Romanova Eugenia. Constructing Perfectivity in Russian: The syntax-semantics interface of verbal prefixes

VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009. — xii, 290 pages. — ISBN: 978-3-639-14683-7.This work deals with one particular way of deriving perfective verbs in Russian, namely, prefixation. Prefixes are not a uniform morphological class; they are divided into lexical and superlexical. The former readily attach to transitive and unaccusative verbs, whereas the latter mostly co-occur with unergative verbs. However, it is not immediately clear what factor is crucial in selecting a type of prefix: the argument structure or the aspectual characteristic of an imperfective verb it attaches to. Motion verbs, which also come in two varieties, help to clarify the mechanism at work. Both types of motion verb are imperfective. This split in imperfectivity seems to determine quantificational properties of such superlexical prefixes as accumulative na- and distributive pere-, discussed and analysed here. The proposed analysis can be extended to other superlexicals as well. In general, this work is an attempt at creating a multidimensional picture of verbal prefixation in Russian, which is just a language- specific representation of the universal phenomena on the syntax- semantics interface: resultative predication, argument structure, directionality and aspect.The aspectual network
Perfectivity under tests
Previous attempts
Internal distinctions in imperfectives
Internal distinction in perfectives
Aspect and objecthood. The data
Background to Lattice Theory
Mapping HypothesisLexical prefixes
Foreword
Theoretical premises
Types of lexical prefix
Structure of LPVs
Den Dikken (2003)
Direct Object TypesMotion verbsUnprefixed motion verbs
Prefixation and motion verbs
Zooming in on the PP
Analysis. Paths withinSuperlexical na- and event quantity
An overview of superlexical prefixes
Previous accounts of na-
Distribution of na-
Analysis of na-Superlexical pere- and pluractionality
Pere- introduced
Pere- as an NP-oriented distributive quantifier
Pere- as a Distributive operator on V
Pluractionality
AnalysisSummary of the thesis
Some questions from Chapter 1 revisited
Open questions