Lexical vs. Nominal prefixes and Their Meaning Domains

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Contributor
Abstract

This study contrasts two types of prefixes in Lithuanian (a Baltic language), the lexical prefix and the nominal prefix. Despite being homophonous, I demonstrate that these prefixes are two distinct elements. There is a tradition in the literature to analyze lexical prefixes as part of a VP complement (Babko-Malaya 2003, Dimitrova-Vulchanova 1999, Svenonius 2004, ia.) since, despite being perfective, they also license an additional argument. Nevertheless, the data from Lithuanian show that the lexical prefix lacks phrasal properties. Instead, I propose that the lexical prefix is a morphological element, which is merged directly with a verbalized root (in line with Basilico 2008). In contrast, I show that the nominal prefix is a category-defining head n since it operates on the roots meaning space (Marantz 2001; Arad 2005) and can assign gender to a noun (Kramer 2016). I further gave evidence for this analysis showing that it correctly predicts polysemy resolution effects (Marantz 2013).

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
2018-04-02
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Comments
Recommended citation
Collection