper inclusion is in most cases equivalent to the ‘higher than’ relation, but certain exceptions can be found.
The exact nature of the standard of comparison, which varies across verbs as shown above, is here attributed to the semantics of pere-. Alternatively, assuming that the contribution of pere- is not purely transparent, we may assume that this component only emerges at the stage when the verb pererasti is created in the lexicon.
Note that a washing event may reach completion independently of whether the piece of cloth becomes clean or not. For instance, if we take a washing machine example, the event will be over as soon as the machine completes the washing process (going through all the programmed stages).
Previous work (e.g., Kagan 2011, 2012) suggests that this hypothesis applies successfully to prefixes that differ considerably from each other in terms of their semantic and formal properties, including both lexical and superlexical prefixes (cf. Romanova 2006 for a detailed discussion of this distinction).
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Edit Doron, Malka Rappaport Hovav, Louise McNally, Yael Greenberg, and Hana Filip for constructive comments and fruitful discussions. My thanks also go to three anonymous reviewers whose comments helped me to improve this paper. I am grateful to the audiences of the conference The Russian Verb, of the Sixth International Symposium of Cognition, Logic and Communication, of the workshop Scalarity in Verb-Based Constructions, of the Linguistics Departmental Seminar at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and of the Linguistics Colloquium at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev for helpful discussions of the semantics of different Slavic prefixes. All mistakes are my own.
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Kagan, O. Scalarity in the domain of verbal prefixes. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 31, 483–516 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-013-9190-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-013-9190-z