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ON THE SEMANTICS OF THE PREPOSITION ZA AND THE PREFIX ZA- IN BULGARIAN

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 -

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ON THE SEMANTICS OF THE PREPOSITION ZA AND THE PREFIX ZA- IN BULGARIAN

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    1. ON THE SEMANTICS OF THE PREPOSITION ZA AND THE PREFIX ZA- IN BULGARIAN Svetlana Nedelcheva

    2. 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’

    3. 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

    4. Bulgarian aspect

    5. 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

    6. 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))

    7. The contemporary preposition ZA The movement to ‘the back side of a location’ became a movement in the direction of that location. ? ? Patuvam za grada. Otivam zad granitsa. (I) travel za city-Det. (I) go zad border.

    8. The Purpose sense of the preposition za Otivam za hlyab. (I) go za bread. I’m doing to get bread. ? purpose the purpose is experientially correlated with the physical destination

    9. The Prefix Za- and Bulgarian aspect Simplex imperfective ????? (‘crawl’) (prefix) ??- Derived perfective ??????? (‘started crawling’) (suffix) -?? Derived imperfective ?????????? (‘start crawling’)

    10. In his Reference Grammar of Modern Bulgarian, Scatton (1984: 291) defines three meanings of za-: movement or location behind ???? (hide) ?????? (obstruct from view) ????? (hold) ??????? (hold back, restrain) beginning of action or state ????? (live) ??????? (begin to live) ??? (sleep) ????? (fall asleep) ????? (remember) ??????? (memorize) result ??????????? (register) ????????????? (put in a register) ????? (dig) ??????? (bury, cover)

    11. However excess (i.e. ??????? (‘conquer’), ??????? (‘guard’), ??????? (‘grab’) covering (i.e. ??????? (‘bury’), ????? (‘pour all over), ???????????? (‘cover with cement’) accumulation of quality (i.e. ?????????? (become pregnant’), ??????? (‘get ill’), ??????? (‘make sour’)

    12. The two most frequent meanings of za- “beginning of action or state” (i.e. ???????? (‘hurry up’), ???????? (‘start talking’), ?????? (‘start raining’)) and “result”, which I call completion (i.e. ?????? (‘nail in’), ??????? (‘fix’), ?????? (‘catch’))

    13. I hypothesize that the image schemas of these two meanings of the prefix za- are related to the proto-scene 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

    14. The Completion Sense 2nd in frequency ~23% of the total number of za-prefixed verbs Peter zagasi ogynya. TR za-LM Peter za-extinguish-3p. sg. fire-Det. ? Peter extinguished the fire. activity time The motion has a goal – the completion of the activity (extinguishing the fire)=>the destination point (LM) of za.

    15. The TR-LM correlations in the prefix and the preposition profiles SPATIAL TEMPORAL TR za LM TR za-LM analogy ? location activity LM TR DESTINATIONS are Life GOALS (Lakoff & Johnson (1999: 62))

    16. The Ingressive Sense the most frequent one more than 58% of the total number of za-prefixed 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

    17. The Completion sense MOTION ? END OF MOTION = DESTINATION The Ingressive sense NON-MOTION ? START OF MOTION = DESTINATION The Destination sense TR ? LM = DESTINATION

    18. 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 za- prefix 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

    19. THANK YOU

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