American Contributions to the 14th International Congress of Slavists. Ohrid 2008

On Prefixed Nouns in Late Common Slavic

Christina Y. Bethin, ed. American Contributions to the 14th International Congress of Slavists, Ohrid, September 2008. Vol. 1: Linguistics. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 149–60. On Prefixed Nouns in Late Common Slavic Frank Y. Gladney Proto-Slavic inherited from the parent language a dozen or so uninflected monosyllabic words with mostly spatial meanings which may be categorized as P. Preceding verbs (V), they come down in Late Common Slavic as prefixes (preverbs); preceding nouns (N), they come down as prepositions. Phonetically, the association of P with the following word in the sentence was close: iz followed by ro˛ky was realized as izdro˛ky ‘from the hand’, just as iz- followed by re!e was realized as izdre!e ‘expressed ’.1 But whereas the P V sequence izdre!e is a verb, structured [V P V ], the P N sequence izdro˛ky, structured [PP [P [NP N ] ], is not a noun and not even a constituent of the prepositional phrase.2 Since P V sequences were prefixed verbs but P N sequences were not prefixed nouns, how did Late Common Slavic come to have prefixed nouns? Loosely speaking, “prefixed noun” may refer to any noun that begins with a prefix . However, words are assumed to have constituent structure. It is further assumed (although this is not crucial for what follows) that that structure is generated by sublexical expansion rules operating on word categories within the sentence.3 A sentence (S) may include a noun phrase (NP) containing an N, thus [S … [NP … N … ] … ] ]. Besides being directly lexicalized, e.g., N ! /!lov"k/, N may be expanded to X N, where X is some other category and N is a noun suffix. For example, the expansion of N as A(djective) N, followed by the lexicalizations A ! /!ist/ and N ! /ost/ generates the noun [N [A !ist ] [N ost ] ] (!istost" ‘purity’). The X may also be V, and the lexicalizations V ! /mog/ and N ! /t/ yield the noun [N [V mog ] [N t ] ] (mo#t" ‘strength’). The V in turn may be expanded V ! P V as in zavist" ‘jealousy’, which is structured [N [V [P za ] [V vid ] ] [N t ] ]. Another possibility is that N is expanded as PP (prepositional phrase) N, with PP being expanded as P N, 1 Unlabeled forms are Old Church Slavonic, drawn mostly from Tseitlin et al. 1994 and Sadnik and Aitzetmüller 1955; Lunt 1954 was consulted for glosses. Forms assumed to be Late Common Slavic but not attested in Old Church Slavonic are labeled. 2 “Verb” denotes both the verbal morpheme stored in the lexicon (V) and the verb form ([V … ])—or rather the stem of the verb form, since my concern here is how verbs are formed, not how they are inflected. And likewise for “noun.” 3 Alternatively, word structures are assumed to be created by rules operating in the lexicon prior to being introduced into the sentence. 150 FRANK Y. GLADNEY so that the lexicalizations P ! /pod/, N ! /nog/, and N ! /ij/ result in [N [PP [P pod ] [N nog ] ] [N ij ] ] (podno!ije ‘footstool’). Thus, although zavist" and podno!ije are both nouns beginning with a prefix, neither is a prefixed noun in the sense of being structured [N P N ]. The three nouns just cited are all headed by suffixes that determine their structure as well as their morphological features: mo#t" and zavist" are feminine i-declension nouns because these are the features of the suffix /t/, and podno!ije is a neuter o-declension noun because these are the features of /ij/. The structure of nouns with suffixes is reasonably clear and is not our main concern here. The focus of this paper is on compound nouns not headed by a suffix.4 They include deverbal nouns (those containing verbs), which result from the recategorization N ! V followed by the expansion V ! P V, yielding, with lexicalization, structures like [N [V [P v!z ] [V dvig ] ] ] (v$zdvig$ ‘raising, exaltation’).5 Then there are dephrasal nouns (those containing prepositional phrases), where N is recategorized as PP, expanded to [PP P N ], and lexicalized, for example, as [N [PP [P bez ] [N d!n ] ] ] (bezd$na ‘abyss’). Thirdly, there are prefixed nouns in the strict sense, where N is expanded to [N P N ] and lexicalized, for example, as [N [P po ] [N drug ] ] (podrug$ ‘companion’). That podrug$ differs in structure from bezd$na is clear from the meaning: podrug$ is a kind of drug$ ‘friend’ but bezd$na...