Transcript Document

ON THE SEMANTICS OF THE
PREPOSITION ZA AND THE PREFIX
ZA- IN BULGARIAN
Svetlana Nedelcheva
Za - one of the primary prepositions
• used as early as the 9th to 11th century,
the period of Old Bulgarian language
• Old Bulgarian spatial meaning of za - ‘a
place beyond something’
• contemporary Bulgarian primary meaning
of za – ‘the purpose of an activity, the
purpose of an object’
Deciding which is the primary meaning
can be quite a problematic issue
• The Dictionary of Bulgarian Language
(1977) shows 22 different meanings of za
in Modern Bulgarian
• Eurodict (2003) associates za with a range
of 14 meanings and 7 fixed phrases
• the primary sense and the functional
element of za is that of PURPOSE
Bulgarian aspect
Imperfective
Perfective
Secondary
imperfective
пълзя (‘crawl’) запълзя (‘start запълзявам
crawling’)
(‘start crawling’)
карам (‘drive’)
закарам (‘finish закарвам
driving’)
(‘finish driving’)
The prefix za is associated with
what seems to be contradictory
meanings
• a ‘starting’ sense (e.g. zacheta ‘start
reading’);
• a 'completed' sense (e.g. zapisha ‘write
down’);
• there appears to be no relation between
these meanings and the meanings of the
preposition za
I suggest that such a relation exists
• Talmy's spatially based theory of aspect
(Talmy (2000))
• a previous analysis of the semantic
network of the preposition za (Nedelcheva,
Tyler (forthcoming))
• conceptual blending (Fauconnier & Turner
(1998))
The contemporary preposition ZA
• The movement to ‘the back side of a
location’ became a movement in the
direction of that location.


Otivam zad granitsa.
(I) go zad border.
Patuvam za grada.
(I) travel za city-Det.
The Purpose sense of the preposition
za
Otivam
(I) go
za
za
hlyab.
bread.
I’m doing to get bread.

purpose
• the purpose is experientially correlated
with the physical destination
The Prefix Za- and Bulgarian aspect
Simplex imperfective
пълзя (‘crawl’)
(prefix)
заDerived perfective
запълзя (‘started crawling’)
(suffix)
-ва
Derived imperfective
запълзявам (‘start
crawling’)
In his Reference Grammar of Modern
Bulgarian, Scatton (1984: 291) defines three
meanings of za-:
• movement or location behind
крия (hide)
закрия
държа (hold)
задържа
(obstruct from view)
(hold back, restrain)
• beginning of action or state
живея (live)
заживея
спя
(sleep)
заспя
помня (remember)
запомня
(begin to live)
(fall asleep)
(memorize)
• result
регистрирам
копая
(register)
(dig)
зарегистрирам (put in a register)
закопая
(bury, cover)
However
• excess (i.e. завзема (‘conquer’), завардя
(‘guard’), заграбя (‘grab’)
• covering (i.e. закопая (‘bury’), залея
(‘pour all over), зациментирам (‘cover
with cement’)
• accumulation of quality (i.e. забременея
(become pregnant’), заболея (‘get ill’),
заквася (‘make sour’)
The two most frequent meanings of
za• “beginning of action or state” (i.e.
забързам (‘hurry up’), заговоря (‘start
talking’), заваля (‘start raining’)) and
• “result”, which I call completion (i.e.
закова (‘nail in’), закрепя (‘fix’), заловя
(‘catch’))
I hypothesize that
• the image schemas of these two meanings
of the prefix za- are related to the protoscene of the preposition za
• the TR-LM relationships invoked by the
perfective verbs prefixed with za- are the
same as the TR-LM relationship of the
spatial meaning of the preposition za – the
Destination sense
The Completion Sense
• 2nd in frequency
• ~23% of the total number of za-prefixed verbs
Peter zagasi ogynya.
Peter za-extinguish-3p. sg. fire-Det.
Peter extinguished the fire.
TR

za-LM
activity
time
The motion has a goal – the completion of the activity
(extinguishing the fire)=>the destination point (LM) of za.
The TR-LM correlations in the prefix and the
preposition profiles
SPATIAL
TEMPORAL
TR
TR
za LM

analogy
za-LM

location
activity
LM
TR
DESTINATIONS are Life GOALS (Lakoff &
Johnson (1999: 62))
The Ingressive Sense
• the most frequent one
• more than 58% of the total number of zaprefixed verbs
Kilimat
sashto
zadimya
i
plamatsite
barzo plaznaha
kam bibliotekata.
Carpet-Det. also za-smoking and flames-Det.
quickly crept
to library-Det.
The carpet started smoking as well and the flames quickly
spread out to the library.
rest TR
LM
event
time
• The Completion sense MOTION → END
OF MOTION = DESTINATION
• The Ingressive sense NON-MOTION →
START OF MOTION = DESTINATION
• The Destination sense TR → LM =
DESTINATION
CONCLUSIONS
• za- makes the verb perfective
• it changes the speaker’s perspective on events
from unbounded to bounded
• the polysemous functional morphemes (za & za-)
have semantic networks
• for the Completion and Ingressive sense of zaprefix and the spatial scene of the preposition za
– the functional element is that of DESTINATION
• the only difference is that with za- prefix the
relationship has been extended from the SPATIAL
to the TEMPORAL domain
THANK YOU