Search

The focus of this paper is on the semantics of the Croatian prefix od-, or, more specifically, on its contribution to the verbal semantics and the resulting network of senses that are realized by all the verbs with an od- prefix in standard Croatian. Following a brief review of the current most influential theoretical treatments of the semantics of the Croatian od-, which is complemented by a brief review of the (cognitively based) analyses of ot- in Russian, the central portion of the paper not only deals with a detailed and systematic analysis of the semantic components, but also with the syntactic requirements of all the Croatian verbs with an od- prefix. In the conclusive part of the paper the authors propose a semantic network that accomodates all the different meanings (senses) expressed by Croatian verbs with an od- prefix, which is paralleled by systematic syntactic requirements of verbs with the od- prefix falling into different semantic subcategories.

The focus of this paper is on the semantics of the Croatian prefix ‘do-’, or, more specifically, on its contribution to the verbal semantics and the resulting network of senses realized by all the ‘do-’ prefixed verbs in standard Croatian. Following a brief review of the current most influential theoretical treatments of the semantics of the Croatian ‘do-’, which is complemented by a brief review of the analyses of ‘do-’ in Polish and Russian, the central portion of the paper is represented by a detailed and systematic analysis and of the semantic components but also syntactic requirements of all the ‘do-’ prefixed Croatian verbs. In the conclusive part of the paper the authors propose a semantic network accommodating all the senses expressed by Croatian ‘do-’ prefixed verbs, which is interestingly paralleled by systematic syntactic requirements of ‘do-’ prefixed verbs falling into different semantic subcategories.

This paper focuses on the Croatian P-elements od ‘from’ and do ‘up to’, which productively appear as both verbal prefixes (yielding either source- or goal-oriented motion verbs) and prepositions ; in motion contexts these lexicalize TO (i.e., goals) or FROM (i.e., source paths). Furthermore, the pair allows for a very interesting alternation: a prefixed od-/do- motion verb is frequently followed by an od or do prepositional phrase. The resulting possible combinatorial patterns are interesting with respect to their semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic properties. A careful look at the various possibilities opens the way for analysis of what seems to be a previously undescribed property of the Croatian spatial prepositionless da-tive: a possible dual reading, generally of the adlative/ablative type.