On (apparently) synonymous affixes
It is commonly assumed that the Catalan prefixes des- and es- are synonymous, since they can be found attached to the same base in change of state verbs with an apparently identical meaning; cf. desgranar and esgranar 'to extract the grain'. The aim of this paper is to show that these two...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2022 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ddd.uab.cat:269785 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://ddd.uab.cat/record/269785 https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5565/rev/catjl.384 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Prefixes Roots Complex verbs Change of state Goal paths Source paths Nanosyntax Catalan Prefixos Arrels Verbs complexos Canvi d'estat Trajectòries de meta Trajectòries d'origen Nanosintaxi Català |
| Sumario: | It is commonly assumed that the Catalan prefixes des- and es- are synonymous, since they can be found attached to the same base in change of state verbs with an apparently identical meaning; cf. desgranar and esgranar 'to extract the grain'. The aim of this paper is to show that these two prefixes are non-trivially different, as suggested by the fact that only the latter, but not the former, is attested with an ingressive (or Goal-oriented) meaning; cf. estovar 'to soften'. Following a nanosyntactic approach to grammar, I claim that the trees lexicalized by des- and es- are not composed of the same morphosyntactic features, which accounts for their different morphosyntactic behaviour as well as for their semantic contrasts. It is proposed that des- lexicalizes a Source Path, whereas es- lexicalizes a Goal Path in addition to a root node. The paper is also a contribution to the long-standing debate of how morphemes with similar meanings compete for insertion. |
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