The semantics of space : A study of the prefix "pro-" in Serbian

Dejan Stosic (1)

1 GRAMMATICA - Grammatica - Centre de recherches en linguistique française

Most of the studies dealing with prefixes in the Slavic languages focus on their role in expressing verbal aspect. Research on the expression of motion in Serbian rarely takes into account the semantic contribution of prefixes when they are associated with verbs. In this paper, we show by analysing the prefix pro- in Serbian that prefixes also play a very important role in the semantic structuring of space. First, we examine effects which may cause the addition of the prefix pro- to different semantic classes of simplex verbs. Next, we show that pro- prefixed verbs involve, because of the semantic particularities of this prefix, more than one syntactic as well as semantic constraint on the nature of selected objects. Finally, we point up the relationship which exists between the spatial and the aspectual meaning of the prefix pro-.

Mots clés: semantics; prefix; serbian; motion; space; verb

Domaines: Linguistique

Dejan Stosic. The semantics of space : A study of the prefix "pro-" in Serbian. Nicole Delbecque, Bert Cornillie. On interpreting construction schemas, Mouton de Gruyter, pp.331-357, 2007. ⟨halshs-00272884⟩